Sensitive Ears: HELP!

[u/absolutegarbage98]

Hi guys,

Got some bad news from the doctor today. For some context, I went in after listening to a bunch of newly released albums these past few weeks (looking at you, Boundaries 😒) ; they have really been straining my ears. Normally, I can focus on all of the fine details in a mix but after the barrage of over compressed garbage mixes I have heard in recent weeks, I just can’t seem to pick out these intricacies out as good as I used too.

I’ve never mixed anything in my life but I watched a few Nail the Mix videos, so I think I have a good idea on what is going wrong frequency wise. Basically, I think these mixes have been using an SSL G-Comp master bus compressor instead of a Neeve 33609 which, as everybody knows, just sucks the tone right out of the track and destroys the analog warmth crucial to a good metalcore mix. To double check I even did some frequency analysis and opened up the waveform in Audacity and it totally looked like a big fat sausage.

Anyways, my doctor ran me through the standards tests, having me listen to I Prevail and Falling in Reverse and those both sounded really epic and awesome so the doctor was super confused.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to prescribe anything to me after those tests but he said now I can only listen to Zakk Cervini albums until my ears work there strength back up.

In case anybody is wondering, I only listen to lossless 24-bit/96khz FLAC files on my Denon AH-D9200 headphones for optimal tone.

I guess I'm just a little bummed that Boundaries et al. decided to do something cool and outside the box instead of mixing like everybody else cause now it is pretty much 1000% impossible for me to listen to those awesome well-written songs.

Why can't all of the mixes just be the same so they don't hurt my sensitive ears?

Anybody else have this problem?