Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Camper  OK G,
We are all nerve ragged with some of the current events in our community. Glad to have you here and straighten up or else. 
Any master should be the best that studio and equipment can provide. If we want to hear all our music loud, we'd use the volume knob.
I've bought progressively worse quality formats in my time. Vinyl is still the reference format for sound quality. Since, we've had tape, compact disc, DVD, digital file. The technology should have given us better quality. Especially since each format required us to pay full fare for the same material.
The attitude of the recording industry has put it on the verge of extinction. The quality of format has lagged behind technologies. If the industry provided us with what's capable there would still be a market. Sell us sterile, compressed, saturated, talentless crap and when the audiophile calls it out, we're the crazy uncles.
Please give this crackpot some understanding. |
I don't think you're a crackpot at all, you make some very good points. Your first point about loudness: Perhaps not many in the audiophile world realise but this problem with loudness (over compression and limiting) is one that was originally raised by recording studios and engineers themselves almost 20 years ago. At the end of the day a recording studio is at the mercy of the client (usually a band and/or a record company). You can explain to the client about loudness but the response is usually 'yes but I want it louder than band x'.
Regarding formats; technically, CD quality 16bit/44.1k is perfectly adequate. 24bit is a waste of time and space for the consumer. Unfortunately, the actual quality of recording is often sub-standard. Over the last 15 years or so, the market has fragmented and the internet and computer file exchange has affected record companies income, a lower income means lower investment in new products. For this reason a lot of recordings are now made partially or wholly in project studios and are sometimes only marginally better than demo quality. The top class studios are still putting out world class recordings but these big commercial studios have been hit hard over the last decade and there are far fewer than there once were. Of course genre does play a part in recording quality, if the product is aimed at teenagers the quality tends to be much lower than say an orchestral recording.
G
