I have a few albums where I'm quite convinced that things sounded great in the studio but when they pushed it to the CD it came in too hot because there's no overhead when burning a CD. So, I'd love to hear the studio master files and tapes and compare those to the CD's I have. The bonehead who worked on Heather Nova's South album has clipping on every track. Every one! There's no way the guy at the mixing console didn't catch that in the studio. Then again, signal headroom exists in the analog world... not the digital.
That just sounds like typical loudness war mastering to me. There's nothing in the CD spec that says you have to master loud or get anywhere close to 0dBFS. Somebody
wanted it that way, to be "competitive."
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Analyzed: Deuter / Empty Sky
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR13 -0.77 dB -19.95 dB 8:56 01-Traveling the Stars
DR10 -4.85 dB -19.67 dB 10:20 02-Brother to the Wind
DR11 -7.87 dB -22.54 dB 4:49 03-Folding into the Night
DR11 -7.49 dB -22.08 dB 7:33 04-Beltane
DR10 -5.23 dB -19.19 dB 4:06 05-The Big Empty
DR12 -6.32 dB -22.50 dB 6:13 06-Empty Sky - Bamboo Calling
DR10 -5.85 dB -19.16 dB 6:27 07-Surfing the Clouds
DR11 -4.92 dB -20.65 dB 10:15 08-Under the Pear Tree
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Number of tracks: 8
Official DR value: DR11
Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 535 kbps
Codec: FLAC
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That's a CD release. You'll note that most tracks have well over 5dB of headroom left.
