[amirm]

I'm perfectly fine with a world of various masters, I just don't think one should cost more than the other. Or do you disagree?

Depends on what hat I put on. As a cheap consumer, sure, I like everything for less money. But knowing how digital music industry has become a money losing proposition at prices Apple and Amazon charge, I don't mind paying more so that there is a healthy and competitive marketplace for digital music distribution. I can't ask the general public to pay more. But I think we can ask the audiophiles to do so if in return they get a clearly superior product to CD and lower mass distributed formats.

 

[bigshot]

Apple and Amazon have given consumers a vast ocean of great sounding music at very low prices. They are making the music business better because they are creating a direct conduit for distribution of content. No more warehouses full of unsold inventory and retailers and distributors adding mark ups all the way down the chain. It's the greatest advancement that has happened to music distribution since the advent of radio. More music. Great sounding music. Lower prices. Nothing to complain about there.

I sat in his presentation and it was mostly good until he got into number of taps, distortions down in -200 db and such.

Yeah. We had a joker around here the other day saying that the highest acceptable noise floor level was 120dB. Can you imagine that?!

 

[TheSonicTruth]

Depends on what hat I put on. As a cheap consumer, sure, I like everything for less money. But knowing how digital music industry has become a money losing proposition at prices Apple and Amazon charge, I don't mind paying more so that there is a healthy and competitive marketplace for digital music distribution. I can't ask the general public to pay more. But I think we can ask the audiophiles to do so if in return they get a clearly superior product to CD and lower mass distributed formats.

I don't see 'audiophiles', or the 'general public. I see music fans - period - and think they should all be able to afford quality, dynamic music.

It's the content, not the format, that matters, and the less processed a song is in mastering, the cheaper it is to produce!

 

[TheSonicTruth]

Yeah, it may seem surprising, but there are people living outside your country, more than 20 times the population of your country in fact. You can clearly see where I am from and sometimes we "outside observers" can see better than the average Joe of your country what's going on, because we aren't brainwashed by bought corporate media only.

However, dumbing-down culture isn't a problem only in your country. Loudness war is international. Finnish pop is just as clipped as American pop and Finnish teenagers use the same iPhones to listen to music. People don't think enough anywhere in the world!

And I appreciate the insight of those living outside of my birth nation, perhaps more than the vast majority of MYOBs I share it with.

Most of the music on my devices is not clipped, ripped from CDs at least twenty years old. That which is clipped or over-compressed is from the few recent CDs in my collection, and downloads of the newest entries.

It's all loudness-normalized, meaning just about all of the last twenty years of material saw anywhere from 6-10dB negative replay gain applied, to match the legacy stuff loudness-wise. I just have to turn my volume controls up a little more than most, but, that's why there'a a range of volume, right?

 

[Strangelove424]

No. They may think they are telling you "peak" numbers but that is not what they are. True peak values may last a PCM sample or two. As such, you need to capture the audio and have a microphone that you know has no limiting.
Random pointing of an SPL meter at sound may not apply I am afraid.

I mean really. You don't even know who came up with those numbers yet you are defending their exact nature???

A single PCM sample? Here we go, we’re back to transients again. I bet if I gave you enough time, you’d wind this trail through all of audiophilia. We go from needing more bits to needing more samples now. You deliberately ignore or twist the facts to suit your narrative. I have never seen an SPL chart such as this refer to average when speaking of music. Maybe it’s easy to average a jackhammer, but music is always mentioned in terms of loudest passage or peak. I’m defending these numbers because they match my own experiences attending many concerts, and recording live music performances. Experiences that keep my understanding of these numbers in context to the REAL WORLD.

What? Of course not. For determination of peak SPL, you want peak loudness. What does your question has to do with that? Peak is peak. It is the absolute loudest something gets because that is what we need to store in our digital samples.

Wow, Amiram, you are quite a piece of work. You originally told me all the numbers are average SPLs, and once I proved the ridiculousness of averaging a rock concert, now you are saying “a peak is a peak”? I was wrong, disingenuous is a euphemism for you.

No, it means nothing because it is not a proper study. A random survey does not make for scientific data. You are just going by anecdotal data that serves your point of view. I understand that but for heaven's sake, you can't dismiss authoritative, peer reviewed study for this specific purpose and chase random charts like that.

These "random" charts (sourced from a book by Daniel Levitin, and vouched for by UCSD) are corroborated by the experience of thousands of people who actually work with audio. Some of those people in this thread have been trying to get you to recognize sense. I'm done with all the references to your quack study. It is not authoritative and not peer reviewed. In fact, a basic critique of it in the pages of this thread have brought up all sorts of weak points! Anybody who makes their own SPL meter, doesn’t mention how they tested or calibrated it, and then goes and measures the ambient level of an empty music hall, is not doing valid work. I don’t care what his title is. If you could think for yourself, you wouldn't keep mentioning his title either. You are appealing to authority, not reason.

 

[amirm]

A single PCM sample? Here we go, we’re back to transients again.

Again, you don't understand the core science and engineering here. When you make a recording, you must record all samples. You can't record averages. You must include the full amplitude of the peak, and the quietest moments.

I have never seen an SPL chart such as this refer to average when speaking of music.

As I explained, this is implied when you don't see the word "peak" and ways the data was gathered. Here is another reference, this time from Journal of Acoustic Society of America, ABSOLUTE AMPLITUDES AND SPECTRA OF CERTAIN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND ORCHESTRAS • BY L. J. SIVIAN, H. K. DUNN, AND S. D. WHITE:

Notice the integration time between peak (1/8 second) and average (15 seconds). Almost all data that you see on SPL levels is with respect to noise and hearing damage which occurs in minutes and hours so it is NOT based on peaks. You need to specifically seek out peak data to find it and that information is only in a handful of research papers as I have quoted.

These "random" charts (sourced from a book by Daniel Levitin, and vouched for by UCSD) are corroborated by the experience of thousands of people who actually work with audio.

I already quoted Daniel's book for you. That is NOT his data. He is just posting that same information with no attribution on where it came from. It is no different than any chart you find online, all which are aimed at warning you about damaging your hearing. They are not intended for defining the dynamic range you need for transparent storage and conveyance of digital music. You can't use lay data like that to counter specific and targeted research by luminaries in our field.

Come back with at least one paper that is peer reviewed and published in J. ASA, J. AES, IEEE Spectrum, Acoustica, etc. and we can talk. Let's not be so closed minded to what audio science really teaches us lest we want to look worse than the worst of subjectivist audiophiles.

 

[amirm]

I'm done with all the references to your quack study. It is not authoritative and not peer reviewed.

I missed this fantastical statement. Everything I am posting is from Journal of AES and Journal of ASA. Both have strict peer review requirements prior to publication:

http://www.aes.org/journal/

Here is the journal paper in question: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7948

And J. ASA:

And paper I quoted from it:

In contrast, what was it that you showed us? Some link online and not to the source itself? And the source was a book which has no backup whatsoever on where the data came from.

So it is not like you cared about anything authoritative or heaven forbid peer reviewed.

I mean really, I have had these discussions for years and this is the first time I have seen someone not know that JAES papers are peer reviewed.

 

[amirm]

Current professional music engineers and artists are obviously creating music for today, not for the 1970's, so of course they are going to look at the likes of cutestudio and amirm as some sort of nazi dinosaurs, stuck in a 1970's - 1980's time warp.

Come again? Much of what I listen to is modern music. Let's take a case in point an album of mine which I bought back in 1999 called "UP UP UP UP UP" by Ani DiFranco. This is its amplitude response:

Nice avoidance of peak amplitude. Now let's look at the abomination that our mastering friend whom I quoted earlier, Brian Lucey has created for the same band in their album, binary, released in 2017. This is the spectrum for the "high-res" 24-bit version that I bought:

You see all those clipped or nearly clipped peaks? You see how the music never, ever settles down?

Again, this is music from the exact same group. No genre change. What used to be a proper mastering is now butchered to hell. And you are calling us the problem? I don't think so.

The worst enemy of our system performance is the badly recorded and mastered content. It is time you recognized the significant role your industry is playing in destroying the enjoyment we could get out of our music.

So I say again, if you want to do any good, start by cleaning up the noses of your own peers. They are doing us far more harm than allowing customers to play high resolution music.

 

[Strangelove424]

Again, you don't understand the core science and engineering here. When you make a recording, you must record all samples. You can't record averages. You must include the full amplitude of the peak, and the quietest moments.


As I explained, this is implied when you don't see the word "peak" and ways the data was gathered. Here is another reference, this time from Journal of Acoustic Society of America, ABSOLUTE AMPLITUDES AND SPECTRA OF CERTAIN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND ORCHESTRAS • BY L. J. SIVIAN, H. K. DUNN, AND S. D. WHITE:

Notice the integration time between peak (1/8 second) and average (15 seconds). Almost all data that you see on SPL levels is with respect to noise and hearing damage which occurs in minutes and hours so it is NOT based on peaks. You need to specifically seek out peak data to find it and that information is only in a handful of research papers as I have quoted.

A recorded file is a record of all samples taken. I have no idea what "recording an average" even means. Recording = taking samples, not averages. And a crescendo doesn't last a single sample! Nor have I ever seen an SPL meter that averaged readings every 15 seconds. You are arguing that more samples are needed in order to capture a peak, and that is ridiculous. Some SPL meters have an averaging capability, some don't. But they all do peak. And you don't need ultra fine sample rates to capture the peaks of a concert. The biggest irony I find in all of this is that many bands carry around an SPL meter so they won't get fined for getting into the db ranges you are advocating for! You ignore standard practice, reason, and even law!

Everything I am posting is from Journal of AES and Journal of ASA. Both have strict peer review requirements prior to publication:

http://www.aes.org/journal/

Here is the journal paper in question: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

 

[bigshot]

Come again? Much of what I listen to is modern music. Let's take a case in point an album of mine which I bought back in 1999 called "UP UP UP UP UP" by Ani DiFranco.

There is some nice acoustic guitar playing on that album. Does she play that herself or does she just sing? Some of the mix is weird how the acoustic guitar is miked super close and the rest of the band is at a normal distance. They don't sound connected, that's why I asked if she played it.

 

[reginalb]

Again, you don't understand the core science and engineering here. When you make a recording, you must record all samples. You can't record averages. You must include the full amplitude
of the peak, and the quietest moments.

Who argues that you shouldn't use 24-bit[1] during recording and mastering[2][3]? The topic of this thread is in reference to delivery format, not recording format.[4] But we all know that DSD[5] is the best format for masters.[6]

Now, back to your repeated[7] logical fallacies[8][9][10][11], you actually tried to prove[12] the veracity of a paper by saying how many citations it has at the end[13]. Man, did you know that my post here has WAY more citations than yours[14], so it's better?[15]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering
[2] https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6212136
[3] https://www.justmastering.com/article-masteredforitunes.php
[4] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital
[6] http://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/dsd-vs-pcm-myth-vs-truth/
[7] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/page-306
[8] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/21/Appeal-to-Authority
[9] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
[10] https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
[12] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/page-306
[13] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/page-306
[14] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/page-307
[15] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiOkOTRitHXAhVC1WMKHcEDDOQQFggnMAA&url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.4597&usg=AOvVaw0H1Bo-xLQ8xl9Rp0skk6v0


I'll set aside being a jerk for a moment, in your post, you quote the following:

"BTW, that study is filled with holes, I can’t understand why you treat it as the gold standard besides the selfish reason that its the only document in existence backing you up. For one thing, they made their very own SPL meter! Did they document how they designed it or calibrated it? Nope! This study lacks transparency, and its data is an outlier. It’s simply not valid, and has made very little attempt to establish its own validity."

You quote something that makes 2 DIRECT assertions to contradict what you've cited.

[1] The data contained is an outlier, many other sources contradict it
[2] The cause of this could be that they used their own SPL meter without documenting how it was created

Then you kind of address the first one, but only by pointing out that other papers have the same weakness, which of course doesn't do anything to help yours out, and then completely fail to even attempt to address the more important assertion, number 2. That one is very important, because you have repeatedly asserted that your points are more valid because they're backed by serious studies, scholarly evidence, people way smarter than all of us plebs in here. Yet you fail to acknowledge that if the above assertion is true, then the work isn't repeatable, which is one of the hallmarks of research. You must be able to replicate experiments. Else you have no way for us to know why your data is an outlier - for all we know it could be completely made up. Here is a real citation that you should read: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/howscienceworks_17

Also, you actually used the author's bio as your other piece of evidence that it's a good paper. Are you even listening to yourself here?

But I know that I'm more right than you, because this post has more citations than yours. Plus, look at this bio:

Reginald Brown received a PhD in knowing way more than you in regards to audio. Then he went on to win 1 million Grammy awards, went back in time and founded every single headphone company ever, then went forward in time and got a 2-billion bit DAC from the future which has a way lower noise floor, and it can be ABX'ed all day long.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

Come again? Much of what I listen to is modern music. Let's take a case in point an album of mine which I bought back in 1999 called "UP UP UP UP UP" by Ani DiFranco. This is its amplitude response:



Nice avoidance of peak amplitude. Now let's look at the abomination that our mastering friend whom I quoted earlier, Brian Lucey has created for the same band in their album, binary, released in 2017. This is the spectrum for the "high-res" 24-bit version that I bought:



You see all those clipped or nearly clipped peaks? You see how the music never, ever settles down?

Again, this is music from the exact same group. No genre change. What used to be a proper mastering is now butchered to hell. And you are calling us the problem? I don't think so.

The worst enemy of our system performance is the badly recorded and mastered content. It is time you recognized the significant role your industry is playing in destroying the enjoyment we could get out of our music.

So I say again, if you want to do any good, start by cleaning up the noses of your own peers. They are doing us far more harm than allowing customers to play high resolution music.

Remember, it is possible that the band wanted the sound that way, as represented in your second waveform pic. You're right, it looks(and probably sounds) like A$$, but try to understand what, largely, is driving the demand for such 'mastering'. (!)

If there's one positive aspect of it, from purely a marketing standpoint, it's that the consumer will hear it and think, WOW, this new high-res audio is farrr ouuuut!

 

[bigshot]

I love it when people make judgements about music by looking at graphs. Personally, I use my ears.

 

[Slaphead]

There is some nice acoustic guitar playing on that album. Does she play that herself or does she just sing? Some of the mix is weird how the acoustic guitar is miked super close and the rest of the band is at a normal distance. They don't sound connected, that's why I asked if she played it.

Yeah she plays the guitar herself - quite an aggressive style as well

Her music is pretty much about her vocals and guitar, with any band really only providing backing, hence the closely miked and forward guitar.

I haven't listened to any of her stuff for a while - must dig some out again.

 

[reginalb]

...This is why Mastered For iTunes is so great, we have a referee of sound quality to pass: Apple, who catch and reject the mangled rubbish that gets out from the dying labels, because they don't want to sully their Mastered For iTunes brand with your junk. It works too. After reading about how bad CD and MP3 mastering - with it's non existent QA - is, take a look at how pleased people are with the Mastered For iTunes tracks....

Dude, how many times does Apple's own documentation have to be quoted back to you for you to stop espousing this claim? I've actually tested "Mastered for iTunes," they're just no different.

Since you're probably in to the dynamic range database, let's use actual data points:

Master of Puppets (Mastered for iTunes - DR score of 10) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/138940
Master of Puppets (Original CD - DR score of 12) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/135194

Dance of Death (Mastered for iTunes - DR score of 7) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/98034
Dance of Death (2004 DVD-Audio release - DR score of 10) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/132211

Collapse into now (Mastered for iTunes - DR score of 7) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/118925
Collapse into now (FLAC download - DR score of 7) http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/112308

So...no. They don't do a thing about loudness.