Music Into Noise: The Destructive Use Of Dynamic Range Compression part 2

Lex is clearly very proud, for some reason, of not being able to cope with certain things, be that changing a lightbulb, cooking a meal, or critiquing pure sound. I'm assuming this is because these are all practical / technical activities rather than aesthetic / hedonistic / emotional ones in his perception, and therefore not matching up to the strictures of the persona he has created. So outright denial, a la climate skeptics or holocaust deniers or Geir Hongro occurs, because the persona cannot develop or change for some reason.

Oh, come now.

Ha! I really like Lex and the above is (I hope clearly) written for parody and reaction, but there are times when his reactions are so strong and didactic and predictable as to feel like a construct rather than a real person. i.e. like Geir!

we're now at the stage where so many records are so cranked that (unintended) distortion is an issue.

really?! which ones? i don't hear "distortion". not even in the ashlee simpson record. i actually love how the guitars sound in that, so clean. i wish more guitar-based music was produced like it.

nick you're not answering my basic point, which is that 1) the effect of this is so minimal that i can't tell it's there unless it's pointed out, 2) even if it is pointed out it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the music in the slightest.

I like your posts on this thread lex -- I have to admit that I find what mixers & engineers are capable of doing these days with compression in pop is actually very impressive to me, everything literally sounds louder than everything else, it is music that is designed to sound that way intentionally and so I am not surprised that it doesn't bother listeners -- it is modern music. Not all of the transient distortion is unintended. It is absolutely put there on purpose in the same way that musical engineers have always found ways to creatively add distortion.

I do have a problem with older records being remastered to the same loudness standard as an ashlee simpson record, but I'm ready to admit that certain people will even prefer that.

Just got back from NYC and went to the AES panel on audio mastering. Nick have you heard about the new ITU-R 1770-2 loudness measurement / the -16 LUFS dB cap about to be mandated in broadcasting at the federal level? A definite sign that all of this is being taken very seriously.

What do you mean by the guitars on Ashley's record sounding 'clean', Lex? Because I think part of the issue here is communication; the words used to describe sound are often very impressionistic and subjective, so what one person understands / describes as 'clean', another person understands / describes as 'distorted', simply because we have different frames of reference. Unlike visual mediums, there's no physical thing which can be paused and pointed at and isolated (like artefacting on a jpeg or lens flare on a movie or whatever) and qualifiably recognised in explanation by both parties (at least not easily), talking about sound ends up being very, very nebulous indeed, and often results in people getting upset and frustrated.

Lex, you HAVE recognised the 'problem' and can hear / identify one of its clearer manifestations (older CDs needing to be turned up; newer ones needing to be turned down). Clearly, judging by your responses, it's not an issue for you and that's great - I wish it wasn't for me because it means I very seldom listen to certain albums / songs that I otherwise would very much enjoy the songs / arrangements of, because the pure sound offends / upsets / hurts me on a physical level (some stuff just can and does give me a headache).

However, just because it doens't bother you consciously doesn't a; mean it doesn't bother you subconsciously (you hate a lot of modern indie rock, much of which REALLY suffers from this, way worse than r'n'b / dance / pop, for instance), b; doesn't mean it isn't a big conscious issue for a lot of people who want something done about it, and c; doens't mean it doesn't affect loads and loads more people on a subconscious level - so many behaviours in terms of people's reactions to and consumption of music these days seem to me to be related to this, directly or indirectly (lack of monetary value ascribed to music; increased emphasis on portable and live music rather than music in the home; propogation of computers as listening devices, etc etc etc etc).

I've drawn these before but I'm not sure I've ever put them up here. This is basically how I hear compression, manifested as visually as I can muster (in 5 minutes on MSPaint). They are MASSIVELY OVER SIMPLIFIED.

Each coloured shape is a musical instrument or voice in the mix of a song; when you play music back via speakers or headphones, they each sit in a specific space relative to each other (I should have done some large and some small, rather than them being pretty uniform in size). Turning the volume up on an amplifier makes the entire canvas larger, including the white space around each element (which is needed to be able to hear each element clearly and understand their relationships with each other), and keeps their proportions the same.

Compression makes each element larger within the same size canvas, and also makes them all the same size, altering their proportions and relative positions. It also squeezes some bits outside of the canvas (distortion / clipping), and overlays some elements over other elements at various points (side-chaining).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/compression1.jpg
So this might be a bit of really minimal techno or hip hop.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/compression2.jpg
You can compress it without really affecting it too much in terms of the elements' relations and proportions.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/compression3.jpg
But do the same with something that has a lot more elements, like several guitars, a piano, several vocal tracks, drums, percussion, strings, synths, etc etc...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/compression4.jpg
...and you lose the shapes, space, and relationships.

that's why i used ashlee simpson as an example of a guitar-driven rock act.

i think it's the extremeness of your position that i take issue with (it also comes with an implication of "i'm a better listener than you"). i mean, i certainly haven't felt physically nauseous when listening to ashlee over the past 7 years, i've felt glorious! she's hardly the only act with live instruments or non-minimal arrangements that i listen to. you've heard the katy b/pj harvey records this year - is this an issue with them? i've caned them this year and couldn't have less of an idea.

(lack of monetary value ascribed to music; increased emphasis on portable and live music rather than music in the home; propogation of computers as listening devices, etc etc etc etc)

1) old man shaking stick at cloud, i'm so bored of all of these arguments, 2) other way round surely? compression comes about BECAUSE of ipods etc, because music now has to be eg louder than the tube. (was talking about this with k8 on twitter - both of us ended up listening to britney's latest album way more than we thought we would this year because it's perfect tube listening.)

britney is good music for tubes?

yeah you can basically hear everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-sxSd1uwoU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bar9e4_C8I

I have to admit that I agree with Lex here. In theory I'm appalled by all this overcompression (and waveforms that look like bricks make me a little sick to the stomach), but in my day-to-day listening I haven't ever been bothered by it. I have to say that I hardly ever listen to music on headphones, so that might explain something, but I also recognize it from watching movies and tv:
I am bothered very much by visual defects like edge enhancement and digital noise reduction on DVD and Blu-ray, and stretched people on widescreen TVs, but my wife will happily watch everything on anything, whether the actors all look like John Goodman or have their normal figure. It's pretty much the same with dynamic compression.

the loudness war was started by FM radio stations competing for the best signal that would break through the traffic and city noise of NY. So this is mainly down to commercial music wanting to be heard in an outdoor/loud environment. You can say iPods & bad headphones are an example of this...

The actual amplifiers people use for listening are now smaller and more likely to form part of a laptop/ipod/dock rather than in the 70s where most people had HiFi stereos for listening in the home.

So people mastering serious music know they could get away with dynamics in the album (and that vinyl could not have that wide a dynamic int he first place) now whats odd is that everything is mastered like it needs to be heard in a city junction roadworks site..

I'd say with those Britney tracks, the track has been produced from the beginning with compression is used as an effect, to create a certain sound. The problem for me is when you have acoustic and electric instruments, stuff that has been mic'd (rather than electronic sound sources), and then after it has been recorded, there appears to have been limiting added further along the mastering stage.

This to me is an example of something with many guitars and acoustic-sounding drums, which has some very painful limiting put on it later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvtsBLPqAR4

If you listen to those Britney tracks, the arrangement is very minimal, there are rarely any moments with many layers of different sounds playing at the same time. To put it into the earlier visual metaphor, there is a lot of white-space in the sound design, and very little scope for sounds to clash with each other at the limiting stage.

i've spoken to a number of non music geek friends about this and they don't give a fuck how something sounds, music to them = a story + a melody + a fashion. so minimal arrangements, bashing you over the head with signifiers, vocal right up in your face, having the track duck in volume to give the vocal more prominence. it's not going to go away unless there's a mainstream shift in how music is used/consumed.

not that i really think it should go away, for certain musics it works, it's just a shame there isn't an alternative offered.

I'm more with lex on this one than, uh, I'm not with lex on this one

but I also recognize it from watching movies and tv:

ha, i know you're making a visual comparison here, but i often find myself wishing that the audio tracks on movies had a little more dynamic compression, at least when i'm watching at home (esp when watching with my girlfriend, who is less deaf than i am). sacrilege maybe, but it's annoying to constantly turn the volume down during action/heavily-scored scenes and then have to turn it up to hear the dialogue.

also lex, i can't remember if you like lcd soundsystem (i think you hate them?), but think about the first track on their last album. it has a ton of dynamics that make for a really big moment when the beat drops...if it was mastered differently, that whole intro would be the same volume as the drop. it wouldn't necessarily be worse, but it would definitely be a choice.

XP: I think my AV receiver has a special 'late night' setting that does exactly that.

huh interesting i actually hate having the tv on because i find it too constantly blaring and loud, and in fact i do feel ill and a bit tired if i'm in one of those houses where they have it on in the background all the time. i always put that down to my being brought up in a house where the tv was only occasionally on, and consequently never having been into watching tv as a pastime.

i love old lcd soundsystem singles like "yeah" and "tribulations", never heard the last album cuz i hated the lead single so much.

this is a great example of what i meant when i said i loved how clean the guitars sound on ashlee simpson songs - like, you can hear every instrument and it's just so polished and perfect, and it really sets off the still-unexpected courtneyesque rawness of her voice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8JJO36w2KA

(one of my favourite songs of the 00s, that)

youtube quality not quite the best there tho :(

Lex, tv ≠ film.

I tend to think that volume constancy through compression has the effect of making everything more like electronic music and less like ensemble playing. On that Simpson track, the distinction between the clean guitars and the distorted guitars is only timbral, so they're like presets on a keyboard.

i think this is otm and a big part of why lex likes those ashlee simpson guitars. they're meticulously edited and compressed on their own (in addition to the whole mix being compressed pretty hard), they might as well be samples. total pop/dance approach.

youtube quality not quite the best there tho :(

LOL

With TV it's usually the adverts that are a massive sinner - a drama might be mastered quite dynamically to generate atmosphere, and then CADBURYS CREME EGG or NESCAFE GOLD BLEND or VOLKSWAGEN GOLF comes in and threatens to break your eardrums.

The 'late night' button on a home cinema amp is exactly the same kind of thing as the Sound Check function on an iPod / iTunes - it equalises and levels dynamics. Radio (and TV, to a lesser extent) do this too, compressing stuff for broadcast. So leave the original source / master relatively dynamic (unless it's a deliberate aesthetic choice, which is totally valid in some cases), and let people choose. That's all I want. People aren't stupid.

Jordan's comment on the comment about compressed guitars sounding like dance/pop music totally OTM.

Levels AND dynamics.

expanding, when i listen to those ashlee guitars i find it really expansive - like, it evokes wide open spaces, a car with the top down, being outside - which of course is partly the melody but i think it's the sound.

idk what that stray "expanding" is doing at the start of that post

your post was expanding like Ashlee's guitars

I think a lot of this comes down to how people use music, which we were discussing the other day on another thread (can't remember where, now). I don't need to use music on the tube (and if I did, I'd probably get isolating earphones again, like when I used to commute on a train); but I do like to sit on the sofa with big speakers and have music wash over / blast through me. You need very different types of music for those two uses. My problem comes when music I want to have wash over / blast through me is mastered for tube listening, which I generally think comes from an artist's desire to get on radio (and misunderstanding of what works on radio) (although it can't always come from that).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spjaA8rZEXM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCeZzW54a2o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMWeKEmuqU0

a couple of other guitar-based songs i've loved recently - non-pop - that i also love the production/sound of. and again, i can't tell whether they're over-compressed?

compressed sounds evoke being outside

huh

I wouldn't call that Santigold song "non-pop", personally.

or that pistol annies tune! which is funny because it's evoking this rootsy, acoustic country sound with total pop mixing and mastering. the snare drum sound is hilarious in how huge it manages to make the brushes sound on the backbeat.

the first two sound fine to me for a pop approach, it's only the third one that sounds unpleasant to my ears, maybe because it's going for this epic chorus but the dynamics don't really go anywhere. there are also more instruments in the mix.

can't we just get Ashlee Simpson to play acoustic guitar and sing directly into a crackly old gramophone horn with no post-production whatsoever

Give it a few years.

actually banjo would be preferable

why would she be singing into a banjo

you don't understand, banjo is my dog's name

b.a.n.j.o.

why would she be singing into a banjo

resonator chamber iirc. better than using the "inside of a banjo" reverb plugin setting.

i feel like this debate is turning into something no one on 'my side' intends it to be which is about whether or not ashlee simpsons music is good. you can love her music, even, and still hate that its horribly compressed. it would be more effective to her fans!! if it wasnt like this

i don't hate that it's compressed. i love how it sounds.

I think we got that already.

lex is sort of the living embodiment of this principle that if you raise a child on a diet of shit, it will think that that's what food is supposed to taste like

"what do you mean it's shit? tastes great to me! more please!"

Dynamic compression is clearly the slow road to fascism.

Constant volume was pretty standard with, say, Spector, classic Motown, etc. Dynamic range becomes more of a preference in the later '60s and into '70s. Given that I like Spector and Motown, I don't think a two-to-three minute pop song necessitates dynamic range or that the lack of it necessarily means that fatigue is going to be an issue. Over an album, probably, but not over a single.

The question for me is more to do with whether it's being done well or whether modern records are just taking a post-'70s style of arrangements and divorcing it of some of its nuance so that it can be loud.

I hate to be the only person talking about how awesome the ITU-R 1770-2 measurement algorithm is on this thread, but it is definitely going to impact this conversation by early next year in the broadcasting field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act

Once it passes there, anyone mastering CDs with a dynamic range of 1-3 dB simply in order to compete in the broadcast arena are going to be wasting their time. Anything that goes out with an average energy level of -16 dB LUFS is simply going to be turned down anyway. It's going to help people take a deep breath and stop feeling like they need to be crushed just in order to compete.