Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace [2007]

So I tried listening to the Foo Fighters’ latest album “Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace” expecting good things from this awesome band. Two minutes into the first track I had to turn the volume down because it was simply too loud and was hurting my ears.

I decided to investigate, and verified that indeed this album is loud as hell. The entire album had a replaygain of -11dB, and that is WAY TOO LOUD.

Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace replaygain

I opened the first track “The Pretender” in Goldwave. You can see that the waveform speaks for itself:

The Pretender waveform (before)

After applying -11dB replay gain we now arrive at something more palpable, although most of the track is still clipped.

Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem

Here is a side-by-side comparison of “The Pretender” before and after waveforms:

The Pretender waveform (comparison)

Now compare those with Rebecca Pidgeon’s “Spanish Harlem” mastered by Chesky Labs waveform, in its unmodified state with +0.15dB replaygain:

Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem

Anyway thanks to Foobar’s excellent replay gain support I can now listen to the entire Foo Fighters album without wincing at the noise and without hurting my ears!

And to think that the cover art of “Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace” shows a hi-fi audio system’s transistor, in the shape of a bomb. Destruction of true audio indeed.

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