Foo Fighters - Have It All (5.1 Downmix)

This is a stereo downmix of “Have It All” by Foo Fighters, derived from the surround sound release of *One by One*! This album as a whole seems to have faced a quite a lot of dynamic range compression (not to confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such) during its production, likely to make the record sound more exciting, but the surround sound mix does not seem to have such heavy compression, so I present this downmix here as an alternative to the original mix! For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts quiet) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to push a signal beyond its peak) were used to make music as loud as possible. Yet unlike most albums throughout the 2000s, the original mix of this album appears to have been dynamically-compressed as a deliberate artistic choice, rather than it being simply due to pressures to conform to a certain loudness. I find this decision is at least partially due to the poor engineering of this record, with guitars that sound like they covered a portion of the speaker cabinet while recording. This is especially noticeable in “Times Like These”, where the guitars feel muddy and indecipherable. This engineering to a point makes me sympathize why understand why the final mix faced so much compression. It feels like an attempt to compensate for sterile recordings the band had to work with. So, on one hand the heavy-handed compression made sense—to create a sense of tension the recordings lacked. On the other hand however, the compression used makes the record feel less spontaneous, more produced, and ultimately contary to the energy of live performances the band attempted to emulate. Simply put, One by One sounds lo-fi, but manufactured at the same time: the worst of both worlds. While I still feel this surround sound downmix suffers from the dull engineering of the initial release, since it doesn’t have that heavy compression of the original mix, it makes for an interesting listen. It also leans on room mics a lot more for its sound, likely to make the listener feel like the band is playing in front of (and behind) you. If you can, let me know what you think! I also produce what I dub “dynamic edits” on this channel to try to fix up the dynamic-range compression of the loudness war! You can look at this for a full list of the albums I’ve done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19...