[chukwe]

When I play music from my playlist on my 1st gen Nano(rockbox with flac), some are ok; some will distort and I've to reduced the volume on my Tomahawk

Why?

 

[TheMarchingMule]

It's all part of the Loudness War (sorry I can't give you the YouTube video link right now); music producers push the volume limit on songs just to be loud, ignoring the natural dynamic structure that the musicians themselves produced.

 

[potato28]

Digital compression, so it forces more people to deaf from cranked iPod's.

 

[majid]

It's your iPod and Tomahawk's way of telling you to make the pain stop...

 

[ozz]

the new stuff without artist intervention seems to be mixed excessively
hot now.

 

[c0mfortably_numb]

Read all about the "Loudness War" and the joys of hot mastering. Also a good read

 

[EFN]

You wanna play it loud, use CDP or lossless. Chances are almost nil for clipping - unless of course the rig is quite crappy

 

[c0mfortably_numb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EFN /img/forum/go_quote.gif You wanna play it loud, use CDP or lossless. Chances are almost nil for clipping - unless of course the rig is quite crappy

Source has nothing to do with how a CD was mastered, if a CD was over compressed, your higher end components will usually be more revealing then say the Fisher Price my first stereo would be.

The whole theory behind hot mastering was to make the music sound better on crappier sources.

 

[chukwe]

I think my problem was the Rockbox Crossfeed, which I've now disabled

 

[Ethan211]

Quote:

Originally Posted by c0mfortably_numb /img/forum/go_quote.gif the joys of hot mastering.

Holy brutal, batman.
Record companies FTL

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chukwe /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think my problem was the Rockbox Crossfeed, which I've now disabled

You could try using the "pre-cut" setting in the software EQ to reduce the gain slightly. This will counteract clipping caused by gain added by the EQ and possibly crossfeed.

 

[rumatt]

Here's a good demo on the loudness war, and compression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ