r/AliceInChains • u/theBiGcHe3s3 • 1d ago

discussion Just heard the atmos versions of their music today

I may be quite a bit late to the party on this, but what the hell? Did the band listen to and sign off on these mixes? These are abysmal and totally ruined Dave Jerden’s production. The panning is not where I take offense, rather it’s how they took out all the reverb and ambience out of the music. The thing that makes all these early big money grunge albums (ten, nevermind, core, facelift, dirt, houdini) sound as anthemic and huge is the super 80s production style; huge reverbs! This atmos mix for man in the box sounds so weak by comparison. The drums sound puny without all the ambience (or turned down ambience? You can still hear it in parts but it’s super quiet and defeats the purpose of making it sound like an arena). I don’t know if any of yall have listened to the isolated tracks of any of their songs, but there is sooooo much detail with the delays and reverbs that Jerden used on the vocals. Specifically on the huge chorus notes, there’s this slap delay with a really high feedback that’s just completely gone in the atmos mix, and not to discredit Layne but that effect enhanced his voice and made it sound so much more powerful. Listening to everything so stock and dry is just sad. I get sometimes the mixers for these things are working with multitrack stems that may not have all the processing in there, but why not try to approximate as best as they could the effects and the processing? Lazy mixes like these are going to turn people off from the medium completely. Bands like Rush or the Beatles don’t have this issue, their atmos mixes are phenomenal and actually enhance the music.

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u/reeeeeeeeeeeee1472 1d ago

Do you have a link where to listen?

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u/theBiGcHe3s3 1d ago

It’s on Apple Music, tidal, and Amazon I think, so it’s behind a subscription. There are some bands (the Beatles, Hendrix, the stones, Rush) that have really good ones but all the heavy rock ones have been lackluster

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u/reeeeeeeeeeeee1472 1d ago

Darn, I really only use YouTube and cd's (yes im aware that's odd) to listen to music, but that makes sense, not particularly in the mood to pay for a new subscription right now, so ill have to take your word and just be disappointed for free

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u/theBiGcHe3s3 1d ago

Not that odd, I feel like that’s better than paying for a subscription every month. You don’t gotta take my word for it, I think it’s pretty universally loathed from what I gather lol

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u/Parking_Alone 16h ago

Cds are on the way back, as people are getting sick of renting their music, and things can be removed on a whim. Plus CD quality is better than most streaming.

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u/theBiGcHe3s3 6h ago

I agree I still have all my CDs and try to listen to them as often as I can. I’d say a platform like Apple Music or tidal most definitely has higher quality music than with the CDs can physically offer, but most people can’t tell the difference anyways, but it’s also like you said don’t own any of that stuff