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

“Now there’s a constant race to be louder than other people’s records,” said Stephen Street, who has produced records for Blur, the Cranberries and Kaiser Chiefs. “What you are hearing is that everything is being squared off and is losing that level of depth and clarity. I’d hate to think that anything I’d slaved over in the studio is only going to be listened to on a bloody iPod.”

God forbid we hear a Kaiser Chiefs album on anything less than pristine, crackly vinyl!!!

Ken Nelson, producer of Coldplay’s first two albums, said: “An example of overcompression is the last Green Day album. If you try listening to it from beginning to end it’s hard work. After three songs you need to put something on that’s been recorded in the 70s.”

Because those first two Coldplay albums are shining examples of proper, listenable production... right???

The only Coldplay album that has obviously way too much compression is the third one. The first two are not at all bad sounding.

Makes this cd labeling system a bit difficult

http://lovelypackage.com/music-cd-labeling-system/

While we're on the topic, has anyone heard the vinyl pressing of "What's the Story (Morning Glory)"? Is it mastered any better than the CD?

A tru fan would just own it on both media.

More of the same:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music.html

While we're on the topic, has anyone heard the vinyl pressing of "What's the Story (Morning Glory)"? Is it mastered any better than the CD?

I sincerely doubt so. Oasis want to sound that way. They even sound that way live. So that is their own wish, not some wild idea by some guy in their record company.

I've said this time and time again, Geir; most artists who make big loud compressed records are NOT made to do so by "some guy in their record company" - they choose to do so themselves because they're dickheads. Show me the evidence otherwise; I researched this, wrote about it extensively. It's not an Artist vs The Man dichotomy; it's uneducated artists not knowing what they're doing.

so you're in agreement!

Argh, no; Geir always blames the record company guy, hence why he's used Oasis as a counter-example in this example.

OK, gotcha.

Where are 65DOS when you need 'em, eh?

Actually, I'd be well up for a new 65DOS album. I'd imagine they're currently working on it.

it's uneducated artists not knowing what they're doing

underlined.
i have discussed the excessive compression issue with a few bedroom producers (one was signed to 4ad !), and the feedback was 'i know little of that side of things'.

Why are people so fucking bothered about HDTV when they don't give a shit about stereo sound.

because more people watch tv than sit around listening to music?

Give a perfectly sensible answer, why don't you.

xpost
true but i don't think that's really the thing.

just coming from video games and the way it operates, it's been my opinion that one of the reasons that the music industry has suffered more than others (aside from the obvious -- small data footprint), is that while games and movies have generally moved towards better fidelity - both audio and visual fidelity - the music industry has pushed in the opposite direction. it's ridiculous. there's absolutely no reason for things to sound worse than they did 20 years ago, but that's absolutely the case...just another way that i feel devalues music for people, even if they don't actively realize that everything sounds sort of grating and tinny, i think there's a lingering feeling of cheapness about how a lot of stuff sounds...ie dylan's famous quote "it ain't worth nothin' anyway" wrt file sharing.

I think that encapsulates my worldview pretty neatly. And depressingly.

Why has this happened?

"there's absolutely no reason for things to sound worse than they did 20 years ago"

Except there is actually a very good reason why they do (hint: it's called convenience.)

The bit about iPods sounding worse than cassette tapes is challoping of the highest order.

none of the music i like sounds grating or tinny to my ears

Except there is actually a very good reason why they do (hint: it's called convenience.)

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3:53 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when I can easily download stuff on Xbox live that's as complex as say a Fallout expansion pack or GTA Lost and the Damned you meant to tell me that shitty MP3s are a necessity?

flatscreen tvs are way worse than crt oldies imho.

btw I look forward to the future of lossless digital music with actual quality servers, we're just stuck in this hellish period right now

The bit about iPods sounding worse than cassette tapes is challoping of the highest order.

― Hreidarsson The Storm (Matt DC), Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:00 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cassettes (and 8 tracks) are sort of a contradiction, but still right now the average person's little bookshelf CD stereo system of 15 years ago sounds way better than their ipod dock now.

flatscreen tvs are way worse than crt oldies imho.

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:07 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what? no.

"when I can easily download stuff on Xbox live that's as complex as say a Fallout expansion pack or GTA Lost and the Damned you meant to tell me that shitty MP3s are a necessity?"

So you download lossless stuff to your iPod?

i don't really use itunes much

if i'm going to pay for stuff i'll buy it on cd or vinyl

any illegal DLing i do i usually only get off blogs and stuff cuz i don't do limewire or any of that stuff, don't see a lot of lossless stuff i guess, but i'm not that great at searching stuff out

do they have lossless stuff for sale on itunes?

"but still right now the average person's little bookshelf CD stereo system of 15 years ago sounds way better than their ipod dock now."

The average person isn't 1) going to notice the difference and 2) is psyched that they have 500 albums on that iPod.

i only care about my own interests, i'm not saying people have to care. i just want a future with music that sounds listenable to my ears. other people's shit is their own shit.

i listen to an ipod every day, yes it's convenient. i get it.

I think people generally value image quality more than sound quality because visual media by default requires more commitment/not as portable

Well above you are posting like you can't understand how we mysteriously got to this point. If you get it, you get it.

I understand how we got to this point, i just don't like the point and I think there are ways that could easily combine the interests of good sound and convenience....I swear too that different Ipods sound differnt, like my wife's mini seems better than my 60gb one, you never know how they structure the analog stage of it etc.

Basically i got to this point when i first joined ILM and stuff where i was downloading a lot of stuff and just listening to my ipod etc etc and all of a sudden i would get this sense of not wanting to listen to music at all....it just seemed sort of annoying to have all these MP3s and etc to be listened to all the time...I ended up deciding to buy a nice stereo and got back into buying vinyl and it sort of restored me to a degree, being able to hear detail and not have that aggressive edge to everything, it seemed so much more human....

one of the only legal services I've stumbled across that has lossless downloads is boomkat.com. since they're UK-based the exchange rate isn't very favorable, tho.

It's a bit like organic food really - if there's a significant demand for lossless files then it'll take off, and I fully expect it to do so at some point. For everyone else, well, good enough for them is good enough for them.

just sell me the pig (masters) and i'll slaughter it myself

back on topic, I'm hoping that overcompression is a production fad associated with the 00s, like in the 80s when everything was drowned in echo/reverb.

i just ordered a marantz CD player that does SACDs have always been curious about them, there's stil quite a few being made that i found on some online sites, all pretty much jazz and classical.

btw at $249 you cannot beat this deal with a BAT if you still think you'll be listening to CDs for a few more years:

http://www.musicdirect.com/product/73832

I think neil young did a bunch of SACDs

"notable air and rhythmic drive"

wtf does that mean

i have never owned a dedicated cd player, by the way! i know you all were curious about that.

Lossy MP3s isn't really the issue, I think; lossless rips of stuff that sounds shit in the first place are still not at all desirable to me.

So the records sound shit, the CDs sound shit, the lossless files downloaded from the web sound shit, etc, yeah I can see how that would be undesirable.

i would def take a 256 MP3 of a good sounding record over a SACD of a bad sounding one.

i think people are specifically mastering for MP3 now which may be part of why stuff has been pushed in a bad direction

Pretty sure this trend precedes MP3 by a good few years but maybe that's just me.

i was hanging with an engineer/musician friend in nyc over the weekend, he was saying that pretty much any conversation with his go-to mastering guy ends up being about compression. when his own band got their new record mastered, the dude gave them a jazz-style version with minimal compression, a brick-wall pop version, and an inbetween one that tried to balance loudness with dynamics, and they were able to compare the three. it would've been interesting to hear the difference that directly.

Why buy that Marantz when you can get an Oppo DVD player that does the same thing AND has DivX AND USB 2.0 inputs for like $169?

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv980h/default.asp

thank you crazy eddie

i dunno, i go to the stereophile forums sometimes (nerd alert) and one of the dudes their said that the marantz was one of the best values at $500, let alone $249, better than the oppo.

i'm not going to use it as a DVD player, it will be in a room where i don't have a TV