[john_jcb]

Well now I need to go get it and see for myself. I hope it is an eqquipment problem and not the CD.

 

[markl]

It's worth it John. I'm really re-discovering the Doors through these discs. I was fairly into them in my teen years (I remeber reading that famous biography of Morrison), but I stopped listening after a while, haven't owned any Doors for well over a decade now. But damn, these are some amazing songs smacking me between the eyes all over again.

 

[bundee1]

Markl thats exactly where most of the distortion is on all the songs. It even appears on my Sennheiser px100's through my Panasonic sl-sx500. Markl see for yourself. download EAC and process a few songs. You can see the squared off peaks yourself. Its definitely audible on my speaker rig. Try playing it on your speaker rig and let us know what you hear. Either way, if its on the master tapes or on the remastering, its there and for me it takes away from the enjoyment. Ill stick to listening through my headphones with this one, its not as annoying that way. Hopefully there will be an SACD in the next couple of years.

 

[Davey]

I don't have a copy of the latest Legacy collection that you guys are discussing but I do have a copy of the 1999 remaster of LA Woman done by Bruce Botnick and Bernie Grundman at Grundman Mastering which is likely the same 24/96 digital transfer they used for this release, but I don't know that for sure. Anyway, as I instructed bundee1 to do, below is a screen capure of Love Her Madly and you can clearly see much clipping. This was just taken at random since I figured this song would surely be on the Legacy collection. Of course you can't conclude from this that it doesn't sound good, only that they didn't take as much care setting levels as they should have (IMO ).

 

[markl]

Davey,
I don't know what is actually being measured this way? Is it a faithful reproduction of a master tape that clipped, ergo the CD master clips verbatim in the same place? Is this apparent clipping an artifact of something occuring somewhere in the signal path of the measuring device other than the CD?

How do we know those noises (that I CAN hear) aren't artifacts of some element of the original recording chain? Aren't we rushing to judgement that it's the remaster at fault? Lots of older rock and pop recordings of the period have plenty of noise on them, I think that these tiny static-y crackles stand out here only because the rest of the signal sounds so clear and clean. I still only hear it on songs from the first album, anyway.

 

[john_jcb]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl It's worth it John. I'm really re-discovering the Doors through these discs. I was fairly into them in my teen years (I remeber reading that famous biography of Morrison), but I stopped listening after a while, haven't owned any Doors for well over a decade now. But damn, these are some amazing songs smacking me between the eyes all over again.

One of the very few good things about being older is that I had the opportunity to see the Doors live. I may wander over to the store this evening and pick it up.

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl Davey, I don't know what is actually being measured this way? Is it a faithful reproduction of a master tape that clipped, ergo the CD master clips verbatim in the same place? Is this apparent clipping an artifact of something occuring somewhere in the signal path of the measuring device other than the CD?

Hey Mark, what I posted is just a graphical display of the bits on the CD. Nothing is being measured, just displayed. This isn't really anything unusual and most of the engineers know they're doing it. They figure if it's clipping, say less than 1% of the time, who cares? It's not gonna be the master tape at fault as that would be a saturation condition long before the electronics clipped which wouldn't look so squared off. Sure, you could get mike preamps or guitar amps or all kinds of electronic gain devices being clipped and record that signal to tape, but you can't really get a signal like that digitized from an analog source because the required low pass filtering would change the shape. Some of those peaks are only a few samples wide. It's just a case of not having enough headroom. Running out of bits. That's why it occurs on the signal peaks and nowhere else. You can easly do the exact same thing yourself with most editing and/or normalizing software that doesn't employ defeatable compression.

I don't know how this could be considered rushing to judgement. It happens and in this case the bits can't really lie. Everybody in the industry knows it happens. I know you have said in the past that all remasters you've heard sound better than their previous version and that's fine with me. I completely disagree and find many of them just too compressed and punchy for my tastes, preferring the much wider dynamic range of the earlier masterings. Not always of course, but sometimes. But like I said in the previous post, I don't know if this is the same master as used on your CD. Is the Legacy a HDCD like this? I personally wasn't very impressed by this LA Woman CD but I honestly never cared that much for the album compared to the first couple so maybe I'm being too harsh on the sound. It looks like the average level for this song is set to about the 78% level which is pretty high but not nearly as bad as many modern recordings where it is up all the way to 90%. Remember that last At The Drive-In record? I think I've seen you mention that you like it and so do I but yikes, the compression was horrendous, even though you could still tell that the base recording was pretty good! A shame they felt the need to make it so loud. The problem is that the original vinyl for most of these vintage late 60s Doors albums sounds so damn good. Maybe if I was comparing the CD to an 80s release CD it would sound much better Admittedly it does sound pretty good, but by this time Morrisson was getting kind of hard to take with his silly ramblings, at least or me

Sorry for the size of that screen capture. I probably should have made it smaller but didn't realize how wide it was when I posted.

 

[Calanctus]

Davey, that's interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it. It's really too bad about how modern pop recordings are engineered. Maybe someone should start a pressure campaign to have it changed. If the information on clipping was widely available and easy to understand (e.g. if there was a way of easily measuring how much clipping occurred in any one song, and then making this info available on a website) then maybe some users would start to take notice.....


....naaaah!

Probably would not work.

 

[markl]

Quote:

I know you have said in the past that all remasters you've heard sound better than their previous version and that's fine with me. I completely disagree and find many of them just too compressed and punchy for my tastes, preferring the much wider dynamic range of the earlier masterings.

Just to clarify, I was comparing modern (last 4-5 years) re-masters to older original issues from the 80s/early 90s. These are almost always better to my ears. OTOH, sometimes, on newer greatest hits collections I have, material from the last 4-5 years does not sound as good as on the actual original issue CDs, so no it's not my experience that a 2003 re-master of stuff originally released in 2000 will automatically always sound better.

I have since found a modern re-master that is almost completely unacceptable to me (and I don't think it's my equipment) which is the recent Bjork Greatest hits. That thing is completely messed up, especially track one. Now *that's* clipping! Yuck!
Quote:

I completely disagree and find many of them just too compressed and punchy for my tastes, preferring the much wider dynamic range of the earlier masterings.

Well, the other extreme is the hazy, washed out, indistinct, collapsed soundstage, zero instrument separation, soupy sound that you get on a lot of the early CDs. For me, I can't listen to that, it doesn't involve me, it's too distant, indistinct and faded.
Quote:

Remember that last At The Drive-In record? I think I've seen you mention that you like it and so do I but yikes, the compression was horrendous, even though you could still tell that the base recording was pretty good! A shame they felt the need to make it so loud.

I can see where you're coming from Davey, but I think the whole point of that album is to feel almost like you've been assaulted and pulverized, this is hard-charging, angry rock 'n roll, man!

It's supposed to be punchy! You don't sit back on the divan, sipping your tea and eating your crumpets, and saying, "what a simply ravishing bassline, bravo"!

It's not supposed to be appreciated that way I don't think.

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!