Dir en grey

[kuyashii 124]

Was there any info on who was going to produce The Insulated World? I hope it isn't the same person who produced "Ningen" because that one sounds really bad, it's WAY TOO LOUD (specially the drums) and like Rosner said some of the drum samples are pretty grating. BTW were all of the songs remastered for Vestige of Scratches or just the earlier ones?

[blacktooth 227]

Don't get me wrong because I really do like that DVD, but it definitely marks a low point in Kyo's vocal health.

[Ro plz 1290]

40 minutes ago, Seelentau said:

Am I the only one who thinks the Rinkaku DVD is their best live ever?

That Live was raw as fuck.

 

I wouldn't say its the best but holy hell was it awesome. 

 

AGE QUOD>>>>>>>

Edited August 13, 2018 by Ro plz

[Saishu 1589]

1 hour ago, kuyashii said:

Was there any info on who was going to produce The Insulated World? I hope it isn't the same person who produced "Ningen" because that one sounds really bad, it's WAY TOO LOUD (specially the drums) and like Rosner said some of the drum samples are pretty grating. BTW were all of the songs remastered for Vestige of Scratches or just the earlier ones?

Ningen will probably have a new mix. Whether or not it’s better is up in the air. 

 

My opinion is that only the first two discs for Vestige were remastered. The stuff on the third disc sounds untouched to me. 

[Seelentau 884]

"This work will come in 3 disc format, and will feature 44 remastered songs selected by members among the ones requested by fans (from 1st Indie Mini Album “MISSA” (1997.7.25 RELEASE) to the latest single “詩踏み” (UTAFUMI) (2016.7.27 RELEASE))."

[Saishu 1589]

Yeah, all that stuff on the third disc still sounds the same. If they did anything they just made them louder. 

[emmny 4139]

what I dont get it why ningen... was mixed like garbage but ash was significantly better like...tf!!!

Edited August 13, 2018 by emmny

[Saishu 1589]

By the way, the live included with Rinkaku is the only place to get a version of Decayed Crow that’s worth a damn. 

[Ro plz 1290]

18 minutes ago, Saishu said:

By the way, the live included with Rinkaku is the only place to get a version of Decayed Crow that’s worth a damn. 

Ima need you to delete this, dawg.

 

And as iffy as Ningens mix is, the album version, based on their track record will most likely sound worse. 

Never gonna forgive them for what they did to Rinkaku, Lotus and Hageshisa. 

Edited August 13, 2018 by Ro plz

[Kelrya 145]

2 hours ago, Saishu said:

Ningen will probably have a new mix. Whether or not it’s better is up in the air. 

 

My opinion is that only the first two discs for Vestige were remastered. The stuff on the third disc sounds untouched to me. 

Sustain the Untruth sounds slightly different to me. The screams in the second verse.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Kelrya

[Saishu 1589]

2 hours ago, Ro plz said:

Ima need you to delete this, dawg.

 

And as iffy as Ningens mix is, the album version, based on their track record will most likely sound worse. 

Never gonna forgive them for what they did to Rinkaku, Lotus and Hageshisa. 

Been down on Decayed Crow from day one you can’t change my mind. 

[kuyashii 124]

Kyo's vocals aren't exactly the best on the Rinkaku DVD but it has my favorite renditions from a couple of songs (like "Tsumi to Batsu") and the energy is great. And yeah that "Decayed Crow" performance is legendary. I love how everyone reacts to it nowadays!

[StriderSubzero 53]

On 8/12/2018 at 8:52 PM, kuyashii said:

Changing the topic a bit, why are their mixes always so bad? I think Gauze might be their best-sounding album in terms of production. Macabre sounds fairly good too (even though I'm not really a fan of the music per se), but then everything between Kisou and Marrow sounds so thin and weak! I actually like the messy sound of the original Uroboros album but I agree it's not everyone's cup of tea. Dum Spiro Spero sounds fairly good, even though the music doesn't have much "depth", but then all of their post-Rinkaku releases  sound so mechanical, specially the drums, which sound too triggered.

 

 

Which songs got better mixes? I kind of skipped over Vestige.

 

Also pretty sure Gauze was their most expensive production, so that's probably why it sounds so good.

Edited August 14, 2018 by StriderSubzero

[Saishu 1589]

2 hours ago, StriderSubzero said:

 

Which songs got better mixes? I kind of skipped over Vestige.

 

Also pretty sure Gauze was their most expensive production, so that's probably why it sounds so good.

The Vulgar and WtD tracks benefitted the most from the remastering. They also used the superior original mixes for singles. 

 

[Zeus 7997]

So what is it about the Ningen mix that none of you like? Once again, I don't hear anything.

[Kelrya 145]

48 minutes ago, Zeus said:

So what is it about the Ningen mix that none of you like? Once again, I don't hear anything.

I don’t hate it as much as some people but I feel like the harsh vocals are too muffled and quiet in places and the bass is not very audible. Other than that it’s fine.

[Saishu 1589]

The beginning with the clean guitar tones is fine aside from Shinya’s MIDI sounding drums. Once the distorted guitars kick in its all downhill. It becomes an indistinguishable mess. Toshiya is barely there. His bass tone is fighting the guitars for the same frequency and ends up getting lost. No dynamics, it’s all just way too loud. 

 

Listened to Ningen and Utafumi today actually. They both sound even worse after a couple days of listening to CHEDOARA. 

[geist 227]

10 hours ago, Zeus said:

So what is it about the Ningen mix that none of you like? Once again, I don't hear anything.

The mix is good as a whole, there's just some questionable decisions in the single that I feel limits the overall impact of the song. Kyo's harsh vocals in the bridge -- a first for the band -- are completely muffled by the guitars. His cleans are clear, but then the growls are mixed as if they're backup vocals when they're not. Or maybe they intended them that way. Either way, bad mixing choice IMO.

[rekzer 599]

The messy guitars don't bother me as much as the drums. They are awful, specially on Ash. Utafumi does sound a lot better live imo so Nigen probably does too.

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

It's the sort of loud, farty jumpdafuckup guitar wall of sound mallcore garbage that they've done lately that I can't stand, and the production just emphasises the fact and I'm praying it won't be too prevalent in the album itself. The shit they did to the remastered Uroboros tells me that someone, either in the management or the band or otherwise, suffers from an acute case of bad taste to which the only cure is death. They'd sound more tasteful recording everything through a xbox 360 headset 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Disposable

[Rosner 35]

18 hours ago, Zeus said:

So what is it about the Ningen mix that none of you like? Once again, I don't hear anything.

From an audio engineering point of view (mixing/mastering process), there's a lot of things that I don't like:

 

-Drums have a lot of problems. The triggering is becoming more and more mechanic with every release. Just check out how the snare sample behaves whenever there are some snare rolls or fills happening. That's a really serious issue that almost every mid-tier triggering software can solve (even with Drumagog you can get a better and more natural snare sound). Beyond that, I really like the snare sample, much better than the one used in 'ARHCE'.  Bass drum is OK: I'm not a big fan of the 'typewriter ' sound, but it works on this song. Toms are the worst of all: they sound mechanic and 'out of the mix'. When triggering, and if going for a 'natural sound', one should always try and get the full samples of a whole kit. On this single, it feels like it doesn't belong to the same drum kit as the rest of the samples. Maybe the engineer was using samples of a kit that didn't have rototoms and ended up using that sample. Anyway, it sounds really out of place. Also, cymbals have no presence whatsoever: they sound really weak and I have the sad feeling that they are also sampling them! 

 

-Bass is barely hearable. Really weird: they dropped entirely the Korn-esque sound they had on the last previous albums in favour of a more regular sound. You can hear it "pop" during the choruses, but it sounds really bad. This is a real mistery: I wasn't a big fan of how loud and mid-fueled it was on previous albums, but at least you could hear Toshiya's amazing and clever bass playing. Here it is non existant.

 

-Guitars sound horrible. I mean, not as horrible as the mid-scooped guitars in 'The Marrow of a Bone', but they still lack energy and presence. It's like they scooped mids and highs/trebles and boosted the shit out of the bass frequencies with a multi-band compressor. That way, it clashes with the poor bass sound and causes the whole mix to bloate. The cleans in the intro, on the other hand, sound really good. Too bad the dynamics are horrendous...

 

-Vocals sound good; my only complain would be the wide-panned vocal scream in the section after the second chorus. They clash with the guitars and overpower the rest of the mix. It sounds really unbalanced.

 

-Dynamics are TRASHED. Chorus has no dynamic impact, only emotional one (which is good but not enough). The song sounds very linear: just check out how the intro creates anticipation for the main riff but ends having no impact. The lack of DR destroys the build-ups. I would love a good WAV-rip of the song to measure the dynamic range, just to confirm my suspicions.

 

-Overall, it sounds 'over-processed' and over-compressed, a problem that was already present on 'ARCHE'. The thing is, somehow, here everything sounds sterile and opaque. I'm no mastering expert, so I cannot really say if this is an issue that could be solved with just a better mastering. Mastering can do wonders (for example, I once worked on a record that had really poor toms that where miraculously enhanced with mastering), but I think 'Ningen...' is a real mess. I really feel the song should be remixed from scratch.

 

From a music production point of view, there's just a couple of small things I do not enjoy; keep in mind this are more personal:

 

-The transition from the verse to the first chorus does not work. It does not have flow and feels really forced. On the other hand, the transition from the verse into the second chorus is flawless.

 

-The vocal layering on the second bridge sounds really bad. Same thing happens with the vocal layering on the section after the second chorus. I applaud the audicity to innovate, but I think the mixing does not favor it. It sounds badly recorded and the metrics feel wrong. 

 

 

Don't get me wrong: I really like the song and I am very excited for the new album, but I feel like the band could do so much better in terms of production and engineering. I hope there's a lot of variety in the thirteen songs, just like on Arche; I also hope the final product has a superb production and not an average/mediocre one. 

 

 

[Zeus 7997]

I didn't expect such in depth responses!

 

19 hours ago, Saishu said:

The beginning with the clean guitar tones is fine aside from Shinya’s MIDI sounding drums. Once the distorted guitars kick in its all downhill. It becomes an indistinguishable mess. Toshiya is barely there. His bass tone is fighting the guitars for the same frequency and ends up getting lost. No dynamics, it’s all just way too loud. 

 

Listened to Ningen and Utafumi today actually. They both sound even worse after a couple days of listening to CHEDOARA. 

 

I can see/hear this. Shinya's drums have sounded shite for a while, so that's nothing new to me. The guitars overpowering the bass is the only thing that stood out to me before I asked my question. The "loudness war" is also something that I've come across so much that I'm desensitized to it, but even if there were dynamics I don't think it matters much if the guitars and bassist are dueling for the same frequency. It's not like Dir en grey's music has been all that dynamic since GAUZE anyway...

 

9 hours ago, geist said:

The mix is good as a whole, there's just some questionable decisions in the single that I feel limits the overall impact of the song. Kyo's harsh vocals in the bridge -- a first for the band -- are completely muffled by the guitars. His cleans are clear, but then the growls are mixed as if they're backup vocals when they're not. Or maybe they intended them that way. Either way, bad mixing choice IMO.

My beef with Kyo's vocals stems all the way from DUM SPIRO SPERO. What annoyed/annoys me about that album to this day is that he jumps from death growl to pig squeals back to death growls so much the impact of his range wears off by the halfway mark of the album. This is the inverse - Kyo is using purely mid range vocal fry and that brings its own style of monotony.  I don't even hear any growls, definitely not any that were on the level of DUM SPIRO SPERO.

 

9 hours ago, rekzer said:

The messy guitars don't bother me as much as the drums. They are awful, specially on Ash. Utafumi does sound a lot better live imo so Nigen probably does too.

Are the drums as stale live? I haven't listened to the live version of Utafumi enough to tell.

 

1 hour ago, Rosner said:

From an audio engineering point of view (mixing/mastering process), there's a lot of things that I don't like:

 

-Drums have a lot of problems. The triggering is becoming more and more mechanic with every release. Just check out how the snare sample behaves whenever there are some snare rolls or fills happening. That's a really serious issue that almost every mid-tier triggering software can solve (even with Drumagog you can get a better and more natural snare sound). Beyond that, I really like the snare sample, much better than the one used in 'ARHCE'.  Bass drum is OK: I'm not a big fan of the 'typewriter ' sound, but it works on this song. Toms are the worst of all: they sound mechanic and 'out of the mix'. When triggering, and if going for a 'natural sound', one should always try and get the full samples of a whole kit. On this single, it feels like it doesn't belong to the same drum kit as the rest of the samples. Maybe the engineer was using samples of a kit that didn't have rototoms and ended up using that sample. Anyway, it sounds really out of place. Also, cymbals have no presence whatsoever: they sound really weak and I have the sad feeling that they are also sampling them! 

 

Isn't it Shinya's job to, I don't know, play the drums? If you are hypothesizing that all of these elements are sampled, then what is he doing in the studio?

 

1 hour ago, Rosner said:

-Bass is barely hearable. Really weird: they dropped entirely the Korn-esque sound they had on the last previous albums in favour of a more regular sound. You can hear it "pop" during the choruses, but it sounds really bad. This is a real mistery: I wasn't a big fan of how loud and mid-fueled it was on previous albums, but at least you could hear Toshiya's amazing and clever bass playing. Here it is non existant.

 

Well that's a blessing in disguise, since I listened to the song again today and he's not doing anything interesting enough to stand out. That little segment in the chorus isn't enough for me.

 

1 hour ago, Rosner said:

 

-Guitars sound horrible. I mean, not as horrible as the mid-scooped guitars in 'The Marrow of a Bone', but they still lack energy and presence. It's like they scooped mids and highs/trebles and boosted the shit out of the bass frequencies with a multi-band compressor. That way, it clashes with the poor bass sound and causes the whole mix to bloate. The cleans in the intro, on the other hand, sound really good. Too bad the dynamics are horrendous...

 

So I'm guessing that this is a minor improvement then? The guitars don't bother me too much, but the bass could use more presence. But like I said, Toshiya isn't doing much interesting in this song so even if I could hear it, there wouldn't be much to get excited about.

 

1 hour ago, Rosner said:

-Overall, it sounds 'over-processed' and over-compressed, a problem that was already present on 'ARCHE'. The thing is, somehow, here everything sounds sterile and opaque. I'm no mastering expert, so I cannot really say if this is an issue that could be solved with just a better mastering. Mastering can do wonders (for example, I once worked on a record that had really poor toms that where miraculously enhanced with mastering), but I think 'Ningen...' is a real mess. I really feel the song should be remixed from scratch.

 

You can't make something amazing out of shit parts. The remastering of UROBOROS comes to mind here. They got a veteran engineer to do a second pass of the album, and somehow it came out worse than the first pass! And part of the reason why is because Tue Madsen does what he normally does, but the more he follows "proper practice", the more flaws come out of the mix. I have a hunch that the original version of UROBOROS was mixed the way it was to hide as many flaws as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened again.

 

1 hour ago, Rosner said:

Don't get me wrong: I really like the song and I am very excited for the new album, but I feel like the band could do so much better in terms of production and engineering. I hope there's a lot of variety in the thirteen songs, just like on Arche; I also hope the final product has a superb production and not an average/mediocre one.

 

I've heard this same sentiment since Kisou. I think they like it this way; it's the only way to explain nearly a decade of bad mixes.

[Saishu 1589]

Shinya is mostly likely actually playing in the studio, but he’s triggering samples. Which is funny, because he doesn’t bother with triggers live where he needs them the most. On recordings, it sounds like Shinya is a heavy hitter, but live he’s anything but. The difference in how he sounds between studio and live ever since DSS is really jarring. 

[Rosner 35]

 

1 hour ago, Zeus said:

Isn't it Shinya's job to, I don't know, play the drums? If you are hypothesizing that all of these elements are sampled, then what is he doing in the studio?

Sadly, it is not an hypothesis. I just casually  saw this picture posted on an audio-engineering Facebook page, and it comes in very handy:

 

 

As Saishu said, Shinya is playing the drums, but the hits are triggered. This can be done in real time or during the pre-mixing stage.  Also, keep in mind that most drum takes are edited before the mixing process: this means replacing bad hits with good hits, fixing playing problems or joining different takes (it's like copy-paste, but with audio). No matter how tight you are, some editing is going to happen. With triggering/sampling and editing, you get really tight and almost perfect takes, something that's really common in modern mainstream rock/metal music (hell, even the guitars are heavy edited...).

 

The best thing you can do in order to notice this is to listen to the song and just focus on one of the drums and try and notice how many different types of hits are there. I'd suggest to focus on the kick drum, which is arguably the most triggered drum ever. You'll notice that it always sound the same, thanks to triggering, editing and, of course, compression: the dynamics are (almost) dead.

 

This whole trend of using samples instead of real drums in rock/metal started in the mid 90s with producers such as Andy Sneap. For this kind of producers, the natural drum sound isn't enough to cut through the mix, specially with the mid-boosted guitars that became a norm in that era within the metal genre (especially on extreme metal). Thanks to this, 90% of modern rock/metal has triggered drums. Just check out any mainstream metal record from the mid 00s and you'll notice this. Since the end of the 90s, most metal producers started adopting this technique, and it became a norm in the industry (sucks to use that word to refer to something we all love, but sadly, music is a biggest industry). Add the 'loudness war' to the equation, and you have an stereotypical mainstream metal mix as a result. Of course, taste is everything: I sometimes enjoy it, because it makes everything sound clystar clear and perfect; sometimes, I want to hear something more natural. It really depends on the genre (for example, a Neurosis record with this kind of clean and sterile vision wouldn't feel right). To me, blending is the ideal, but it is very hard to achieve, especially on modern metal.

 

Back to Dir en grey, just look at what happened to 'Uroboros' (the original version): that's maybe the realest drum sound on a Dir en grey album to date, with either really tight playing and/or an amazing drum editing. For me, it is great and really makes the band and the album stand out from its contemporaries. For others, it's simply unhearable, and that seemed to be the opinion of the band, or anyone who manages/produces the band (record label maybe?). Thus, we have that remix/remaster edition of the album where every drum hit is replaced with mechanical and sterile samples. And don't get me started on the reamped guitars...

 

1 hour ago, Zeus said:

Well that's a blessing in disguise, since I listened to the song again today and he's not doing anything interesting enough to stand out. That little segment in the chorus isn't enough for me.



I agree: the Korn-like bass sound wasn't my cup of tea, but this new sound clashes with the bass-heavy guitars and makes it almost unhearable. Would love for the instrument to distinguish themselves from each other.

 

1 hour ago, Zeus said:

So I'm guessing that this is a minor improvement then? The guitars don't bother me too much, but the bass could use more presence. But like I said, Toshiya isn't doing much interesting in this song so even if I could hear it, there wouldn't be much to get excited about.

If comparing it to 'The Marrow of a Bone', yes, it is an improvement. The thing is that if you want the bass to have more presence, you need to adjust the EQ of the guitars in order to let it shine. This means enhancing the mids! Enhancing the highs/trebles clashes with the cymbals; enhancing the bass clashes with the bass drum, the toms and the bass guitar. In this mix, they scooped the mids and highs/trebles and boosted the bass, so it is natural that the bass guitar and the guitars' frequencies clashes, especially when using downtuned 7-string guitars.

 

The single version of 'Hageshisa...' has the best distorted rhythm guitar sound that the band has ever had, at least on their 'extreme metal' era. It just sounds really big and 'meaty'. Compare it to the sound the same song has on 'Dum Spiro Spero'.

 

2 hours ago, Zeus said:

You can't make something amazing out of shit parts. The remastering of UROBOROS comes to mind here. They got a veteran engineer to do a second pass of the album, and somehow it came out worse than the first pass! And part of the reason why is because Tue Madsen does what he normally does, but the more he follows "proper practice", the more flaws come out of the mix. I have a hunch that the original version of UROBOROS was mixed the way it was to hide as many flaws as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened again.

That's an interesting theory! Dir en grey became a tight band during the end of the' Dum Spiro Spero' era. Shinya was, without a doubt, the most virtuous and tight member of them all. Toshiya followed closely; Die and Kaoru were really sloppy, and Kyo... Well, just watch the 'Uroboros -With the Proof...-' DVD (although in studio he was great!). The remix/remaster has triggered drums, reamped guitars and a clear sound that makes everything sound really plastic (which means getting rid of everything that is or sounds like a mistake -with the modern metal production we talked about before used as the standard-). I think they tried to match the quality of 'Dum Spiro Spero' and then failed at it. 

 

Regarding Tue Madsen, he's not one of my favourite producers: he's one of the many that jumped on the same wagon as Andy Sneap, but maybe a little more versatile. I'm thinking of nice sounding albums like Extol's 'The Blueprint Dives, The Haunted's 'Unseen' (I KNOW! But I really like this album...) and Meshuggah's 'The Violent Sleep of Reason' (especially this one, which was supposedly recored in a true analog way -I have my doubts...-). The only thing I cannot always tolerate is how mid-centric most of his albums sound, lacking some extra bass frequencies punch. This makes a lot of his recordings sound really thin. Thankfully, 'Dum Spiro Spero' sounds quite good, but the 'Uroboros' remix/remaster, suffers from that problem.

 

2 hours ago, Zeus said:

I've heard this same sentiment since Kisou. I think they like it this way; it's the only way to explain nearly a decade of bad mixes.

I stick to my theory: the band, being self-produced, may be to blame. However, I prefer them having a total control of the creative process and badly mixed albums than little to none control of their art and with masterfuly mixed records.

 

1 hour ago, Saishu said:

Shinya is mostly likely actually playing in the studio, but he’s triggering samples. Which is funny, because he doesn’t bother with triggers live where he needs them the most. On recordings, it sounds like Shinya is a heavy hitter, but live he’s anything but. The difference in how he sounds between studio and live ever since DSS is really jarring. 

 

I totally agree!!! Shinya is a mystery to me. As fragile and graceful as he looks, sometimes it looks like he's hitting the drums like a bull! I really like how the band sounds live since the 'Dum Spiro Spero At Nippon Budokan' show. On that show and on 'Arche At Nippon Budokan', Shinya's drums sound great (a perfect blend between the real drum sound and the samples that are triggered live), and the hard panning of Kaoru and Die's guitars leave a lot of space for the bass guitar to shine (it is also a nice touch for us fans: you can really tell who is playing each part of the song).

 

I feel like on the 'FROM DEPRESSION TO...' shows they have become one of the best live bands in the world. They are getting tighter each day, have amazing setlist, are talented musicians, have good songs with clever structures and progressive elements and also are a really interesting band to watch perform. And most importantly, they sound REALLY good. To be honest, nowadays I prefer to watch the live shows than to listen to the albums.

 

 

 

[Kelrya 145]

I just wish the harsh vocals were less muffled and buried in the mix.  The Beautiful Dirt remix had the same problem. His cleans sound fine but his screams are poorly produced and mixed and his mid-range harsh vocals kinda suck lately but he seems to be all about them again.