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

~better listeners~. bullllllshiiiiiiiiit.

lex's argument is like some climate change denier weirdness

"I don't notice it, therefore it isn't happening"

It's all scientific hooey, that's what it is!

dudes, i am almost always in disagreement with lex but what he's saying here is "I don't notice it, therefore why should I care?" which is a different argument.

on the other hand, i'm not sure why he's arguing about it so persistently if it doesn't affect him.

because he feels everyone is telling him he should?

i dont understand the liking it just because its modern angle though. Same with someone i know who only listens to music before 1990 and only on vinyl because it sounds better and modern recording/mastering is inferior to 70s music.

it's obvious lex doesn't care. hurrah for him. that does not mean it does not exist.

Hum, looks like war here ! I have the feeling you guys take all this way too agressively.
To me some tracks sound better with a lot of compression (a danja track, or daft punk, mgmt's "time to pretend", some animal collective tracks on "merriweather"...) And some music not at all. I don't really think it's all or nothing/black or white (not the MJ track !).
I also disagree with the idea that all remasters are evil. The beatles ones, for instance, are good.
But I don't want to interrupt your fight !

the flip of lex's position is that he thinks everyone who hears this is listening wrong

youre saying that about the lex though too!

I am and I'm not denying it. It's a two-way street.

like good for you lex, your ears are so fucked you can't notice something that is "proven by science" (lol), acknowledged by the people who actually make/record/master music as being put into practice, etc. Because you can't hear it does not mean that others can and do. Given the mass consensus throughout the recording industry about DNR you might stop, for a second, and ponder why all these other people - including the people who actually make the music - hear this and you don't.

xp

instead of calling it "nonsense" and "yelling at clouds"

lots of people don't hear it!

the reason i seem to care so much is because i find the implied assertion that "we are better listeners" to be completely obnoxious

is that why you make it yourself

also not hearing /= saying it does not exist, as you do.

no one is saying compression is evil, compression is one of the most important tools in the entire recording process!

i mean it's been my impression you want a little in-line compression on a lot of stuff in the mix, like bass drum, bass guitar, vocals etc

DNR /= all compression

analog tape compression etc.

like, that's a very different thing. DNR happens at the mastering stage.

DRN argh

lol I appear to just be making up acronyms now

DRC!

i think lex attitude probably just reflects 99% of humanity. in that they don't care about this shit.

beatles CDs should have been called Remixes. that would have been more accurate. or Reconfigurations or something. need some new term for stuff like that.

in that 99% of humanity does not care about the quality of music, you are probably right

some people just haven't tried music bareback yet

I seriously think there's an awesome interdisciplinary PhD in here, crossing psychology, sociology, and economics. I think it's fascinating.

beatles CDs should have been called Remixes. that would have been more accurate. or Reconfigurations or something

Was there something so different in the mastering process for the Beatles CDs that they were *altered* in some way that they were not altered in other mastering jobs?

Of course, every mastering job results in some alteration of the sound coming off the master tape.

just realizing how weird it is that this process is called "mastering." and if you're mastering something from something, surely the thing you're mastering from isn't the master?

not weird i guess, just... racist.

/troll i kid i kid

you are creating a master

^^^

when you make a record, you are recording etc

glad recording isn't racist

you can't make a master without making a slave

lex is racist?

Hum, looks like war here ! I have the feeling you guys take all this way too agressively.
To me some tracks sound better with a lot of compression (a danja track, or daft punk, mgmt's "time to pretend", some animal collective tracks on "merriweather"...) And some music not at all. I don't really think it's all or nothing/black or white (not the MJ track !).
I also disagree with the idea that all remasters are evil. The beatles ones, for instance, are good.
But I don't want to interrupt your fight !

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, October 27, 2011 11:30 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you dont 'get' this argument fyi

Not that anyone's necessarily arguing this but I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of electronic/dance music is neither compressed nor suited to compression. There's a lot of dance music where the listener's ability to spatially differentiate between different components (i.e. the listener's sense of the music comprising the interaction of different sounds/instruments within a given physical field, however imaginary this actually is) is very important.

Like I'd hate to imagine the effect of dynamic range compression on the second disc of New Forms.

Though perhaps the common element for the above is dance music that either uses live instrumentation or (more commonly) very "clean" samples from music made using live instruments.

^^^on point & true of lots of rap music too.

you dont 'get' this argument fyi

oh ok, maybe, it's true I haven't read the whole thread.
I'll leave it to you experts, then !

but just one thing : is it a consensus with audio experts that all remasters are shit ?

No, not at all. Some are, some aren't, same with new records.

ctrl-f equal temperament with overly compressed music:

"I've learned to hear equal temperament music as a kind of aural caffeine, overly busy and nervous-making. If you're used to getting that kind of buzz from music, you feel the lack of it as a deprivation when it's not there. But do we need it? Most cultures use music for meditation, and ours may be the only culture that doesn't. With our tuning, we can't.

My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned to introspection, contentment, and acquiesence. Equal temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent action films. The music doesn't turn your attention inward, it makes you want to go out and work off your nervous energy on something."

sorry, find and replace, or whatever

that's from kyle gann writing about just intonation btw, and it's an excellent read, love that dude

the thing is lex for you this is about social positioning - about you asserting, "I enjoy my experience of music, so this thing you'll telling me decreases it is somehow an insult to my claim." It's not, though, any more than...like, there's no doubt that mass agriculture has decreased the quality of some vegetables. I still enjoy those vegetables! but when I get a better one, from a farmer's market or something, I don't pose and go "oh you guys are saying this tomato is so much better" because that would be FRONTING. whatever your favorite pop record of recent years is - literally, whichever one it is - I could take you & the original files into a mastering studio, tell them to master w/o range compression, and you - you, Lex, lover of music - would say "fuck - this sounds so much better." this is a fucking stone guarantee - I've had mastering engineers walk me through how records are mastered now. it is decreasing your enjoyment of the music you like, that's a promise. I know you don't want that to be true because it'd put you in tiresome old man company or something but what you're basically saying here is "how do you guys know I don't like the taste of dog shit?"

Tim in re: dance music is especially otm - crescendo & build is so important to a good night out, this is why many DJs still prefer vinyl isn't it?

Would pay top dollar for Aerosmith remasters of Girls Aloud.

smithy, if you dont mind me asking, do you get your vinyl releases mastered differently from the cd version? I've seen quite a few albums on vinyl saying they do just that. And do they sound better?

aero otm.