Criticism
The production of Vapor Trails has been criticized by critics and fans alike because of the album's "loud" sound quality. Albums such as this have been mastered so loud that additional digital distortion is generated during the production of the CD. The trend, known as the loudness war, has become very common on modern rock CDs.
As told by Rip Rowan on the ProRec website, the damaged production is the result of overly compressed (clipped) audio levels during mastering, though Rush has admitted that there was digital distortion during recording, which also contributed to the damage. Remastering the album would not correct the damage from digital distortion that was introduced during recording, but it could correct the other, more destructive damage that is the result of overly compressing the audio during mastering.
On Retrospective 3, Richard Chycki, who recently worked with the band on the R30 and both the Snakes & Arrows album and live sets, remixed "One Little Victory", and "Earthshine". In an interview with Modern Guitars, Lifeson remarked that since the remixes were so good, there has been talk of doing an entire remix of the album. He also stated:
It was a contest, and it was mastered too high, and it crackles, and it spits, and it just crushes everything. All the dynamics get lost, especially anything that had an acoustic guitar in it.
On February 4, 2011, the band's engineer announced that he would be remixing Vapor Trails in its entirety.. As of October 2012, these plans have been down-shifted
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