Nine Inch Nails announced today that they're releasing two separately mastered versions of
Hesitation Marks next week: a standard version and audiophile version. According to the band, they struggled with this mastering dilemma: keep the mastering loud and sacrifice bass, or keep the bass and have an overall lower sound? NIN reasoned that since most fans seem to prefer louder albums, they'd release the louder mixed version as the standard and allow fans with high end equipment and "an understanding of the mastering process" to download the audiophile version, which will be available exclusively as a free download option to those who purchase
Hesitation Marks from the NIN store. For what it's worth, Nine Inch Nails claims that for the majority of people, "the standard version will be preferable and differences will be difficult to detect." Additionally:
"The standard mastered version is in no way inferior to the Audiophile Version - we wouldn’t release something inferior as the default. And vinyl purists rest assured, the vinyl edition was mastered to sound the very best for that format. The Audiophile Version is merely an alternate take on the mastering, which some people will appreciate. It’s meant to give a slightly different experience, not denigrate the standard version. Listen to each and come to your own conclusions."
Read more about the mastering of Hesitation Marks
straight from engineer Alan Moulder. Pre-order
here and stream the standard version of
Hesitation Marks ahead of its release
on iTunes. Or if you live outside the U.S.
go here.
Published August 28th, 2013 @ 8:10 PM
