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

you're talking out your arse

No, I'm not.

I guarantee that that will not be the waveform for Get Lucky.

you better check again man, cos you're showing all the signs

Here’s a wavefrom I just made from the mp3 that is going around, seems pretty similar to me:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fga0lyjjnophl0w/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-18%20at%2023.39.57.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fga0lyjjnophl0w/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-18%20at%2023.39.57.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fga0lyjjnophl0w/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-18%20at%2023.39.57.png

Well, I can't argue with that but sheesh, that is fucking weak. Only thing I can think of is that sometimes leaked versions have the volumes deliberately lowered in order that people still might want to pay for a proper version.

I mean, it's basically unbroadcastable if you left it at that volume.

some more advanced audio systems allow users the ability to control the volume at which they wish to listen, or broadcast

seriously i don't understand some aspects of the loudness war pushback; that waveform has nothing at all to lose by being brought up 6 or 7 db because it's already v flat dynamically, as it is it doesn't take up the full dynamic range and can even be considered lower fidelity than another track that does - only by a bit (maybe literally, as each bits in yr 16-bits of cd quality represents a certain amount of dynamic headroom and leaving that much unused space at the top is akin to only using 14 or 15 bits)... but still. the way that song is mastered it looks and is quieter but doesn't seem to have any more dynamics than yer average brickwalled whatever. i understand not wanting to change the sound of a song in mastering with hard limiting, but that doesn't mean you have to make a song much quieter than allotted, and it doesn't mean it'll sound any better if you do.

iow, i feel these waveform comparisons are often misleading!

lol contendo

that waveform has nothing at all to lose by being brought up 6 or 7 db because it's already v flat dynamically, as it is it doesn't take up the full dynamic range and can even be considered lower fidelity than another track that does - only by a bit ... but still. the way that song is mastered it looks and is quieter but doesn't seem to have any more dynamics than yer average brickwalled whatever.

sleepingbag otm, was thinking the same thing. nice that it's not completely brickwalled, but it does look p heavily compressed, and if you're gonna do that, there's no reason to limit the available dynamic range by reducing the volume overall.

except, you know, to make a point

It’s already at roughly -1.5db. Just turn it up, I guarantee it will sound better. Radio stations will brickwall it themselves anyway.

The track itself is another matter, love the guitar playing but the rest isn’t doing much for me.

Interesting though that Daft Punk are taking this stance after how much they have abused compression in the past.

I agree that it's an extreme statement, but yes zoomed out to four minutes, waveform comparisons are misleading.

When I import the mp3 and zoom in to the loudest transient I can find, it peaks at -1.7 dB under. It's not impossible there's a slightly louder one in there somewhere if I had the time to crawl for it. So it's basically a zero compromise master; even though most of the drum hits are down around -3.0, they left about one full dB of headroom louder than the loudest ones, so that not even one single drum hit had to be sawed off for the sake of bringing up the overall volume.

I'm for it!

xpost yes this is one of the bands I always used as a counter-example to the more rabid 'compression is evil' arguments, so it's interesting that one of the main bands that mainstreamed the creative use of sidechain compression is throwing down this gauntlet

consistent w the perversity of their stance on edm i guess

just played it back while watching on a loudness meter. levels safely average around -3, leaving safe room for a handful of drum transients to spike, usually around -2.5, though a couple go louder, and the loudest one is that one hit at -1.7

they did not normalize the track

totally conventional cd mastering practice, circa 1985

I was thinking the reason for the headroom would be that so louder tracks on the album could be louder, but being that this is a single edit, that doesn't stand up to reason

So Bob Katz reckons iTunes Radio, which has Sound Check turned on permanently, will win the Loudness War by making people master thing approx 7db quieter. To use VERY simple terms.

More here: http://www.digido.com/forum/announcement/id-6.html

Thoughts?

Interviewed Bob Katz.

http://thequietus.com/articles/13821-loudness-wars-apple-itunes-bob-katz

> "My son helped me to get the screenshots in Audacity" - sounds weird coming from Moroder.
> You'd've thought he'd be good at computers.

Any Hans-Peter Lindstrom fans in here? He blew my mind in one interview when he admitted he doesn't know anything about hardware synths and that he mostly uses Reason presets in his music. Which goes to show you don't have to be a DSP programming wizard if you have a good ear.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tvgp1#in=collection:p021gdts

Trevor Cox asks whether compression can detract from our enjoyment of recorded music - does it matter that what we hear may not be the same as what the musicians heard in the studio? How important is high quality reproduction? He looks at attempts to make music recordings sound louder and louder (the so-called Loudness War) and asks whether anything is lost in the process. And he considers whether making audio file sizes smaller, so that they take up less space on portable devices, means that some of the musical detail is lost. He talks to record producer Steve Levine (who produced Culture Club among many others) mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, the musician Steven Wilson, members of the BBC Philharmonic, and Dr Bruno Fazenda, Senior Lecturer in Audio Technology.

my main issue with this programme is that it doesnt really account for how people might subconsciously hear compressed music. instead you just get a lot of people on this saying that you wont hear the difference unless you have a great room and great system, when i can hear differences hearing a cd on my computer speakers compared to playing something from mp3.

You can hear the differences on a phone and a pair of earbuds... Talking about an over compressed harsh recording, not the differences between mp3 bitrates etc. But listen to like a new rock record and one from from 70s it's obvious

I guess they're playing to their audience, but if I was listening to a program about compression and loudness etc., I'd like to hear a perspective from someone who doesn't listen exclusively to classical and impeccably recorded '70s prog/art-rock. They should have some laptop beatmaker on, see what he or she thinks, what that listening audience demands.

MP3 compression and loudness compression are 2 very different things that don't really have anything to do with each other, apart from being around at the same time I suppose. But that's not the first time this has come up on this thread.

i cant imagine classical gets compressed anyway. but yeah, the issue of mp3 bit rates and compression as part of the studio production process are two different issues.

, I'd like to hear a perspective from someone who doesn't listen exclusively to classical and impeccably recorded '70s prog/art-rock. They should have some laptop beatmaker on, see what he or she thinks, what that listening audience demands.

surely you jest, this is radio 4 we're talking about here

this Daddy Kev quote on mastering has really stuck with me:
https://youtu.be/36euriw9WMY?t=241

basically you can't avoid the fact that, at least for music with a lot of electronic elements, a loud master without a lot of dynamics is the modern sound.

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

love the way it ends on a positive note that more artists will record in better fidelity/with less compression due to the success of songs like get lucky. as if studios arent closing around the world and most artists arent just recording with their own setups (never mind that not everyone has a budget like daft punk!)

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