How Bad are Modern Recordings Getting?

A lot of new albums are probably going to sound louder and *****ier. The point in investing in good equipment to me is to really enjoy those well mastered albums. But for albums that already have a crappy recording, I choose not to listen through my revealing setup and just go for a more simple approach. I guess to me I can't listen to poor recordings on good equipment, but poor recordings are just fine on my lesser headphones.

That's how I approach it.

 

Who knows....

 

The quality is dependent on both the artists and producers as well as the mastering engineer. A good example is the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Stadium Arcadium". John Frusciante insisted some of it be taped. He also insisted on having a proper analogue release on vinyl which he personally approved. The result is a fantastic master and an awesome vinyl release. The CD was done by the notorious Vlado Meller and approved by the company.

 

Just a note: If you ever see Vlado Meller's name associated with anything, you can bet it's going to be crap.
 

 

Even with crappy recordings it's worth it. Why? In my case, it allows me to listen to the errors and try to fix them. 98% of the time, I can and do and end up with a higher quality recording. I couldn't fix those errors if I couldn't hear them properly or hear the effects of my work.
 

 

Yes, the source is what matters most. However, there are some things that can make them sound much better if you have the proper training, know-how, and patience.
 

 

IMHO, it mostly depends on the genre, classical, jazz and a lot of indie production are not succumbing to the loudness wars, on the other hand "studio quality" mixing and mastering gear is becoming more affordable and even amateurs can have really good gear, the problem being that amateurs tend to botch a lot of things. Still, for a lot of genres, sound quality isn't becoming worse.

 

On the other hand, mainstream pop/rock is loosing to the loudness wars badly.

I've read on several places on this site that has been creeping into classical and jazz now. But I can definitely see your correlation with those genres from my music.

Yeah, rock and pop really suck now.

I feel that things are slowly getting better actually....looking at the DR analysis / waveforms of a lot of music in my library it seems as though *most* new music (at least the kind of stuff that I listen to) is compressed less than music from a few years ago...Not saying it is good by any means, as most of it is still completely unacceptable...but...maybe some progress anyway.....mehh...

 

Ohh, I found this somewhat interesting on the topic as well... http://www.dynamicrange.de/en/timetable-strategy

[oldgrouch]Who cares? Most modern music is awful and a great recording wouldn't help anything. I'm content listening to jazz, classical and the non-brickwalled music of my youth.[/oldgrouch]

And get off my lawn.

I hope I'll never be so stupid as to call modern music awful. All they need is to leave at least 8-10dB dynamic range at the top (currently under 3), and stop boosting the highs and adding distortion in the highs to make it seem louder.

If this happened, I would buy so much more modern recordigs.

Yes, but throwing the awful solves nothing. If you really want to do something, get flux alchemist or another dynamic expander / transient processor and patch their crap mastering until you get something listenable. You don't have to be a specialist, just make some crap music presets and use them. And don't get angry, louder really sounds better, even to you!

Are your promoting piracy or telling me to spend $800 to attempt to fix bad recordings on my own? Either way, I shouldn't have to go through effort of fixing a recording. If people made decent recordings to begin with, there would be no need to remaster something down the line to enjoy it.

And I disagree, I tend to find quiet, after everybody else is asleep, sounds better more often than not through my gear, regardless of music.

How bad?

 

This bad:

 

Sorted by Year:

 

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?search_artist=metallica&sort=year&order=asc

 

One of the most popular bands in British History (via ticket receipts I believe):

 

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?search_artist=oasis&sort=year&order=asc

 

 

Of course I'm promoting piracy, are you kidding?

I've had some of the same considerations. Part of the problem is ultimately there's nothing we can do about the Loudness War probably. The big studios aren't going to listen to us. You can try to change your listening habits, but, what you actually like is what you actually like and ultimately there's only so much you can do in this respect. There's only so much listening to independent artists and that sort of thing that some of us can really do (just finding them alone is a huge uphill battle.)

To answer your your question though, I think that as the music itself gets less and less dynamic, more sensitive equipment becomes actually MORE necessary so you can pick out the details that are being further and further obscured. You didn't need very good equipment to hear some of the best stuff of some older music, but with dynamics being compressed more and more, it gets harder and harder to do things like hearing individual instruments as being, well, instruments rather than just noise.
I have to actually disagree with you there. My biggest problem is that I mostly listen to newer music because it's hard for me to find a lot of older music that I like. That said, when I do listen to older music, I invariably like the actual sound of it far better. (It's the music itself that I don't like as much.) I just love the sound of the drums or whatever when they have their full punch, and I can hear each individual instrument more the way it should be heard rather than it all blurring together into one big noise all at the same volume levels. To my ears, the full dynamics just sound so much better that it's not even funny. On the subject of newer music though, while I don't listen to the music that most listen to that you can get in games like Guitar Hero and etc, I've recently run into a situation much like that whole ordeal people had with the newer Metallica album. I recently got a music game that I enjoyed where I found that the music was kept in ATRAC3+ files in such a manner that I could easily just decode and then combine them. Because they wanted it to sound "live" and semi-authentic -- and because they wanted each instrument to stand out and for the game to sound like a small band playing live rather than a big studio production -- there's really a much more minimal amount of processing to the music in that game. As such, when I combined them, I found that they sounded about 10x better to me versus the soundtrack versions of the exact same songs (and yes, as with the older music, each instrument stands out, vocals are better, and so on.) With this I've more or less confirmed my suspicions that newer music can still sound better if they didn't do compression of dynamics.


Anyway, I don't see how you can ever really hope to decompress the dynamics all that much. I get the distinct impression that they actually process each instrument even these days. If you use some tool to try to decompress the final sound, you're still only going to do so much. Short of somehow getting a hold of the original takes themselves before being mastered, there's just only so much you can really do (and I don't think that's going to happen...)
Edited by Nazo - 11/8/11 at 3:49pm

The problem with the loudness war to me is not loudness but when a recorded track is so loud it clips (aka death magnetic of metallica). I have no issue with loud recordings in fact i prefer it.