[Minimauled]

This is a demonstration between a typical late 80s cd mix and one from today. It's shocking how much info is lost and makes me wonder if i'm chasing my tail with all the gear i buy.

click play on the video then come back here and rant about how upsetting this is!

http://funl.blogspot.com/2007/06/loudness-war.html

 

[one-eyed-xander]

Not disagreeing with you, but all this shows is that music can be compressed to minimise the dynamic range. This doesn't show that music typically is compressed in this way.

Also this is not specific to headphones, hence probably belongs in another forum such as the Music forum.

 

[Night Surfer]

Yup. Seen it.
Sucks indeed.
Vinyl rips and MFSL rule.

 

[qazwsx]

This is noticed with most of today's CDs. Not only compression ruins the music, but extravagant volume gains producing clipping. Some CDs go higher than +6dB the standard!

 

[rwest1389]

Yeah I think there was a thread in the music forum all about this with this video. It is indeed upsetting because you can definitely tell with many new artists. The clipping in Californication... However there are still artists out there that have really good recording like porcupine tree.

 

[epaludo]

Already saw this video. It really changes the music. Looks like it loses instrument separation and add distortion ...

 

[iPatcH]

I've been advocating this kind of thing lately, especially with my band. We intend on having our CDs mastered in a much better fashion. There's a volume knob for a reason.

 

[003]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Night Surfer /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yup. Seen it. Sucks indeed. Vinyl rips and MFSL rule.

If you are ripping from an LP that was pressed from a digital master... it could be just as bad or worse than the CD release.

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by one-eyed-xander /img/forum/go_quote.gif Also this is not specific to headphones, hence probably belongs in another forum such as the Music forum.

Yeah, but everybody who frequents the music forum has known about this for ages.

 

[milkpowder]

Then again, if your speakers are the generic craptastic ones, you probably wouldn't be able to hear the distortion.

 

[Michgelsen]

True, but you will hear the lack of dynamics because the music just sounds boring.

 

[Rise To The Top]

I've seen that before. Some mix loud, some don't. It depends on the artist and record company.

 

[Gurra1980]

I can clearly hear the badly distorted sound stright out of my laptops crappy built in speakers.

But I think this loudness war is mostly comon within modern pop and mainstream music, it is not offten I hear this in music, but when I bought Nelly furtados latest album it become very clear to me.

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gurra1980 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can clearly hear the badly distorted sound stright out of my laptops crappy built in speakers. But I think this loudness war is mostly comon within modern pop and mainstream music, it is not offten I hear this in music, but when I bought Nelly furtados latest album it become very clear to me.

There are reports that re-issues of old Rush albums are remastered with everything turned up to 11 and clipping hard right out of the cd player.

But I'm more or less with you - I don't listen to much in the way of mainstream music. The only really horrible album I've heard lately was The Delgados "Hate" - which has sound quality that is just painfully bad. I don't think someone did it on purpose, I think whoever recorded it was a rank amateur with a tin ear and bad luck.

 

[ILikeMusic]

Music on vinyl can be over-compressed too, and plenty of well-produced CDs are not. This issue has nothing to do with the format itself, just bad judgment on the part of the recording engineer. But unfortunately this practice does seem to be becoming more frequent.