Back catologue in 5.1 / DTS

[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by Jan

So to match STITI's volume to that of OWB or AHDO, I applied a 6 dB boost with a limiter. For fair comparison, I applied ReplayGain correction to all files after that.
Some pictures:
Confusion the Waitress (original)
The left channel appears to be clipped a bit. To explain, this is just a result from a 0.82 dB boost applied by ReplayGain to allow fair comparison. There has been a limiter applied so the sound difference to the STITI version is neglegible.
Rowla (original)
Here you can clearly see the kickdrums (zoom). Most of the dynamic range available is just used for the kickdrum.

If STITI had been mastered today it would probably look like this. Again the shots have been taken after PG correction:
Confusion the Waitress (compressed)
Rowla (compressed)
You can see how the kickdrums are "cut off" at around -6dB.

not sure what's going on with your files but your originals seem to have a strange DC offset. Notice how the waveforms aren't centered anymore so that would definitely not lead to any kind of decent result when you start limiting.
I'm sure they could make STITI be louder without it starting to sound like crap. With good professional equipment and a good mastering engineer you can make something reasonably loud without completely destroying it. Just compare STITI Pearl's Girl to the version on 1992-2002. The latter is definitely louder but it still sounds good to me.

In any case I think the way they mastered OWB is definitely a sign that UW care about dynamics and sound quality over loudness.