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

good read

http://www.sfxmachine.com/docs/loudnesswar/loudness_war.pdf

"Lindstrom IS A+ spot-on with production, I don't dispute that, but mastering is a DIFFERENT thing, which is what I think a lot of people don't get."

yeah yeah but ime it isn't mastering engineers who are responsible for making everything louder, it's the artists/producers compressing the shit out of everything because in isolation it sounds great.

also, a lot of people don't "get" mastering because mastering isn't really a thing

you get quoted in that link above nick

Nick/Scik Mouthy of this very parish on dynamic range compression in 2011.

Just came here to do that myself...

from apple: "Any boosts in playback volume are designed to be protected against clipping by iTunes' build-in limiter."

If only there had been a clear definition of who got to do the limiting at the very beginning between Mastering Engineers, radio stations and the system you're currently using.

My ears are fatigued.

thought that the Kanye album was an accidentally shipped set of demos or something. Gash. Can't listen to the thing.

I am getting the impression with the music I like best that this was worse a few years ago than it is today. A lot of American indie acts (and probably also hip-hop/R&B although that is not really my cup of tea) need to cut down the compression and volume considerably though.

The Beatles remasters were just perfect. Far from clipping or anything, but at the same time (unlike a lot of 80s/early 90s masters) loud enough not to sound tame on modern phones, iPods or portable CD players.

Hey nick thanks for writing about this stuff, its really important.

I'm glad you brought up games in the end. Working in that industry I think its ludicrous how music is the only industry that'd turned its back on fidelity

I'm no tech head but I think this article at RA may be a nice supplement - use of VU meters, also (especially!?) to monitor digital recordings.

ctrl f - bob katz 'mastering audio'

Not sure if this has ever been linked to, but it's also a good read:

http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html

(Chicago Mastering Service is co-owned by Bob Weston from Shellac)

How long will it take for people's computer hardware (including smartphones) to be of such a quality that Spotify may become all lossless? It would be a very important change because it would mean the kids would get used to more dynamic sound again.

YOU'RE STILL DERANGED

yeah, you can losslessly hear how the recordings sound like ass soup.

i always forget that this is a thing that's meant to exist until these threads are bumped

have never noticed it while actually listening to music

How does lossless/lossy encoding make sound more or less dynamic?

it doesn't

You mean Geir might be wrong sometimes?

What's your usual listening setup lex?

tbh given what lex listens to, it's probably the audio equivalent of those fish that live at the bottom of the sea and can thrive under thousands of pounds of pressure

have never noticed it while actually listening to music

― lex pretend, Wednesday, October 12, 2011 10:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wake up sheeple.
shit is hella obvious

what is the singular of sheeple?

sheeperson?

what, ewe don't know?

How does lossless/lossy encoding make sound more or less dynamic?

The more compressed, the less difference between the loudest and most silent parts. Because the most silent parts become less silent. Extensive use of dynamic range compression is just like USING CAPS LOCK ALL THE TIME.

data compression is not the same as audio compression

It has much of the same effect on the audio. Today's recordings are being compressed because the kids are used to hearing badly compressed mp3s and expect music to sound that way.

you do not know what you are talking about

Geir, you're confusing low-bitrate-encoded files with brickwall-mastered audio.

They can both sound bad, but neither necessarily so. There's some truth to the idea that kids are being trained to accept poor fidelity by both low bitrates and extreme (distortingly so) audio compression, but this may only be a passing phase in the grand scheme of things. Data compression is just the natural result of low bandwidth and storage limitations, but those are receding by the month. And audio compression has, in part, come from the fact that everybody listens to music through chintzy headphones with high impedances that require a high average level (the "RMS") to give a listenable level. Which should change, too, if more slowly.

Things that are well mastered can still sound pretty good even at 128kbps. Depends on the music involved. And many things sound fantastic when the audio/dynamic range is seriously compressed. There's no single rule to cover this. I'd say that more important than data or audio compression is EQ—whether the piece in question is well balanced across frequencies. If it is, it can be pushed pretty hard, just as a well balanced car can be driven harder than one that's off kilter.

Of course, a lot of music these days is marred by both too much data and audio compression.

What's your usual listening setup lex?

at home, mp3s through laptop plugged into this stereo system (sony ss-cpx333)

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS7iBmSTn8Dx2qEY2BvOSit-Fp2BSoIIdNHp1rgj_TnCq3MHSZODiQpYmPQ

while out and about, ipod with these headphones (sennheiser px100)

http://www.dansdata.com/images/3senns/px100640.jpg

tbh given what lex listens to, it's probably the audio equivalent of those fish that live at the bottom of the sea and can thrive under thousands of pounds of pressure

what are you saying about sade??

i love how deej can come out with "it's obvious" despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary

no, audio compression is entirely audible. download the greatest hits version of sugar ray's 'every morning' from amazon, then download the album version. they remastered for the greatest hits. the difference is entirely noticeable

What evidence to the contrary? Once you know what limiting sounds like, it's impossible not to notice it.

One track that always comes to mind for a really really horrible brick-wall job is Girls Aloud "Can't Speak French". Listen to the instruments in the background and hear the way they are constantly pulsing in and out when the drums and vocals push them into the background, only for them to come steaming back in afterwards. I quite like the song, but listening to it just gives me a headache.

download the greatest hits version of sugar ray's 'every morning' from amazon, then download the album version.

why in god's name would I do either of these things much less both

zing!

Ignoring the choice of music, this video gives a good demonstration:

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

Geir's thoughts are like imagining that changing a richly-formatted Word doc to a plain .txt file also changes it to all uppercase.

man i love old analog word docs, the mids in the punctuation is so creamy

I only listen to mimeographs now.

that'll make sense that you don't hear the effects of highly compressed music. it's designed to bang on consumer hifi stuff. a lot of music relies on that clipping-in-ur-face thing

i don't have a problem with music that's mastered too hot, i just wish there was an alternative

has anyone come across any labels offering 96k 24bit audio files? it'd make sense for techy dance stuff aimed at djs who are going to stick in some software and play it out

xpost

yah my friend just faxed me a bunch of old jug band mimeos from the 20s, great stuff

Ignoring the choice of music, this video gives a good demonstration:

http://www.youtube.com/v/3Gmex_4hreQ&fs=1&hl=en

― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, October 13, 2011 12:27 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh that video has it wrong...he's just making the track louder, not compressing it to do so, which is missing the point. the dynamics remain intact with what he's doing.

One track that always comes to mind for a really really horrible brick-wall job is Girls Aloud "Can't Speak French". Listen to the instruments in the background and hear the way they are constantly pulsing in and out when the drums and vocals push them into the background, only for them to come steaming back in afterwards. I quite like the song, but listening to it just gives me a headache.

haven't heard the song, but this sounds like it might be intentional use of sidechain compression at the mixing stage, not necessarily the result of the mastering job?

even if it is sidechain compression, it is still a symptom of the need to fill the dynamic range to get your music to stand out, just at the mixing stage not the mastering.

Audio compression = a typed document with less and less spaces between words and no punctuation so that there is very little variation between lines and it becomes difficult for the reader to stop reading once they start.

Data compression = a typed document that uses as little printer ink as possible but still allows the text to be read.

24bit 96k files are becoming more popular as people want something that sounds better than CD and now that buying a few terrabytes of storage is affordable. However it is very much a specialst market with a small range of albums. HDtracks offer the most well known stuff, but I have been hearing that they often take the left and right channels of a surround mix, so you end up with less instruments in much higher quality.

Holy shit on the RMS levels of the 1997 remastered "Search and Destroy" from that Chicago Mastering Service article.

i know! that article was really cool

i don't know why anybody would be proud of not being able to hear this sort of thing. Being tin eared isn't a positive

even before i knew the science behind it, even back in my formative musical days, i just knew that some albums were really hard work to get through. It's a physiological sense as much as a facet of your hearing

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not Jordan, but if you think those two clips sound the same you've either got cloth ears or cloth speakers.