Ok, so a co-worker got an advance copy of the Nelly Furtado cd that comes out…a week from today, it looks like. I can’t help but love the single getting radio play - it’s just, well, catchy as hell.

I listened to the rest of the album, though, and nothing really stuck out like the single, except a production/mastering decision that was made. It’s hard to differentiate at this point because of the current trend in hip-hop (and now some poppier, top 40 stuff as well) to use drums/percussion/samples, particularly the bass drum, that are distorted - usually low-order, just grungy distortion in the midbass/lower midrange region.

Anyway, this style is in use throughout the album to various extents. One track in particular, though, “Say It Right”, takes the effect to a bit of an extreme. At first I thought the mastering engineer clipped the converters for peak control (a common practice for certain types of music, though controversial among mastering engineers), fairly heavily in this instance, creating less of the dirty kick distortion and more of a harsh, digital clipping sound. Very unpleasant, to say the least.

But further examination in an audio editor indicates the clipping has taken place well below the 0dbfs - -0.5dbfs region where peak limiting/control usually would be, which makes me think it’s a production decision.

For the sake of anybody who likes to listen to music that’s not extremely harsh and fatiguing, I hope not.