fighting the loudness war!

[m0ofassa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brighten /img/forum/go_quote.gif I need a record player bad...

The loudness war took part on LPs a lot too, but stopped a bit sooner than CD production because LPs went out of mainstream consumption and more into the niche market we see today.
Just got home, but some stuff has cropped up. I'll give the program a bit of a fiddle during the week and then post impressions.

 

[sunseeker888]

It's much less of a problem with vinyl.... You can't limit and boost to ridiculous levels like you can with digital. The stylus would jump out of the groove...

But yeah, many 45's and LPs from yesteryear pushed the envelope a bit too much for my tastes.

Freakin' loudness war has to stop. It's to a point where I don't listen to FM radio, watch music videos, or listen to any new music at all. Just awful. And the better your gear gets, the worse it sounds!

The RIAA is in trouble, but only because of their greed.

 

[m0ofassa]

impressions at a glance (all the time i have atm).
Doesnt support flac. Supports wav, aiff, mp3 etc.
at a glance options seem a bit limited. Currently decoding audio with a multiband declipper. Takes a fairly long amount of time (10 minutes or so remaining on a fairly decent rig for a 6 minute song). Will edit post to comment on sound quickly and will look further into the software.
It looks nice, but atm it doesnt seem promising.
edit: Ran some stuff through the declipper as shown in the link provided by OP, sonic difference was minimal (almost inaudible). As a note, I was doing this with tracks without audible clipping, for the purpose of expanding dynamic range. The software appears to not be made for this - only as a parametic EQ program that is so-so imo. So, giving up on that I tried some of the other stuff with mixed results, none of which were promising. Tried the equaliser - its 4band with the option of high and low pass rolloffs. resulting sound is slightly better, but only because I know what I am doing (to an extent). There is a smoothing of the EQ graph and as far as I can see at the moment you cannot add additional bands.
Would not recomend this software.
I'll look around for some freeware easy to use software for people.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

I picked up a CD at the library today just because I was curious how it would sound. It was R.E.M. "And I Feel Fine...: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987". It's a compilation, remastered and released in 2006.

They killed it. It is compressed and boosted. They did clean up the audio, but the compression and boost makes it unlistenable to me on headphones. The ears can't take that abuse for more than a few songs. The compressed dynamics makes the music less interesting. Sigh. Fortunately I have the old R.E.M. CDs.

</rant>

 

[leeperry]

Quote:

Originally Posted by m0ofassa /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ran some stuff through the declipper as shown in the link provided by OP, sonic difference was minimal (almost inaudible).

I tried it in realtime in 32float in ffdshow, and I wasn't impressed either.

 

[leeperry]

a friend of mine from HCFR has told me that he's got great results w/ Ozone4...I'll try that