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

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.

fyi the main engineer at this place is the best mastering engineer in the US; people say "no records are made w/o range compression now" but it's not true - if he mastered it, the mastering is great even if the original production sucks. I don't think pop lovers will find much to love on their list of credits but as far as good mastering goes there are a couple of houses people can turn to if they actually want their record to sound good.

xp yeah, there's always a different master for vinyl - just slightly different though, has more to do with cutting the lathe than with anything you could hear on the files. The European pressing of the most recent Aerosmith album incidentally is hand-to-God the best cutting I've had in 20 years on the job, it sounds fucking fantastic.

haha i hate farmer's market evangelists too. farmer's markets stress me out even more than supermarkets.

i don't know how "the music you love = dog shit" ISN'T an insult tbh? i find a lot of your claims completely weird and extreme - nick saying he feels ILL when he listens to compressed music! - and y'know, i just don't feel that or hear that in any way. it's a bit batshit.

also i realise i am in the minority in this particular thread - even though other posters have chipped in in support, so i'm not alone even here - but MOST MUSIC LISTENERS DO NOT HEAR THIS/DO NOT CARE

It's inaccurate to say most music listeners don't hear it; EVERYONE hears it! The "DO NOT CARE" part is way more defensible.

by "not hearing it" i mean "i can't tell when it's reached egregious levels or not"

i honestly don't think everyone hears it, that's insane

my gf listens to a track and after one listen will know the melody and all the words. if i then play her the instrumental version of the song, she wouldn't immediately recognize that it's the same song. she finds it insane that i don't hear the words to things.

Lex got what I meant; the original position is analogous to saying "I've never German" while watching archival footage of Hitler's speeches. You're talking about something that is an intrinsic component of the sounds you are listening to; recognizing/identifying it is a different question from hearing it.

i am pretty close to your gf on that crackle box - unless an instrumental is really striking it'd take a lot more listens for me to recognise it in isolation than to remember the words/melody - it always astonishes me when people say "oh i just don't listen to lyrics" - like how can you not, they're RIGHT THERE!

plenty do though. Some people prefer the music. Some are more into lyrics and some prefer both.
Sometimes the lyrics are completely unintelligible or so bad you just don't want to know them!

I don't really listen to lyrics most of the time.

you don't listen to dance music for lyrics. Especially those ones with the terrible vocal hooks. And lets be honest, there's not much metal that has lyrics you value like you would a Dylan or someone.

yeh it's not so much words vs music, more a mode of listening type thing

of course, good lyrics do stand out in any genre. But most lyrics aren't that great.

Which may be part of the thing, here - vocals recorded without any compression at all sound absolutely fucking weird and freaky. We're so used to compression on the human voice that we think of it as the 'natural' sound of recorded singing (with autotune etc as the 'unnatural' sound). If Lex foregrounds lyrics and vocals in his listening, he's not goign to pick up on other stuff.

Lex, when you watch a film, do you typically find yourself paying attention to the plot, or to the camerwork / set design / framing, etc etc?

um, the acting?

then the plot, then the camerawork. give a fuck about set design - i remember my parents always gushing over the sets of certain period dramas and i never understood that, it was like they didn't care about the characters or the storyline

it's all that stuff... audio spacial awareness, spectral awareness, listening to details vs the whole, where your imagination goes when you listen, what inner reference point you're using when you do listen, how you "feel" the rhythms/melody/harmony

and then how does this affect what you choose to listen on, how loud you listen, how picky you become about that sort of thing

i remember when i couldn't recognise intervals, or anything more complex than basic triadic harmony. it now seems completely mental that i couldn't tell the difference between different 7th chords because it happens naturally, i don't have to think

People listen to and watch things for different reasons.

Emma has difficulty recognising some actors from one film to the next; I have difficulty predicting lionear plot developments unless they're signposted texturally. It leads to us each being 'fooled' by different kinds of twists - Em was UTTERLY BAFFLED by the reveal in The Prestige, whereas I recognised Bordon from the first moment I saw him. People and their braisn are very different. None of us are necessarily 'wrong'.

this is all true, so why all the "better listener"/"what you enjoy is dogshit" implications underlying your arguments? and the refusal to accept that some people don't notice it or don't care?

I honestly am not reading any "what you enjoy is dogshit" under anyone's arguments. What I'm reading is that some people, itt, are rightfully arguing that there is a huge difference between "don't hear it" and "don't care". You are hearing it, but your not caring about it isn't wrong.

shakey mo and aerosmith have both explicitly equated liking compressed music to eating dogshit, and deej flat-out refuses to believe that anyone doesn't notice it

I missed shakey's post, but I think you're reading too much into aero's dogshit reference, tbh.

this is all true, so why all the "better listener"/"what you enjoy is dogshit" implications underlying your arguments? and the refusal to accept that some people don't notice it or don't care?

Dynamic change really enhances/improves music! I don't think you would argue against this?

yeh i don't like this "better listener" "you should hear this if u r a critic" stuff

i think one of the reasons i enjoy reading lex's stuff is that he talks about things i never notice, don't know anything about

lex you have argued on this thread that DRC basically doesn't exist, that it cannot be discerned/distinguished/noticed. This is wrong.

Yeah, lex, I think you'd be better off planting your flag in the "I DON'T CARE ABOUT DRC" than trying to argue that it isn't noticable or w/e.

haha i remember someone once saying that they'd heard sting's dreary and trite new album as it sounded on the original playback in the studio, and it sounded AMAZING, and i remember thinking I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN IN A WAY THAT MAKES STING'S RECORD AMAZING

lol

hahaha

lex, i feel like you might be conflating "music" + "recordings" a little bit? no one is slighting your taste, just the way some of these recordings are presented to the listening public. i like & listen to lots of records where i don't like the mastering job, it doesn't ruin the music for me but i might still like to hear a different master.

xxxxp

lex you have argued on this thread that DRC basically doesn't exist

no wonder that team always lost the rugby match on boxing day

shakey mo and aerosmith have both explicitly equated liking compressed music to eating dogshit, and deej flat-out refuses to believe that anyone doesn't notice it

― lex pretend, Friday, October 28, 2011 10:32 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

?? i just said that you hear it, you just dont know what it is that you're hearing

like, you might not recognize it AS drc but it is nonetheless, drc