Are You Really Getting The Sound You Pay For?

[JackA]

Have anyone of you heard about the "loudness war"? - Basically what is happening is that the recording engineer boost the music to be "louder" - by compressing the dynamic range and boosting the overall sound level. I have wondered for quite a while, why most modern recordings are all very loud, but without the dynamics, until I read this piece:

The Loudness War Analyzed « Music Machinery

Loudness war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So basically the mass produced CD's are all leveled to some degree, and thus while overall it's louder, the dynamics suffer, which probably is one of many reasons, why many prefer Vinyl to CD's.

The result by manipulating the sound this way is: Louder, less dynamic - the "reality" of instruments are not there, as the sound is leveled so the dynamic range will be within 6dB, which is ridiculous. I always wondered what was behind the term "audiophile" CD. But once I bought some, I must admit that I didn't realize that music could sound this way, where drum and snares really takes authority and where a slam is a slam.

With our passion for "neutral" and revealing sound systems, the term "garbage in" "garbage out" is taken to a whole new level.

So when we buy a record, have the dynamic range been altered? - most likely - keep that in mind next time you go shopping and wonder why your system just don't give you the "like being there" feeling.

End of rant.

[astral]

Not a new problem, unfortunately.

This is why the ads on TV blare out, and you have to turn the volume down.

Even on the classical music concerts of the Proms in London the BBC

uses the infamous Optimod to compress the signal.

BBC - Radio Labs: What happens to The Proms after the Royal Albert Hall?

[stgrhe]

I totally agree with you JackA, but fortunately there are some very good recordings out there with JVC's XRCD 24-bit recordings being the top of the tops.

Here is a brief description how JVC do it:

xrcd24

and here is one of the many sites where these outstanding CD's can be bought:

Home Of XRCD!!! - elusivedisc

Another thing I do not like with modern recordings is when they record one instrument at the time. In these recording you never get to hear that "tighness" that one can hear live from a well tuned band. Some artists dare to be different, e.g. Eric Clapton, who has done some studio recordings "live".

[soundman]

Commonly called "Brick Walling", made famous by Def Metal bands.

Usually achieved by running a very hot signal into a Compression/Sound Dynamic device running infinite:1 compression ratio with a fast attack time.

Destroys natural dynamics and causes sound re-production/re-enforcement to sound terrible IMO.

[chrgrims]

just for some balance: compression makes listening to radio in the car possible. compression probably made modern pop possible. yes, its overused. yes, its annoying in a quiet living room. 

sidenote: i would appreciate hearing more opinions on the xrcd format...it seems a bit strange because the final master is still 16bit and 44.1khz, so i dont see how it can be a major improvement on cd sound. but thanks for the link, its very interesting to see what formats are available. are there other similar sites for HDCD's?

[stgrhe]

just for some balance: compression makes listening to radio in the car possible. compression probably made modern pop possible. yes, its overused. yes, its annoying in a quiet living room.

sidenote: i would appreciate hearing more opinions on the xrcd format...it seems a bit strange because the final master is still 16bit and 44.1khz, so i dont see how it can be a major improvement on cd sound. but thanks for the link, its very interesting to see what formats are available. are there other similar sites for HDCD's?

Swedish label Opus 3 does some amazing good quality recordings (http://www.opus3records.com/).

An American retail site for high quality CDs and vinyls is Acoustic Sounds (http://store.acousticsounds.com/index.cfm). I have bough many CDs of different sorts from them.

With regards to your query about JVC's XRCD I can assure you that the sound beets everything I have heard in recorded music for sale.

[powderpuff]

Sadly Santana's wonderful album "Supernatural" was compressed in this way during mastering & thus we are unlikely to ever hear the tapes in an audiophile way. I did ask Steve Hoffman (famous mastering engineer) & that was his reply.

Direct to FM is the way I would describe it.

Volume wars is something different.

In about 2000 some engineers started boosting the max sound level & each artist in turn demanded his/her next CD also be mastered at higher levels. Different problem altogether.

Jack - be sure to add Annie Lennox "Diva" & "Medusa" to your collection. Fantastic dynamic range & deep bass.

Did the new amp wake up those massive Dynaudio loudspeakers? Have you run them with the Brystons?

My link

[stgrhe]

Ani DiFranco is another artist who refuses compressed recordings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ani_DiFranco

[chrgrims]

just to clarify: there are many forms of compression.

1. compress the whole signal of a song to maximize the loudness (loudness maximizer). this is used on pretty much all tracks these days to some degree. but, as some argue, its possible to avoid to retain the dynamics of the song (if that is wanted). what must be understood is that this is a question of song esthetic's, there is no absolute answer about what is the "best". Genres require different compression. listening to Shostakovitch with full compression would be pretty dam_n awful. and listening to michael jackson's songs with no compression would be pretty dam_n terrible. in the last instance i am talking about maximizing and individual track compression.

2. this brings us to the second way compression can be used. balancing individual instruments in a song in production. for example, if you have a guitar, you can make the sound much more even and thus much more powerful (in pure output).

and if santana didnt direct the mastering, its really his fault. dont blame the output from an artist on an engineer, especially not an experienced artist like santana.

compression of whole tracks happened long time before 2000, maybe not to the ultimate level, but pretty close. i produced music all through the 90's and compression was certainly a key in the late phases of production. the loudness maximizers and similar DSP's became popular in the early 90's. and compression was used a long time before this. one doesnt need digital equipment to maximize. one can "maximize" manually when a tape is run from one to another, with the hands on the mixer. yes, this sounds incredible, and many takes are required. but i have seen major producers "compressing" complex tracks and songs like this. of course this doesnt work on drums, but its an example of how things can be done, that many doesnt even know about.

Refusing compression might sometimes be just a part of the artist image. its VERY difficult to avoid any compression at all in the whole production process.

if one wants an enemy, make it maximization, not compression.