Audio Problems in The Taken King Soundtrack? (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Sunday, October 04, 2015, 03:56 (3120 days ago) @ Beorn

There are a number of audio "glitches" in the Taken King Soundtrack that make me wonder if the master files were exported incorrectly when they authored the soundtrack.

These errors always appear at the same spot and they always sound the same, sort of like a sparkly crinkling noise on top of the music. I'm no audio expert, but it sounds to me like a clipping issue, maybe?

I've tried playing the files through several different computers in addition to my normal headphone DAC/amplifier setup. The issues are consistent on both pairs of (rather nice) headphones that I own across all devices. I purchased the soundtrack from the Bungie Store and all three formats (ALAC, FLAC,and MP3) have identical issues. The problem regions always seem to behave the same, which is why I'm wondering if there's an error in the original export.

As a sanity check, I did my best to clip out a couple of the problematic regions that have been driving me nuts in the first three tracks: MP3 Clipping Sample (320Kbps, use headphones). The errors can be heard at 0:15, 0:26, 0:30, 0:42-0:44. The recording here is at a little lower level to prevent accidental clipping, but I can still hear them in here. It's even more noticeable when played directly.

For those of you who have purchased the Taken King Soundtrack (either the lossless version from the Bungie Store or from iTunes/Amazon), do you notice these problems in your copies or did I get an "extra special" edition? :-P

So the 2nd and 3rd examples definitely sound like clipping. The first example is strange... almost sounds like an editing splice gone wrong. Not entirely sure.

Sounds to me like the OST was just mastered poorly/in a hurry (same thing, really).