Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication [2LP VINYL]

Product Information

Throughout the loudness wars, vinyl releases often avert excessive dynamic range compression and clipping by featuring a different, more dynamic master. All versions of Californication officially released in 1999 (as well as the 2019 picture disc release and 2014 digital remaster), however, seem as though they have the same ridiculous clipping. Other released versions of Californication—some official, some unofficial—feature different masters and sometimes different mixes of songs. Original is written as '0 9362-47386-1 9' and the numbers in the middle are below the gaps left by the shorter bars. Oddly enough, John Frusciante remixed “Can’t Stop” and “Universally Speaking” for their single releases to bring the guitars and bass more to the forefront, and the vocals of “Can’t Stop” sound even MORE compressed 3 than they were in the album mix. The single mix of “Universally Speaking”, which was also used for the band’s Greatest Hits album, still has the vocal distortion present on the album mix. The 2014 remaster of By the Way is pretty much identical to its original release, except it has a slightly different mix of “Universally Speaking” that is missing a few guitar lines and plays at a very slightly slower speed. This LP is a bit better - the vocals are a little more natural, and Flea's bass is a tad bit deeper. It has a slightly more natural feel to it. That's about it really, aside from some light EQ improvement which just could be the difference between my analog rig and my digital rig. The LP just isn't on the same level as something like "Unlimited Love," which sounds truly incredible on vinyl. (Then again, it also sounds decent on CD, as it isn't clipped to death - compressed and limited yes, but listenable!) Some consumers turned to the vinyl copy in the hope of salvation but were sorely disappointed to find it was the same “squashed” mix as the original CD, just pressed to vinyl. It wasn’t until 2012 that the record finally received a proper remaster, specifically for vinyl, when Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering was tasked with cutting the record for a 180g re-pressing.

Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers ( Vinyl, Oct-2012

In an official aversion of Californication’s clipping, the 2012 vinyl release of the album (as well as the 2020 repress) does not seem to have the clipping distortion of its previous counterparts. This is generally viewed as the best version of the album for that reason. Mixes of “Californication” and “Easily” in these vinyl copies differ slightly from their original release, with the former having organ present in its first verse, and the latter having vocals on its final instrumental passage. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a particularly good example, as their 1991 classic Blood Sugar Sex Magik stands in stark comparison. Here, the dynamics are superb, the mastering compression is mild, and in my opinion, it’s one of the best recordings to come out of the 90s. These are sections of “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, “The Blister Exists” by Slipknot, and “The Day That Never Comes” by Metallica, respectively. The practice of applying excess compression to boost the overall perceived volume artificially progressed exponentially throughout the 90s. By the time we reached the decade’s end, there were several notable examples where even non-audiophile listeners began to notice quality issues. Perhaps most famously, Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic Magnetic” were among some of the worst offenders. When music is dynamic, it sounds punchy and exciting. There are moments of calm and moments of crescendo. These changes in intensity and texture create the natural light and shade that makes music sound exciting. Dynamics are human, and too much consistency sounds robotic and lifeless.

I think this release has been bastardized over the years and that originally was a first pressing but manufactured at a different facility. My copy has the double rings like so many Warner Bros pressings of the time but has these matrices: Also, I've seen Elusive Disc list Bernie Grundman as the mastering engineer as recently as the One Hot Minute reissue and then it was pulled down. Oddly enough, yesterday Bernie wasn't mentioned and today he is. 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, sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which 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. Living Colour Time’s Up-I had the original CD and it sounded like a really good production with plenty of power. I recently bought a single album version Epic 466920 1 that is anaemic and limp compared to the CD.It also is very quiet perhaps because both sides are very long.I wonder if compression has contributed to make this vinyl sound so bad.There is a double album pressing that might be much better sounding.

Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers ( Vinyl, Oct-2012 Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers ( Vinyl, Oct-2012

The mastering process of a vinyl record can make or break the overall sound quality. The mix engineer can get everything right, from the initial microphone technique to the final mix, but if the mastering quality is poor, the record will fall at the final hurdle. i removed "get on top" and "emmit remmus"....and i added under the bridge,aeroplane,and my friends... While I don’t hear the clipping distortion on the vinyl sections of the video, an assumption the video presents, that higher DR values (as determined by a program) means that the vinyl IS more dynamic, is a bit erroneous. The imperfections of vinyl can create the illusion of higher dynamics when in fact it is derived from the same compressed master. This is a great detailing of that concept (made by the same video creator, funnily enough).For me Californication is an album which I play along to, and when my brother and I get out the guitars to have a jam, the Chili Peppers staples, "Californiation", "Otherside", "Scar Tissue", "Road Trippin'" and "This Velvet Glove" are what we regularly turn to (usually spliced in with some choice moments from Bloodsugar...). It is a record which, when played correctly by two trained and highly professional musicians such as me and my brother, can have enormous bonding qualities, and I like to think that it has brought we two siblings closer together. This is the original 1999 US pressing. Please note there is a 2012 remaster which is externally quite similar to this. Californication is the Chili Peppers' most commercially successful studio release with over 16 million copies sold worldwide and more than 5 million in the U.S. alone. As of 2002, the album had sold over 4 million copies in Europe. The album produced several hits including "Otherside", "Californication", and the Grammy-award winning "Scar Tissue".

Explaining and attempting to fix up the clipping and dynamic

While all previous Chili Peppers projects have been highly spirited, Californication dares to be spiritual and epiphanal..." - rollingstone.com, Greg Tate, June 24, 1999 The band’s Greatest Hits album contains a number of songs from Californication, (specifically “Parallel Universe”, “Scar Tissue”, “Otherside”, “Californication”, and “Road Trippin’”) and they have a bit higher dynamic range than their retail counterparts, and notably less distortion. Even “Californication”, which is 0.7dB quieter on Greatest Hits, has a lot less hiss than its previous release. (It should be noted though, that the Greatest Hits mix of “Californication” has organ in its first verse and runs through the first chorus twice.) I attempted to make this album more dynamic and fix up its compression, bringing the dynamic range of the album from 6 to 12! I am probably the least confident in my removing of the distortion in this album though, mainly because selecting the parts that are distorted with “Perfect Declipper” is much more difficult when these sections aren’t horizontal, and when they seem to be the result of production, rather than mastering. I still hear bits of clipped vocals at points during “Universally Speaking” and “Midnight”. I also edited the songs from the deluxe edition of the album, the songs from “By the Way” single, and two alternate official mixes of “Universally Speaking”! Coming off the rough and odd production stylings of Californication and By the Way, Stadium Arcadium is absolutely a breath of fresh air. The instrumentation is finally given the room to finally bounce around without hogging up each other’s sonic space. That being said, Meller again clipped the album for its digital mastering, making every instrument unable to really reach their full potential. The clipping is, again, not as bad as Californication, but is still quite audible, such as on “Stadium Arcadium” and “Animal Bar”. The vinyl release, however, was mastered by audiophile-beloved Steve Hoffman, monarch of the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, and apparently sounds great, averting the clipping of the digital release! During my music technology studies, I clearly remember my university lecturer talking about both records and how he’d gone from being a huge fan of the band in the early 90s to woefully disappointed by the release of 1999s Californication.I could lie with the shit sound, but I must have cleaned the record 10 times and my needle thinking I was crazy. Sadly, there are countless records out there (particularly from the late 90s and 2000s) that are the victim of poor quality mastering.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (2021, Vinyl) - Discogs

While the 2014 digital remaster of Californication has as much rampant clipping as the original release, it features a slightly different mix of “Savior”, one with “all in the hand” vocals during its outro. (I couldn’t find a posting of this mix on YouTube, so this is the passage in question on my “dynamic edit” of the release.)

The mastering process can enhance the quality and consistency of a recording or completely destroy it. There are many cases where heavy-handed compression was applied to classic records, where they were then resold as remastered and “improved” CDs. This process is, was, in my view, one of the greatest swindles the music industry has ever seen. Thankfully, thanks to normalized levels, we’re hopefully seeing an end to the days of louder is always better. Red Hot Chili Peppers aren’t really known for having great masterings of their albums. 1999’s Californication especially left many consumers scratching their heads from how it sounded, many convinced there was something wrong with the disc itself. Californication and many of the band’s albums since One Hot Minute have been subject to what is known as the loudness war, their music being very heavily clipped or dynamically-compressed (not to be confused with data-compressed, which concerns MP3s and such). This differs from a later pressing that shows two pressing rings and some differences in lacquer cut etchings in runout as Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication and also a pressing without noticeable rings here: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication. I know we have been discussing this in the a RHCP thread but I thought it might be appropriate to start a new thread for those not following that one and to bring attention to this particular album title. Regardless, since I’m doing it for every one of these examples, I made the album more dynamic, bringing it from a dynamic range of 6 to 12!