What are the weaknesses of digital sound and why? - Page 2

Max. Average is lower.

My first experiences with CDs were magical. The light reflections were a thing of beauty, the action of the disc tray was intriguing, and it genuinely felt like an amazing new technology from the future. And coming from dull-sounding tapes or scratched up LP hand-me-downs, the sound quality could best be described to me as sonic enlightenment. It was so clean, so pristine, so exact. No pops, no scratches, no dullness, no noise. It was a "wow" experience. You only get those so many times in audio. 

 

MP3 192 the one I listen to.

It it's a noticeable improvement over FM and most DAB+.

There are always exceptions. Got a couple of HD Radio stations here that sound better than their FM mains.

You can give anyone a hammer, doesn't make them a carpenter .

A weakness, that has more to do with mastering, is that the signal can be dynamically compressed and pushed into clipping almost indefinitely - the format doesn't care.

The format actually does make a difference. If you are releasing to CD or high(er) rate download, the mastering destruction/loudness war processing is at the end of the line. If its going to broadcast there is at least one more round of aggressive loudness war processing to go through. Processing for FM vs HD Radio is very different as HD is basically bit-rate reduced from linear PCM, but FM is has no perceptual coding, may have a higher noise floor and has 17dB of preemphasis boost at 15Khz making peak control and HF limiting a very different problem. Both use multi-band processing and a final clipper. Good mastering engineers know all that, and it may influence their work if the client will permit.

 

Though lossy compression in digital broadcast schemes can aggravate the audible harm of clipping. The sad thing is that perceptually transparent compression was hardly an impossible goal for HD/satellite radio.

LP cover art almost always spanks the CD equivalent.
 

Could it be due to the mixing itself too? I hear a lot of "mastering" stuff on Head-Fi, but I always have to wonder if the mixing engineer at fault too. I don't think the mastering engineer would be the only one to blame for the lack of cymbals in rock albums (e.g. a lot of Nightwish albums are kind of like that, at least to me).

 

If the original poster meant an analog versus digital recording process then I have no idea.

Death Magnetic: MusicRadar and Rolling Stone attribute a quote to the album's mastering engineer Ted Jensen in which he claims that "mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived" for mastering and cite a petition from fans to remix or remaster the album.

 

 

What I don't get is why a correctly mastered(lowered volume, dynamic range restored) version isn't released as a paid digital download separately on sites aimed at DJs and audiophiles.

Sales would be small but even a 5%+ increase in sales would be worth have the extra option. It's not like you'd have to advertise it much(word of mouth) and with the record industry hurting they need every dollar they can get

 

Supposedly that album has a "good" mastered version that isn't brick walled which was given to the guitar hero crew to use in their game....why doesn't The label offer that version for download on itunes as a "special version" considering the huge amount of press the album got for bad mastering. It's free money aside from Bandwidth....

 

Then again, clipping and brickwalling isn't limited to mastering: Plenty of DJs, home theater nuts, and "sound" guys love to do it too

 

Red on a meter = bad...not "turn it up so the crowd can feel it"

 

EDIT: I wonder if hearing damage could be the reason some artists and producers prefer the badly mastered ultra loud record?

 

I was a pro-concert/nightlife photog but I had to nix it full time becuase of hearing damage and tinnitus fairly early. Even aggresive ear protection(30+ db) is not enough to prevent hearing damage. It's very unlikely somebody could tour & listen to loud concerts as a job for a decade with little to no hearing protection(common) and not come out with some sort of damage....add drugs and alcohol and I'm surprised most old rock stars can even hear. Hearing doesn't heal itself making it a downhill ride to deafness

Edited by ukon16 - 1/28/13 at 9:47am

I don't know why they don't re-release it, but I don't really care about Metallica.

 

 

Austrian public broadcasting and private television stations adopted loudness based metering and leveling (based on EBU R-128) a few months ago. Now those loud commercials are played at a sane level and you can immediately hear the compressed, wimpy sound.

Same should be forced upon those "engineers".

 

As a provisional solution, every audio player (software or hardware) should have a loudness based ReplayGain function enabled by default. See foobar2000 for an EBU R-128 based ReplayGain scanner.

This also punishes those highly compressed tracks by reducing the volume. Again, all that's left is wimpy sound. It also makes side-by-side comparisons a lot fairer.

Sometimes the most effective way to improve the sound quality of your music is to just listen to better music.

Aussies rock!

 

I don't care about metallica either....they have a loyal fan base I guess. My friend was about the most non-musical person I ever known despite knowing tons of famous djs, artists and clubbing 24/7. Not one word about music artists or songs for years(least of all rock/metal). Guitar Hero: Metallica comes out for Xbox and he buys the 4 piece instrument set then forces me & 3 friends to play it for days .

Aussie means Australian, but I'm talking about Austria and Austrians. You know, the little country next to Germany. Don't worry, that gets mixed up a lot.

 

 

@bigshot: Good music can still have not so good sound quality.