[Jahn]

well i just DL'd some new singles off of itunes - it's 128 AAC i know, but i've had some recent success finding rips that actually sounded decent on my rig.

Not so with the Black Eyed Peas' new one, "Don't Phunk with my Heart." GAR this thing is recorded SO hot it's basically frying bacon in the red! Dammit- it's a fun car song when the stereo stinks so bad that it masks the problem, but with headphones (even my portable rig) this track is unusable. RATS. We need a recording engineer Saviour...

Another gripe - I thought I was safe buying the import CD of "Jetstream" by New Order, especially since the album was recorded ok. I was wrong. ALL of the mixes, even the album version on the single, are recorded so hot they are actually DISTORTED! I can't stand it! WAH! Dammit! Again, it sounds fine out of my crappy boombox, but put it in a decent rig and you start to cringe - even with my 0404 to solo to sony receiver to wharfedale speakers, it sounds like it's trying to crinkle my tweeters!

thanks for the vent, this really pissed me off.

 

[pank2002]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn well i just DL'd some new singles off of itunes - it's 128 AAC i know, but i've had some recent success finding rips that actually sounded decent on my rig. Not so with the Black Eyed Peas' new one, "Don't Phunk with my Heart." GAR this thing is recorded SO hot it's basically frying bacon in the red! Dammit- it's a fun car song when the stereo stinks so bad that it masks the problem, but with headphones (even my portable rig) this track is unusable. RATS. We need a recording engineer Saviour... thanks for the vent, this really pissed me off.

You know what tricks me? Stupid censor! Why has they changed it from fuck to Phunk. Why are artist forced to cripple their lyrics?!
I know there isn't true freedom of speech in the US (not that there is in Denmark either), but really, I can't take when people are forced to censor themselves!

And, yeah, hot recordings are annoying. Black Eyed Peas has a lot of very attractive singles. I haven't listened to a whole album though, but where is the love was, and is, really cool. I saw them at a MTV show, though, and they just couldn't sing. They might have been drunk

edit: sorry for randing in your randing thread...

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pank2002 You know what tricks me? Stupid censor! Why has they changed it from fuck to Phunk. Why are artist forced to cripple their lyrics?! I know there isn't true freedom of speech in the US (not that there is in Denmark either), but really, I can't take when people are forced to censor themselves! And, yeah, hot recordings are annoying. Black Eyed Peas has a lot of very attractive singles. I haven't listened to a whole album though, but where is the love was, and is, really cool. I saw them at a MTV show, though, and they just couldn't sing. They might have been drunk edit: sorry for randing in your randing thread...

Tell me about it - the Black Eyed Peas seem to get targeted like that - they even had to change "Let's Get dumb" to "Let's Get It Started" for radio - c'mon, that's just non-PC, it's not like saying a curse word, sheesh! It's still a free country, if they have offensive lyrics, so be it, but i'm sure the FCC doesn't have a serious smackdown fine for saying "dumb" on the air!

Anyhow back to my original rant lol - I'd really love to get some of the newer music in a clean format someday. oh well.

 

[ACAVant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn Tell me about it - the Black Eyed Peas seem to get targeted like that - they even had to change "Let's Get dumb" to "Let's Get It Started" for radio - c'mon, that's just non-PC, it's not like saying a curse word, sheesh! It's still a free country, if they have offensive lyrics, so be it, but i'm sure the FCC doesn't have a serious smackdown fine for saying "dumb" on the air! Anyhow back to my original rant lol - I'd really love to get some of the newer music in a clean format someday. oh well.

I loved the "elephunk" album, rude as it was. That's what the warning labels are for. Loved the beats. There could've been no cursing or cursing out my family and I would've enjoyed it all the same. With all these downloadable songs available, in my experience I have found that they all sound hollow. Is this due to the compression? Are the CDs they are producing now just burnt copies of these compressed files?

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ACAVant I loved the "elephunk" album, rude as it was. That's what the warning labels are for. Loved the beats. There could've been no cursing or cursing out my family and I would've enjoyed it all the same. With all these downloadable songs available, in my experience I have found that they all sound hollow. Is this due to the compression? Are the CDs they are producing now just burnt copies of these compressed files?

the itunes are all 128AAC. ok for most portable uses, but personally it takes up to 224 AAC before i'm happy that i'm not hearing sonic degradation, and even then i prefer lossless for perfect peace of mind. so yes, it's due to the digital bits getting all lossy and squished to fit in less space.

but this kind of compression is different than my original complaint. normal compression is when peaks are taken out of a track to "normalize" it, to make it more level. In that way, you can drive the whole thing up higher in decibels without random peaks blowing your eardrums out. this is what is used in old school analog guitar effect pedals, just fyi - i used to have a MXR Dyna-Comp that would compress the hell out of my signal until i got that nice chicken-picking country twang out of my guitar.

but what happens is that pushing that pancake of a signal to the borderline of loudness means the whole mess is borderline distorted - plus all the nice peaky dynamics have been squished out of it. the resulting effect is - well, Phunked up.