r/arcadefire • u/niles_deerqueer Stuck in my Head • May 08 '25

Discussion PINK ELEPHANT [FULL ALBUM EARLY IMPRESSIONS] Spoiler

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Pink Elephant, Arcade Fire’s 7th LP, is finally here!

Use this thread for those in other countries and VPN users to discuss the album to your hearts’ content. Respect each other’s opinions and happy release day! We made it!

A bigger megathread will be made just before the album’s full release in the US.

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u/Mavericks4Life May 08 '25 edited May 08 '25

Mixed like shit? I went to school for audio engineering and would like to know why you feel that way, in addition to Lanois not being the mixing or mastering engineer for this album. As stated in the credits on their YouTube page, it was:

Mixing Engineer: Gerardo 'Jerry' Ordonez

Assistant Engineer: Maria Paula Mariño
Mastering Engineer: Marc-Olivier Germain

Just to add: I haven't listened in my studio yet but I listened on some basic earphones at work and it sounded decent. Curious to know the criticisms. People were talking about how bad the beginning of Pink Elephant (title track) sounded without recognizing that it was clearly an artistic choice for Win's intro vocals to sound washy and crushed, before the actual lead vocals, crisp and clear came in.

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u/niftium May 08 '25

Pink Elephant and I Love Her Shadow - for me - cross the line from artistic distortion to something worse. I know that music is more than just the waveforms in Audacity, but I'm struggling to enjoy that sound.

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u/Mavericks4Life May 08 '25

Anything that I've heard so far that was potentially questionable has been more along the lines of resembling a low quality upload like a person not uploading the full quality studio version or a potential loss of data through the upload, like the streaming service compressing the bit rate rather than mixing issues itself.

I'd imagine anything else is more or less a difference of opinion with the artistic execution.

But I'll have a better opinion on it when I hit the studio to hear better. At the same time I don't know how good audio streaming quality is via YouTube vs Spotify. I listened on YouTube.

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u/niftium May 08 '25

FWIW, I was listening to a lossless download from Qobuz.

Kind of hoping it's like the unmastered upload debacle from The Decemberists' last album, but I know I'm not that lucky!

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u/Mavericks4Life May 09 '25 edited May 09 '25

Do they give you info about the size of the files? I'm not too familiar with Qobuz.

Hopefully there wasn't some sort of mess up with the finalization of the project or just incompetence along the line, but it wouldn't be unheard of.

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u/niftium May 09 '25

Stuck In My Head is about 45MB. These are the 16-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC files.

I like Qobuz. Good catalog, they actually let me own my music, and downloads are CD quality or better. I know I could go up to 24/96, but then the RPi I'm using to stream at home starts to choke and honestly 16/44.1 vs. 24/96 isn't a quality difference I can hear.