[Steve999]

I think it's tarnations. And I don't know what TL means either, or even DR. I think this deserves an explanation.

Anyway, to all concerned, I have my Foobar2000 loaded (LOVE it) and if I understand all of this right I am getting 50+ db of dynamic range on a Keith Jarrett CD (Whisper Not). It's a real nice mainstream jazz trio set by him on a modern-sounding live recording. I am streaming by bluetooth to a Marshalll bluetooth speaker that I really love the sound of. Mid-fi for sure.

Is that good? Is it bad? Does it make me a bad person? Does it mean I'm ignorant? Am I ruining the music industry?

Got the after part; what in turnations is "TL", somethin made by Acura motor company?

 

[castleofargh]

Tiny Length, Did Read.

 

[bigshot]

If folks didn't use quoting that required a key in the footnotes and going back to the previous post to sort out what the hell they're talking about, it wouldn't be "too long, didn't read". Context counts when you're replying. No one cares enough to go and translate all the footnotes and dangling replies in your posts but you. I don't have time for that.

You can't expect me to translate everyone's context when the signal to noise ratio has been so low lately. Sorry!

 

[gregorio]

What I meant was: Once all(10, 12, 13, etc. of) the tracks for a given album have, at the mastering stage, been dynamically compressed, limited, EQ'd, and otherwise seasoned to taste, some songs might still be more dynamic than others(have higher crest factor, higher 'DR' value, however you want to quantify it). On the LUFS scale, you can do either one of two things to ensure minimal to no need for listener volume adjustment during the entire album playback:
1. Align the average loudnesses of all the tracks to an arbitrary LUFS value, like the 'K-system' Katz devised some years ago: K-12, K-14, etc.
Or:
2. Determing the average loudness of the most dynamic track of all of them by peak-normalizing just that track, then adjusting all other songs' average levels, in LUFS, to match that of that most dynamic track.
For example, the most dynamic track you peak normalized to -0.5FS for safety margin. For purposes of this discussion let's say it has an average loudness of -9LUFS(after peak normalizing). So you align, both by ear and by meter, the loudness of all dozen or so remaining album tracks to -9LUFS. That means, from most to least dynamic their peaks might max out, in that order, from -1 to -4LUFS. But because they are aligned to match the loudness of the track with the highest peaks, they will all sound about the same volume, necessitating little to no adjustment during playback by the consumer listening to the album.

It's very difficult to respond to this post without being insulting, because your post itself is very insulting! How do think a Formula 1 racing driver would react if you suggested that in order to win races he should just push the gas pedal a bit harder? What about if you suggested to a 3 star Michelin chef that he/she should try a teflon coated frying pan or told a top structural engineer that maybe it would be a good idea to build skyscrapers in earthquake zones with bigger foundations? These are the sort of suggestions to people at the top of their professions that a 5 year old might make or an adult might make for a joke but if they were actually serious suggestions, such professionals would have to conclude they were being insulted for not knowing even the basic principles of their profession and/or that they were dealing with a complete nutter! How would you even have the nerve to make such suggestions to such professionals in the first place and make a complete fool of yourself?

Where do you think the mastering engineers used by the top artists come from, do you think they're just some high school drop out dumped in a $1m mastering room? You've watched a few Youtube vids by Bob Katz but have you actually read and UNDERSTOOD his seminal book on the Art of Mastering? If your response is "yes" then congratulations, you have the basic knowledge expected of any student or novice, still a million miles from a top mastering engineer though. However, your posts clearly indicate you either haven't read Katz's book or, if you did, you failed to understand virtually all of it! It takes 3 years to get a degree in the subject, at which point the level of novice has been achieved, then, assuming you're a top student, years more apprenticing with a good mastering engineer and after that, years more to become a good/top mastering yourself, so an audiophile being largely/almost completely ignorant about mastering is entirely expected and understandable. What's not understandable though is the astonishing level of delusion and arrogance of some audiophiles who think that all the top mastering engineers know way less than they do! That's why virtually all commercial music engineers in general, let alone mastering engineers, simply avoid engaging with the audiophile community, viewing them as a bunch of extremist, delusional nutters with whom rational discussion is simply not on the table to start with. The result of course is that the situation just gets worse and worse, with no communication with those who really know what it's all about, the audiophile community ends up relying almost entirely on incorrect suppositions, superstitions, myths and complete nonsense and just becomes even more deluded. I've been posting here for about a decade and in all that time I've never told a single colleague, not even my best friends in the industry, they'd think I'd lost my marbles, which is why I post anonymously!

I don't know how to respond to your post, how would a F1 racing driver respond to a 5 year old who told them to push the gas pedal harder? Maybe that racing drivers thought about that when the idea of racing cars first started but today, the use of the gas pedal in a modern F1 car is a great deal more complicated than it seems and has been for two generations or so. What you seem to be suggesting is essentially what was done up until the 1950s and what is still done to a large extent with most classical music today. Obviously they didn't have LUFS back then but then your understanding and suggested use of LUFS doesn't make any sense anyway.

What I think is actually being done is...
3. that the loudness of all the tracks on the album is being done by aligning with the loudness off the least dynamic song of them all, which means that each more dynamic song needs more peak limiting(after all tracks have been compressed, EQ'd to taste) to match that least dynamic song in LUFS value. So you might end up with a total album LUFS value of -6, but with more severe peak limiting for most of the tracks - the opposite of the scenario outlined in #2.

Nope, that is not what is actually being done! How it's actually done would be more like your #1, although that is what has lead to the loudness war in the first place. Your #2 would only work if the piece with the most dynamic range were also the piece which was required to have the loudest peaks. However, much of your #2 suggestion doen't make any sense because LUFS is not a peak measurement it's an average measurement, in practice the peak measurements would all be the same and again, none of this would affect the loudness war anyway.

G

 

[TheSonicTruth]

It's very difficult to respond to this post without being insulting, because your post itself is very insulting! How do think a Formula 1 racing driver would react if you suggested that in order to win races he should just push the gas pedal a bit harder? What about if you suggested to a 3 star Michelin chef that he/she should try a teflon coated frying pan or told a top structural engineer that maybe it would be a good idea to build skyscrapers in earthquake zones with bigger foundations? These are the sort of suggestions to people at the top of their professions that a 5 year old might make or an adult might make for a joke but if they were actually serious suggestions, such professionals would have to conclude they were being insulted for not knowing even the basic principles of their profession and/or that they were dealing with a complete nutter! How would you even have the nerve to make such suggestions to such professionals in the first place and make a complete fool of yourself?

Where do you think the mastering engineers used by the top artists come from, do you think they're just some high school drop out dumped in a $1m mastering room? You've watched a few Youtube vids by Bob Katz but have you actually read and UNDERSTOOD his seminal book on the Art of Mastering? If your response is "yes" then congratulations, you have the basic knowledge expected of any student or novice, still a million miles from a top mastering engineer though. However, your posts clearly indicate you either haven't read Katz's book or, if you did, you failed to understand virtually all of it! It takes 3 years to get a degree in the subject, at which point the level of novice has been achieved, then, assuming you're a top student, years more apprenticing with a good mastering engineer and after that, years more to become a good/top mastering yourself, so an audiophile being largely/almost completely ignorant about mastering is entirely expected and understandable. What's not understandable though is the astonishing level of delusion and arrogance of some audiophiles who think that all the top mastering engineers know way less than they do! That's why virtually all commercial music engineers in general, let alone mastering engineers, simply avoid engaging with the audiophile community, viewing them as a bunch of extremist, delusional nutters with whom rational discussion is simply not on the table to start with. The result of course is that the situation just gets worse and worse, with no communication with those who really know what it's all about, the audiophile community ends up relying almost entirely on incorrect suppositions, superstitions, myths and complete nonsense and just becomes even more deluded. I've been posting here for about a decade and in all that time I've never told a single colleague, not even my best friends in the industry, they'd think I'd lost my marbles, which is why I post anonymously!

I don't know how to respond to your post, how would a F1 racing driver respond to a 5 year old who told them to push the gas pedal harder? Maybe that racing drivers thought about that when the idea of racing cars first started but today, the use of the gas pedal in a modern F1 car is a great deal more complicated than it seems and has been for two generations or so. What you seem to be suggesting is essentially what was done up until the 1950s and what is still done to a large extent with most classical music today. Obviously they didn't have LUFS back then but then your understanding and suggested use of LUFS doesn't make any sense anyway.



Nope, that is not what is actually being done! How it's actually done would be more like your #1, although that is what has lead to the loudness war in the first place. Your #2 would only work if the piece with the most dynamic range were also the piece which was required to have the loudest peaks. However, much of your #2 suggestion doen't make any sense because LUFS is not a peak measurement it's an average measurement, in practice the peak measurements would all be the same and again, none of this would affect the loudness war anyway.

G

RE: Your final paragraph. But loudness isn't(to a substantial manner) determined by peaks. And besides, doesn't the most dynamic song have the highest peaks, or highest crest factor? That's been known for decades. To me, a sausage in a DAW, with a big fat lighter-colored average and sawed off peaks, is the least dynamic thing.

Again, your misunderstanding of what I'm trying to get across comes from my misunderstanding of the dBfs LUFS Ladygagagaga audio alphabet soup.

Perhaps I should have said, in scenario 2, 'peak normalize' the most dynamic track to -.5dBfs. Then just align all the other tracks, according to loudness, to the loudness of that most dynamic track.

I suggested use of the LUFS meter only because it closest corresponds to how we perceive loudness.

 

[gregorio]

RE: Your final paragraph. [1] But loudness isn't(to a substantial manner) determined by peaks. [2] And besides, doesn't the most dynamic song have the highest peaks, [3] or highest crest factor? [3a] That's been known for decades.
[4] To me, a sausage in a DAW, with a big fat lighter-colored average and sawed off peaks, is the least dynamic thing.
[5] Perhaps I should have said, in scenario 2, 'peak normalize' the most dynamic track to -.5dBfs. Then just align all the other tracks, according to loudness, to the loudness of that most dynamic track.

1. Correct.

2. if #1 is correct then this point cannot be correct!

3. OK, let's create an example to illustrate why not, let's take a drum kit: A drum kit has an enormous crest factor, it's comprised of a number of large transient peaks with relatively low level sustain and short decay times. Let's we have a consistent (doesn't change volume) drum kit recording with an arbitrary crest value factor of say 30, we'll call this "A". Let's say we apply compression which results in a crest factor of 10 and then take some sections of the recording and reduce them in volume by a value of 10, we'll call this "B". Obviously "A" has a far bigger crest value than "B" but "B" will sound like it has far more dynamic range than "A".
3a. What I'm saying has been known for decades but what you're saying has never been known because it is incorrect (or has been known by those who have a similar incorrect belief)!

4. As you say, the sausage shape in a DAW is caused by many peaks in the song having been compressed/limited but again, if your point #1 is correct then dynamic range is not affected "to a substantial manner" by these limited peaks! As loudness and therefore perceived dynamic range is largely unrelated to peak voltage levels, then the sausage shape may or may not be indicative of a small dynamic range. What do you think is the correct answer to this question: Which is louder: X. A signal with 3dB of compression, limited to -0.5dBFS or Y. An uncompressed signal which peaks at -3dBFS?

5. How's that going to work, when peak level and loudness are not directly related? If we peak normalise our most dynamic track to -0.5dBFS, what are we going to do with our less dynamic track which peaks 1dB higher, we can't have +0.5dBFS! I'm afraid none of this makes much sense, you're not considering what loudness really is, how LUFS works or the relation (or lack of it) with peak levels.

G

 

[TheSonicTruth]

1. Correct.

2. if #1 is correct then this point cannot be correct!

3. OK, let's create an example to illustrate why not, let's take a drum kit: A drum kit has an enormous crest factor, it's comprised of a number of large transient peaks with relatively low level sustain and short decay times. Let's we have a consistent (doesn't change volume) drum kit recording with an arbitrary crest value factor of say 30, we'll call this "A". Let's say we apply compression which results in a crest factor of 10 and then take some sections of the recording and reduce them in volume by a value of 10, we'll call this "B". Obviously "A" has a far bigger crest value than "B" but "B" will sound like it has far more dynamic range than "A".
3a. What I'm saying has been known for decades but what you're saying has never been known because it is incorrect (or has been known by those who have a similar incorrect belief)!

4. As you say, the sausage shape in a DAW is caused by many peaks in the song having been compressed/limited but again, if your point #1 is correct then dynamic range is not affected "to a substantial manner" by these limited peaks! As loudness and therefore perceived dynamic range is largely unrelated to peak voltage levels, then the sausage shape may or may not be indicative of a small dynamic range. What do you think is the correct answer to this question: Which is louder: X. A signal with 3dB of compression, limited to -0.5dBFS or Y. An uncompressed signal which peaks at -3dBFS?

5. How's that going to work, when peak level and loudness are not directly related? If we peak normalise our most dynamic track to -0.5dBFS, what are we going to do with our less dynamic track which peaks 1dB higher, we can't have +0.5dBFS! I'm afraid none of this makes much sense, you're not considering what loudness really is, how LUFS works or the relation (or lack of it) with peak levels.

G

But dynamics, as we hear them, are affected by presence of both peaks(percussion, hand claps, etc,) and changes in the average levels(remember my 'soft verse vs loud refrain' example?). Compression and limiting tools can be used to even out both.


THIS:.....




Is what I have been trying to express verbally, albeit with disastrous results! (With eternal gratitude to Mr. Robert Katz)

Apply the following assumptions to the RH graph in this illustration:

1. The top of the vertical black line represents digital peak - '0dBfs'

2. The horizontal black line represents the average level.

3. The colored vertical bars represent the Average and Peak levels of songs on a typical album.


Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the most dynamic 'songs' are to the left, and less dynamic ones are to the right, as arranged on the graph.

THIS is what I have been stumbling to say all along: If the left-most song is the most dynamic, it is peak normalized just shy of 0dBfs on the scale in this graph. IT's average loudness becomes the average loudness for the entire album, and thus the horizontal black line is being used in this example to represent that. All the OTHER, less dynamic, songs songs are raised or lowered, as need be, so that their averge loudnesses all approximate, both by ear and meters, the loudness of that left-most track.

MY issue was confusing the argument with what to label the measurement at the horizontal black line: dBfs, LUFS, R2D2, or something else?

Suppose, in that graph, HYPOTHETICALLY, the average loudness of that most dynamic(left hand) track happens to fall around -7dBfs? How is that -7 expressed as a measurement - LUFS? dBfs? We're assuming operating in the digital realm here, so what'll it be?

I hope the use of Bob's graph here clarifies what I was trying to convey over the past 5-6 posts.

*Apologies for all my misspellings - I know in your eyes they do nothing to aid my crediblity! lol*

 

[gregorio]

But dynamics, as we hear them, are affected by presence of both peaks(percussion, hand claps, etc,) and changes in the average levels(remember my 'soft verse vs loud refrain' example?). Compression and limiting tools can be used to even out both.

I'll respond to this, when you answer my question.

"What do you think is the correct answer to this question: Which is louder: X. A signal with 3dB of compression, limited to -0.5dBFS or Y. An uncompressed signal which peaks at -3dBFS?"

G

 

[TheSonicTruth]

I'll respond to this, when you answer my question.

"What do you think is the correct answer to this question: Which is louder: X. A signal with 3dB of compression, limited to -0.5dBFS or Y. An uncompressed signal which peaks at -3dBFS?"

G

I would say X, assuming makeup gain has been applied.

 

[gregorio]

I would say X, assuming makeup gain has been applied.

Yes, make-up gain has been applied, that what is meant by 3dB of compression. Your answer though is incorrect, the correct answer is:

If X and Y were the same identical signal before X was compressed and limited to -0.5dBFS, then X would be louder. Under any other conditions though (where X was not originally identical to Y), the question is unanswerable without more information because level and loudness are not directly related. In other words, X could sound louder than Y, X and Y could be the same loudness or Y could be louder, and not just by a bit, Y could be massively louder!

G

 

[TheSonicTruth]

Yes, make-up gain has been applied, that what is meant by 3dB of compression. Your answer though is incorrect, the correct answer is:

If X and Y were the same identical signal before X was compressed and limited to -0.5dBFS, then X would be louder. Under any other conditions though (where X was not originally identical to Y), the question is unanswerable without more information because level and loudness are not directly related. In other words, X could sound louder than Y, X and Y could be the same loudness or Y could be louder, and not just by a bit, Y could be massively louder!

G

So the correct is Y?

Remember, peaks have a negligible affect on loudness.

 

[tansand]

Riding the gain is essentially manual compression. I think straight wire approaches to sound recording are basically wrong headed. You should aim to make the best sounding recording you can, not force dogmatic theories of purity on the recording process.

They're not wrongheaded if purity sounds better. Remastering = crap, imo. Listen to the original Diament mastering of Heartbreaker or Ramble On and tell me with a straight face they could be improved.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

They're not wrongheaded if purity sounds better. Remastering = ****, imo. Listen to the original Diament mastering of Heartbreaker or Ramble On and tell me with a straight face they could be improved.

Agreed! I wouldn't eff with anything Barry Diament had a role in.

This whole notion that the sound of a classic album has to be changed in order to be appreciated by younger audiences makes no sense to me.

While we're at it, the Empire State Building, 34th & 5th in Manhattan, is starting to look a little short compared to things like Freedom Tower, and Burj Khalifa over in Dubai. Let's 'remaster' it: Add a forty story addition to the top, paint the exterior stonework different colors, and mount LED ribbon lighting all over it!! That should appeal to the m'asses!

 

[Glmoneydawg]

They're not wrongheaded if purity sounds better. Remastering = ****, imo. Listen to the original Diament mastering of Heartbreaker or Ramble On and tell me with a straight face they could be improved.

I have all the original zep albums and all the remastered versions....Jimmy Page missed the boat,the remasters seem to accentuate the distortion present on1 the originals...this is a re(mastering problem) nothing else,not a digital/analogue issue.Just to be clear i love my records but this is not an anologue superiority thing.

 

[bigshot]

He also messed up the fat middle from the albums, thinning the sound out and dissolving the power; and he put mushy digital reverbs on stuff that made it sound like it was half a block away instead of in your face the way the LPs were. That slimy reverb makes the distortion seem less organic. The How The West Was Won blu-ray audio is better sounding than the albums, even though it's live.

But on the other hand, every single David Bowie album sounds a million times better on CD than it ever did on LP, even on MFSL half speed masters. The same is true of Elton John's 5.1 remixes. Those are fantastic. And the first Beatles CDs and the Beatles mono box sound great. The Stones mono box sounds better than the LPs ever did too, but the SACDs are more neutered.

It all depends.