[bigshot]

Gain riding is still compression. It's just a very slow way of doing it. Try to gain ride vocals to make them read clearly. Betcha can't do it without an inky poo machine, John Henry.

 

[pinnahertz]

But I also like transparency in marketing, which of course will never happen. /QUOTE]
Yup. Right. Rarely are full tech details available. I know of a tiny handful.

And of course I've never heard a well-done manual gain change: if it's well done, I shouldn't notice it ^_^

Good one!

 

[gregorio]

There are a few misconceptions going on in the last page or so of posts:

1. Compressors are dumb devices but those operating them are not. A violin, a snare drum and a trumpet are also dumb devices, it's not until a musician plays them that they are anything other than just a piece of metal tubing, wooden boxes with strings or a wooden shell with a plastic head.

2. Something which is being overlooked by everyone, including pinnahertz, is automation! "Automation" is the ability to record and replay setting changes and every parameter of a compressor in a DAW is "automatable". What this means is that the threshold above which compression is triggered, the compression ratio, knee settings and pretty much everything else which defines the performance of compressors and limiters can be changed throughout a piece of music/audio. These changes can occur instantly or morph over any period of time, entirely at the discretion of the mix engineer/producer and DAWs provide editable graphical overlays of this automation data so it can be tweaked with almost infinite precision. Many compressors are typically employed on every mix, on individual channels, on sub-groups of channels and on the entire mix. These compressors will all likely have different settings, some of which will be static (don't change throughout a piece) others will be "automated".
2a. Like the ability to "automate" a compressor, or any other parameter of any other plugin processor, the gain (fader output level) of each channel is also automatable. In fact, the history of gain automation is far older than that of automatable processors, being implemented on analogue desks long before DAWS were even invented. So, manual gain riding is not exactly the pure one hit "performance" thing it's being made out to be.

3. Riding the gain and compression are two entirely different things! Sure, the original purpose of a compressor was the same as riding the gain but that's essentially a 1940's-1950's view of what compression is. From the 1960's compression was used more as a sonic sculpting tool than as simple a gain control! Riding the gain just changes the output level but compression allows the sculpting of transients, positional changes and changes in the sonic character and feel of a channel, group of channels and the entire mix.
3a. Despite my trying to explain in the past, it seems that a 1950's concept of compression still prevails here. Transient sculpting and the other factors controlled by compression are absolutely intrinsic to pop and rock music. The application of compression is an art and the compressor is arguably the most important artistic tool in the mixer's/producer's arsenal, as important and commonly used as EQ and even this statement isn't really representative because compression isn't really "a" tool but a whole bunch of tools. Again, the idea of some sort of purity that comes out of a mic and needs to be preserved is complete nonsense, that purity of sound does not exist, it has never existed, the "sound" of pretty much all music genres since the 1960's absolutely depends on it being "sculpted"! The only possible exception is some classical music but even then the concept of some sort of purity from the mics typically does not match the actual reality, it's an audiophile myth!! Maybe you just don't want to take my word for it? No problem, please read this Sound on Sound article from 2009, which is essentially a survey/explanation of the use of compressors from many of the most influential engineers and producers of the last 50+ years. Again, please read this article! Once you have, you will hopefully realise why it's nonsense to keep asking for recordings without compression and to just apply whatever you need in your playback device. It's not much different from asking for there to be no lead vocals in a recording, your playback device could just have a male and female voice programmed in and simply apply it to every song!

Another article you might find enlightening is this one, again from SOS. Of particular note is the insert box at the bottom of the article, an interview with mix engineer Kevin Doyle and mastering engineer Peter Moore.

G

 

[pinnahertz]

2. Something which is being overlooked by everyone, including pinnahertz, is automation!

Quite right.

 

[ev13wt]

The problem is also the fact that 90% of people listen to music with earbuds and the environment (street, bus, train, walking) need "one volume level". The drivers are usually pretty bad too, as is the frequency response. So the mixdown with a lot of compression makes a bunch of sense.

Without compression, many people simply would not hear "anything".

Listening to TV on my 2 channel system is sometimes impossible due to the dynamic range. Set the volume to people talking as they would in the room and music / effects will blow out the windows. Without a compressor behind the tv, it simply "sounds like crap".

 

[ev13wt]

The BBC Proms are coming up. I don't know if it's still the case, but years ago when they were broadcast live over FM an engineer with a copy of the score manually rode the gain...

These days its a FLAC stream? (pilot project currently going on over at BBC3, last years prom)

 

[Silvian]

Hey again Elgrindio,

Yesterday I discovered a new toy and I thought you might enjoy playing with it too: http://www.claessonedwards.com/home-audio/breakaway-audio-enhancer. Free full trial for a month.
It appears that it lets you adjust a few characteristics of a compressor and you can see the differences it makes. Now, I don't know how critical is that all these adjustments are made after the fact, after the production. I am still learning about these things, but I have the feeling that one can't "decompress" something which was already compressed; similar with trying to make something which was already chopped to say 128k back into CD quality. So they must have some algorithms which "reconstruct" whatever it is possible, but you can get an idea of what a compressor does, in real time.
You'll have to find good pieces to test it with. While for most music the first impressions are quite impressive, when you get to more demanding ones, you can tell of the limitations. To keep it simple, take Lorde's Royals. The bass line in the beginning is quite difficult, not very well defined - I was never satisfied with how it sounds in any of the set-ups I have. But with this Breakaway it becomes quite "hollow", I don't really know how to describe it.

Cheers

 

[bigshot]

You can do dynamic expansion. Back in the 80s I had a peak expander that worked very well.

 

[gregorio]

Listening to TV on my 2 channel system is sometimes impossible due to the dynamic range. Set the volume to people talking as they would in the room and music / effects will blow out the windows. Without a compressor behind the tv, it simply "sounds like crap".

Sounds like a problem with your 2 channel system. A mix obviously doesn't leave the dubbing studio sounding like that.

G

 

[Elgrindio]

Hey again Elgrindio,

Yesterday I discovered a new toy and I thought you might enjoy playing with it too: http://www.claessonedwards.com/home-audio/breakaway-audio-enhancer. Free full trial for a month.
It appears that it lets you adjust a few characteristics of a compressor and you can see the differences it makes. Now, I don't know how critical is that all these adjustments are made after the fact, after the production. I am still learning about these things, but I have the feeling that one can't "decompress" something which was already compressed; similar with trying to make something which was already chopped to say 128k back into CD quality. So they must have some algorithms which "reconstruct" whatever it is possible, but you can get an idea of what a compressor does, in real time.
You'll have to find good pieces to test it with. While for most music the first impressions are quite impressive, when you get to more demanding ones, you can tell of the limitations. To keep it simple, take Lorde's Royals. The bass line in the beginning is quite difficult, not very well defined - I was never satisfied with how it sounds in any of the set-ups I have. But with this Breakaway it becomes quite "hollow", I don't really know how to describe it.

Cheers

That sounds like just what I'm looking for! Thanks! I'll check it out.

 

[gregorio]

That sounds like just what I'm looking for!

No, it's not! I've tried to explain that what you're looking for ("can I use an audio editing program to change a good dynamic recording into a "loudness wars" recording") doesn't really exist. Sure, you can get yourself a free compressor plugin (or even a processor such as the linked one which is more than just a compressor) and just compress the living daylights out of a dynamic recording. That will give you a massively over compressed recording but it won't be much like most of the loudness wars recordings! Maybe that's all you want though, but it's not really what you asked for?

G

 

[Vatnos]

Hi Elgrindio,
In case you're not aware, this website (http://dr.loudness-war.info/) has quite a lot of CDs with their DR levels. Based on this I went to my local library and borrowed a few in order to test (listen) and learn, and indeed, it is quite easy to hear the differences. Once you know what to look for, you'll pick up easily the good from the bad. Just be careful: you might end up giving up some of the music you would have liked otherwise; it happened to me. Luckily, there is plenty of well recorded music out there. I believe that the CD, as a format, is plenty enough if care is applied when producing.
Cheers

Yeah, when I installed a waveform seekbar into foobar and looked through my library, it was an exceedingly useful tool, but not without downsides. I have a few versions of some albums, and I was able to figure out which versions were the best. And there were albums I'd always suspected had terrible production, and it felt very cathartic to see that they were brickwalled.

But... I was very saddened to learn some of my favorite albums were mastered overly hot as well, and part of me wishes I could go back to the ignorant happy days before then.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

Yeah, when I installed a waveform seekbar into foobar and looked through my library, it was an exceedingly useful tool, but not without downsides. I have a few versions of some albums, and I was able to figure out which versions were the best. And there were albums I'd always suspected had terrible production, and it felt very cathartic to see that they were brickwalled.

But... I was very saddened to learn some of my favorite albums were mastered overly hot as well, and part of me wishes I could go back to the ignorant happy days before then.

I believe even the earliest releases on CD, from 1982 up to the late '80s, most, not all, but most of them, had even just very gentle compression applied during transfer from whatever master(vinyl LP master tape, early digital mix tape, etc) was applied. Just 1.2:1 up to 1.5:1 ratio, at a low low threshold, -30 to -50dBfs, to subtilely lift the whole thing above the 16bit noise floor. Back roughly during that period, mastering consisted primarily of transcribing existing analog masters to PCM, flat, without any of today's totally OTT processing(super-EQ, giga-compression, brickwall limit).

So most of the original tonal quality made onto CD, but there was just something 'missing' for some folks. That part missing was the dynamic range on the vinyl releases those music listeners already possessed. And that's why so many original CD releases from CD's early days all seem to return dynamic range values of DR12 on tools like Foobar2000, as opposed to needle drops to WAV of the same albums, which produced values of DR14 to 16.

Then along came the late 1990s fad of reissuing "Digitally Remastered" versions of CDs listeners already owned. They claimed better source for mastering from, but DR values started dropping downwards while RMS/Avg. values crept up and up! The more gullible customers bought into these 'remasters', not realizing that they were actually sonically inferior to their original CDs and of course, their vinyl. They were just louder versions, but that equaled 'better' to the less knowledgeable, especially in the days before DAW software became available for every bedroom PC.

So now I own their original CDs, purchased with glee at Goodwill or outdoor flea markets. Even with DR12 dynamic range, they still sound more natural and lifelike than DR9 remasters and the DR5-7 of post-2000 to contemporary new releases!

 

[gregorio]

[1] I believe even the earliest releases on CD, from 1982 up to the late '80s, most, not all, but most of them, had even just very gentle compression applied during transfer from whatever master(vinyl LP master tape, early digital mix tape, etc) was applied. Just 1.2:1 up to 1.5:1 ratio, at a low low threshold, -30 to -50dBfs, to subtilely lift the whole thing above the 16bit noise floor.
[2] Back roughly during that period, mastering consisted primarily of transcribing existing analog masters to PCM, flat, without any of today's totally OTT processing(super-EQ, giga-compression, brickwall limit).
[3] So most of the original tonal quality made onto CD, but there was just something 'missing' for some folks. That part missing was the dynamic range on the vinyl releases those music listeners already possessed.
[4] And that's why so many original CD releases from CD's early days all seem to return dynamic range values of DR12 on tools like Foobar2000, as opposed to needle drops to WAV of the same albums, which produced values of DR14 to 16.
[5] Then along came the late 1990s fad of reissuing "Digitally Remastered" versions of CDs listeners already owned... The more gullible customers bought into these 'remasters', not realizing that they were actually sonically inferior to their original CDs and of course, their vinyl. They were just louder versions, but that equaled 'better' to the less knowledgeable ...

1. All releases, even 20 odd years earlier than 1982 had some amount of compression. It wasn't to "lift the whole thing" above the 16bit noise floor though, the noise floor of 16bit was already lower than the noise floor of the analogue final mix tape. So, compression didn't help with the noise floor, in fact the opposite, it makes the noise floor higher/worse!

2. If mastering were simply a case of digitising analogue masters, there would be no need of mastering, a mastering engineer or a mastering studio. Any studio with an ADC and an intern could do it equally well at a fraction of the cost.

3. The dynamic range of even the best analogue studio tapes was less than 16bit and vinyl had even less dynamic range than studio tape!!

4. No, that's not why. The real reason "why" was ably demonstrated by the mastering engineer Ian Sheperd in this video. Briefly, he demonstrates that the DR measuring tool (TT meter) is effectively flawed/faulty and doesn't work with vinyl. Given exactly the same master (with exactly the same dynamic range) the the vinyl version results in a DR measurement 4 higher than the original digital master. The reason postulated is the additional distortion introduced when cutting/playing back vinyl.

5. There were some particularly poor remasters made, some however were better. Furthermore, even those which were "just louder versions" were typically NOT "sonically inferior", they were sonically superior and being louder/more compressed was actually "better", even for the more knowledgeable! However, that depended on the situation/circumstances of the listener. In a critical listening situation, with a good quality system and listening environment, it would indeed sound inferior but of course, that's a relatively rare situation, in a far more common situation it would sound "better".

G

 

[bigshot]

Recordings made for vinyl were already compressed. I have found a lot more dynamics in digital recordings, sometimes too much so