hutnicks said:

  That's lethal pricing on the GM Japanese pressing!  I think Daniel Ray Costello would be hard to find at the best of times. Although you might be able to borrow a copy at the local public library.

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lol speaking of the devil. I just found a source where to get it. So I just ordered the CD. Wish me luck. Wanted that CD for years. Even the Loyal Garner, Best of CD was very hard to come by. Lucky I scored that CD new for $16.00. They go for about $100.00 or more new now I think?  

lee730 said:

   
The sad thing is low dynamic range is common place this day an age. Makes me wonder how many of the people who master such recordings actually know what they are doing? It's pretty strange. You'd think people who do this stuff for a living would put emphasis on quality. But it's generally about quantity .

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I think the sad thing is that they DO know what they are doing, just the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  Dynamic compression can help in a lot of scenarios, low volume listening, listening with poor equipment, listening in noisy environments.  I think the mastering is done assuming that LP's will be used with a dedicated HiFi while the digital master will be used with all sorts of scenarios where dynamic compression might be beneficial.  Caveat: I know nothing of the music industry and am making this up as I go.

drez said:

   
I think the sad thing is that they DO know what they are doing, just the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  Dynamic compression can help in a lot of scenarios, low volume listening, listening with poor equipment, listening in noisy environments.  I think the mastering is done assuming that LP's will be used with a dedicated HiFi while the digital master will be used with all sorts of scenarios where dynamic compression might be beneficial.  Caveat: I know nothing of the music industry and am making this up as I go.

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Well I think the argument of the needs of many is really bs to be honest. This was clearly not the case in the very early 90s and previously to that. The fact of the matter is it was common place to have good dynamic range across the board pretty much with all music produced before that point. Even basic mp3 players can drive IEMs loud enough to accommodate for music with good dynamic range as well as basic stereo systems in cars. We're not talking the type of dynamic range you'll have in movie theaters lol.... I'm not really sure if I can agree with the low volume listening bit with low dynamic range tracks. I mean I generally feel there is not enough headroom in tracks that are overly loud. Basically I just feel its too loud. Yes I can listen to it at lower volumes but even at that point I just don't have that happy medium if you get my meaning. With tracks with higher dynamic ranges I have more headroom to raise the volume while getting overall better articulation in the track.

I think dynamic compression in music served the same function as the super bright, super saturated, super contrasty, super shifted-to-the-blue-end settings on televisions do these days: it made the track in question stand out, in this case by being extremely loud compared to others. Unfortunately, the days when this mattered--i.e. when there were actually quieter tracks to compare with--are long gone. Nearly everything is mastered this way, so it's loud-as-possible vs loud-as-possible. Now labels are pot-committed. If they released something that wasn't no-holds-barred loud, it would be quieter in comparison to the other tracks and would stand out as inferior and/or a nuisance to the average consumer (why's this one quieter--I have to turn the volume up for it, but then back down again for the other songs!).
 
I have a feeling it will take a company like Apple, which people associate with "cool", to "reinvent" the idea of dynamic range and market it for the masses, probably calling it the iMasters iCollection iHD* or something.
 
*I seem to remember them doing something where they used 24-bit and tailored global EQ as a gimmick. I don't recall anything about dynamic range, though.

argyris said:

  I think dynamic compression in music served the same function as the super bright, super saturated, super contrasty, super shifted-to-the-blue-end settings on televisions do these days: it made the track in question stand out, in this case by being extremely loud compared to others. Unfortunately, the days when this mattered--i.e. when there were actually quieter tracks to compare with--are long gone. Nearly everything is mastered this way, so it's loud-as-possible vs loud-as-possible. Now labels are pot-committed. If they released something that wasn't no-holds-barred loud, it would be quieter in comparison to the other tracks and would stand out as inferior and/or a nuisance to the average consumer (why's this one quieter--I have to turn the volume up for it, but then back down again for the other songs!).
 
I have a feeling it will take a company like Apple, which people associate with "cool", to "reinvent" the idea of dynamic range and market it for the masses, probably calling it the iMasters iCollection iHD* or something.
 
*I seem to remember them doing something where they used 24-bit and tailored global EQ as a gimmick. I don't recall anything about dynamic range, though.

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I have to agree. Initially on first listen it definitely will catch your attention (it's like fools gold). But it also becomes quite tiring pretty quickly. Even I was fooled into thinking louder was better when indeed it is quite the opposite. It all comes down to conditioning. It's quite ironic actually. Because you're actually hearing less detail in the music in such cases. But of course most people don't really listen to music do they?

lee730 said:

Well I think the argument of the needs of many is really bs to be honest. This was clearly not the case in the very early 90s and previously to that. The fact of the matter is it was common place to have good dynamic range across the board pretty much with all music produced before that point. Even basic mp3 players can drive IEMs loud enough to accommodate for music with good dynamic range as well as basic stereo systems in cars. We're not talking the type of dynamic range you'll have in movie theaters lol.... I'm not really sure if I can agree with the low volume listening bit with low dynamic range tracks. I mean I generally feel there is not enough headroom in tracks that are overly loud. Basically I just feel its too loud. Yes I can listen to it at lower volumes but even at that point I just don't have that happy medium if you get my meaning. With tracks with higher dynamic ranges I have more headroom to raise the volume while getting overall better articulation in the track.

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Best example I can think of is listening to classical music in the car, during softer passages you cant hear the music very clearly and feel like increasing the volume. Dynamic compression means you can hear all he music within a very limited dynamic range, and this also means that softer elements int he music are easier to hear on poor playback systems as they are simply louder. Just my theory though. Could be that all mastering engineers just care about the loudness war. I agree re need for a powerful content provider to step in, I cant recall but was "mastered for iTunes" something like this?

See in a sense I agree with you on things being easier to hear. Yet at the same time I don't agree. Because since everything is so boosted the music will lack contrast and at this point the sound will be more one-note-like where it is actually harder to differentiate things. Basically things sound cluttered and not as defined. I consider this harder to hear as things are flowing together opposed to having distinction. I consider it having the music forced on you opposed to actually listening to the music. But at the same time there are exceptions to the rule. I do agree that the MO of these companies is to appeal to the larger market at the expense of quality. It's always the case lol.
 
Classical with no dynamic range is like putting good year tires on a lambo. Just wrong .

drez said:

Best example I can think of is listening to classical music in the car, during softer passages you cant hear the music very clearly and feel like increasing the volume. Dynamic compression means you can hear all he music within a very limited dynamic range, and this also means that softer elements int he music are easier to hear on poor playback systems as they are simply louder. Just my theory though. Could be that all mastering engineers just care about the loudness war. I agree re need for a powerful content provider to step in, I cant recall but was "mastered for iTunes" something like this?

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The thing is, lots of car stereos (every one I've ever had, in fact) have a dynamic range compressor as an option for exactly that reason. It's nearly obsolete these days, since nearly all radio stations compress the hell out of already compressed-to-hell music (I suppose the classic rock station might need to compress stuff, since some of their collection might be old, original CD pressings), and nearly all modern releases and remasters are compressed to hell, too.
 
A few million years ago I actually posted a blog entry about dynamic range compression, where I prepared three examples of the same recording with differing levels of compression in order to demonstrate what happens to the sound. (Don't mind the lyrics--I've always been useless at poetry and verse). This sort of thing is difficult to get across to people since in many cases you don't have a "good" mix to compare to.

Yeah how much of a difference it made especially on the older music was shocking and made the decision easy. No way I can change my mindset again after hearing the improvements on a consistent basis. It's like rediscovering you music again. So funny that there's so many ways we can go about this lol. . That dynamic range meter plug in for foobar is super handy. I dragged and dropped my entire collection and had it tag all the albums with ratings.

argyris said:

   
The thing is, lots of car stereos (every one I've ever had, in fact) have a dynamic range compressor as an option for exactly that reason. It's nearly obsolete these days, since nearly all radio stations compress the hell out of already compressed-to-hell music (I suppose the classic rock station might need to compress stuff, since some of their collection might be old, original CD pressings), and nearly all modern releases and remasters are compressed to hell, too.
 
A few million years ago I actually posted a blog entry about dynamic range compression, where I prepared three examples of the same recording with differing levels of compression in order to demonstrate what happens to the sound. (Don't mind the lyrics--I've always been useless at poetry and verse). This sort of thing is difficult to get across to people since in many cases you don't have a "good" mix to compare to.

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Very interesting article - I agree, most people have no idea how evil their stereo system or the muzak they listen to are, and people who are interested in music probably have never heard a well produced piece of music or a reasonably fidelious sound system.  If excessive compression has become established best practice in mastering then things really are bad, well for most people anyway.  The most compressed music I listen to is heavy metal, and as I said a few pages back, most bands seem to embrace really bad recording and production as part of the ideals of the subculture, with a few exceptions that seem to take interest in the production of their music.  With heavy metal I just take it for granted that things will generally sound dirty and unpleasant, I mean it bothers me because compression just makes things sound more boring but what can you do (except buy vinyl - and to be honest I've invested too much into digital at this point to go there).
 
I also have some music that seems to sound the same no matter how much I upgrade my system, mostly stuff I listen to as a teenager, but also some more recent heavy metal.  Maybe it's some sort of democratising force to ensure that everyone gets an equally mediocre experience of the music.
 
Continued:  This discussion had me thinking about some of the albums I recently found to be compressed - Opeth, and I came across a dowmix from 5.1 someone kindly gave me, apparently the 5.1 mix of a lot of albums can be better in terms of dynamic range, the only problem is one needs to manually dowmnix them and adjust the channels, which I suppose can't be that clean in terms of digital filters, but probably beats vinyl rip for fidelity.  With some album's it's a matter of the lesser of two evils, and in some cases the 5.1 mix is not necessarily any better than the stereo mix.

argyris said:

   
The thing is, lots of car stereos (every one I've ever had, in fact) have a dynamic range compressor as an option for exactly that reason. It's nearly obsolete these days, since nearly all radio stations compress the hell out of already compressed-to-hell music (I suppose the classic rock station might need to compress stuff, since some of their collection might be old, original CD pressings), and nearly all modern releases and remasters are compressed to hell, too.
 
A few million years ago I actually posted a blog entry about dynamic range compression, where I prepared three examples of the same recording with differing levels of compression in order to demonstrate what happens to the sound. (Don't mind the lyrics--I've always been useless at poetry and verse). This sort of thing is difficult to get across to people since in many cases you don't have a "good" mix to compare to.

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You've got a good voice  Could use a little more clarity in enunciation though.
 
The thing is, if all of a sudden someone started to make a good master with proper dynamics, it would sound much softer than every other song on the radio, so no one is willing to make that jump. It only works if everyone did it at the same time. Because seriously... what's wrong with turning the volume knob a single click louder in exchange for superior sound quality?

blueangel2323 said:

   
You've got a good voice 

 Could use a little more clarity in enunciation though.
 
The thing is, if all of a sudden someone started to make a good master with proper dynamics, it would sound much softer than every other song on the radio, so no one is willing to make that jump. It only works if everyone did it at the same time. Because seriously... what's wrong with turning the volume knob a single click louder in exchange for superior sound quality?

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Scary terraced dyamics? (That could cause car crashes )

muppetface said:

  Abel Tesfaye aka The Weekend who can channel Michael Jackson to an eerie extent,

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I never really made this connection till you said!

veyrongatti said:

  Scary terraced dyamics? (That could cause car crashes 

)

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As if that's more than dangerous than texting and driving or half nude women on billboards
 
"Terraced?" Never heard that word used in this context before.

Reason #30043 never to go to Australia.
 
http://suny-suny.likes.com/bugs-in-australia-are-intense
 
*shudders*