[bundee1]

If youve read my post over in the cable, speaker asylum about the Doors Legacy cd causing distortion on my system, you know how Ive been agonizing over it for 3 days. Ive seen guys here record songs on to their hard drive and analyse the peaks to see if they are clipping digitally. We've found out about the D.S.O.T.M cd layer clipping, now I want to see if anyone who owns the new Doors Legacy cd would volunteer their help in analyzing this cd. The worst offender is the solo in "Light My Fire".
Can anyone run this song through and help me regain my sanity?
Other cds that have driven me to the edge are:

James Brown Live at the Apollo vol II (special edition digital remaster)- most of the cd

Fleetwood MAc -The Very Best Of 2 cd digital remaster
"Dreams"

Thanks for all your help!!!!

 

[Davey]

Don't you have a CD-ROM in your computer? If you dothen download a copy of the EAC freeware and use it to analyze a .wav file of the song you're curious about. It's really quite simple.

Once you've copied the selected track to your hard drive then just go to the Tools menu and select Process WAV, select the file and it will load and you'll have a grapical display of the song. Then pull down the Process File menu and select Select Peak Range and you should see a marker jump to someplace in the song. Go down to the zoom buttons in the lower left part of your screen and hit ZOOM RANGE and it should expand fully at the peak. If the peak is flat then you know it's clipped.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

 

[MusicLover]

Davey, is there a way to fix it, like a way to alter the .wav file? Is there a specific program needed?

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally posted by MusicLover Davey, is there a way to fix it, like a way to alter the .wav file? Is there a specific program needed?

If it's really clipped then there's not any way to "fix" it that I know of. Quite a few CDs are pushed to the point of clipping though, especially nowadays when louder is thought to be better. But the problem has surprisingly been with us since the early days, although it didn't really get to be much of a problem until maybe the mid 90s when the volume wars started to heat up. Sometimes they just can't compress it enough or set the controls wrong or just plain don't know what they're doing and so they drive it into clipping in the attempt to make it as loud as possible. There might be some software that could recognize and smooth out that area but I'm not that much of an expert. Maybe a search would turn up something but I don't think it would be a "standard" tool.

 

[bundee1]

Yeah I did it. I checked out the Doors Legacy and found a ton of clipping on "Light My Fire" . Also Fleetwood Mac's The Very Best Of CD. Dreams clipped like crazy. Those 2 motherf*&%in' cds drove me nuts and had me worrying about system defects and deficiencies. Damn them both to hell!!!!

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl Maybe with the new formats we'll have the best of both worlds-- ability to play huge dynamic peaks without having to pump up the recording!

Well, as someone in this thread mentioned, CD already has the ability to play huge dynamic peaks, it's just not used anymore for pop records. I don't know if you're a fan of PJ Harvey or Pavement, but as recently as the early 90s you could still buy albums like Dry and Slanted and Enchanted that were frustratingly quiet recordings compared to many other contemporary releases. And these were both pretty noisy rock recordings. A lot of people listen to them and say why aren't they mastered properly at a louder level? Well, the problem is that they still have peaks that hit the maximum CD level so they are mastered at the max volume they can be without using more compresssion and they sound great because of it. Maybe not to everybody that has gotten used to the modern punchy, bass heavy and splashy sound of heavy compression, but to those of us that still long for the days when even noisy rock recordings had a little bit of dynamic range! I wonder if they used compression on the recent remaster of Slanted and Enchanted to make it louder? I haven't heard any tracks yet to compare. I was pretty disappointed when I heard some of the recent David Bowie remasters, even in comparison to the problematic previous remasters from Ryko. The new ones just use too much compression which limits bass extension and turns the cymbals into slashes of white noise with no air. Yech! Fortunately I was able to try before buy

Probably the biggest advantage to pop music released in the new formats, beyond the obvious sound advantage of the seamlessness only possible with high resolution, is that the discs aren't required to be as loud as all the other CDs since they aren't really targeted for the same market, and so can be mastered in a way that preserves the dynamics of the recording. Maybe .... do you like Death Cab For Cutie? Their much anticipated new album is supposed to be released in a limited edition hybrid stereo SACD in October. That's pretty interesting news, I think. Much more interesting to me than just seeing another round of classic rock remasters available in hi rez and I think, ultimately, much better for the future of SACD too.

 

[john_jcb]

Thanks for the heads up, a couple of Cd's that will not be added to my collection. Sorry that you had to be the one to find it.

 

[elrod-tom]

I just noticed this on the new Doors CD last night...it was really bugging me. I thought my headphones had developed problems. It's like I had gone back to vinyl and found it without the analog benefits...just the pops and crackles. <<GRR>>

 

[markl]

Very strange. The Legacy discs sound absolutley fabulous out of my rig, in fact I'd say this is the best re-master I've owned. I'll listen again and see if my system is clipping at all.

Mark

 

[robert]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl Very strange. The Legacy discs sound absolutley fabulous out of my rig, in fact I'd say this is the best re-master I've owned. I'll listen again and see if my system is clipping at all. Mark

same experience. i) yamaha drive, adcom dac, headroom Home, grado 325/ety4 ii) d25s/senn 100x

hard to see how digital clipping could happen with pop music. red book is either 104 or 106 db dynamic range (or thereabouts). pop music (even the Doors), doesn't use anything like that. on the other hand, the analog tape masters could have saturated on peaks, which would be audible, and not fixable (short of some super new technology).

clipping usually happens in the user amplifier

edit: http://rvcc2.raritanval.edu/ktek9053/cdpage/

robert

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally posted by robert hard to see how digital clipping could happen with pop music. red book is either 104 or 106 db dynamic range (or thereabouts). pop music (even the Doors), doesn't use anything like that.

The thing is that clipping has nothing to do with a large dynamic range in this case (actually just the opposite) and everything to do with the level that the music is mastered at. Nowadays almost all pop music is hugely compressed to limit the dynamic range of the music to just a few dB so that the average level can then be pushed up very close to the upper limit so that it sounds LOUD. Almost all of the dynamic range of the music, be it old analog recordings like the Doors or a brand new Pro-tools recording, is compressed away when CDs are mastered now. It's sad, but in most of the recent remasters you can hear aspects that sound better, but you also have the congested sound and the tubby, compressed bass and all the other artifacts of heavy compression (like clipping when the compression isn't set high enough for the chosen mastering level). Old pop/rock CD masters often have way, way more dynamic range than their modern counterparts and/or remasters and are hence much quieter (on average), but many listeners perceive that as something wrong. But if you look at most of those old masters with a sound editor you can see that the music has peaks extending all the way to maximum level just like it should so they were actually mastered as loud as they could be without using additional compression. But today the engineers are told that the final product must have an average level close to the maximum limit of the CD and hence they are forced to use huge amounts of compression in many cases to get the average level up to what the record label or producer wants. And sometimes they aren't careful enough and wind up with digital clipping. And sometimes they just don't really care as long as it sounds loud.

 

[john_jcb]

Well now I am in a quandry. I guess I will wait a bit and see how this sorts out. I would enjoy the Doors CD.

 

[bundee1]

Its a shame really because both cds sound great when theyre not clipping. The sound is very clean and punchy. But when you start grooving and the music builds up to a peak, watch out.

 

[markl]

The Legacy discs were re-mastered by Bruce Botnick, the original engineer on all the sessions. I trust that he knows the recordings best (since he made them) and the Legacy discs represent his attempt to capture the sound that he started with. My ears tell me he succeeded, for me they sound great. However, I'm not a Doors completist so I can't tell you how the Legacy discs compare to other CD masterings or original vinyl.

I think there's also an issue in telling the difference between "this CD is clipping", "this recording has clipping in it", and "this CD is making my equipment clip". I'll listen again to Disc One this afternoon and see if I can discern any issues on my rig.

Mark

 

[markl]

OK, I'm listening to "Backdoor man" right now. I don't hear what I would call "clipping", but I DO hear some *very* low-level micro-distortion in the right channel only, especially when Manzerek's keyboard is at its most aggressive and the guitar are playing in tandem. It's like a tiny little crackling sound, is that what you are referring to?

I would chalk this up to the master tape, amazing as these recordings sound today, this is a rock recording with circa '67 technology here and aging tapes now played back many times for many masterings, it's just not going to sound 100% *perfect*. I did notice this on my first listen, but even at that time, this sounds like an artifact of the master tapes to me. It only affects some parts of songs the first album, it goes away later.