Slashdot Mirror
Is Louder Better?
GoodNicsTken writes "Rip Rowan over at prorec.com did an
analysis of 5 different Rush CD's released from 1984 to 2002. The results show a definite trend in the recording/mastering style from each album. Rip contends that louder is not necessarily better as the record execs believe. The artist however, is often left with little choice in the matter."
Now that is one tough, durable fellow. I would have split my own head open with a .44 slug by the start of the third album.
Air Supply, now there was a real band! ;)
'nuff said! ;-]
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I'm a fan of the heavy metal genre and I've seen (or heard, more like) many songs that would be absolutely great if they weren't subjected
to the same LOUDER IS BETTER butcher job Rush's Vapor Trails went through. One example is the song "Here Comes the Pain" on Slayer's latest album. I can barely make it past the intro because it simply sounds so terrible. Or if I really want to listen to it, I turn my volume down so my speakers don't peak or bottom out. Turning metal DOWN??? That just ain't right. Damn their sound engineers to hell.
On the other hand, In Flames' latest album entitled Reroute to Remain sounds absolutely beautiful on any speakers I play it on. Same holds true for other Nuclearblast artists such as Old Man's Child and Dimmu Borgir. Kudos to foreign audio engineers!
I always mix to -20 dBFS RMS because louder is NOT better. Headroom is much better.
Hopefully, surround music formats (DVD-Audio & SACD) will convince the tried & true engineers that they don't have to slam recordings at -0.1 dBFS like they've been doing with CDs.
A nice 24 dB of headroom allows for dynamic range in muxic, as well as loud transients. This is something you don't get when your music is an L2 brick.
Jory
Did anyone else shudder at the thought of 5 Rush Limbaugh CDs?
no comment
Whaat? Whaaaaaaat?
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
They really ought to know, given Disaster Area's track record...
Mayve louder isn't necessarily better in terms of production on a studio album... After all, no one wants a CD full of static and feedback. But at a live show a band needs to be louder than the thousands of screaming people. And Rush being one of the greatest bands of ALL TIME certainly knows this.
that the louder speaker system always sounds better. They move a lot of expensive speakers like that.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
It's all about the radio. If your song has a lower volume than another one, it'll just sound Lame when it'll start.
Of course all radios should/would/could normalize their playlists
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Since when is volume fine tuned by the artist? I have a little knob to do that on my speakers.
RRRRR, matey.
Rip Rowan recounts rummaging Rush recordings.
Best Windows Freeware
Grace Under Pressure (1984).
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
yeah, but once they're done with the wah pedal, they go find your girlfriend and give her the fucking that you can't with your worn-down pencil dick.
And don't forget that every Canadian decibel is almost two American decibels.
Another great read here.
My server
More range is better, which can equate to louder "loud"'s, and softer "soft"'s. Just having the record be louder is going to sound like crap on really super-hi-fi systems that can pick up every little thing... you'll hear cats meowing in the studio, etc... I know from experience in the studio!
stuff |
If your listening to Rush then quieter is definitely better. The lower you turn the volume the better for everyone.
~~~
And it was originally released on CD, huh?
Thats right up there with this hippy chick I know who's convinced she has a original and very rare Beatles CD from the 60s.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's been covered in many web publications back in 2002.
Dynamic range problem is real though. This is why you whould avoid mainstream, "radio-ready" artists and bands. Another excellent reason to buy indie music.
If you want to see how bad the problem is, get yourself a copy of the latest Foo Fighters CD and listen to the album with decent headphones. (Grado sr-80/125 or Seinheisers of equal quality). It's just noise.
This guy call himself a fan? Apparently, he's never heard Rush in concert.
The differences come from the old analog to new digital recording process.
He probably has old equipment that can't handle the new CDs... He's jealous that Rush isn't sold on 8-Track anymore.
I find I enjoy my music much more when I turn the amp up to 11. It's one higher than 10, so of course, its even louder, and therefore better.
There is unrest in the changers
There is trouble with CDs
For the rockers want more volume
And the amps ignore their pleas
The trouble with the rockers
(and they're quite convinced they're right)
The say the amps are just too puny
and the volume's just too light
~~~
First off it's stupid to base any "analysis" on just 5 items. That's plain stupid.
Second - who said is better? Yea, the prole said it. Nobody else.
The solution is to send a radio mix to the station, and sell the good mix on the CD. Of course, that requires more expenditure in production, so unless there's some trivial way to generate the louder radio version, it will never happen. (I'm not a sound engineer, can you tell?)
When I working in a night club, I would receive promotional music on vinyl and cd formats. I could not tell the diff until the volume was way up. Bass sounded amazingly deeper and cleaner from the record. The speakers were flubbering at the same volume from the cd. http://www.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
I went to CES this year and heard the (vastly overpriced) high end sound systems. One thing that struck me on one pair (Avantgarde Duo) was the dynamics. It was a simple recording with male vocals and guitar and every sound could be heard from quiet to loud. Obviously the recording must have been very dynamic and lacking the amount of compression that is used on most new recordings to make them louder. I cringe when I hear very compressed songs and get bored easily. Louder is not better! Dynamics are!
Yeah, and you might as well say the same thing about the FA, because the author made the same point about it likely being the label's, rather than the engineer or artist's, fault.
You did RTFA, right?
Just like how DX-7s and putting huge amounts of reverb on your Linn drum machine were in vogue during the eighties, I think this phase will play itself out. Right now the recording style seems to be centered around, compress everything, auto-tune the vocals, and master it so every track, it feels like the guitars and drums are burrowing into your eardrums. This too may pass. And besides, if people get sick of the excessive mastering trends of today, the record companies can just go back to the master tapes and re-re-master everything, and get everyone to buy all new cds.
Today, every commercial CDs comming out are compressed so heavily that you can barely see any difference between smooth and busy parts of any given mix.
Mastering engineers use all sorts of multiband compressors and loudness maximizers so that if you use the CD in a multiple CD charger, you don't have to ride the dial and ajust the level to make it sound even.
That means that the louder one goes, everyone bassicly has to follow so that they are not the softest playing CD in the set...which most people will perceive as inferior (psychoacoustics phenomenon here).
It really is a sad state of affairs because the role of the compressor is to limit dynamics in the sound wave which in turn, makes it harder to create climax and release in the song. The jazz and classical recordings seem not to be affected so much, fidelity is the word here...but for pop/rock records...they go as close as possible to digital 0dB.
Okay, I'm gonna float an ill thought out conspiricy theory now. Is it possible that CDs are being recorded louder to stop people ripping them? I know less than I ought to about digital compression of audio, but surely it is possible that making the music louder will adversely affect digital compression techniques?
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
softer is definitely better. Volume at 0 db is definitely best.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
Sure, they are great musicians. But Great White had WAY better hair!
yes. Yes! YES!
No, of course louder isn't better. What rock 'n' roll music clearly needs is more cowbell.
Not only dynimically compressed music sound terrible, at the same time it drowns out the quieter, better made albums. A solution has been proposed that records maximum and average loudness into the sound file, so a music library can be played at a constant volume, to help alleviate the problem. See:
http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I wanna bite the hand that feeds me ...
I wanna bite that hand so badly
I want to make them wish they'd never seen me
You either shut up or get cut up, they don't wanna hear about it
It's only inches on the reel-to-reel
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
Tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel
Rush made 5 albums after 1984?
"Louder" may simply an illusion due to compression and levelling. Know when you turn on your teevee and flip channels and you don't have to continually adjust the volume on your set? That's the FCC (or CRTC in Canada) saying networks should spare our ears and broacast only so loud. In response to this, compression allows the soft sounds to be heard with equal ease as the loud sounds in commercials, essentially "pinning" the entire sound spectrum in your average 30-second commercial up against the FCC broadcast barrier, allowing programs and commercials to be loud without requiring you to turn up your television (or radio or CD, etc).
- IP
Often, the band will work with an audio engineer if they want to ensure quality and desired "loudness" of each track creating the whole of the album. If the artists do not insist on sitting in the studio with the audio engineer during the mastering, they are asking for trouble.
All that said, one of the four loudest concerts I ever attended was a Rush show. The other three were Husker Du, Lou Reed and (I can't believe I am admitting this), Van Halen.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The artist however, is often left with little choice in the matter.
Yeah, especially when you're a band that sucks as bad as Rush does.
<Bart>I didn't think it was possible for anything to both suck and blow at the same time.</Bart>
Spread the RC luvin'
All you need to do is to get the TK421 modification for your amp and everything will sound much better.
my sig
In fact, yes. And we had cars and television back then, too, youngster!
I agree with the basic premise of the article, that modern CDs are too compressed. I just wanted to say one thing. Presto is one of the worst sounding albums I've ever heard. The music is OK for late 80s Rush, but the sound is among the worst ever. It was fine when I played it on a cheap system. But a friend of mine insisted that I become a "high-end" audiophile and took me to a Thiel dealer. Thile speakers are among the best sounding speakers you can get--when the source is good. But when I put in Presto, I literally had to turn it off before listening to it for a minute, because the sound was so bad. Terribly bright, no bass at all.
He looked at the same artist, same musical style, over a period of time. He did a quantified, scientific analysis of their work (or the work of the mastering engineers). He clearly understands his topic. So yes, I'd argue that this is an "analysis". Nowhere in his article does he claim it to be representative of all music, or exhaustive.
You know, I thought it was just that Rush got old, but I think I've played Vapor Trails about twice.. it DOES suck.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
only if you are a metalhead.
Up the Irons!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Nope. If you were to try to compress some of those harsh clipped signals, you'd get much better compression than trying to compress a signal with good headroom to it. Go read the article and look at those signals. The peaks and troughs are just way the hell off the scale. When you clip a peak or trough like that, you're essentially throwing away all signal information that was in there. It's really easy to compress something when it's made up of all zero's.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Sorry, I can't hear you, you'll have to speak up. Seriously, I have tinnitus because of you recording industry idiots. How about some music with a little dynamic range, you know, some quiet parts mixed in with the louder bits? Oh wait, my hearing is so damaged that when I listen to music with real dynamic range, like a symphony, I have to turn the volume up until the loud bits shake the windows in order to even hear the quiet bits. Guess I'll just go listen to some heavy metal instead.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think this guy is failing to grasp the implications of the 'loudness' of Vapor Trails. Yes, it is quite 'loud'. It definately SOUNDS louder than previous Rush CDs. But this has nothing to do with the engineering of the album. It has to do with the sound that Rush was trying to make.
Rush was on like a 6-year hiatus. They produced the album (along with another longtime Rush producer guy). Do you think that they would have put out an album that didn't sound like they wanted it to?
Vapor Trails does sound different. There's more distortion, the amplifiers are more overdriven, being pushed to their maximum more... But that is more a style thing than anything else. There's been a lot of Rush stuff that has been very clean, very free of distortion, very clear.
And Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Niel Peart have said that they chose to make things 'louder' and less clean to give the album a bit more of a 'jam' feeling. They wanted to get back to their roots, and distinguish themselves from the different clean and synthy sounds they had in the '80s.
So... Vapor Trails doesn't sound loud and overdriven because it is engineered poorly, or because not enough effort went into producing it... it sounds that way because that's the sound Rush was going for
And for the (slashdot) record, Vapor Trails has generally been recieved well by fans, and has gotten very good reviews. And I like it, so you KNOW it's good stuff.
no thanks
While louder isn't always better, I must say, if an album is mastered at too low of a volume level it drives me nuts.
Say for instance there is an album where it has about a 33% lower volume level than all my other CDs, when being played in my cd changer, when the next CD comes on, your ears are blown out because now this CD is about 33% higher volume than the previous.
The worst CD mastering I've run into in recent times, is Pepper's album "Give'n It". It's volume has got to be close to 50% less than the average CD.
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
Rip contends that louder is not necessarily better
Try telling that to the latinos in their 1992 Honda Civics. They will cut you - fool. Maybe if they turned up the volume a little bit more, the distortion would go away.
Aye carrumba!
i remember reading that the wma format boosts the volume of recordings by 3db, and was doing better than mp3 and other formats in some tests. when they altered the code to make the mp3 encoder boost volume by the same amount, wma suddenly didn't look so hot.
if you want to hear really bad production on what should have been a great cd, check out "songs for the deaf" by queens of the stone age. the dynamic range has been compressed so much it's really ridiculous.
...were written on the studio wall. # # # CONCERT HALL! # # # (play Rush lick featured on South Park w/ Timmy)
What'ya know, I thought CDs didnt hit retail stores until 86 for some reason.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Among the various styles of music I am keen on, I like a lot of death metal, particularly stuff along the lines of what Relapse records puts out. Unfortunately, one of the members of the band Nasum does production on a lot of records they put out, and they sound AWFUL, because of the use of a "finalizer", which does a hard digital compression of all the sounds on the record. My ear gets exhausted listening to Human 2.0, so I can't even tell if I like it or not.
I dislike many of the recordings nowadays because the are so compressed. Yeah they sound "loud" because the dynamic range has been squashed almost to binary. The quiet nothing pause and full throtle.
Since I listen to many live recordings, it amazes me at how compressed newer studio recordings sound. However, I do not see any reform to the recording industry, because a true dynamic recording does not sound LOUD (ie, GOOD) at 1st listen. Also, I see this as a harm to the quality of recordings to come, because it will be hard to adopt a wider dynamic range format (eg, 24 or 32 bit) when the current 16bit version isn't used correctly anymore.
I don't have anything too insightful to add to the subject, but rather just an "Me too" as I have noticed this trend. Note that good recording companies do not compress their recordings this way, like Blue Note. Also, listening to these recordings at high volumes are difficult becuase they are monotonous and they are already loud.
One thing that just hit me, is maybe the music of today has demanded this recording style. It too is either at a pause/rest or full out, hmm.
BTW, since Rush's 1st album came out in 1974 how is that the "late seventies"?
It was an AAD recording however, which I think is more to the point.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
http://georgegraham.com/compress.html
The article provides a nice perspective on the subject.
All Rush songs sound the same.
... Barracuda?"
"Aren't you
+1 Funny.
No, Geddy Lee is not Nancy Wilson, silly rabbit.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It made mp3gain put every track WAY in the red. I wonder what the CD would sound like if it wasn't clipped so badly?
There was a thread on prosoundweb.com about this same thing.
To top that off almost all the radio stations in my area (Kansas City) add crap tons of compression on top of the already loud mixes. It's so bad you cna hear the compressor "breathe" on some songs.
Most indie bands record with a more natural sound. I think music sound good when it sounds like you are standing right in front of a band and the instruments sound as iff they would were the band set up where your stereo is.
Maybe others would agree, or perhaps some of you may want to see so for yourselves, but I've always thought that Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream was the best mastered album I've ever heard. The Bass levels are perfect, absolutely perfect.
Radio does have automatic limiters. Listen to a rock station sometime, it all comes out about the same level, despite the different levellings of the individual recordings. This was in the article, btw.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Driver, Papa John's Pizza, Anderson, SC (1999)
Here's a link (reassemble as needed).
n g. html
http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/clippi
Why would someone want to purposely clip the sound? The CD that I get does not set the volume when I play it.. I am the one controlling the volume. So why would having a softer CD be any worse? All I have to do is crank up the volume yet still maintain the intregrity of the sound. Last time I checked I have *never* ever put my amp volume at 100% to warrant the recording studio to release a CD that has a lossy gain in it...
oh wait--i'm confused--so maybe some sound engineers are doing some crap job on some albums thesedays, but, now let me get this straight - there are people actually WORKING on producing music? Do they expect to get paid? how? I'm confused.
Yes, some women do struggle with my pencil dick.
I read this article a year ago when it was first published. The problem is indeed still around, but it rarely affects such tech-savvy audiophile-type bands such as Rush. Vapor Trails is a good album musically, but I have to agree with Rip's assessment that the compression and limiting done to those recordings is criminal. The band members themselves have hinted in interviews that they were not particularly pleased with how the sonics turned out.
I found a great freeware program called MP3Gain, that will adjust the level of
And yes, I understand that the article is pointing out defects in engineeering, I did read it. This is just a possible band-aid. *groan*
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
The CD player first went on sale in the Fall of 1982 in Europe and Japan, and in the US in the Spring of 1983. source
though I do not know if it is true, that certain things are done to recordings sometimes to make them sound better over the FM radio band, and limit the difference from listening on a song on the radio as opposed to at home via a cd player.
The magazine Stereo Review tested this exact concept about 10 years ago (and I'm sure others have too). They ran tests using different efficiency speakers (measured as the sound pressure level @ 1Meter with 1W input). They found that 80% responded that the more efficient speaker (the louder one) was "better" sounding with various musical passages. They also tested switching between using the same exact speakers but one was playing at an average level of 1db higher and again, 80% suggested the louder one was better sounding. Different tests (using loudness compensation, boosting certain frequencies etc..) and methods of switching were used but overall, the louder choice won 5 out of 6 times.
I don't know how all of this would fit into a specific cd release though because you are already listening to the thing and not comparing it to a different song in a side by side test.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Got to do with it got to do....
Whats really funny is watching the engineers wince at some of the shit they have to listen to.
Try recording a Granados piece like one of his Spanish Dances that calls for ppp passeges. Then you are a real recording engineer, for that matter a musician that can play and make the dynamics mean something is a rare bird, and usually cannot be bought. Todays recording studios have got nothing on what was done with good mics, tubes and tapes by the engineers and producers that did Archive, Columbia, Angel and the like back in the early 1960s when people actually cared about dynamics. Sure they have lots more equipment and all the bells and whistles but their ears are suspect. It is far better to be deaf and just watch the levels now a days, collect pay check and punch the clock. If I were to do it I would make sure I limited my exposure to high DB. I already have paid enough of that price, I am down atleast 20% and I used to be called eagle ears.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Well, if we're bitching about CDs being mixed too loud, can someone tell me WTF is up with advertising being twice as loud as the TV shows? I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets the "TURN IT DOWN" every time a show goes to break. I could be watching Alias or something where shit blows up and it's the commercials that get me in trouble with the wife!
First of all, the article is dated September 2002, though that doesn't make the writer's concerns any less valid.
Second, this has been going on for almost twenty years, starting around the time digital tape decks (like Mitsubishi, Sony, 3M) gained wider currency in recording studios. Digital audio sounds really harsh when you push recording levels, as opposed to analog tape, which has a "softer" limit.
Rowan makes a very valid point: radio stations are notorious for compressing their feed, mostly to get the hottest signal within their transmitter's power limit. Television stations are even worse. I recall taking a road trip with my band in a rented van that didn't have a cassette player; we were at the mercy of every Top-40 station and all of them were playing Phil Collins's "Sussudio" every ten minutes. Some of the stations flattened the signal so much that we thought it was some sort of remix just for robots (the drum machine was at least twice as loud as the lead vocals).
Where I don't concur is Rowan's placing the blame for this on the labels. True, the A&R people are the ones who have right-of-refusal on the final mix, but you can't let engineers, producers, and the mastering lab off the hook. I've been on the other side of the glass and I know that I've been guilty of patching compressors into a channel to keep the kick drum at a managable level, make up for a singer's lax microphone discipline, or "punch up" the final mix. Note that I'm not blaming the musicians; they do whatever they have to in order to get the track on tape. If that means Joe Frontman is going to sway back and forth like Bill Gates at a deposition, so be it. It was my job to deal.
Finally, not to sound too much like a Luddite, but back in the analog days, there was a limit on the number of effects you could employ, the limit being the number of physical units present in your studio rack. Now, with ProTools or Cakewalk, your limits are RAM and CPU cycles, both of which are cheaper to expand than buying more compressors, limiters, gates, reverbs, etc.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Squarepusher's "Go Plastic" has about 30 seconds of the entire CD that are louder than the entire rest of it. I believe that he did this on purpose... keeps the record quiet, and then BAM, he fucks your shit up with some serious (intentional) white noise. Every time I listen to it I'm like, "oh FUCK i forgot about that part."
Indeed. There is a point after which you begin to clip the music and reduce its dynamic range. If you record the damn thing too high, I will never be able to play it loud without distortion.
My brother tought me this 20 years ago when he showed me how to make tapes. I would sit there and stare at the VU meter throughout the WHOLE song, turning down the record volume slightly every time it hit red. Then rewind the song, and now with the volume properly set, record it.
Later I learned to let a bit of red slip in there, to taste. If its loud and distorted, its just pure garbage.
Personally I do not like rock and roll. But if its lound and 'clear' I can dislike it with a sort of appreciation...
Better watch your back.. those RIAA goons can be sneaky..
Speak before you think
Of course, pretty damn soon there will be the same problem.. ;)
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
IS LOUDER BETTER?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The worst offender I have EVER seen, personally, is Green Day's International Superhits. It's way loud, and it peak-flattens all over the place. It's not too tragic since Green Day typically isn't a band that has a lot of nuance you'll miss, but it does make it sound overall weaker because the hard bits don't stand out.
Also, I'm not sure, but I think it's true of remasters of old albums (I'll have to see an old copy sometime to check for sure). Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" looked suspiciously peak flattened, and sure enough, it's a recent re-master. Great. Ruining good, old music too. For what it's worth, his new albums are second only to Green Day in terms of horrible peak flattening. And for albums with a lot of acoustic instruments, this is truly a crime.
So I hope this satisfies you. The effect is real, and it's unfortunate.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Er, what happened to the lameness filter??
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
This is REALLY interesting, and a terrible fact. Has this only been a problem with rock music?
:-) ).
Has anyone tried to find out if there's any difference between labels? It would be very interesting to see which one makes the LOUDEST RECORDS.
If I were to name one record I think best handles
audio quality, it would be "kind of blue" by Miles
Davis. But that's jazz, anyway. And I'm no expert (I just play in a jazz band
If the CD mastering wasn't bad enough, wait until the program director and his corporate overlords at your local FM broadcast station get their hands on it. Almost all of them use boxes like the Optimod, set to hunt down and terminate all vestiges of dynamic range. They want 100% modulation in every frequency band, all the time. That's part of why FM radio sounds so bad.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I tend to have a theory that perhaps the Music Buying Public is starting to get tired of all these empty, manufactured pop bands that come out of Disney. That and a lot of the mainstream stuff that was based on the Seven Formulas To A Perfect High-Selling Pop Song (or whatever that was) (read: what 80% of the population buys, because 80% of the population buys it) has just become way too tired after 25 years. I think the music industry's own marketing is thier biggest problem.
/me gets off his soapbox and offers everyone else a try
That said, let me step on my soapbox for a sec..
As a music buff, a musician, and someone who's seen the musician's side of the music industry in nearly all its forms (garage, stage, touring, studio, etc)...
I will first say that getting music recorded is a fairly long-winded and convoluted process...
1) The sound you get out of the instrument's amp in the studio is not what you'll get on tape
2) In the mixing process, there is a great deal of EQ'ing, Compressing (this is what gives the LOUD), and various other things to get things to come together in a certain fashion. When all is said and done, the sound you had on tape before is now going to be totally different.
There are many many schools of thought on how best to master a recording. Some go for atmosphere, some go for candid honesty, some go for a super-polished sound, well, you get the picture.
However, the trend i'm seeing lately with a lot of old albums, is that they're getting remastered in a modern studio with the attempt at "Updating" them. I don't know if this is something rookies cut thier teeth on or something, but i've got a lot of horribly done CDs. I do realise that the difference of listening to stuff on my old, worn out vinyl or tapes as opposed to a CD will be fundamentally different just because of the analogue/digital conversion.
Sabbath albums that are gated so hard, that everything is muffled to hell, but the vocals are enough to spring THE ENTIRE MIX open and everything distorts.
Maiden albums where someone took the effort to attenuate the feedback from the guitars. This really blew me away. like "Dewd, Adrian Murray WANTED that there!"
I've got a few hendrix and yardbirds albums where everything was squashed into oblivion with a compressor/limiter (failed attempt at making something LOUD). Yes, the album is loud, but it doesn't *breathe*.
I've got a fleetwood mac album where everything sounds cold, thin and empty. Too much noise reduction. Noise reduction being my biggest beef.
IMHO, the bass guitar rattling the snare drum in an intro, the 60hz hum of the PA, all the delicious lil freaks of sound that come out of guitar amps..... to me, that's just as much a part of the music itself. I love the *noise*. My old vinyl was full of it.
When stuff gets too `polished' i think it loses too much of it's `soul' and becomes a little too mechanical. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on this, though, so to each thier own.
Starting to get spooky, isn't it.
It is the sampling rate at 96Khz tha's more important in the formats.
Nyquist is your friend.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
1. then you're further causing problems with your tinnitus if you turn it up. don't do it.
2. It is possible for you to get a normalization filter. It could lose some fidelity, but it would be worth it to your hearing. (the cheap way would be to rip it to wav, normalize in something like cooledit, and reburn.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As most folks here probably know, your ears' frequency transform functions are not linear. Some frequency ranges are relatively louder at different volumes than others.
Another factor is the "lockdown" effect -- if you listen to a loud sound source for a long enough period of time your inner ear actually tenses up, limiting the range of motion of the ossicles (you know.. hammer, anvil, stirrup) to prevent damage to your cochlea. The effect of this is damping of certain frequencies, and a HUGE difference in your personal frequency transform.
One could take these frequency transformations into account and master a CD to be played softly... but no one does. If you get a chance to sit in a studio while an album is being recorded or mastered you'll be *amazed* how loud they play the music they're working with. I guess they can hear every detail that way -- until it damages their hearing, of course, and they have to play it even LOUDER.
Point is, professionals master recordings with the studio in mind as an ideal listening environment, which means loud, which means a particular frequency transform -- which means in order to hear the music as it's intended, it needs to be played loudly.
WHAT? LOUDER? SPEAK UP!
If it isn't loud it isn't Hi-Fi. Of course, it must be loud so one hears the silent passages. ;)
Well, I'd have to say that louder is generally better, but not always. More volume gives you greater detail in sound.
I have two sayings...
"as loud as I wanna be"
"play it loud"
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Rush is not "Heavy Metal". It *is* hard rock, but there is a big difference between the two. If you can't tell it, well then you just suck. I've been a Rush fan since the 1970's when most of you /.'ers weren't even born yet and your parents were still in high school, so therefore I know what I'm talking aboot.
Take off, hosers.
My loudest CD, hands down, is the Iggy Pop remix of the Stooges "Raw Power" album. David Bowie butchered the original mix, with hardly any bass and tinny guitars. Even then it was a classic. Iggy's version is twice as loud as most other CDs I own, and it rocks hard.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
if that's what happened to Metallica's new CD. Because man it is hard to take.
...just wait until the only music cd's you can buy have commercials in them too, and you're forced to listen to them under penalty of law ot the disc will self destruct or something...
The whole thing never happened, you know.
Looking at his graphs, they have pumped up the quiet parts so much that there is no variation in dynamics ... there are no dynamic lows to make the peaks stand out, and it would be a totally revolting CD to listen to, kinda like chatting up my deaf uncle who yelled all through dinner. The enlarged graph of Vapor Trails is badly distorted, when you consider that it's supposed to be analog music and not a compressed data feed.
And for this we buy expensive speakers? Why bother?
I mean when you are tlaking consumer gear, a good 16-bit dithered signal is fine and will exceeed what their equipment can reproduce. The actual reason is that given the same source at two different volume levels, people will prefer the subjectively louder one (unless it has gone ot to point of being too loud). So they squeeze the shit out of it to make it sound louder. This is even more true for radio tracks, since they are competing for attention. Funny, given that radio stations compress tracks before playing them too.
The most severe example I've yet found is on the Evanescence album Fallen. Track 2 is the track they intend for radio play and you can tell. The whole CD is squashed, but it is squashed far more than the rest, to the point of a crackling kind of distortion.
He is referring to the resolution of the LOUDNESS of the signal.
20 * log( 2^16 ) = 96dB.
This is the amount of room we have to describe dead silence to the loudest thing you can record.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I really must say that this is one of the most interesting, concrete, factual stories I have seen on Slashdot recently. Props to the author, he did a really good job.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
... is why the hell were cats in your recording studio?!?
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
I've also been a Rush fan for years and I was looking forward to hearing the new album after Test for Echo disappointed me. I downloaded some of the tracks to see if I liked them (yes, RIAA, some people DO only download "illegal" tracks to try them out before buying them).
I did like the songs, but after about 10-15 minutes, they were giving me a headache through my headphones and I didn't know why. I ended up passing on the album altogether because of that - good music writing or not...
Sidenote: Funny that he uses Grace Under Pressure (1984) as an example. That album is seemed SO much louder/brighter than Signals (1982), and yet according to the article it's very clean... odd...
There was a distant early warning of this problem back in 1984. However, the band decided to stick it out all the way up until 1993. Then they remembered their grand designs to face up to the problem until at least one little victory. Personally, I don't think they have a ghost of a chance.
This may be redundant, but louder is worse. The louder something is, the more likely it'll do long term damage to your ears. Other factors like frequency have a play in this as well - you can have a high frequency at a lower volume do the same damage (and induce more pain as well) than lower frequencies at higher volumes. No charts, just experience to demonstrate.
This sig no verb.
As NTK would say: Life imitates The Onion.
Anyone who has watched a decent number of DVD's will note that most films on DVD sound to be about the same volume. Some films do have bigger explosions than others, but conversations come across at about the same levels typically, with the occasional exception. This is because film soundtracks are recorded with a reference volume in mind.
.ape files on it from my PC over S/PDIF using kernel streaming to bypass the bit-diddling nastiness of windows kmixer. ID3v2 tags already have a field for reference volumes... They could be used by a winamp plugin to tell my preamp what volume to play each track at...
CD's on the other hand, have no such reference and vary in volume wildly. The fate of modern pop has been discussed above. Another infamous CD is Telarc's recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. This is one of those CD's you literally won't be able to hear after a playing that Rush album. You'll crank the volume up and enjoy some wonderful classical music at a normal volume. Then the cannons will fire and your speaker cones will blow. Many an audiophile has fallen victim to this example of excessive dynamic range. Is it a good recording or should those cannon transients have been tamed a little?
This is not an easy question to answer. On the one hand, many believe that CD's should be mixed to take advantage of the best possible gear, not some POS Bose car stereo. Recordings should reproduce the live event as closely as possible. However, audio reproduction gear just isn't suited for the reproduction of cannon fire. We're talking about volumes that will literally rupture eardrums! Even if the average stereo could reproduce point-blank cannon fire, it would be excessively unwise to make recordings that do so. Most music lovers want to preserve their hearing to some extent. A day or two of ringing ears after a concert is one thing, but acute physical pain and bleeding from the ears are entirely another! Too much dynamic range can be a bad thing if misused.
We could solve all of these problems by introducing reference volumes for albums. These references would crank the volume up for a quiet classical recording with oodles of dynamic range and turn it down for a modern pop album that has almost no dynamic range. There would be no more volume-knob-riding for people with ecclectic musical tastes! Classical music, when played at the same average level as the latest Rush album, will have much louder transients. This is unavoidable, but players could limit the peaks depending on the application to prevent equipment and hearing damage from recordings with excessive dynamic range. A car stereo player might crank up the volume and reduce the dynamic range so everything is audible over the background road-noise while a powerful audiophile system could pull out all the stops.
Sounds like a good idea right? What's the downside? Delivery. While perhaps we could diddle with the red-book standard to include the reference level data on the CD somehow, old CD's would still lack it, and haven't the copyright gestapo messed with the standard enough? A better option would be to add reference volume data to the CDDB database. Any player with an internet connection would then have access to album or even track specific reference volumes. As wireless internet becomes more and more ubiquitous, it would be easy to add this capability to stereo gear.
For example, I use an Anthem avm20 preamp that has an RS-232 interface which allows it to be controlled by external devices. I play
Actually, to hell with you guys. I could set this up so it just remembers the last volume I set my preamp to when listening to a given track. JOY!!!
My first though when I read the headline and the resume was: Of course louder is better. Because louder allows you to utilize more of the 16 bit quality of the CD. If the sound was too low, it would maybe only use 15 or 14 bits of the quality. I started reading the article, and at first it sounded to me like this guy didn't know anything about what was really going on. But finally about one third into the article he got to the real point. That the sound is simply scaled beyond the 16bit. So as loud as possible was simply not enough, it had to be louder than that causing irrecoverable damage to the sound. Those trolls saying you could just turn down the volume either didn't read the article, or didn't understand it. Turning down the volume will not bring back what was lost.
So what can we do about this? It would be nice with some analysis software to evaluate individual CDs. Not that software can tell you how good something sounds, only the ear can tell you that. But still it is good with some subjective meassures instead of only objective meassures. But that is not all. How about releasing two masterings only differing in the volume. One of those too loud, and another one that is simply scaled just enough to not cause clipping. So people could listen to whatever version they prefer, or even mix the two in a way that would actually reproduce the original with more than 16 bits of quality.
What would be even better was a new format and a standard somehow forbiding this practice. From the article it sounds like they are pushing the volume about 9dB too loud. How about a format the forbids an average volume higher than the -18dB of the range allowed by the given number of bits. The problem is that everybody wants to have the highest volume, so standardizing a volume below what will cause damages to the sound seems like a good plan.
Of course requiring a lower volume will loose some bits of quality. 18dB equals to 6 bits of your samples, so my suggestion would be to use 32bit samples which is a nice number and 8 bits more than I have heard about anybody using. Sure it is not going to happen with CDDA, but it is about time to get a replacement format anyway. Unfortunately I'm afraid those designing that stuff today are not focusing on quality, but a lot of other stuff like screwing their customers as much as possible.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Mastering with a "louder is better" mentality is akin to overexposed photography: the details get washed out and are lost.
Just like a nicely balanced black-and-white photograph will have black blacks (but not too black) and white whites (but not too white), a well-mastered CD's content should fall between the media's minimum and maximum dynamic range.
The parallels between photography and music start to fall apart when you bring normalization into the picture. If you are familiar with Photoshop, you know that you can tweak the blacks and whites in a photo so that the blacks are black and whites are white with the Level tool. This is normalization. When you normalize, you either expand or compress the information to fit between a maximum and a minimum value. This works great with photos, but not as well with music, especially if the source material is bad.
If your source material is not recorded at the proper levels for CD mastering, normalization can definitely put it in the proper range, but it comes at a price. If the source is too quiet, normalization will raise the noise floor and may introduce or enhance undesirable artifacts. If the source is too loud, normalization can compress the sound so the differences between loud, medium, and quiet are not as distinct as they should be. Imagine a smooth gradient from white to black suddenly becoming scrunched towards the edges so there is a wide band of mushy gray in the middle).
All this can be summed up with the phrase:
junk in, junk out
It doesn't work that way.
You're thinking of traditional, lossless, general-purpose data compression. In data, it's pretty frequent that you see patterns of exactly the same value, so general-purpose data compression algorithms are designed to deal with this. But we aren't using Huffman or something similar here, and the optimal input is not all zeros. We're working with MP3. The best compression you'd get with an MP3 would probably be a sine wave, since it's very simple once you run it through a Fourier transform.
Clipping probably actually makes the audio compress slightly worse.
It's a pretty good bet that FLAC doesn't compress clipped audio all that well either.
May we never see th
I'm a fan of the heavy metal genre and I've seen (or heard, more like) many songs that would be absolutely great if they weren't subjected
to the same LOUDER IS BETTER butcher job Rush's Vapor Trails went through.
The article mentions that artists usually don't have a choice in the matter, but Geddy Lee himself did Vapor Trails. He stated in interviews that he was having breakdowns because everything was digitally clipping, but that he was reassured that it sounded okay by the rest of the band.
"Sufferin' succotash."
This happens to be right up my alley, as well as a pet peeve.
I design broadcast audio processors for a living, and most people would probably categorize me as an audiophile!
CDs have been mastered louder and louder since the beginning of time, but around 5 years ago is when they ran out of bits (headroom) and first started using limiting, later clipping, to go over the top.
As the article points out, noone wants to release a CD that is quieter than the other CDs! It must be just a little bit louder, always.
Forget any quality arguments, it's not about that. I used to think that 24bit/96khz (DVD-Audio) would be the salvation, but the same thing has already started to happen there!
Here's something the article missed:
Broadcast Audio Processors will in many cases actually *penalize* the overly loud/distorted audio, and make it quieter than clean audio would be, regardless of the original loudness of the CD! This is (very simplified) because they will normalize to an average "loudness" rather than a maximum "peak level", and when the input signal contains peaks it will subjectively sound louder than if it didn't.
I'm almost contradicting myself here, we're talking *subtle* loudness differences, but at the very least it will NEVER sound louder on the air because the CD was mastered louder.
By the way, Radio Stations have had loudness wars all on their own since the early 80's (when a company named Orban, http://www.orban.com introduced the Optimod 8100 audio processor, paving the way for broadcast loudness wars).
So the question is, if there's nothing to be gained, why do it? And if people don't care (which they obviously don't), again, why do it.
But they're doing it. Not just to Rush CDs but to virtually EVERY mainstream CD released.
Why?
Beats me, guys. It's gotten to the point where I'm moving away from mainstream music simply because I can't stand to listen to the ruined sound. Maybe that's a good thing in the end!
Reading the article, the guys' title was misleading. It's not the volume he's complaining about. (That's controlled at the listener's end anyway.) It's the fact that the signal isn't being mapped down into a representable range of values in the digital samples. (So, if one sample is a number that ranges from -32767 to +32767, the engineer is trying to record a lot of samples that are in the +40000 or +50000 range onto that and they are getting "cropped off" to the maximum. Thus the part of the wave that was supposed to be at amplitue 40000, and the part that was supposed to be at 45000, and the part that was supposed to be at 34000, all end up getting "mashed" into the same spot and you lose clarity.
It's not about loudness being good or bad. It's about the (alleged) misunderstanding by execs in the recording industry that make them think they are making louder music. In fact they are not. Once you hit the limit of what the digitization can record, any further attempt at loudness doesn't actually work, since loudness is caused by the size of the *change* in value, not the value itself. (A sine wave that wavers between +40 and +60 is exactly the same volume as one that wavers between -10 and +10) by making the waves "top out" they actually make it quieter by truncating the top of the wave off, resulting in a long period of time during which the speaker won't be moving at all. Had they made it "quieter", by reducing the amplitude, they would have actually gotten a louder sound because the speaker would still be *moving* during that time instead of stuck against the stops not moving any air.
So he's not complaining about volume. He's complaining about losing the tops of the waves because the amiplitude has been punched up to the point where they hit the flat top of the representable range. This is not more volume. It's more distortion.
More volume comes from that knob you turn.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I've always wondered about why (more or less) permanent audio storage formats like CDs or DAT use linear PCM when it's fairly clear that the human auditory system uses a logarithmic transfer function. Wouldn't we be better off using 16 bit logarithmic samples instead of linear samples on CDs and such?
Note also that the article points out the legitimate uses for pushing up the volume without any distortion. For example, many pre 1980s recordings are now getting a second workover: the original release was on vinyl, then there was the simple 1980s digital transfer to CD, and now many classical recordings (e.g. most of Rudy Van Gelder's recordings for Blue Note) are released a third time after 24 bit remastering and mixing. (Plus there are the Japanese 20 bit releases from the 1990s.) This does make sense, since you when transfering your final 24 bit mix to a clunky old 16 bit audio CD, you need to make sure that you keep the volum as high as possible without introducing distortion, coz if you don't, you lose detail in the softer passages due to the fact that you have to drop the least significant byte of each sample. So louder is in fact better, as long as you don't clip the peaks.
Marklar: marklar
I brought a couple friends to a Si Se concert a couple days ago and had to apologise to them after the first few songs sounded like crap. The band started to play quiter songs after that and the mix engineer was apparently disabused from turning up the volume again, but it happened again on the second to last song. It wasn't that the first songs were painfully loud dB wise it was just it was louder than the sound system could handle so all the peaks were clipped to white noise. (Si Se has a Brazil Pop sound so there are plenty of drums, and there is a viola too.) Ironically their CD is mastered acceptably, there are a few songs sound better on a television recording I heard but for the most part it's ok.
All Rush songs sound the same.
Well, all Rush songs from 1994 to 2002 sound the same anyway. The stuff they did before that tended to be fairly unique from song to song and album to album. Or maybe it was just the drugs I did then.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
I wonder what would happen if anyone told that guy about volume control...
The music is great but unfortunately every song clips (badly). It sounds like shit.
Bottom line is... if you want your music LOUDER, spend money on more amps and speakers. Clipping sucks.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
I respect the poster's technical ability to analyze waveforms. Headroom was something that Rush never seemed to have because they never seemed to me to have good engineers. Geddy and Neil and Alex do have experts on stage but that never translated into good recordings. It seems to have started in the LP days. "2112" was a nightmare as were later ones such as "Roll The Bones". Some of these were re-mixed for CD but the originals are so badly mixed that there is no hope. I frankly think that this higher volume level is a bogus thought. It is my thought that the original was badly mixed as have been all of their previous ones.
TG
dunno... how can you differentiate linsux distros?
same point. you just know better if you are actually in the know.
pigfukr
For Those About to Rock, Back in Black, Highway to Hell... their loudest albums were about the best, generally.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Clipping like this can blow out the midranges and/or tweeters in your speakers. Clipping produces harmonics of the original frequencies present. Speakers are not designed for this kind of sustained high frequency energy and will fry easily. Just ask anyone who's blown a tweeter by accidentally rewinding a tape with head lift off.
I don't understand. Why would you mix to -20? Do you mean record to -20? I can see where that would make sense, because then if the musician got loud all the sudden, he's got 20db of headroom to get louder in. But if you're mixing, and the output signal peaks at -20, why not turn it up to -0.1? It's not gonna clip, you'll have all the dynamic range that was in the original tracks, and it'll sound about as loud as most CDs. I can see the reasons for not compressing the signal further and bringing the lows up, but just bringing the peaks up? I don't get it.
c-hack.com |
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
And virtually all recordings are compressed to some degree (LPs are compressed and then decompressed on the fly). A raw recording has very high-value spikes in it which, if not chopped off, would make the recording VERY low loudness, thus actualy reducing the resolution of the recording (if digital) or pushing the recording into the noise floor of tape or LP.
:(
So some amount of compression is necessary to raise the sound level. Usually some amount of compression is applied to microphones when recording voice or acoustical instruments as well.
But yes, the problem is, these days the trend is to compress more and more and more to raise the loudness level as much as possible. Well it's got to stop somethwere!
Personally I make some grungey distorted music and I over use compression on purpose, but for normal stuff, when over used, it can ruin an other-wise nice recording terribly
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I always thought He was just on the Radio...
Now I find he's been getting louder every year.
Rush Limbaugh...
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
All of this talk about mixing and headroom is interesting, but a bit confusing.
What is headroom and why do you measure it in negative db?
Anybody know of a good mixing/mastering introduction/tutorial?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Those waveforms are from copyrighted music and are NOT the intellectual property of Mr. Rowan. He posted them right there on his web page and therefore he is potentially liable for a DMCA based lawsuit. Here's comes the RIAA...
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
Check out this article: "How To Make Better Recordings in the 21st Century---An Integrated Approach to Metering, Monitoring, and Leveling Practices" by Bob Katz, a well-respected professional mastering engineer.
Anyone know what happened to the latest Metallica-album? I mean, recording-wise? I did a quick scan through it once and I've never heard anything so poorly produced, ever.
Jokes aside, why? Is it supposed to sound "cool"?
I couldn't buy that even if I wanted to!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
But this has nothing to do with the engineering of the album. It has to do with the sound that Rush was trying to make.
Exactly. Billy Corgan's new band, Zwan, did the same thing on their recent album. He said,
"Recently, some concerns have come to light regarding the 'sound' of the album, and there seems to be confusion about whether or not there is a problem, which is understandable in the warm 'digital' age. So from my mouth to your ear, here's the deal: We set out to make the loudest fucking rock and roll album that was humanly possible. No detail was too small, and by that I mean that everything, and I mean everything on the album is distorted by yours truly. I became obsessed by the sound of the great mono albums of the sixties, whether it be Dusty Springfield, The Walker Brothers, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks, etc. and their compressed excitement. so if our album is blowing up your speakers or making your dog cry, I can't say I'm sorry, but I do apologize for any worries this may have caused. Mary Star of the Sea uses everything but the kitchen sink in the analog or digital domain to push the sound of Zwan past the blur into something that feels fresh and exciting, and most importantly, LOUD at any volume.
So crank it up, and sit back and enjoy what it sounds like for us on stage in the overdriven glory." -- Billy Corgan, ZWAN
...so you can't hear how bad it really is!
Ignorance is bliss!
I'd love it if music publishers were forced to label every recording with the % of the album waveform that is limited.
Much like I can see how much sugar and additives are in my cornflakes.... :)
I do think power windows and grace under pressure do sound more nice, but that's defenately not because of some clipping that occured. :
When 110 samples clip, that means that I can hardly hear that within the other
(album is about 1 hour * 44100 samples/sec = ) 160Msamples (probably even times 2).
It is neglectible and clearly this report doesn't make much sense. Thise guy simply doesn't like the sound of vapor trials (which I partially agree too, even as a long term big Rush fan), but he's got to stay to the facts. The album is louder, but that doesn't affect the sound by itself.
Ummmm... this is news? People in the recording industry have known this for a decade.
;-)
For me (a recording engineer) I judge the sonics of the record on mix clarity. Can you hear ALL of the instruments ALL of the time? This generally has nothing to do with loudness. Were the sounds captured well? Again, this has nothing to do with loudness.
To me, this article sounds like an immature diatribe put forth by some kid with a pet peeve.
He says he LIKED the analog recordings that used TAPE compression to get things louder, as opposed to the modern way of using digital compression (in software or hardware forms).
Well I have bad news for him... TAPE compression is STILL compression, and it STILL distorts (often radically) the waveform into something different than the original input signal. So why is one better than the other? Perhaps he's answering a question that I already know the answer to (the whole analog vs. digital argument.)
Does this guy think that back in the analog "day" that analog compressors weren't put into the signal path when mastering the recordings to vinyl? Of course they were, and THOSE distorted the signals also.
I haven't heard the new Rush album, but now I'll have to. I suspect it sounds fine, and it's just had all of the dynamics squeezed out of it. Or maybe it was simply recorded and mixed like shit and would sound horrific whether or not is was mastered too loudly.
So is it the volume or the distortion that this guy doesn't like? Because if it's the distortion he'd better tell Lifeson to turn off those Marshalls.
Look, I like dynamics left in my recordings also, but there are FAR worse engineering crimes out there other than mastering too loudly.
What about those earlier Rush records where Peart's drum heads were taped up so much it sounded like he was beating Tupperware?
And to the guy who likes the way the records on Nuclear Blast sound and congratulates their european engineers? Well, I did two records for that label in a NY studio. Sorry, no European engineers were on those sessions at all.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
There was no 1992 RX-7. 1991 was the last year for the 2nd generation RX-7 and the 3rd genereation was introduced as a '93 model. On another note, no matter how fast it is, looking at an Olds Cutlass it makes me feel like gouging my eyes out with a spork. Looks like it crashed head on into the ugly tree.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
They always are involved in the mixing of there CDs. The artist in this case isn't left with little choice. However, Universal/Mercurey does not ask them for there opinion, probably because it's not their label anymore. They've been releasing the same stuff over and over again. BTW, RUSH was awsome on Tuesday.
You can notice a trend like this in most industry-produced music today. I got to a recording school in the Bay Area, and we've been told by many peope in the industry that people are compressing music, that is shortening the distance between the softest noise and the loudest noise, then amplifying it all up so everything plays, loudly!
Ever wonder why something gets "played out" so quickly? Because it fatigues your ear, instead of entertaining it by providing a range of volumes.
Thanks, I know that, now. I don't really listen to things at erath shaking volume these days. When I go to clubs or concerts, I try to bring earplugs. The tinnitus is from when I was young and didn't think hearing damage would happen to me.
Mostly, the problem is with DVDs. Movies are mixed for theater sound systems (and even there, the loud bits can be anoyingly loud. I live next to a restaraunt, their exhaust fan is just loud enough that I have to turn up the volume on most DVDs to hear the dialogue, and then the music and explosions are too loud. I have tried playing with the normalization setting on my DVD player, but it doesn't seem to do much.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When the new Rush cd came out, I was waiting for one of the songs to come on the radio so I could hear it. Rip mentioned in his article that a cd recorded LOUD like Vapor Trails would likely sound quieter on the radio, and I would have to agree. I was driving on the highway in my wife's car, which is a bad car to listen to the radio in because it's loud (mainly because the AC doesn't work very well so I had to have the window at least cracked). Typically, I have to turn the radio up a bit higher than normal due to the noise of the car, and that's fine, because I can then hear every song just great. Well, a song off of Vapor Trails came on, which I had been waiting for, and I could not hear a *damn* thing. I ended up turning the radio up so loud that the poor little speakers in her car starting crying in pain, but I still couldn't hear anything but some sonic mush and an occasional drumbeat. I've noticed some other songs that had the same effect, but I can't remember any off the top of my head.
Project Steve
And I quote "No computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing, or mastering of this record"
"All songs on this record recorded to eight track reel to reel at Toe-Rag Studios, Hackney, London, England by gentleman Liam Watson in Apil 2002 except track 4 recorded at the BBC Maida Vale studio by Miti"
I haven't seen liner notes like this (i.e. referring to the recording process) on a rock album in a really long time.
This was the same album that was sent to radio stations in vinyl only, the speculation being, they were trying to avoid it being uploaded to a P2P network. But accoring to an interview, vinyl is their preferred listening medium, and they wanted people to hear it in that same manner.
I have both versions of this album, and I must say, that the vinyl disc, on a VPI Aries Scout and a tube phono preamp are not subtle.
And the detail! It sounds glorious!
For years and years there's been an ongoing compression war between studios, radio stations, and producers.
Audio is compressed in the recording stage, compressed during mixdown, again in mastering, and a further set of compression takes place in radio broadcast.
All of this sacrifices dynamic range in order to make the music seem much louder than it really is, and make some stations seem "better" than others.
Some people use maximizing tools (like Waves L1) in addition to all this compression which just makes this issue worse when those tools are overused.
You hit it right on the head. The trend in radio lately has been to compress the hell out of the music they broadcast, and in turn, record companies have jumped on the bandwagon with CDs. Most music consumers think louder sounds better, and so that's what sells. It kind of makes sense even -- just listen to a recent mega-compressed track at a comfortable volume, then listen to a track from an old CD at the same volume. The older one sounds weaker, but only because it is softer. Adjust the volume again and it probably actually sounds better. But most consumers don't care enough to make that realization.
Back in the early 90s, a remastered CD was something that actually sounded much better than the initial digital transfer of a classic album. Nowadays, remasters accomplish two things: compressing the music until it's all one uniform LOUD volume, and lining the pockets of the record industry as die hard fans buy the same albums again.
Of course, this trend is not all bad. Not hearing soft sections of music in the car is a legitimate problem. I won't listen to classical music in the car because of this - I tend to stay within the rock genre because of this and only listen to classical and jazz in the quiet of home. It's too bad that record companies are now "solving" the problem by giving us this "one volume fits all" compression now. The ideal solution might be for car stereos to start including some sort of compression circuitry so that you can hear more of a tune over the road noise, but you get to hear it in its full dynamic glory at home. Heck, other things like TVs and DVD players could use this too. Sometimes a TV show or DVD will need some compression so I can hear the quiet parts but don't piss off the neighbors during the loud parts! Either that or maybe some sort of new audio format with two versions of each audio stream - normal and compressed. Of course we already have SACD and DVD Audio, yet another new format is just what we need...
Say hello to zMac.
Well, the obvious response is "better than what?", but, for the life of me, I can't figure out what this has to do with computing.
/. manipulation of its readership designed to boost ad revenue.
/. readers are sophisticaed enough to simply ask "Does this guy know what he's talking about? Does he prove what he says?"
/. crew another pointless can to kick.
I suspect this piece of doggerel has been foisted on us as one more
One really wonders if
First of all, musicians sign contract with recording labels. That's their choice. If they don't like some of the things done by the label down the road, they need to remember that they signed that contract of their own free will.
That said, look at these assertions from Rip Rowan's piece:
Record labels have never really understood what makes a record "sound good" and frankly, few even care. Many of the people who sign artists don't understand their music at all. Instead, they are able to pick up on musical trends, and replicate those trends across the ranks of their artists. Artists that fit into the trend are fed, the rest are starved.
Labels are in the business of creating and meeting demand. That's why musicians sign with them: to sell CD's and make money. If there's a demand for one kind of music, it makes sense that labels would focus on musicians who make that kind of music. What else would they do? Spend their advertising and promotion budgets on musicians that no one listens to?
Mastering engineers are caught in a Catch-22. If they do not deliver a product that is appropriately LOUD, then they are consdered inept by the labels and are shunned. If they refuse to destroy the artist's music, then they aren't being "team players" and quickly fall out of favor. But if they provide what the customer demands (and remember, the label, not the band, is the customer) then they ruin a perfectly good piece of music,
Why should we believe this assertion? It might be true, but, then again, it might not be. If writers expect readers to take them seriously,, they need to back up their assertions with evidence and facts.
This guy "Rip" is just whining in public, and happened to give the
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I work with ADCs and DACs all day. Your first pass answer of 96dB is correct for DC characteristics. However, sinewaves introduce some differences.This ADC is a darn good performer. You will notice that the SFDR (Spurious Free Dynamic Range) is -101dB, while the THD is -99dB. Also, its Signal to Noise is -92dB, while the theoretical best is -98.08dB.
In fact, a small amount of noise actual can improve the signal representation! But that is a rather long discussion.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
In Half Life, the radio is usually louder than the gun shots. This was annoying, because it hurt to turn up the volume. However, the people who created Enter the Matrix did a great job. If you adjust the volume so the guns were the same level as Half Life, then the voices would be too low. So, you adjust the voices to be a good volume, and then you get rocking gun sounds. I am glad some games are finally including good dynamic range.
In terms of music, I also don't like stuff that is all loud. I heard they do that to get people's attention on the radio. That is one of the reasons I like symphony pieces in soundtracks, they have good dynamic range (Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, etc.)
...a drummer stole your girlfriend?
:(
Poor talentless guitar player.
Ok, here's what happens.
First off, while everyone bashes analog, the analog signal is what you want to measure. When you convert to digital, two things happen:
1) sampling in time. The sampling in time reduces the maximum frequency that can be represented to half of the sample rate. This is not a big deal, since you really can't hear much over 22KHz (for CDs) anyway. Just make sure that you have a good lowpass filter so that signals don't alias.
2) quantization. While the analog signal has an infinite range, you would need an infinite amount of bits to represent each signal as digital. While modern hard drives have gotten enormous, they still are not infinite. So, quantization restricts the valid levels to a finite number, and also restricts the minimum and maximum levels that the digital signal can represent.
Generally, for signals with a large amount of frequency content (what you kids call 'music' these days), there is a large amount of peaks. However, the peak is not what gives the impression of loudness. The effective amount of power, referred to as the RMS, is a better indicator of loudness than the peak levels. The peak of a sinewave is 141% of the RMS of a sinewave. More complicated signals will have a peak-to-rms ratio much higher (1000% or more).
So, when you are digitizing a signal, if you keep the input range of the converter constant and keep increasing the input signal amplitude, you will be increasing both the peaks and also the RMS levels. Once the peaks hit the maximum level that the ADC can represent, the peaks start getting clipped - but you can still increase the RMS. However, as you start clipping the signal more and more, you increase the amount of distortion in the signal.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
LOUDER IS BETTER!!!!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I used to live in Britain, and travel to the US frequently. Now it's the opposite way around. In all this time I have had the strong impression that US FM and TV audio is horribly compressed and disgusting compared to Britain. (This is by no means a more general point about the two countries. I'm not trying to stir up anything.)
Anyway, I recently watched the Foo Fighters DVD single of "times like these" and it has US and UK versions of the video. To my ears, the mix for the UK video was quite different and much better. It had more punch... so I wonder now if engineers perhaps pre-crappify video soundtracks for the US market. Perhaps the Foo Fighters engineer thought he could compress the signal to broadcast standards and achieve a better result than if it was left to the TV stations.
My theory is that the BBC lead the way with reasonable dynamic range in the UK, because if they needed more powerful transmitters the taxpayer picked up the bill, and so commercial TV had to follow their lead. (But it's all pure speculation!)
the brain/ear will generally perceive louder sounds to be better quality (not just in terms of audibility, but actual quality), even if that's not the case (psychoacoustics).
compression raises *average* loudness of a track (which is also why it destroys dynamic range).
take two identical recordings, adjust the volume levels on each so that they both peak at the same dB. the one that has some compression (not overdone) will generally sound better.
also, it's about contrast/comparison. if you're using a CD changer, when a softer CD comes on, all else being equal, the audio quality won't seem as good as the one preceding it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been listening to the VAPOR TRAILS CD in the car, and I thought I was hearing clipping. Knowing that Rush albums are among the most meticulously crafted in the business, it never occured to me that the CD might have been mastered clipped, but that is exactly what seems to have happened.
Who in their right mind considers a '92 Cutlass a classic?
To those who say Cutlasses are ugly, check out a '68 Hurst Olds. That'll give you a woody.
IMHO, the bass guitar rattling the snare drum in an intro, the 60hz hum of the PA, all the delicious lil freaks of sound that come out of guitar amps..... to me, that's just as much a part of the music itself. I love the *noise*. My old vinyl was full of it.
Unfortunately, it seems that producers and engineers have entered into a volume war...every record made must be louder than the last so that it stands out.
I learned it a little late myself, and I have reduced hearing and the slightest of the ringing, and only in silence.
That reminds me... I have a concert coming up and I promised myself to get some professional earplugs before that. Thanks!
This is probably redundant, but I read this a VERY VERY long time ago. But I guess if enough people don't read anything but Slashdot, it must be new news.
I always believed that albums meant ["to be played loud" - Bill Symczac] should be mixed for that purpose, while Air Supply would benefit from a very different mixdown. Some music is best distorted.
Funny, we always used to say "How do you get a drummer to shut up? Hand him some sheet music!"
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I like the album - but I find it annoying to listen to - not because fo the loudness, but because of all the overdubs. The old albums sounded like 3 people playing in a studio with very good sound.
Now everything sounds so super-polished, layered, etc... that it is annoying to listen to. It's as if the music just sounds too cluttered and complex.
In this episode the moderators mod an opinion as a troll. Even though this seems to have been done a million times before, the moderators never tire of it. The poster realizes that they just wanted to get it to -1, he also realizes that any other negative mod would have been more appropriate.
I can't even give this one star.
First, minor point - 96 kHz sample rate gives you 48 kHz theoretical bandwidth - Nyquist frequency is exactly one-half the sample rate. Not 44 kHz.
So, here's the real point. Higher sample rates allow you to pass higher bandwidths through the ADC (and theoretically through the DAC). However, those higher bandwidths get shrunk when they hit the amplifiers (consumer, even pro-sumer products rarely use high-bandwidth amplifiers), further shrunk when they hit your speakers (know how many speakers will produce anything above 22 kHz? Simple answer - not yours. Unless you spent several tens of thousands for your high-efficiency ribbon tweeters), and even further shrunk when they hit your ears (though, some people can indeed hear above 20 kHz. I can hear up to 26 kHz, but then, I've never been to a concert or club without earplugs). The acoustic coupling they claim happens in mid-air (which is true - put a 40 kHz tone and a 44 kHz tone out - you get difference tones at 4 kHz, 8 kHz, 12 kHz, etc.) only occur if your speakers can get those high-frequency tones out in the first place... which they probably can't.
So, what's the real point?
Better anti-aliasing filters on the ADC side. If you are sampling at 44.1 kHz, under the Redbook standard, you have to be down 40 dB at 22.05 kHz. However, you want to pass 20 kHz with no filtering, which means your filter has to be as brickwall as possible (about -200 dB/octave... sheesh!). 3rd order filters can't even do that properly, so most anti-aliasing filters start rolling off around 16 kHz, some even earlier (especially in digital video cameras. I know, I've tested 'em).
So instead, set your filters to be down 40 dB at 48 kHz ('cause you're sampling at 92 kHz). Now your filter only has to be about 36 dB/octave to pass 20 kHz untouched, and that both increases your flat bandwidth and decreases phase distortion (the -3 dB point is a 45 degree phase inversion, and every 3 dB after that is another 45 degrees of delay).
That's why sampling higher improves things - no brickwall filters.
-T
I used to think it was just me as well for a while, but I've read a lot of people complaining about it. Poor center mixing is the plague of the DVD industry. For some reason Hollywood engineers think its fun to go from total silence to huge noises constantly. That gets old after your first few movies once your done being wowed with surround sound. In fact I was just watching that new Jackie Chan movie shanghigh nights or whatever and most of the movie was fine even though I had the sound cranked up, but right when they played music in a few parts it was blaringly loud for no reason.
I'm told by A/V snobs that the loud parts are supposed to sound LOUD, but really if you end up having to constantly turn down the volume for certain parts they aren't doing a good job mixing for home theaters. Dynamic compression is no panacea either.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
As most folks here probably know, your ears' frequency transform functions are not linear. Some frequency ranges are relatively louder at different volumes than others.
Yes. For interested third-parties, look up "Fletcher-Munson Curves" or "Equal Loudness Curves". In short, at lower amplitudes, we can hear midrange (500 Hz to 2.5 kHz) much better than we can hear high or low frequencies. Physiologists theorize that we evolved this way so that we could hear animal/baby cries from farther distances.
At higher amplitudes, we don't get the same boost to the midranges, and our frequency response becomes flatter.
Another factor is the "lockdown" effect -- if you listen to a loud sound source for a long enough period of time your inner ear actually tenses up, limiting the range of motion of the ossicles (you know.. hammer, anvil, stirrup) to prevent damage to your cochlea. The effect of this is damping of certain frequencies, and a HUGE difference in your personal frequency transform.
Yes, and this is not a desireable thing - while your hearing will adjust to ambient conditions, this causes both fatigue and (after a long enough duration) damage.
One could take these frequency transformations into account and master a CD to be played softly... but no one does.
Oh? No one? Tell that to the audio engineers that can still hear, and especially tell that to the mastering engineers - who don't turn it up at all, if they can possibly help it.
If you get a chance to sit in a studio while an album is being recorded or mastered you'll be *amazed* how loud they play the music they're working with. I guess they can hear every detail that way -- until it damages their hearing, of course, and they have to play it even LOUDER.
Yes... If you're referring to the guys that leave the business in their late 20's. The guys that work in the studio for the entire lives don't listen at that level - they work with it much softer, much as visual artists who want to work until reitrement age don't spend their days staring into the sun.
Point is, professionals master recordings with the studio in mind as an ideal listening environment, which means loud, which means a particular frequency transform -- which means in order to hear the music as it's intended, it needs to be played loudly.
No, professionals master recordings with an "ideal listening environment" in mind, which means excellent speakers, good room acoustics, and reasonable monitoring levels. I know *no* mastering engineers that master their recordings at high volumes. The ones that do quickly burn out and leave the business. So, no, the music is not intended to be played loudly.
And, yes, I am an audio engineer.
-T
yes... there is no reason why a recording studio would want to clip the audio track. there is no benefit to doing so. then why do it? it seems illogical to do something like that. what do you gain out of clipping the audio... another 3db? who is the genius that figured out clipping is better?
bunch of morons they are
Many different people do 'Mastering',. and each one does it in his or her own special way that they want to convince you is better than everyone else's. The main steps in mastering are eq, compression, and level matching. Very few cd's are printed with clipped samples, because this data is out of range, it can't be reproduced, if the playback of the cd results in a clipped waveform it could be either a perfectly recorded clip or it is a failure of your hardware to faithfully repoduce the waveform as it is encoded on the disc. Most generally it is the latter.
When finished tracks are sent to be 'Mastered', they are usually compressed a little bit, or a lot, depending on the taste of the Mastering Engineer. Compression in this case doesn't refer to encoding audio in a compressed format, rather a compressor is a dynamics processor, with it you can set a threshold above which the sound will be modified based on a ratio like 2 or 3 to 1. So for a 2 to 1 ratio any sound that is above the threshold will be reduced by half.
This was initially done back in the old days when you had at best 45 dB of dynamic range to work with on your recording medium, a very noticable noise floor, and material with a dynamic range of 120 dB (Live Rock). Obviously you can't stuff 120 dB into a 45 dB (cassette tape(if you are lucky)) dynamic range, So the material was compressed to fit within the dynamic range. Also because of the quality(lack thereof) of consumer audio equipment and the previously mentioned very noticable noise floor, most music is compressed into the top 3-5 dB of whatever medium it is recorded on.
Nowadays, we have a playback medium with a 96 dB dynamic range and close to a 96 dB noise floor, but because people got used to the way it used to sound, they want to keep hearing it that way. Pretty much the only recorded materials that truly benefited from the increase in dynamic range allowed by CD's and digital recording are orchestral works, and the people that listen to these avidly, and care about the recording truly reflecting the performance, still want more!
The other aspects of 'Mastering' are a great deal more subtle, equalization and level matching between tracks are things that most people do not notice unless it is done badly. At the end they turn the result up to the top of the mediums allowable dynamic range and start printing tens of thousands of them at a few cents apiece.
If you think a cd has clipped samples recorded on it the best way to check is to rip the track off the disc into a PCM (Non Lossy, Non compressed, Non MP3)format at 16 bit/44.1 (Redbook native format) and look at the samples in question with a wav editor. If you have blown up the waveform to the point where you can see a single sample, and the tops of the waveform are at the cieling and flat, then complain to the recording engineer, because it is probably his fault.
BTW make sure it is a clean non scratched cd, any unrecoverable data loss can appear as a clipped waveform, and is heard as such depending on the smoothing filter on the output side of your cd player.
The thing that makes this comment funny to me is that I just watched Spinal Tap last night and this is the exact same thing I was going to write. And it was already +5 funny, didn't have to spend mod points...
...this problem has been well known for a long time. And it's not only that they compress the hell out of everything, the last few years they are even pushing the volume so hard that it's actually starting to clip. Not enough to be obvious, especialy not on more heavy music where the guitars are already heavy with distortion, but still. No, of course louder is not always better. Often the record company in an effort to make the album loud force the mastering to use so much compression that the life is sucked out of the songs, and what surely once was a nice intro with a powerful snare drum that cracks becomes a puny intro with the snare drums no longer is loud, but just goes 'piff' and forces down the volume of the rest of the instruments, thanks to the compression. It's all quite silly, IMO, especially since the radio that they want to be loud on will add their own heavy compression, so the heavy compression they put on the album is useless anyway.
I don't know how the author could like the tracks in the Vapor Trails album, but certainly for me this is the worst piece of crap Rush ever made; it sounds ugly and poorly composed. Sigh... they followed their falling path after Hold Your Fire (IMHO the best album in Rush's modern era).
Anyone who wants to enjoy the great music from Rush should get all albums until Hold Your Fire included. The following three albums (Roll The Bones, Counterparts and Test For Echo) are not so bad, but certainly inferior; Vapor Trails is total rubbish.
Listen to the new Metallica and that is EXACTLY what you get. Snare drums that sound like cow bells!
Good choice but, Jaco... not really, but the stories about him are a lot of fun. Les - real interesting stuff. he plays sloppy, but it seems intentional. I like anyone with the balls to go on stage wearing combat boots, long underwear and a civil war infantry hat. hehe Stu - after listening to all his stuff it really sounds the same. it's a creativity issue. The chordal playing is really cool though, especially Flow My Tears. and Myung - I love Dream Theaters stuff but he always felt like the weakest link to me and his tone makes me wanna barf. I guess we forgot to mention Bill Sheehan or Jeff Berlin......
pigfukr
You forgot to mention his spelling of "Eunuch" :-)
see as an exhibit the remastered albums from The Police and yes, even Rush. I picked up a copy of the Singles album from the Police, both the remastered and the non-remastered versions. The remastered version is just louder... that's all. They had it right back in the 80s.
This isn't offtopic, you Crack Smoking Moderators (tm).
...please note YYZ is the airport code for Montreal.
no it's not worse, because you can always compress a wide dynamic range (the player can do it!), but you can't uncompress one that's been compressed (only the studio can do it, unless details of the original levels are saved in the stream somehow).
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
While channel hopping I often notice on the ethnic selections that the sound on programming from India and the middle East often are clipped and distorted like crazy. This is so persistent I began to wonder if this only happened on the U.S. cable rebroadcasts, of if this is how the programs appeared originally. Then I saw a BBC program from somewhere in India -- the voice of the presenter and street sounds appeared perfectly clear and well-recorded, but then the program showed a family watching a television program with people singing ; the same intense clipping and distortion of the sound again. I now wonder if this is a cultural thing -- do people in those parts LIKE that clipped sound? Just wondering.
Here's one, found from a simple friggin' Google search:
m l
... I just had to go. I felt badly, because everything was dumped on Geddy, to do the mastering and make all those decisions."
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicRush/may7_rush-can.ht
Relevant snippet:
But in rock 'n' roll, it ain't over till it's over. And even after the trio went their separate ways at the conclusion of the album, there were more challenges.
"Geddy went away to do the mastering. I went away on a golfing trip as soon as we finished (last February)," Lifeson says.
"It had been 14 months (making the record), and in the past, we spent four to six months making a record
Even as he was hitting the links, Lifeson was on the phone four or five times a day with Lee, who was forced to deal with unexpected glitches that didn't emerge until late in the recording process.
"We found problems that we didn't hear in mixing that were apparent in mastering. To get the kind of levels (we wanted), we had digital distortion. We remixed a couple of songs half-way through the mastering, through the remix, back to mastering," says Lifeson.
"The poor guy (Lee) was doing this on his own. It really shook him up."
Still, Lifeson took a final, mixed-and-mastered version of "Vapor Trails" with him to Hawaii for a holiday with his wife. And even then, he couldn't bring himself to listen to the finished product until late in the two-week vacation, when he settled onto the beach, slid the finished disc into his Discman, and pressed play.
"I was really thrilled by the fact that I heard the songs and I really liked the songs a lot. I was really proud of the work we did. It all unfolded for me," he says with obvious satisfaction.
"When I got back, I called him and said, 'Ged! The album is great! We did a great job! We got through it, we stuck to everything we believed in and we did it!'
"He said: 'I don't know what to think. I think it's awful.' I said, please do me a favour. Just don't put it on for a couple of weeks. Be relaxed and open'."
Lifeson said he's still not sure Lee is at a point where he has separated himself from the trauma of finishing the album, to where he can listen to it as a whole. But given how intense an experience creating "Vapor Trails" was, that's not surprising.
"Sufferin' succotash."
...please kill Vlado the Impaler, and all the other "mastering engineers" who like using Waves L2/ARC at +20dB across the bus. Even if good tunes are fed in to these people, the results offend my ears.
We want a remastered 'Californication'!
Some eairly CDs had less than 16-bits effectively used since 16-bit converters never achieve their total theoritical range (no converter does) and eairly ones were espically problematic. However, the Red Book CD format is 44.1khz, 16-bit stereo. It does not allow for any other bit size. Now there is a technology called HDCD that encodes some data in low level noise that an HDCD decoder can use to give extra resolution, but it is an encoding trick and the actual data is stil 16-bit 44.1khz and works on normal CD players.
Also 22bit music would stop rippers like not at all. First, it is easy to convert smaple sizes. There are tons of programs that do it, including open source stuff like SSRC. Second, Windows 2000 and above do not much care what sample size a file uses, they will, in real time, convert it to match the output of the soundcard. Finally, MP3 is bit size agnostic. You can (and I have) encoded them from sources > 16-bit, they will play back just fine on 16-bit soundcards since the deocder handles it.
If you don't turn it down, I will break your knee-caps. No one will hear your screaming because they're all "too old".
Petey, I am an audio engineer. I make rock records. I am not some sound purist or Rush throwback.
There are ways - good ways - to make things loud as shit. Digital clipping on mixdown or mastering is simply not one of them. It is a MISTAKE.
If I ran the whole CD through a telephone filter effect and panned it all into the left channel, so that it sounded extremely small, tinny, and off to the left, you'd say, "hey, this sounds like shit!" Just because I meant to do it that way wouldn't make it a good decision.
Rip Rowan
ProRec.com
I Love Rush. I was hooked a long time ago to their cool sound. I edited a video for my buddy using a Rush/Joe Walsh soundtrack.
Normally, I Listen to Rush with my Logictec Z-560's cranked up to ten. And I love it.
This disturbing information only makes me sad.
I hope that a premaster tape was saved.
I detected this after listening to La Villa Strangito. (Sic.)
I was embarresed by the quality so I requested a borrow of a CD from a friend, and I ripped the cut at the highest possible rate and guess what?
Shitty quality from the master.
The power Trio from Canada should consider breaking free from the crappy mixers and consider hooking up with the likes of Bose.
I still love Rush, No matter what.
I in no way want to deride my idols, however this guy has a huge point.
I missed more than that. Music is a matter of opinion. I think Rush has done some great stuff, although I haven't really listened to anything from them since Grace Under Pressure. I just never considered Geddy Lee one of the "great" bassist. Perhaps an oversight on my part.
Exactly. And since the station is screwing with the sound so much, there isn't much the mastering people can do to the album that the radio station can't undo - in other words, your album won't pop compared to other albums, since they always want their station to pop compared to others.
Non-comm stations are more interested in fidelity, so that's why they'll tend to sound quieter -- they're backed off on the compression so they get more dynamic range out of the FM process. Of course, to a certain extent it's because they have less money and so can't buy the latest and greatest compressor technology.
God bless analog. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Also, its Signal to Noise is -92dB, while the theoretical best is -98.08dB.
I suspect you meant +92dB and +98.08dB.... Otherwise, this is the noise-to-signal ratio.
www.wavefront-av.com
Actually, it was released on CD... one of the first CD's I bought, along with 90125 by Yes.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.