edit - so it's the 2nd listen through of this album. i still stand by what i said later in this thread, unfortunately.
but honestly, i think the main issue is that they are "Dream Theater." to me, this isn't Dream Theater. it's a new band. again, the performance and recording is excellent! but because it's "Dream Theater," i'm naturally expecting a certain thing. it hasn't been that for a while... and i actually felt this shift as far back as Octavarium. BCSL brought it back a bit, but then MP's departure changed everything completely.
so as DT, this doesn't do it for me. but as [insert new band name here], i like it much better.
Mangini's sound is always heavily compressed like that. Some song I heard the loudes ghost notes of the snare ever in a mix. Full band going, heavy guitars and vocals... And ghost notes were louder than everything.Am i the only one earing bad quality drum samples with not enough different velocity layers?
Sounds exactly like old school DT to me.
Am i the only one earing bad quality drum samples with not enough different velocity layers?
The snare definitely sounds "robotic" and sampled all the time. Past albums too. It's his style, how pearl drums sound, how they are tuned, and post-production.Are you serius?? are you hearing this with ipod inears or what? I gave the album a good listen with my studio headphones and the drums sound great!!!!
Whats next, James LaBrie was out of tune??? Geez....
The drums sound like they are all triggered, quantized, tempo mapped, & velocity levelled generic library samples.
They are not. Mangini is disciplined in the sense that he tries to get every hit the same velocity.
Whether you like that style of playing or not is a different story....but that is all Michael.
He's a friend of mine, so I'm keeping my opinion out of this thread as I am biased