[Scrith]

I'm just curious how people here are dealing with the ridiculous amount of clipping that seems to be taking place in just about every CD produced in the last five years or so. I never really paid much attention to it until I heard an egregious case or two, and then I began hearing it all the time. I'm using Foobar2000, so my main options seem to be to use one of the limiter DSPs or the ReplayGain option to reduce clipping. So far the latter sounds the best to me (mind you, I prefer to do nothing on a decently recorded album...this is just a last resort on recent CDs that just sound so distorted on my system that it really detracts from my enjoyment of them). On my "lesser" systems I never really noticed it...it's on my high-end equipment that a poor mastering really starts to bug me.

Anyway, I'm curious what others are doing to deal with the problem, or if you just accept distortion as a common component of recent CDs.

 

[SR-71Panorama]

Ive actually never even tried replay gain or the dsp section in foobar (save for occasional slight eq when Im in a playful mood).
I love all the disturbed albums, but theres way to much sizzle in the guitars

Usually I just live with it. One thing that helps is to listen to it on the cheapest headphones in your collection. My theory here is that most listeners use this stuff and remain blissfully ignorant of any such distortions, so maybe the headphones won't bring these faults out.

 

[RasmusseN]

I have not noticed this so I recommend you look at your setup to find out the problem. I am sure others don't hear clipped either

btw SR-71Panorama disturbed sucks

edit: what CD's do you notice clipping?

 

[mastercheif]

Using Replay gain or anything like that isnt going to reduce cliping. It will just make those load songs at the same level as your other songs. The cliping will still be there. But yes, mastering these days has gone to crap, and cliping is just a common amenity in CDs today.

 

[SR-71Panorama]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RasmusseN /img/forum/go_quote.gif btw SR-71Panorama disturbed sucks

Hodgepodge!
For what its worth, I tend to listen to them and the harder bands in the car more than headphones. But different strokes for different folks I guess.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SR-71Panorama /img/forum/go_quote.gif But different strokes for different folks I guess.

I hate that saying.

On topic somewhat, I listen only to Disturb's latest album (Ten Thousand Fists), but they do become repetitive in their rhythms towards the end of the album.

 

[c0mfortably_numb]

Throw them in a trash bin, and set them on fire? Well I been tempted to at least

 

[jrussell6]

i'm in love with the new amy winehouse album, and it crackles more than bacon, and not in a good way, kills me......

 

[Gatticus]

I notice distortion sometimes in loud electric guitars and it's not my setup as I have a test cd and my gear doesn't distort at any frequency. I hear it on both of my set of headphones too, it's less noticable on the cheap Pansonics but it is still there. I don't think it has to do with new recordings though as I hear it on old 60's stuff sometimes too. I think they just happened to have monkeys at the controls when they recorded. Some 60's rock stuff is just dreadful recording quality.

 

[regal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scrith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm just curious how people here are dealing with the ridiculous amount of clipping that seems to be taking place in just about every CD produced in the last five years or so. .

Don't buy them and post your disgust on internet display as much as possible.

The thing that amazes me in the stupid industry thinks sales are down because of MP3's. Sales are down because of the quality of recent releases.

 

[HiFi FOR METAL]

Actually, I find many discs are compressed too much, but if you listen to rock, or metal many amps cannot keep up in the dynamic headroom dept. So, they loose unity gain very quickly, tube amps tend to not sound like shattering glass when they start to loose unity gain. So perhaps getting a Darkvoice in order? but just listen to a track where there is one instrument and it keeps adding them. Like on YES's "Talk" ablum. I listened to it on my little dot II and that thing distorted and clipped to hell on the addition of the third instrument in the track. which is bad. It went like this. "ok sounds real, sounds real, adding guitar, ok now sounds horrible and unreal!" Much of this has to do with bad amps and metal will do this like no other genre of music unless you have good gear. The sound stage and transparency are shot to hell when it runs out of juice.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I guess I just appreciate each album for what it is. Sure, there are some that I definitely wish had better sound, but I still get something out of listening to the tunes, even if they don't sound as nice as they might have.

FWIW I don't use replaygain anymore, other than as a visual indicator of how loud each album is, but I also don't get any clipping warnings in foobar either. The clipping that is already in the signal will be there regardless; replaygain only helps to avoid clipping in case you use any additive DSP's.

 

[Packgrog]

There was some discussion a few months ago at Perpetual Motion about the increasing trend for compressed or hotly mastered albums, especially in rock and metal. Apparently this is by the choice of the artist rather than the producer/engineer/mixer. Supposedly some artists hear an early, dynamic, audiophile-friendly mix and say "No, make it louder! It has to be louder and heavier! LOUDER!" So they wind up with a highly compressed and distorted mix in the end that sounds better on crappy hardware (like, for example, car stereos), but it agony for those of us who invest in better audio equipment.

One album I love that is painfully compressed is Slipknot - Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses. Musically it's a great album, and if you can get ahold of the 2-disc special edition and hear the Terry Date mix of Vermillion, you'll see just how much more dynamic the album COULD have been if it weren't compressed to crap. That track is marvelous. The main album is agonizing. All because of a too-hot, too-compressed mix. Such a shame.

-Packgrog

 

[Scrith]

Yes, the Amy Winehouse CD is a great example of a bloody awful mastering job. The sound is terribly distorted in many places. This is one of the CDs that lead to the original post in this thread, by the way.

No, this is not my setup. When I hear a younger user like Rasmussen claim that nobody can hear clipping and that the problem is probably my setup, I begin to fear for the future of recording...do our younger users even know what a properly recorded album sounds like? It's quite possible that none of the music they enjoy has ever been recorded properly.

ReplayGain (using the clipping option) definitely reduces the perceived distortion (even after volume matching to compensate for the reduced volume that using ReplayGain causes). My understanding is that digital clipping is caused by the data in the signal reaching the maximum value...ReplayGain would certainly prevent this from happening if it were implemented correctly. But it's easy to prove: listen to the Winehouse CD (or any other where you notice distortion from clipping) with and without ReplayGain...to me, listening with ReplayGain certainly sounds a lot better than listening without it. By the way, I am not using any DSPs in my current Foobar setup (and my ReplayGain pre-amp gain settings are both set to 0db)

I fully understand that ReplayGain will reduce the resolution of the digital recording (by scaling the values in the data by a certain amount), but in the case of a very poorly recorded CD this seems to improve the sound. And, in the case of overly compressed data in the recording, reducing the resolution a bit probably isn't going to matter much because the signal is probably at or near the max for much of the recording anyway (i.e. there is very little dynamic range).

Despite claims on HydrogenAudio to the contrary, I've found that the "Advanced Limiter" in Foobar2000 is almost useless for reducing distortion caused by the clipping problem, by the way. Also, the clipping indicator in Foobar appears to be broken (or representing something other than what I expect it does). I remember that then one in the E-Mu PatchMix panel seemed a lot more accurate (although I'm not currently using an E-Mu soundcard so I can't verify this).

I guess some artists might actually want there to be distortion in their recordings (so the comment about just accepting recent CDs for what they are is appreciated), but in many cases it just seems like the engineer didn't really know any better (or was instructed to just make the recording sound "loud" at all costs).

The problem is so widespread that I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some sort of conspiracy going on...something that will make us want to purchase some new format of music in the future that isn't sold with criminal misuse of compression in the digital data. The thought of having to re-purchase (and rip) my collection in "CD 2.0" format is not very appealing (and it will almost certainly contain the type of DRM crap that SACD has in order to prevent ripping in the first place). Perhaps this is yet another unfortunate decision by the recording industry that will backfire on them (instead of increasing future sales, maybe it will lead to more declines in record sales).

 

[Lord Chaos]

Overly compressed albums are a big problem. In the old days compressors themselves sounded so bad it was obvious when an album was compressed too much. Now compressors sound a lot better and their artifacts are much less obvious... other than the record just being LOUD! I hate it.

I've only heard clipping on a couple of CDs. One of them is by Fernando Ortega, an otherwise well-mastered record. My guess is that at that particular place in the song the bass player got more into it, and the bass line clips.