Well Axl, Slash and Duff reunited live for the first time in decades last night. Fantastic performance by the sounds of things. A few brief talking points:

- From the little I've heard Axl sounded great!

- As a big, big fan of Chinese Democracy I'm thrilled to hear Chinese Democracy & Better being played - My favourite two tracks of the record! It's great to see they haven't swept the era under the carpet, which they very easily could have done. I'd be lying if I said I was shocked though... A concrete Axl demand for sure (rightly so too).

- Love the fact the band are having fun with it. The Not In This Lifetime Tour... Axl's Mickey Mouse t-shirt... Hilarious!

- Fan whipping boy and Guns N' Roses 2nd keyboardist, Chris Pitman, (Mother Goose himself) is oouutttaa heerree!! He finds himself replaced by (former members) Buckethead and Brain associate, Melissa Reese, who (hands up) I know basically nothing about. Fingers crossed she'll be better than Chris though!

Blur Oasis

Don't they have a volume normalization feature where it keeps the audio maximization of all audio at the same levels? Also they have that whole 'mastered for iTunes' thing which basically puts a limit onto how much compression and loudness a track source can get. Apple lossless (ALAC) also exists, so it would have to be sold in that format for the store. 

I'd also have to ask davidjay for clarification on this 

Fix You is an absolutely beautiful masterpiece. The climax in the second half is unreal, and it's the type of song that I wish Oasis would've done at some point.

The La's could have been as big as any band of Britpop, needed an album out 92/93 and 95, the entire scene would have been different at the time... even more of a waste than the Roses.

Teenage Dirtbag reminds me of Disco 2000.

There're so many good music and great releases at the moment. I need more ears.

As I understand it, iTunes now implements loudness normalization via their Sound Check feature. This seamlessly adjusts the gain on playback, so that it matches a set reference level across all audio. You get a consistent loudness without any reduction of dynamics. Which, some argue, should help to reduce the incentive for hyper-compressed "loud" mastering in the years to come. For a detailed account of all this I would recommend the article The End of the Loudness War? (Sound on Sound report by Hugh Robjohns, February 2014).

I think that with Mastered for iTunes producers can still use a hard-limited and dynamically compressed master where required - mastering engineers submit a version that just peaks slightly lower than that used for the CD, in order to have the small amount of additional headroom required by the MFIT encoding conversion.

Spotify also uses loudness normalization, giving consistent loudness across material mastered at widely different average signal levels. YouTube is in the process of implementing it as well. Anyway, I hope this is of some help. It's quite an involved topic and I'm trying to get my head round it atm.

Here's a soundcloud mix of tracks mastered at very different levels, normalised to -18 LUFS according to the new R128 loudness normalisation standard. 

Interesting stuff, as the tracks slammed to be as loud as possible have lost the original "loudness advantage" they would have in a peak normalised environment, which highlights their relatively flat and lifeless sound compared to those mastered at a lower level with dynamics intact (i.e. tracks from Metallica's Death Magnetic versus Norah Jones' Come Away With Me). The transition from Robbie Williams' She's the One to Seal's song Killer is particularly striking.

https%3A//soundcloud.com/airon-extv/18-lufs-normalized-clip-mix

I like Till Lindemann's vocal on the German cover of Bowie's Heroes by Apocalyptica. Anyone who thinks he's trying to sound scary should listen to Rammstein, then realise that is his toned down voice. (Keep in mind Till has a personal connection to the song as a West Berliner)

How many drummers, not just in Immolation use triggers? That's a sign you're getting too old, lads.

I love listening to the Rolling Stones in the spring, especially Exile on Main St. For some reason, I like to listen to certain artists at certain times of year.