[gregorio]

Well, you may wish to impart your wisdom to Apple Inc., you may not have heard of them but they struggle by.

I quoted and gave you a link to the actual document Apple themselves publish and distribute to content creators, providing all their guidelines and tools to create "Mastered for iTunes" certified content and then you say, "you're wrong, go impart your wisdom to Apple". It wasn't "my wisdom", it was Apple's wisdom, I was directly quoting APPLE!!! Honestly, what is wrong with you?

G

 

[pinnahertz]

The issue with clipping the medium (rather than clipped content like fuzz boxes) is twofold:
1. Each DAC's overload character will be different, some get very upset with audible clicks while others hide them better. I.e. the result is now out of your control.

True, but production clipping should take that into account, and they don't use a fuzz box.

2. Each flat top tends to add 3rd/5th/7th/9th etc. odd harmonics which are the most audible distortion products.

True too, but the harmonics of clipping are masked by other content, and the audibility of distortion in general is a function of time, degree and masking. Your view is correct, but far to shallow to be related to reality.

Additionally the most basic limiter and compressor should be able to round off the tops, clipping can never be either necessary or desirable.

Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of audio processing! SOOO much you don't know here. A basic limiter modulates the entire channel gain, and therefore its action becomes audible in several ways. If it attacks quickly and recovers quickly it creates a high level of distortion a lot of the time. If it attacks quickly and recovers slowly, a high peak causes an overall gain duck. What you can do with a clipper is to clip a short high level peak without changing the channel gain. If the peak that is clipped is short, and surrounded with other music, the clip is inaudible. The result is far cleaner than using just a basic limiter.

But who uses a basic limiter? Nobody! Not even radio stations! In recording, processing is done first on the track level, second on the mixing level, and finally in mastering. All of those possibilities are entirely variable from none at all to lots. Processing is complex, multiple processors with multiple attack/release characteristics and curves, even multiple bands are handled separately. That's an extremely basic description, it's far, far more complex in reality. You're way out of your depth here, arguing things about which you have no idea.

Today I walked past a street musician with a microphone and a guitar, the sound balance was actually pretty good and dynamics were well under control. I smiled as I recalled the 'art' and 'skill' which mastering engineers claim is required, the guy I heard must have been a genius .
Maybe he's like the people on here who buy a compressor for film soundtracks, getting a good sound without clipping is hardly rocket science particularly when operating on a fixed track rather than a live stream.

Sorry, your level of understanding of these issues is almost non-existent. Helping you out on that would take a totally different thread.

 

[gregorio]

Processing is complex, multiple processors with multiple attack/release characteristics and curves, even multiple bands are handled separately. That's an extremely basic description, it's far, far more complex in reality. You're way out of your depth here, arguing things about which you have no idea.

I can't even get him to read and understand simple sentences and quotes, so I think you're completely wasting your time trying to explain some technical basics of the equipment he's crying about. Good luck!!!

G

 

[Strangelove424]

Absolutely! Instead of stamping their little feet, insulting the very people trying to stop the loudness war and screaming "no more compression" like lunatics, when they don't even seem to know what compression is or how it's used, they should simply vote with their wallets and buy the well mixed and mastered stuff. We've been telling artists and labels not to apply silly levels of compression for years, they nod wisely, totally agree and come back a day or two later and say "sounds great, good job but it needs to be louder". There's only two ways to get them to actually heed the advice, standardise and enforce loudness normalisation, as they have in the TV broadcast world, or hit them in the only place they'll feel it, in the wallet!

G

Yes, they need to hit the music industry where it hurts! The power to stop this is not in any single person’s hands. It’s a structure built on sales, and even the CEOs of the labels aren’t positioned to reverse that kind of tide. But the listeners are equipped to do so. They are the collective power. Where they move, the music is certain to follow. If the majority desire free, pirated mp3s then the system will cater to that, and that is what it is currently doing. To compete with 99 cent songs and pirated mp3s, the labels have now turned in desperation to free music streaming services that rely heavily on advertising to recover profits. It’s a sad situation for art and expression, but consumers bear responsibility for the current situation too. They demanded easy and cheap, and that is exactly what they got. Getting angry at producers and engineers who probably value a well mastered album more than anyone does not help the situation, it just creates more battle lines we don’t need drawn, that are unfair to draw in the first place.

 

[RRod]

Hm, you got my wheels turning. Maybe they could make the process semi-automated by adding a microphone to the system (on the wire to the headphones or on the player itself) that could measure ambient noise, and constantly adjust the amount of compression to meet both the minimum value and range value of ambient noise in the environment. It could be customized with a light, medium, and strong setting but the algorithms would do most of the work using mic data. In fact, I wonder how easily this could be designed into the pre-existing hardware of smartphones, which many people use as music players nowadays.

I wonder how many people ever played with AC-3 compression options when watching movies at home. Somehow I think anything above 'on/off' would be too much for the top-most interface. Using the mic to make things sound better is a great idea, though I'm sure there is still some beepy-bloopy music that would horribly screw things up.

Essentially we're making a mastering-engineer-in-the-box. How much we could expect such an algorithm, blessed by the industry, to avoid the same pressures that the actual engineers are facing now, I'm not sure. You would need a simultaneous release of un-sausaged masters, which we can't even get now.

Voting with your wallet does not mean total boycott of music, it just means choosing to buy well mastered music only.

The problem is that my vote is weighted by my relative rarity as an audiophile.

 

[pinnahertz]

I can't even get him to read and understand simple sentences and quotes, so I think you're completely wasting your time trying to explain some technical basics of the equipment he's crying about. Good luck!!!

G

Yeah, I know, but I woke up this morning and said "Today I'm going to frustrate myself!", so I felt obligated.

 

[Cutestudio]

I quoted and gave you a link to the actual document Apple themselves publish

I suggest you trying reading the document yourself

http://images.apple.com/euro/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

Be Aware of Dynamic Range and Clipping
:
Many artists and producers feel that louder is better. The trend for louder music has
resulted in both ardent fans of high volumes and backlash from audiophiles, a
controversy known as “the loudness wars.”
:
Although iTunes doesn’t reject files for a specific number of clips, tracks which have audible clipping will not be badged or marketed as Mastered for iTunes.

It's not my fault you don't like Apple's Mastered For iTunes initiative - I guess it bypasses your creative mangling - again, nothing to do with me. I haven't heard people complaining about clips on there - perhaps that statement is why.

Go attack Apple if you don't like it, stop shooting the messenger and learn to live with people who disagree with you for there are many

 

[Strangelove424]

I wonder how many people ever played with AC-3 compression options when watching movies at home. Somehow I think anything above 'on/off' would be too much for the top-most interface. Using the mic to make things sound better is a great idea, though I'm sure there is still some beepy-bloopy music that would horribly screw things up.

Essentially we're making a mastering-engineer-in-the-box. How much we could expect such an algorithm, blessed by the industry, to avoid the same pressures that the actual engineers are facing now, I'm not sure. You would need a simultaneous release of un-sausaged masters, which we can't even get now.



The problem is that my vote is weighted by my relative rarity as an audiophile.

I use night mode on almost all of my movies. My receiver has 3 compression settings: day, night, and midnight. Midnight probably has a high pass filter of sorts though, it castrates the bass for the sake of my relationship with neighbors. I've also messed with the compressor in VLC, which gives complete control over elements like peak, sustain release, threshold, etc. The problem is I am in no mood to sit down and remaster every movie when I start watching it, adjusting and testing the audio in scenes I've never even watched yet. That's no way to start a film, so I just use my receiver because it seems to work well enough. Ease of use really is important for DSPs I think. When I switch headphones sometimes I let out kind of a sigh, because it means I have to switch around a bunch of stuff.

You bring up a lot of good points. This is well above my level of ingenuity, but I suppose the algorithm would also need to analyze the track itself, as well as the ambient levels, in order to apply the most intelligent kind of compression. It get's more and more complicated, doesn't it? Until we're doing exactly what you said... making an engineer in a box. With artistic decisions being made by robots.

I dunno.

 

[pinnahertz]

I suggest you trying reading the document yourself

http://images.apple.com/euro/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf



It's not my fault you don't like Apple's Mastered For iTunes initiative - I guess it bypasses your creative mangling - again, nothing to do with me. I haven't heard people complaining about clips on there - perhaps that statement is why.

Go attack Apple if you don't like it, stop shooting the messenger and learn to live with people who disagree with you for there are many

If you read that document too (and comprehended it) you'll notice how they define "clipping":
"With digital files, there’s a limit to how loud you can make a track: 0dBFS. Trying to increase a track’s overall loudness beyond this point results in distortion caused by clipping and a loss in dynamic range. "

Now, if you can open your mind to this possibility: What if I deliberately clipped audio, but did, not by exceeding the digital max of 0dBFS, but instead it with a processor at a level just below 0dBFS? The audio would still be clipped, but wouldn't show up as clipped using Apple's tool, and would likely be accepted as "Mastered for iTunes" too!

You are unaware of the actual tools available to process audio. There are actually things called "smart clippers" that hard limit peaks on a dynamic basis, then undo some of the distortion effects. Surprised? I knew you would be. The technology has been around for decades, just not in your world. What would "Mastered for iTunes" do with that? Nothing.

I applaud Apple's attempt at improving things, but it's a weak attempt with marginal results at best.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

I wonder how many people ever played with AC-3 compression options when watching movies at home. Somehow I think anything above 'on/off' would be too much for the top-most interface. Using the mic to make things sound better is a great idea, though I'm sure there is still some beepy-bloopy music that would horribly screw things up.

Essentially we're making a mastering-engineer-in-the-box. How much we could expect such an algorithm, blessed by the industry, to avoid the same pressures that the actual engineers are facing now, I'm not sure. You would need a simultaneous release of un-sausaged masters, which we can't even get now.



The problem is that my vote is weighted by my relative rarity as an audiophile.

I hope you know that AC3 compression and dynamic compression are two different things. AC3 might contain provisions for less dynamic night time listening, but the effect is one of amplitude and not data size reduction. Just making sure.

 

[gregorio]

I suggest you trying reading the document yourself

You really do like making a fool of your self don't you! How do you think I quoted from it, if I didn't read it. And, thanks for posting a link to the document I already linked to. At least you're not just picking on my quotes, you apparently can't even read YOUR OWN quotes. Where does it say in your quote (or anywhere else in the document) that they will reject a track or album for over-compression????

And, just for the benefit of others, cutestudio is trying to be clever by stopping his quote at a particular point. The paragraph actually ends:
"While some feel that overly loud mastering ruins music by not giving it room to breathe, others feel that the aesthetic of loudness can be an appropriate artistic choice for particular songs or
albums." Of course, trying to be "clever" is relative and his starting point wasn't exactly high to start with!

G

 

[bigshot]

I quoted and gave you a link to the actual document Apple themselves publish

OH! Thanks for reminding me! CUTESTUDIO! Have you had a chance to read the article in my sig yet? Your reading list is piling up. Maybe it's time to cut back on your talking and get to work on learning!

 

[bigshot]

learn to live with people who disagree with you for there are many

There are lots of different opinions... everyone's got one just like you-know-whats. The thing is, some opinions are built on the sand of logical fallacies and others are built on a foundation of facts. If you get so invested in an opinion that you refuse to listen to and consider the facts other people share with you, and you resort to fallacies to try to bully your argument through instead, you aren't part of the latter group.

Now why you're reading this... let your cursor mosey on down to that blue link at the bottom of this post and click on it. You just asked us to click on your link. It's only fair.

 

[RRod]

I hope you know that AC3 compression and dynamic compression are two different things. AC3 might contain provisions for less dynamic night time listening, but the effect is one of amplitude and not data size reduction. Just making sure.

Yes I mean dynamic range compression in AC-3 (p.87).

 

[castleofargh]

1

I suggest you trying reading the document yourself

http://images.apple.com/euro/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf



It's not my fault you don't like Apple's Mastered For iTunes initiative - I guess it bypasses your creative mangling - again, nothing to do with me. I haven't heard people complaining about clips on there - perhaps that statement is why.

Go attack Apple if you don't like it, stop shooting the messenger and learn to live with people who disagree with you for there are many

look, you turn every issue into a right vs wrong thing no matter how complex it actually is, so of course what you say is basically false every time. if only for failing to mention all the grey areas left out of your black or white narrative.
if you can't stand it when people disagree with you, be more cautious with what you post. and if you can't help but make everything a personal issue where you're the justice warrior against the evil idiots, maybe it would be better not to post at all. antagonizing posts can only ever lead to personal attacks and this forum has clear rules against those. dispute ideas all day long, but the all "we vs them" rhetoric has to stop. you're not your ideas. Greg or big shot aren't secretly destroying all which is beautiful in life for reasons only evil masterminds understand(at least I don't have solid evidence yet). they simply don't see the world in a binary way and can disagree with your massive exaggerations, while still being saddened when some cool album is remastered by an incompetent noob. they can be against the loudness war and use compressors all day long. things are not as simple as you want to make us see them;

now if everybody else could refrain from responding to provocation with more personal stuff, that would be great. it takes 2 to tango. report personal attacks, don't respond to them by making some more.

now back on the subject even though it has nothing to do with this topic...
the very stuff you quote is showing how mastered for itune is mainly a suggestion guideline and the requirements are actually pretty limited. their main motive aside from money for putting their name on things, was to limit audible clipping. not to fight the loudness war like you seem to believe. maybe you think they're the same thing, but they're not. any idiot can cripple an album and leave a 0.5dB headroom at the top. mastered for itune mostly tell to do that TBH, they don't have a take in how much compression you think is artistically relevant or how close to the original live event the album must be.