Melodic Metal groups

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #40 on:** 15 Dec 2006, 08:11 am »

Hmmm...I thought the lyrics of King Diamond/Merciful Fate was part of their 'charm.'

Bwanagreg · « **Reply #41 on:** 16 Dec 2006, 08:54 pm »

I've been revisiting the classics lately, 'specially Rainbow's first two albums (Dio , inventor of

btw) and all of Sabbath's early stuff. It holds up better than the Beatles IMHO.

What, no Norwegian Black Metal

Imperial · « **Reply #42 on:** 16 Dec 2006, 09:53 pm »

My norwegian pride... aa

Ya'rr!

Daygloworange · « **Reply #43 on:** 17 Dec 2006, 07:51 am »

Don't know if you'd call them metal, but anybody anyone heard of Electric Boys? Powerhouse hard rock band from Sweden. Hard rock with a funk edge and Beatles like pop sensibility at times. They rock.

Another unique band was a three piece called T Ride. I believe they only put out one album. San Francisco band. Seen them open for Joe Satriani back in the early nineties. They absolutely floored everybody ! Super players. If you've never heard them, you've got to check them out.

Cheers

Imperial · « **Reply #44 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 11:46 am »

Quote from: amdan on 14 Dec 2006, 09:40 pm

I love this album but it is unlistenable on my hifi. It is better in the car but not by much. Has anybody else had this experience?

What you are mentioning here is a , I think, a little talked about phenomenon in audio (circles...) Well...
----

You have your exotic high-end speaker, or amp or cdplayer or what have you...
They sound fabulous on simple stuff such as jazz, acapella , small ensembles...
You say, its a beauty, but its best on the simple stuff, that's were it really shines...

Lets not dig a hole here... I'm not looking for sugarcoating...

What this is, is inferior components... bad stuff...
Am i calling some e very expensive speakers bad? Yeah!!!

They are tuned resonators of certain waveforms... not high-end speakers!!! Or amps or cdplayers!!!
And their pricetags may very well be insane!!!
And they may very well be regarded as the worlds best for their type of music capacity...

Well I disagree!
And when you play something as say In Flames on them, you find that it sounds bad.
This is not because In Flames is bad, but it is because the system that one uses has been designed
with a certain musical or should we rather say a certain level of musical complexity in mind.
Reasonly priced stuff act like this to...

Then you have some speakers that just play it all! Everything sound good on them...
And you have to ask e very scary question:

- Why is it so?

Square waves capacity is the answer...

Fried Speakers are known to reproduce square waves... play In Flames on a set of
Fried Studio 7's and you will hear it...

Music ain't sinewaves... design a speaker for sinecapacity, and you have just that!

Its amazing to know that a lot of the really good speakers out there work, most likely because of a fluke!
They have been designed on a wrong idea!!! But they still manage to sound good!

Crazy!

Imperial

JoshK · « **Reply #45 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 02:59 pm »

Imperial.... watch it, you are going to start a war!

However, I very much agree with what you said at least on some level.

Not to go off on a huge tangent but this is what half the audiophile industry is about, making audio gear that makes a certain type of music sound eerily real. However lots of those system far apart on complex, aggressive, busy or highly layered music. Large scale orchestral will do this too, not just bleeding metal. I also think this is why you have such a huge variation of systems, designs, approaches out there.

I really like a huge variety of music with a gamut of complexity from utter simplistic to horribly complex. I cannot tolerate a system that falls apart on any one type of music. Nor will I ever taylor my listening habits to meet my system. I am a music snob first, audio snob second.

The system has to allow me to play whatever music I happen to be in the mood for that day.

I often like to throw some complex, hard or large scale pieces on a system just to see if it will hold together, since I know I am going to play that type of music on the system at least 20% of the time, usually quite loudly too!

Rock on!

woodsyi · « **Reply #46 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 03:38 pm »

Josh,

Get 2 or 3 or 4 rooms for different music -- more toys to play with.

And probably a divorce.

I am coming to the conclusion that a system that does everything well can't beat a specific setup tuned for a genre within that genre.

nathanm · « **Reply #47 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 03:56 pm »

I am willing to bet sound unheard that the In Flames record in question is total flatline peak-limited. EVERYTHING is these days. I just downloaded the first song online to confirm or deny...I suspect to see few spikes there.

...

Oh gee, what a surprise...

Seems like you can't escape this nowadays.

JoshK · « **Reply #48 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 04:03 pm »

Quote from: woodsyi on 20 Dec 2006, 03:38 pm

Josh,

Get 2 or 3 or 4 rooms for different music -- more toys to play with. And probably a divorce.

I am coming to the conclusion that a system that does everything well can't beat a specific setup tuned for a genre within that genre.

True enough. I am developing two systems for largely the same purpose (if I ever finish). One is absolute performance, the other more comfy in some senses (hi-eff, tubes, etc). We don't all have the luxury of multiple systems and in that case, it has to meet all standards.

Imperial · « **Reply #49 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 07:25 am »

Quote from: nathanm on 20 Dec 2006, 03:56 pm

I am willing to bet sound unheard that the In Flames record in question is total flatline peak-limited. EVERYTHING is these days. I just downloaded the first song online to confirm or deny...I suspect to see few spikes there.

...

Oh gee, what a surprise...

Seems like you can't escape this nowadays.

Hm... but with this little dynamic swing, should it not be really easy to "speak" it?
I would think so...

Imperial

Imperial · « **Reply #50 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 07:32 am »

Quote from: JoshK on 20 Dec 2006, 02:59 pm

Imperial.... watch it, you are going to start a war! However, I very much agree with what you said at least on some level.

Rock on!

I agree on the classical.
I know, I built speakers myself that only could play the "humpty dumpty song..." aa
Hehe, well, a war? I don't think so. I like the psychological aspects of selling your side of things.
But I don't like a modified version of the truth.
Which what I am talking about is.

But we need to call it something! Can't it just be "musically adept for jazz and the likes..."
The shine on me crazy genre?

Dude, used to listen to a set of Infinity SM 152's ... believe me, they could not play it all!
But the could play classical and heavy and jazz, makes you wonder... And you could clearly delineate
all that was "spoken" ...

Imperial (on somewhat thin ice...)

Imperial · « **Reply #51 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 07:40 am »

In flames, Reflect the storm.
Does not look that compressed to me...

"trying to find a beautiful place today..."

Imperial

nathanm · « **Reply #52 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 10:57 pm »

True, it's no "St. Anger" or "Monotheist", but it's still crammed looking compared to metal albums in the days of yore, that's what I'm saying. But it's not necessarily a sonic death sentence. For instance there are some "guilty pleasure" albums I like which are total 2x4s (to paraphrase EveAnna Manley) such as Kataklysm and The Melvins. (Commodore's "Brick House" is crammed too, but for some reason it still sounds great) Usually the most trouble with compressor abuse comes in when there are generous overs. (Slayer's latest for instance) Perhaps one day we might have DSP in our DACs\media players which can reconstruct those ugly square waves. Maybe there's something out there now, I dunno. It would be a borderline magic technology I'd figure.

I'm very skeptical on the idea that equipment can be designed to suit one style of music or another. Seems a little too abstract to me. I think the main question, as it has always been, is how good are the recording engineers and does what they think sounds good correlate with what I think sounds good? The only way I could see a certain speaker having a music-specific bias would be in terms of frequency response and SPL. If you're judging an acoustic guitar you aren't going to run into the bass response and power handling demands of a pounding metal tune, but the acoustic tune is also compromised, just our expectations have shifted a bit.

Daygloworange · « **Reply #53 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 11:37 pm »

Quote

Perhaps one day we might have DSP in our DACs\media players which can reconstruct those ugly square waves. Maybe there's something out there now, I dunno. It would be a borderline magic technology I'd figure.

There does exist something in pro audio, it's called an expander. It does the reverse of compression.

It's not an easy solution however. Number one, it will amplify dynamics, but it will also amplify the noisefloor that resides in the audio by the same amount. There's no free lunch, so to speak. The other problem that exists is this.

Compressors work in ratios and are user adjustable. With a setting of 4:1, you get a gain reduction of 3. For a 4db rise in gain going in, you only get a 1 db rise going out. Here is were it gets tricky. You can set the ratio, but then you have a threshhold, the level at which the attenuation begins to take place, below it, the compressor section is dormant.

Beyond that, you have attack and release adjustments. Attack is the way the compressor effect ramps into effect, release is how long it takes to resume it's dormant level. But as it's ramping down, if you set a long release time, as a sound is decaying, the compressor will actually add gain, in effect, an artificial sustain. These are very tricky controls to set. If they are not set properly the effect will be quite erratic gain levels up and down. The terms are pumping and breathing.

So technically you could reverse the compression effect. However, you would need to reverse the ratio, threshold, attack and release as well.

The problem is, is that what we hear as a 2 channel recording, is not just a 2 channel recording that's been compressed. What you are hearing is a 2 channel recording of a compilation of instruments, individually compressed ( with different settings on each individual instrument ) amalgamated on 2 tracks.

You can't isolate the instruments, uncompressed them individually, (expand) then amalgamate them into a 2 channel compilation.

Even if you could, and you added up all the noise floor that you've boosted back by expanding, and all the signal degradation by running that many instruments through all those electronics, it would sound like crap.

Cheers

Imperial · « **Reply #54 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 11:54 pm »

tc electronics do make some sort of mastering finalizer that compresses
but does not loose the dynamics.
Saw a demo once, but dont remeber the product name now.
But It seemed to work.

Imperial

Canyoneagle · « **Reply #55 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 11:56 pm »

---TOOL has been mentioned a few times, which I heartily second (as with A Perfect Cicle.
---- Dream Theater - particularly the earlier stuff-
---- Queensryche - for sure. Very prog metal, very melodic
---- NIN has put out some amazing albums (Halo Fourteen comes to mind)
---- Smashing Pumpkins. Excellent stuff. Siamese dream is a Classic!
---- Catherine Wheel
---- Stabbing Westward.

Tool seems to have a good recording quality, but I agree that some of the other stuff can be a bit harsh if the system is overly revealing (especially the high freq).

Rock on

Warmly,
Michael

gitarretyp · « **Reply #56 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 02:16 am »

I just picked-up the latest Coheed and Cambria album. It's prog rock, but very melodic.

arthur · « **Reply #57 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 02:53 am »

well well well, where to begin!

Rage Against The Machine and Pantera (especially Far Beyond Driven) are a must have for any kind of metal fan

but if you want to go fully melodic you have to try black metal - i know there is a lot of controversy if they hate any particular group of people, but as far as i understand they are equal opportunity haters

- misanthropes.

tell you the truth i don't listen to it for lyrics at all, and thankfully i can't understand much of it (same applies to some of the more sexist edges of blues)

but the one album that is recorded very well is Dissection : Storm of the Light's Bane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection_%28band%29

if you like it, try also Sentenced : North From Here

... there are so many to list. if you like any of these let me know and i can recommend a whole lot more.

but yes these do sound pretty evil since you can only get so angry without getting evil

if you still find that you don't want to financialy contribute to anything that migh possibly be harmful to anyone - and if you live in LA area let me know and i can let you listen/borrow/"borrow" whatever kind of music that i have.

JoshK · « **Reply #58 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 02:55 am »

C&C is different...its ok.

It hasn't been mentioned, its a bit devil-music but very melodic....Danzig (I, II or III)

Kyuss - Blues for a Red Sky
Iron Maiden
Rush
System of a Down is ok

So far though your recomendations and comparisons are all what I'd consider 'death metal' and would qualify as 'eating gravel' as you put it. I sampled In Flames a few times and I couldn't take much of that. I like the music but the vocals are horrid. To each his own, not going to hear sh*t from me about your taste in music. I just personally can't tolerate that kind of vocals, except in small doses in choral emphasis, such as Slipknot's "hits" (not that they are a good band).

nathanm · « **Reply #59 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 04:36 am »

Daygloworange, I was referring to somehow reconstructing the clipped-off peaks of a transient, making the flat plateaus back into the spiky mountains they used to be. I am not sure if that's what you meant or not, but it seems almost impossible unless some sort of artificial wave "tips" could be pasted in. Hmmm...

"Storm Of The Lights Bane" is indeed excellent! "Where Dead Angels Lie" is about as brilliant as I've heard black metal get. I heard their comeback album after the lead guy got out of jail, it's pretty mediocre, a huge departure. Of course, then he killed himself so... Black Metal in general is very much into the thin and scratchy sound, those guys seem to have an aversion to bass. I do dig Immortal's "Blizzard Beasts" though, the sound is so...wrong and right at the same time.