What is it and "what for"? The initial goal was to eliminate clipping and excessive compression in order to restore natural dynamics and enhance listenability (so the ears would feel less strained). The FLA's fan comunity on VK voted to give the album a sound similar to some classic Front Line Assembly albums. People chose Tactical Neural Implant (1992) and Implode (1999) as the main references. So what was done in the end? First, i eliminated clipping and excessive limiting. Then, based on the decompressed version of the album, the following layers were produced, which were mixed in relatively equal proportions: 1) A layer that matched a remastered frequency response curve of the Vinyl version of this album, where each album track was EQ-matched to its vinyl remaster version; 2) Double layer with the average frequency response of "Tactical Neural Implant" - half was from the CD version, and half was from the Vinyl version (because the CD was quite dull in sound, especially in the high frequences range, albeit it was relatively warm); 3) Layer with the average frequency response of Implode, where each individual track from "Soldier" turned out to be different from the others, due to the peculiarities of the original mastering of "Soldier" and the peculiarities of the frequency response of "Implode"; 4) Layer with only the native high frequencies of the decompressed version of "Soldier", in order to make up for their deficiency, that accured during production of those previous layers - those layers had a slight boost of high-freqs only in certain areas in order to increase the readability of the notes, but the overall "airiness" was gone, which I decided to make up for, on this stage; 5) After that, multiple manual corrections were made, and the final layer was the average frequency response of the "Soldier"'s decompressed version that was applied to the previous 4 layers in order to correct the excess of low and mid-high frequencies, which interfered with readability on some types of headphones. To summarize, here are the proportions of the final mix: 20% - vinyl frequency response 10% - TNI frequency response from CD 10% - TNI frequency response from vinyl 20% - Implode frequency response from CD 20% - native high frequencies of the decompressed version + multiple corrections 20% - average frequency response of the decompressed version, partially applied to the average frequency response of the sum of the previous layers And yes - it IS much quieter than the original, but this was the point of restoring the dynamics, so that the sound would have a more extended range, and the instruments would have room to roam and breathe, so to speak. Whether it turned out to be a frankenstein or a "treat for the ears" is up to you to decide, but I tried my best. * * * 00:00 Unleashed 05:18 Low Life 10:48 Beneath The Rubble 17:15 Descension 23:22 Buried Alive 28:52 Dopamine 35:23 Social Enemy 40:47 Future Fail [feat Jean-Luc De Meyer from Front 242] 46:58 The Storm [feat Eskil Simonsson from Covenant] 52:10 Humanity (World War 3) 57:36 Fawnchopper