Music Into Noise: The Destructive Use Of Dynamic Range Compression

Filter ringing -- I sometimes wonder if maybe that's what's going on, that some of that filtered data is folding back into some maybe not precisely audible but still somehow perceptible zone and causing the much-cited listening "fatigue."

OK, I'm struggling here, and I should just go and read some stuff, but that's what ILM is for, eh?

So the limits of vinyl are in the dynamic range (the volume) and the higher and lower frequencies. But, given that, is what's left still not higher resolution than CD (as it's sampling rate is, in theory, infinite)?

xpost

No - infinite sampling rate would mean infinite bandwidth, i.e. no upper frequency limit at all. In sampling theory, that's what the sampling rate determines - you can theoretically capture everything as long as you sample at at least twice the highest frequency contained in the music. So, with CD, you filter out everything above 22.05kHz (which has its own problems - you need to design a very abrupt low-pass filter) and then sample at 44.1kHz and you capture everything that's left.

Vinyl is a continuously-varying system, not a discrete-sample system, so it's probably not very useful to talk of sampling rates with vinyl. It remains true though, that CD's hard 0-22k limit is typically wider than what you get on most LPs (even if you get cartridges with 40-50k upper limits).

It's kinda hard to grasp the sampling theory thing, I know - people often say, "but what about the gaps?" There are no gaps - what you lose when you sample is everything above a certain frequency limit and nothing below it.

Again, in theory.

Ha, yes "what about the gaps" was exactly how I was conceptualising this.

I was also confused by bit depth and sampling rate, but I think I've got it now.

Have you got into all this theory just through being into hi-fi or do/did you work/study in this area?

Well, I did a physics degree and then I got into hi-fi in my mid-20s. I've barely used my graduate study in my working life but it's handy for hobbies... Something similar has happened recently with photography - quite keen to retrieve the optics textbooks from my mum's house!

(I could quite easily be found out if a proper electrical engineer wandered into this thread).

where is shakey mo qutoe

I've just been googling this a bit, and came across these dudes:
http://studio-central.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=10705&highlight=24bit+16bit "> http://studio-central.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=10705&highlight=24bit+16bit

They get on to the theoretical maximum volume of any sound ever, on Mars, and using sound as a weapon, and to cool ice cream. Nerds!

Actually they just linked to his band's myspace page, Jon.

over on my audiophile LP thread I found a neat interview with cutting engineer Stan Ricker if anyone wants to really get into DETAIL...

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/ricker1.htm

he talks a lot about frequency limitations while cutting vinyl.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

Let's bump this one, too, just cos it's the bigger thread overall.

It's about time to impose a ban on all mp3 players.

Also, about time Sony et al start producing headphones that bring a volume loud enough to damage your ears again, or those CDs that do not use that awful compression will sound way too tame.

Another thing: I guess in 10-20 years there will be a bunch of remasters of 00s albums released, to make the listener able to hear all the nuances that were lost in compression on the original release.

Good to see my stance vindicated.

I'm sick of having to knock down the reproduction level of MP3s just so they won't distort when I play them. Not that that fixes the clipping/buggered waveforms in the originals, but it's a start.

This has actually become way worse since 2002, when this thread was started. No?

of course it has.

Another thing: I guess in 10-20 years there will be a bunch of remasters of 00s albums released, to make the listener able to hear all the nuances that were lost in compression on the original release.

maybe. but the remasters will be from mp3s

Definitely worse. Even my wife complains about it now: 'you stuffed up the new (blahblah) album on my ipod, what did you do to it' etc.

"I guess in 10-20 years there will be a bunch of remasters of 00s albums released, to make the listener able to hear all the nuances that were lost in compression on the original release."

yep, there'll be a remaster of the arctic monkeys debut 'as heard on the masters'.

"I'm sick of having to knock down the reproduction level of MP3s"

how dyou do this? can it be done on itunes?

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

MP3s have an internal setting that instructs the player at what volume to reproduce the content. You can change this without re-encoding. If you have an ipod, you NEED to use this thing.

I wonder how much of the compression on 00's albums was added BEFORE the mastering process?

that's not the kind of compression that's the issue

Yeah, it's about ramming the levels of every component up so high that it all just mashes together, and mastering the final mix beyond saturation point. In order to have some of this stuff sounding reasonable, it'd have to be re-engineered.

ah gotcha, I think I already knew that but forgot (xpost)

yeah it seems like a total ground-up remix from the original tracks is the only way you could fix this kinda thing.

Not at all -- I've seen plenty of bitching from people who finalized mixes they were happy with, and then had the mastering engineer squash it all too loud. It'd be incredibly simple to just master them again. To, umm, "re-master" them, as it were.

They're all different.

interesting point buried in this ipds are making ppl deaf!! report:

Professor Christian Huggonet has told France's Le Figaro newspaper that 10 to 20% of adolescents surveyed had poor hearing.

He also said the use of "compressed" sound in modern media — in which weak signals are boosted to the level of stronger ones — is changing the way people speak.

"Once the ear has got accustomed to this kind of sound, it finds it very hard to return to sounds of weak intensity," Professor Huggonet said.

"Young children used to watching cartoons with compressed sound can end up speaking in the same loud, monotone way."

this thread isn't very funny ;_;

serious custos is serious

IN A WAY, ABUSE OF DYNAMIC RANGE COMPRESSION MAY BE COMPARED TO WRITING AN ENTIRE POST ON, SAY, ILM, USING ALL-CAPS-LOCK. I THINK THIS SUMS UP BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE WHAT THE LOUDNESS WAR IS ABOUT.

How does range compression affect the way people speak? Do they start to sound like an ELO record?

If something using range compression is playing in the background, people will start to sound like James Hetfield. To be heard.

Anything that makes people sound like an ELO record should be encouraged!

I wonder how much of the compression on 00's albums was added BEFORE the mastering process?

-- sleeve, Thursday, 3 January 2008 20:41 (6 days ago) Link

that's not the kind of compression that's the issue

-- Jordan, Thursday, 3 January 2008 20:45 (6 days ago) Link

Well, it's part of the issue. Most of the time people are compressing individual tracks and then compressing the master again. The loudness war tends to refer to mastering compression, but too much mixing compression can produce bad effects too.

the right sorts of mix compression can drastically reduce the need to overlimit tracks just for reasons of volume.

I recently made a driving mix for CD and was frustrated by the huge range of levels. My remastered version of The Who's "Out In The Street" sounds great, especially in the car, on a shitty boombox, not so much on headphones. I loaded it into Audacity and had a look at it, and it had such extreme clipping, it looked like a solid block. Given the originally distorted sound of that particular song, it kind of worked. I went ahead and compressed and clipped the hell out of most of the other songs on the mix to try to match those levels. I couldn't bring myself to go to that extreme, but at least the rest are just about as audible in comparison. Kind of micro-model of how the compression trend snowballed I'm sure.

If in doubt, just download the free software and look at the waves to compare different music:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

My hope would be that as more stuff becomes available for download, they'd start to introduce decent masters of uncompressed .wav and lossless codecs along with the .mp3 and .aac for mass market. However, I don't know that the "audiophile market" (those who listen to music at home on decent speakers rather than on noisy trains and in their cars) will ever be big enough to be catered to overall.

there are some classical companies that are offering uncompressed downloads in .wav form...huge files obviously but i think the market is starting to develop.

I've been trying to get most of the stuff on my ipod normalized, so that I can listen on shuffle at whatever volume I want, without massive shifts from track to track blasting my ears off. In doing this, I've been opening more or less everything in a wave editor. So fucking appalled by the clipping/compression on a lot of stuff I've downloaded/ripped, that I'm just basically trashing everything that looks like a solid block. Shit sounds hellish shrill, anyways.

there are some classical companies that are offering uncompressed downloads in .wav form

There are rationally mastered CDs being sold. They just aren't in the US mainstream pop rock market. Most of my import remasters of classic rock are OK. Plus there are still a lot of undermastered CDs from the early Nineties still floating around, particularly at budget price.

In contrast, everything that comes out of Nashville is set to blare at any volume. I always have to remember to turn the stereo down when I go from the former to the latter, say, like Sugarland's new one.

I don't listen at all on earbuds. MP3's sound noticeably inferior to me. Most of my stuff still comes out of a nice but not extravagant stereo, only about one percent sitting at the computer, a terrible way to listen to the music I like.

I don't know that the "audiophile market"

Incidentally, I'm hardly an audiophile. Since the standards have been lowered (or twisted, perhaps) so much, it would seem anyone who doesn't listen on iPod or computer is deemed an audiophile.

MP3s seem to be decent at maintaining the dynamic range of the source recording, at least at reasonable bitrates (192 or so).

Incidentally, I'm hardly an audiophile. Since the standards have been lowered (or twisted, perhaps) so much, it would seem anyone who doesn't listen on iPod or computer is deemed an audiophile.

Yeah, that's why I put the quotes in. I'm audiophile by mainstream standards, but real audiophiles would laugh at my rig. I've enjoyed upgrading my speakers, but can't yet bring myself to buy pre/pro and amp that costs as much as a car.

I'm hardly an audiophile either, though for listening at home through decent speakers, I'd rather have a better source than MP3. Though for listening in the car, I think MP3s are fine, since the road noise drowns out the fine detail anyway.

High bitrate MP3s don't sound atrocious to me. In a quiet room, on a nice system, you notice the loss, but even then, it's not so profound as some make out. Then again, maybe I don't have the ears/gear. Either way, I don't like the sound of hypercompressed audio. Cuts through the chatter, but so does a car alarm.

No, they're not terrible by any means. Sometimes the MP3 actually sounds better than the original - depending on the recording. They tend to round off the upper treble a bit, which can improve some harsh trebly CDs. Sometimes reducing the density of detail helps the ear pick out the important elements more easily - so I think they can actually be more pleasant to listen to for certain types of music. You do lose small subtleties of texture and detail though.

let's not confuse compression in mixing & mastering with audio format compression (mp3s)

Yeah, maybe the mp3 discussion belongs on a different thread.

Yeah, though I was referring to MP3s, I was talking about dynamic range compression & clipping in mastering (at least I presume it's in the mastering, and that these things weren't actually mixed for bricklike sound).

http://www.nme.com/news/metallica/39816

nme website readers comments don't see what the fuss is about

MASTERER of puppets LOL

DEAF magnetic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

now it makes a lot more sense to me (though i could hear the problem with certain releases, i couldn't really figure out what was going on in regards to the mastering process)

no doubt you'll tell me this aint the crux of the issue, but hey ..

Coo - Jarvis Cocker just quoted a bit of Nick's Stylus essay on Radio 6.