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

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.

sorry rephrase:

Anything that goes out above an average energy level of -16 dB LUFS is simply going to be turned down anyway.

Cross your fingers with me

I can only hope that this has a knock-on affect in the uk.

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 thing is, that is "designed" contant volume, so that different sections will sound like a similar volume. But, you still have comparatively very full dynamics on instruments. However with brick-wall limiting, the volume of sound changes from micro-second to micro-second - this is what causes the fatigue, rather than a lack of quiet sections.

^^^

Well, let me ask this. The objection, then, if I have what you're saying right, is to the volume of individual tracks or instruments constantly going up or down throughout a given piece of music in order to keep the overall mix within its dynamic limits?

Isn't this done already in the mixing process, though? Even in the old days, engineers would ride faders during a mixdown. Nowadays with software, you can specify increasing and decreasing volume levels for every track throughout a given piece of music. In my own experience, it often behooves you to do so because it can just improve the mix - bring things out where you need them or push them back.

I understand that the volume of individual instruments or tracks might be going up or down more randomly, however, when limiting is applied to an overall mix. Is this the problem?

the problem as I see it is a very broad, general "pop music folks don't know how to mix/master anything that comes from a live instrument and not a synthesizer"

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

yeah but you're just going to say this no matter what at this point in the argument; your heels are dug in. it's been pointed out to you that you might hear more of what you like if compression hadn't flattened the dynamic range, but you seem to think that admitting that would be betraying ashlee simpson or something, so you just say "I like this sound." but the sound you like is allowed less space to play in because of range compression. however, in the end I am with you in that I cannot & will not betray ashlee simpson.

She's a hoe

i don't know, several people in this thread have also said that they can't hear it/it doesn't bother them, and the fact remains that i can't tell if something's compressed if it's not pointed out (is the katy b album compressed? beyoncé? pj harvey? WHO KNOWS)

i assume live performances aren't compressed? but often i enjoy the sound LESS there, because venue soundsystems are so often shit

EVERYTHING is compressed (effectively, in the realm of pop/rock/dance/hiphop/r'n'b), it's just a question of how much.

There will be lots of compression used in live-shows, pretty much anything going into the mixing-desk, and then there will be some sort of compression between the mixer and pa, if only to kick-in to protect the equipment. Also, a lot of venues will also have some kind of volume limiting, to stop them breaking any local sound restrictions.

There's nothing wrong with the right amount of compression to fit the sound you're after, and most modern genres wouldn't sound 'right' without it. Indiscriminate 'hot' mastering to make the sound give (and if ever there was a correct time to use the phrase) 110% on everything is what this thread is talking about.

OTM.

if i turn up the volume on a cd to hear how it sounds loud (you know, a reasonably loud level that my speakers and receiver have no problem handling) and it distorts then i never play that cd again. to me, its a faulty product.

i've heard so many horrible examples, i kinda wonder how people even know which "remastered/expanded/remixed" CDs to buy. "remastered" on the cover of a new version of an old album almost seems like a red flag NOT to buy it.

"remastered" on the cover of a new version of an old album almost seems like a red flag NOT to buy it.

unless you can find evidence to the contrary, that's a safe bet.

Unfortunately that is true. Just recently I ripped my fancy Virgin Prunes remaster/reissues on Mute, and I thought I'd clean up a track or two in my wave editor. Everything was overmodulated, and there were 1-2 second spots all over that were total squarewave crushed misery. What a disgrace. My vinyl rips sound way better.

Also see New Order, where the "remasters" were sourced from bad vinyl at first.

This is a long, long thread. Is there a post somewhere on here (or elsewhere) that lists recent albums that do not have destructive range compression on them?

Here it is:

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then how come i enjoy the sound of music just as much as i always have done? i'm even more inclined to say this is nonsense now

or at least if it exists it doesn't MATTER because it's impossible to notice