The Chemical Brothers - Block Rockin' Beats (The Micronauts Remix)

This is The Micronauts remix of “Block Rockin' Beats” by The Chemical Brothers! *Dig Your Own Hole* and its singles were mastered loudly with a ton of clipping, often making them fatiguing to listen to and quite audibly distorted. In this, I attempt to undo that clipping and resulting distortion, making the music more dynamic, and hopefully also more listenable as a result! For some reason, the CD version I have of this track isn't dynamically-compressed, so I left it unedited.

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 sounds better, and thus, should sell better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (not to be confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such; dynamic range compression makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible.

The issue with this is that overuse of dynamic range compression and clipping can make music fatiguing to listen to, and sometimes even audibly distorted. Additionally, clipping, poor compressors, or overuse of compressors can result in artifacts such as hiss or crackle being audible atop the signal. For the album in question, the “you’re coming on strong” section of the vocals on “Setting Sun” has a ton of crackle from its clipping, and the shwoops surrounded by the thick bass on “It Doesn’t Matter” crackle quite a bit when they pop in. As for the b-sides, the beat of “Prescription Beats” distorts as well during its bassy sections, as does the beat of the Dust Brother’s remix of “Elektrobank”. The 25th anniversary tracks, while notably compressed, certainly aren’t as badly affected as the b-sides or the rest of the album. I wasn’t able to hear any crackle on those tracks.

I attempted to undo the mastering compression and distortion on all these songs with a program called “Perfect Declipper”, which can not only affect clipping, but mastering compression as well. It can undo much of the distortion caused by heavy compression, such as the sections of “Setting Sun”, “It Doesn’t Matter”, “Prescription Beats”, and “Elektrobank (Dust Brothers Remix)” I noted! The program also makes the music more dynamic, and I was able to bring the dynamic range of *Dig Your Own Hole* from 5 to 10, and was also able to heavily improve the dynamic range of the b-sides as well! I am missing the songs “Block Rockin’ Beats (Radio Edit)” and “Where Do I Begin (Radio Edit)”, because I honestly didn’t care enough to buy them.

It’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the “Perfect Declipper” program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to “declip” an album as one would be unable to “unbake a cake”, I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix.

I also want to note that dynamic range compression is not an inherently bad thing. It can tighten up performances, add grit, and help remove dynamic outliers that would take you out of the mix. Additionally, mastering engineers are often underneath the implicit and explicit pressures of artists and record labels to master albums loudly, so the results of mastering may not necessarily reflect a mastering engineer’s intentions for how they wanted an album to sound.