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

Exactly why we're recording, mixing, and mastering our next CD ourselves.

If you really want to hear for yourself the difference, listen to first Coldplay's Rush of Blood... (in terms of levels and mix) and then listen to Sigur Ros' Agaetis Birjun (levels and mix) and you'll realize that Coldplay's album maintains a sort of "stasis", whereas the Sigur Ros album has a wide variety of different levels of tone and clarity. Even if you don't like Agaetis Birjun, I think it makes for quite an excellent example of using digital techniques but without over-compressing everything into one chunk of sound.

And my #1 problem with "nu-metal"-ish bands is that, thanks to overcompression (even moreso than stylistic similarities between bands) they sound IDENTICAL on record.

I miss quiet parts.

Over-sqwozed tracks sound horrible. It works for some genre's (nu-metal, happy hardcore etc), but as a general rule it's a pile of poo.

If you're after a loud track without utterly raping your dynamics then I recommend the Waves L-1 or L-2 Ultramaximiser. It's the less noticable one I've found. It still takes time though, a lot of tracks are ruined not by compression, but when it's done lazily with no thought to what the track actually needs.

Have you considered buying a compressor? (No, I'm not being a wiseass) Some people do like them for home listening, though I'm not really one of them.

listen to Sigur Ros' Agaetis Birjun (levels and mix) and you'll realize that[...]the Sigur Ros album has a wide variety of different levels of tone and clarity.

Heh, that's funny -- one of my biggest problems with A.B. (as I recall, anyway -- I haven't listened to it in a while) has always been that it sounded too compressed to me!

i still say it's completely up to the artist as to how they handle all this...

it's a shame a band like rush would let people screw their sound up cause i imagine they would probably rather have their record sound undistorted as opposed to the opposite.

it's my opinion that some audiophiles care too much. no offense, but a little distortion and white noise doesn't turn my ears off. i find it a little ridiculous how annoyed this guy is. (and i constantly complain about how loud commercials are as opposed to television shows... so i maybe i can't talk.)

good production will never make a bad record good.

bad production doesn't always make a good record bad.
m.

You know, there are many decent albums that have been ruined by excessive compression. I would like to nominate The Prodigy's "The Fat of the Land". A friend commented, it's a great album to vacuum to" because you can set it at a suitable volume and depend on that volume never changing! And you know what I hate most? it's those albums which fool the quotidien critic. They go, 'hurgh hurgh, it's loud, it great', give it a good review, we go and buy it, and feel like fools because, like an excessively loud, obnoxious and stupid guest, an overly compressed record quickly outstays its welcome.

Never Take Maxim to elegant places
he lacks all the social graces
He'll dance on the table
Whenever he's able
and giggle at you, making faces.

Will any death metal fans have any idea why this matters?

Probably not many, but death metal is style where 'hot' mastering is very difficult to pull off, as the typically thick, full-bass-full-treble sound of the guitars is extremely hard to preserve when you use to much compression - which is why most nu-metal (= produced for radio/tv so lots of compression needed) uses those thin sounding, all-mid-range guitars instead.

Please please please read my piece and the Rip Rowan one and everything else I've linked, and talk about this phenomena everywhere and anywhere. Because it's fucking important.

Hopefully there won't be some crazy no-compression backlash. Compression + normalization are important - the problem is getting engineers and producers to use them with discretion in the right circumstances. By the time you hear the effects of compression, you've probably used too much. Not surprisingly Albini's had some choice words about this over the years.

Those wanting to delve in can get more info at the usual gearhead hangouts:
www.electrical.com
www.tapeop.com

Not to mention weezer. The blue album is really compressed, but I don't think it can hold a candle to The Green album and onwards.

the guy we mastered with was also complaining about "multi-band" compression, in which you can go through and compress different spectrums of the sound at different frequencies separately

Yeah, that's what they do. They can be quite handy, though. I recorded this really cheap toy glockenspiel once, and the high frequencies were painful to listen to. Slapped a compressor on just the highs, and bam, it sounded pleasant.

yeah, he definitely uses it, and actually used it on one of our songs that had a deep dub bass thing going on that was sort of problematic, but I think he was just saying that it's become sort of a crutch for some people.

Isn't that what EQ is for?

No; EQ will cut or boost a frequency range by a fixed amount. A multi-band compressor will compress a frequency range by a given ratio.

It amounts to the difference between simply turning down the volume, which keeps the shape of the waveform intact, and compression, which squshes the waveform.

It's a very different discipline seeing as you're literally cutting a record, with all of the attendant restrictions on how low or hot you can go with that particular piece of plastic at that rpm and with that running time.

You don't have to worry about sub-bass or phase issues or summing to mono below a certain frequency or wild dynamic shifts when mastering for CD; it seems to be because of (rather than despite of) these limitations when mastering for vinyl that so much more care goes into making it sound as good as possible. You know the CD will take anything you chuck at it, so why not max the thing out? Shame...

That said, this:

Compression is like audio crack - sure it feels good but it can destroy your life.

Is just a weeeee bit hyperbolic.

But I’m still troubled by some aspects of the article. First, I think the article sometimes compares apples-to-oranges. Some examples of properly compressed music cited in the article seem to be more subtle and textured to begin with, e.g., the songs on Talk Talk’s “Laughing Stock,” while some examples of over-compressed music cited in the article seem to be less subtle and more blunt, flat and loud to begin with, e.g., songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Queens of the Stone Age. A true apples-to-apples comparison would be two songs in the same genre, one with proper compression and one with over-compression, or – better yet – two versions of one song, with the only difference being that one version is properly compressed and the other version is overly-compressed. I suppose the latter comparison can be done by comparing a song from the original disc with the same song remastered on a reissued version of the disc.

Second, the article wisely notes that being able to hear proper compression in music is akin to being able to taste or smell individual notes in wine. If you’re a connoisseur, you can detect smoke or chocolate or earthy flavors in a given bottle of wine; if you’re not a connoisseur, it can just taste like a big, bold red. Similarly, I have trouble hearing over-compression in songs without a connoisseur’s guidance.

So what are some examples of properly-compressed and overly-compressed current music, and what tells you that the music you cite is properly or overly compressed? Since I like indie-rock, I’d greatly appreciate some examples in that genre.

the weird thing about this always is that music with less compression actually sounds better turned up real fuckin' loud than compressed-for-loudness music

otm

I wonder if, in 10 or 15 years, you're going to start seeing a slew of "remasters" where people have gone back to records from today, and mastered sans all the compression.

(altho frankly, a lot of this happens in the actual recording/mixing stage at this point, as just an aesthetic decision)

otm. like, for a lot of sound system-oriented music, it makes sense to shift textures and frequencies without the actual volume changing much.

I wonder if, in 10 or 15 years, you're going to start seeing a slew of "remasters" where people have gone back to records from today, and mastered sans all the compression.

― Dominique, Thursday, January 21, 2016 12:01 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rush did that with...I forget which album. It was originally released in the early 00s, brickwalled to hell, and recently completely remixed/remastered.

Ah, ok, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor_Trails#Vapor_Trails_Remixed

sure but is that good and for like 99% of artists who never make any money anyway, should you care?

is this about the daddy kev thing or the bbc thing?

I wonder if, in 10 or 15 years, you're going to start seeing a slew of "remasters" where people have gone back to records from today, and mastered sans all the compression.

the the did this for the recent reissue boxset of 'soul mining', and are supposedly going to 'fix' the rest of the back catalogue as matt hates the reissues that came out a few years back.
and i'm sure that i have a few other examples hidden away.
basically, this is already a thing.

sure but is that good and for like 99% of artists who never make any money anyway, should you care?

is this about the daddy kev thing or the bbc thing?

― sam jax sax jam (Jordan), Thursday, January 21, 2016 11:53 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

daddy kev...i mean just like the idea some people i even know personally that feel like they have to be "competitive in the marketplace" or something and it's like we're all just local bands you know?

unless you want it to sound super compressed which is obv your choice, but like this idea that "my product needs to sound 'modern'" (which "sounding modern" is a real fluid term, what sounds modern now could sound dated very quickly also

yeah i take it as a totally aesthetic comment rather than market-driven.

like if your music is composed of samples and has big sub bass, it just might not sound "right" if it was mastered in the style of something with live instrument dynamics.

i get that, i guess i misinterpreted what he said, & obv dif music, i mean really even within the same styles or genres should be mastered differently to best fit that particular song

i've just heard ppl irl say it and also anecdotes from guys i know who master that say its not uncommon for people to come in and be like "we want it as loud as" [x album]

(& these are all rock bands)

otm

I wonder if, in 10 or 15 years, you're going to start seeing a slew of "remasters" where people have gone back to records from today, and mastered sans all the compression.

― Dominique, Thursday, January 21, 2016 12:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the station to station deluxe reissue box included a cd which cloned the first early 80s west german cd mastering of the album.

The new version of Vapor Trails sounded great. It didn't do anything to make the songs better, unfortunately.

I picked up a used LP of Face Value over the weekend. I had to turn up "In the Air Tonight" to hear it clearly — but when those drums came in, holy hell, I thought it would blow my speakers. I had no idea the volume varied that much on the original. Must have scared the pants off listeners back in the day.

its crazy with older masterings, there's a specific tipping point of the volume knob where the sound picture goes from thin & gray to rich and colorful in an instant

like if your music is composed of samples and has big sub bass, it just might not sound "right" if it was mastered in the style of something with live instrument dynamics.

― sam jax sax jam (Jordan), Thursday, January 21, 2016 10:18 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah.. see the balearic revival thread, listen to house music

or "deep house" music or whatever... not that swedish house mafia stuff

was microhouse really quiet?

love that when it came up to reissue spiritualized material, he refused to remaster anything as he was of the opinion it sounded perfectly fine as it was.

(and i agree - the cds do indeed sound fantastic !)

xp idk about quiet but it had plenty of "space" and "dynamics"

xpost : he = jason of course.

yeah Lazer Guided Melodies is one of the finest sounding CDs I own

deep house sure, whatever, but for a lot of 'beat' music and club tracks, i've gradually become fond of a really banging, compressed mastering style (as long as it's not overdone, and i'm aware that there are a lot of different ways to make something loud). doesn't work for everything obviously.

except for some of the more bootleggy records ("balearic" stuff, some edits, stuff ripped from mp3s and mp4s), most of the house I buy is really well mastered. They're not mastered hot like some of the contemporary pop, rap, r&b, """indie""", and country records I've bought and gotten totally burned on

feel like house mastering is carrying the legacy of meticulous disco & r&b production. you can turn it up loud and still hear the shape of the voice and the instruments

been kinda wanting to make a running list of every new record or CD I buy that's mastered like ass

uh oh
http://productionadvice.co.uk/is-the-loudness-war-really-over/

That's not remotely surprising.

the the did this for the recent reissue boxset of 'soul mining', and are supposedly going to 'fix' the rest of the back catalogue as matt hates the reissues that came out a few years back.
and i'm sure that i have a few other examples hidden away.
basically, this is already a thing.

IIRC there was an earlier series of cocteau twins reissues, approved by robin guthrie, that were brickwalled to hell and sounded terrible. so now they're going back through the catalogue to re-reissue the music in editions with less compression.

the station to station deluxe reissue box included a cd which cloned the first early 80s west german cd mastering of the album.

there are a lot of audio nerds who now swear by the first generations of CD masters (of then-new albums, that is), from the mid-late 1980s, and insist that these are often the best-sounding digital copies out there. which may very well be true in some (or a lot?) of cases, although i lived through a lot of 1990s propaganda about how the first generations of CDs sounded terrible and always took that for granted.

And that was after the propaganda that the original CDs were revealing flaws in the master tape so don't blame the CD for any bad sound that might be coming out of your speakers.

I have many mid-to-late 80s CDs, and they most definitely are not the best-sounding versions out there. Basses and other low-end sounds in particular are often very weak on them, compared to vinyl and later CD remasters. AFAIK, it was simply because mastering engineers of the era hadn't yet figured how to optimally use this new technology, which is understandable. But if you compare something like the original 80s Yello CDs and the early 00s remasters (which are not cranked up in loudness in any significant way), the remasters sound better in every way.

The only 80s CD that I have which sounds incredibly good is the Japanese version of the Akira soundtrack. In general, Japanese CDs from the 80s I own tend to sound better than Western CDs of the era, they don't really have that weak bass problem, for example. Since Japanese invented the format, I guess it makes sense they would be the first ones to perfect CD mastering.

The received wisdom on this (and I'm not really sure how true it is) is that the rush to get everything out on CD in the mid-late '80s led to a lot of corner-cutting, where whatever available stereo master (perhaps not even 1st generation, and likely equalised for vinyl) was used for the CD. So various EQ compromises that had been made for the LP mastering were present on CD, which, as a format, didn't have a problem with lots of low-end or out-of-phase imaging and certainly didn't need any "presence boost". Hence, a lot of pretty weedy, harsh-sounding early CDs.

I seem to remember back on the audio forums, Brothers In Bloody Arms was held up as an example of what could be done as early as 1985 with engineers who knew what they doing (24-track digital tape, analog desk, bounced down to digital master, then to CD), "proving" that there was never anything wrong with CD as it was first conceived, just bad implementation. But (a) it's Dire Straits and (b) there have been myriad half-speed master / 180gm vinyl / SACD / whatever reissues of BiA over the years anyway.

There also seemed to be another consensus that 1993-94 was the Greatest Time To Be Alive Buying CDs, as 20-bit+ recording, noise-shaping, high-end ADCs, etc was everywhere by then and the loudness wars hadn't kicked in.

Yeah, my vague feeling is that 1992/93/94 is a pretty amazing time for CD sound, and then Oasis come along and start to fuck it up.

Like the Prince 3CD thing I just got, which is from 1993, sounds AMAZING.

CDs have probably never been capable of sounding better than right now, as we chuck them aside

just look at the spectrogram on these - awful! just a straight line with no dynamics at all

https://archive.org/details/cd_californication_red-hot-chili-peppers/disc1/02.+Red+Hot+Chili+Peppers+-+Parallel+Universe.flac

If you think it looks bad, wait until you hear it ;)