I just finished a comparison among this, the CD (and streaming version), and the famed "Unmastered" version of this album. As others have noted, there are some differences in the mixes between this LP and the CD. The "Unmastered" version is even more different. However, my goal was to find the best sounding version to my ears, regardless of mix elements. I edited this album to fix up its clipping, and I was able to get its dynamic range from 5 to 12! I also edited the b-sides from the “Dani California”, “Tell Me Baby”, and “Snow (Hey Oh)” singles!

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (1999, Vinyl) - Discogs Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (1999, Vinyl) - Discogs

Another unofficial version of the album was an “Unmastered/Unsequenced” version that was leaked in 2011. Despite what its title may imply, this release faced a ton of compression on its signal, resulting in distortion comparable to the original retail release. Red Hot Chili Peppers aren’t really known for having great masterings of their albums. 1999’s Californication especially left many consumers scratching their heads from how it sounded, many convinced there was something wrong with the disc itself. Californication and many of the band’s albums since One Hot Minute have been subject to what is known as the loudness war, their music being very heavily clipped or dynamically-compressed (not to be confused with data-compressed, which concerns MP3s and such). For me Californication is an album which I play along to, and when my brother and I get out the guitars to have a jam, the Chili Peppers staples, "Californiation", "Otherside", "Scar Tissue", "Road Trippin'" and "This Velvet Glove" are what we regularly turn to (usually spliced in with some choice moments from Bloodsugar...). It is a record which, when played correctly by two trained and highly professional musicians such as me and my brother, can have enormous bonding qualities, and I like to think that it has brought we two siblings closer together.

Catalog

This LP is a bit better - the vocals are a little more natural, and Flea's bass is a tad bit deeper. It has a slightly more natural feel to it. That's about it really, aside from some light EQ improvement which just could be the difference between my analog rig and my digital rig. The LP just isn't on the same level as something like "Unlimited Love," which sounds truly incredible on vinyl. (Then again, it also sounds decent on CD, as it isn't clipped to death - compressed and limited yes, but listenable!)

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (2020, 180g

During my music technology studies, I clearly remember my university lecturer talking about both records and how he’d gone from being a huge fan of the band in the early 90s to woefully disappointed by the release of 1999s Californication. Vlado Meller mastered this album, and will continue to master all of the band’s digital releases until The Getaway, but returned again for the band’s upcoming album, Unlimited Love. Meller is rather infamous for his digital mastering work, often audibly clipping the albums he works with, and Californication is perhaps his worst example of that. There are certainly ways to make loud and dynamically-compressed masters while avoiding making it sound THIS distorted. The solution is generally to have a quieter master. Even one or two less decibels of loudness would lower the amount of distortion on this album significantly, and it would STILL be considered a loud master. Californication is the Chili Peppers' most commercially successful studio release with over 16 million copies sold worldwide and more than 5 million in the U.S. alone. As of 2002, the album had sold over 4 million copies in Europe. The album produced several hits including "Otherside", "Californication", and the Grammy-award winning "Scar Tissue".For those not in the know, the “loudness war” is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sounds better, and thus, sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible. Vinyl, as a format, has often provided some sanctuary from the loudness war over the last couple of decades. Music that’s overcompressed doesn’t translate well to vinyl. That, and it takes considerable time and skill to master and cut a vinyl record properly. By purchasing music on vinyl, you significantly increase your chances of someone with considerable skill being behind the mastering process. Zooming in, we see something quite familiar: the diagonal flattened compression like was seen on One Hot Minute and the “Unmastered/Unsequenced” versions of Californication. Since the bad old days of the late 90s and 2000s, things have eased off a little. Some balance restored in recent years, partly because the industry recognized there is a problem, but also because of changing listening habits.

Explaining and attempting to fix up the clipping and dynamic

Californication” and “Universally Speaking” also feature different mixes than their album counterparts on Greatest Hits, but I already noted and edited them in their respective album sections.Regardless, since I’m doing it for every one of these examples, I made the album more dynamic, bringing it from a dynamic range of 6 to 12! Describing these albums as “victims of the loudness war” is correct insofar that dynamic range compression and clipping have audibly distorted the sound of the band and made them fatiguing to listen to, but it doesn’t really seem as if this compression and clipping is for the purposes of “adhering to the loudness war”. Given that Rubin has used dirty-sounding compression for records other than By the Way, I find it likely that he just flat-out likes how that compression sounds, and his continued use of Vlado Meller as a mastering engineer makes me doubt that he isn’t acutely aware of Meller’s tendency to clip the recordings he works with.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (2021, Vinyl) - Discogs

A similar-looking compression was also applied to One Hot Minute a few years prior. I would argue that use of it complemented the messy aesthetic of One Hot Minute's production. The production on Californication is far more basic and straightforward though, so creating relentless distortion through compression or clipping doesn’t really fit, in my opinion.Just like with One Hot Minute, I made dynamic edits of Californication as well, and I really think I was able to fix up that crazy distortion on the album! I also included edits to many b-sides and two official alternate mixes from the album as well. While the 2014 digital remaster of Californication has as much rampant clipping as the original release, it features a slightly different mix of “Savior”, one with “all in the hand” vocals during its outro. (I couldn’t find a posting of this mix on YouTube, so this is the passage in question on my “dynamic edit” of the release.) Before I start, I want to note that there are 2014 “remasters” of every album by the group from Blood Sugar Sex Magik to Stadium Arcadium. I use “remaster” in quotation marks because nearly every one of these albums retains the same level of dynamics as their original digital 1 release. Only Blood Sugar Sex Magik has a significant difference, that being that it’s far more dynamically-compressed than before. These 2014 remasters sometimes contain different mixes of songs previously-released, however, and I will note when that’s the case.