[reginalb]

So, I have been using this a lot lately. I use streaming services for the majority of my new music, but there are a few artists who I really like, and I still buy albums occasionally. At this point, it's usually vinyl (don't come in here telling me how bad it is - I don't care, I just find playing with a turntable to be fun). I own the Norah Jones box set in vinyl, on SACD, and a couple of the albums in digital form (DSD - because the masters are just SO much better). Point being, while I love Google Play Music All Access, sometimes I still like downloaded music.
 
Anyway, I am starting a thread for a few reasons, firstly, if you aren't familiar with it, you should contribute: http://dr.loudness-war.info/
 
As I have used it more and more, I have made some pretty frustrating (some expected and some unexpected) revelations.
 

• The inconsistencies in masters are mind-boggling. Now, I would expect that most of the hi-res stores are getting their music from the same source, but you find some weirdness when you look at the data that's been collected.
  
  Michael Jackson Thriller provides an illuminating example. I currently own this, but I have the 30th Anniversary Edition, with an overall DR score of 09 (http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/110165) I uploaded that one, so I know its the score that my own copy got. The best example are the vinyls and the first pressing Japanese CD at 15. That one would be harder to find, presumably, but the DSD download from Acoustic Sounds is easily available to download (for $25) just behind those masters with an overall score of 14. I assume 14 and 15 are pretty indistinguishable, and you in fact find that one track has more DR in the DSD version. I assume more is not always better (I am not an engineer so that is just a lay person's assumption) - and I pretty much consider anything on there in the green to be just fine.
  
  So, go to Acoustic Sounds and get the DSD, but you could also go to HD Tracks and get the 24-bit/88.2KHz version which scores just behind the AS DSD, and is $7 cheaper. You could also get a 24/96 version for the same price as the HDTracks version from Acoustic Sounds. But wait, it's the lowest scoring example (tied with some others). It's actually slightly worse than my MP3 download.
  
  This is an example, but the problem is that a lot of the music that I've tried to find don't look like the Thriller search result with tons of versions analyzed, I find a lot of artists missing completely. 
   
• F Pono. I expected this, but out of curiosity I decided to compare my MP3 copy of Renee Olstead's self-titled album to one downloaded from Pono. I got my download from 7Digital I think, and that version and the Pono's show different copyright dates, so I thought it could be a different master. It isn't, it's just as miserably bad. 
  
  According to Pono's own about page:

  PonoMusic is a company on a mission. A mission that starts at the source – the artist’s master recordings – and ends with the mystery of music and the human soul. PonoMusic is dedicated to restoring that ear-body connection with a new digital music system that optimizes the listening experience end-to-end. It includes PonoMusic.com – our music store that brings you musical art in its original, highest quality form, and the PonoPlayer – a powerful, beautifully designed device that plays your favorite music perfectly. A full ecosystem for a full experience. For more details check out our Kickstarter page.​

  
  
  You didn't start at the artist's master, Pono, you ripped an existing CD and threw it on your servers. This is true of the others as well. Acoustic Sounds, HDTracks, all of these "Hi-res" stores are doing nothing to improve the situation. I had hoped once that their editions would be mastered better. They're aiming at a niche of the market, so there is reason to believe that betters masters could improve the situation. They aren't providing better masters, however. 
   
• "Mastered for iTunes" seems to mean "Let's compress it more." 
   
• Renee Olstead, Melody Gardot, Adele, Gregory Porter, and many others have beautiful voices backed by wonderful music. I love them and many similar artists. In all examples, they are victims of terrible masters. In all examples, their vinyl is where you can get the most dynamic range. Modern jazz vocalists seem to not get decent masters if their name doesn't start with Norah and end with Jones.
  
   

It's pretty disheartening. But if anyone here isn't participating, get some obscure music up there! At least others following you can be helped along in their quest to find better music files. I still love a lot of the music, so it's not the end of the world. The top listing if you search Melody Gardot is a bad score for an iTunes download. Still love it, and am listening to it as I type this out. 

 
Note, they don't ask for this, but I like those people that put the store they got the music from in square brackets at the end. I am doing that in instances where I am sure about where I got it, or can verify with order records (I don't remember all of them). 

 

[Harry Manback]

Mastered for itunes does NOT mean "Lets compress it more." Mastered for itunes insures that the highest quality digital file is used to produce the final product delivered to Apple. You can have good and bad masters that are Mastered for itunes. It only addresses the technical portion of the process, not the human decision to reduce dynamic range.

This is a good read about it:
http://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

 

[reginalb]

Mastered for itunes does NOT mean "Lets compress it more." Mastered for itunes insures that the highest quality digital file is used to produce the final product delivered to Apple. You can have good and bad masters that are Mastered for itunes. It only addresses the technical portion of the process, not the human decision to reduce dynamic range.

This is a good read about it:
http://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

 
Yes, thank you. It was a bit of a joke. And color me surprised that Apple doesn't say that in their literature. Nonetheless, I just searched the database for iTunes, and compared several "Mastered for iTunes" versions of albums, and nearly each was at or near the bottom of the list against their brethren, when you do a search more generally for that album. 
 
And yes, I know that they aren't telling mastering engineers to do this. That said, I always like to check when there is a different source of a master, and I have yet to see one labeled as "Mastered for iTunes" that was really bad.

 

[dprimary]

I don't know what the software is measuring. I have recordings that I ran through the DR software that have absolutely no compression on them what so ever score lower, then recordings that have fair amount of compression on them. I have never liked the sound of compressors (including LA-2a, 4a, 1176, DBX, Disstressor and so on) so I use it very sparingly and more as an effect.

 

[RRod]

 
I don't know what the software is measuring. I have recordings that I ran through the DR software that have absolutely no compression on them what so ever score lower, then recordings that have fair amount of compression on them. I have never liked the sound of compressors (including LA-2a, 4a, 1176, DBX, Disstressor and so on) so I use it very sparingly and more as an effect.

 
It compares the 2nd highest peak to the top 20% 3s RMS scores. So if you have soft sections but they account for only a small part of the track, you can get a lower score than expected. Same if you have a track that only has one big peak. It's a measure best used to compare masterings of the same material. Using DR to compare across tracks or albums doesn't work to well; LUFS is better for that.

 

[reginalb]

   
It compares the 2nd highest peak to the top 20% 3s RMS scores. So if you have soft sections but they account for only a small part of the track, you can get a lower score than expected. Same if you have a track that only has one big peak. It's a measure best used to compare masterings of the same material. Using DR to compare across tracks or albums doesn't work to well; LUFS is better for that.

 
That's kind of been my working assumption. I would definitely like to learn a lot more about audio engineering. But I assume some music is just going to be naturally more dynamic than other music, so the only thing useful to contrast are masters of the same recordings. 
 
As an aside, I've been thinking about picking up Mastering Audio by Bob Katz, are you familiar? If so, would you recommend it?

 

[RRod]

   
That's kind of been my working assumption. I would definitely like to learn a lot more about audio engineering. But I assume some music is just going to be naturally more dynamic than other music, so the only thing useful to contrast are masters of the same recordings. 
 
As an aside, I've been thinking about picking up Mastering Audio by Bob Katz, are you familiar? If so, would you recommend it?

 
I haven't read it, but it's a standard reference, so you probably can't go wrong.
 
And yes, some music isn't by its nature dynamic. This was the amazing thing about Death Magnetic: it reached a point where people were complaining that a metal album didn't have enough dynamic range! Note that in other genres you get the opposite. I've read many a review of classical music that complains about excessive dynamic range, forcing the reviewer to choose between enjoying the softer passages and getting evicted.

 

[reginalb]

   
I haven't read it, but it's a standard reference, so you probably can't go wrong.
 
And yes, some music isn't by its nature dynamic. This was the amazing thing about Death Magnetic: it reached a point where people were complaining that a metal album didn't have enough dynamic range! Note that in other genres you get the opposite. I've read many a review of classical music that complains about excessive dynamic range, forcing the reviewer to choose between enjoying the softer passages and getting evicted.

 
Lol, anything with horns can have that problem. There is a passage in Ella and Louis, when a trumpet comes in, and if I don't turn the volume down, it causes physical pain with my iems. That's not good for the hearing. I learned that spot very quickly, I have to listen to that album actively with my iems in, not just in the background as I work, haha. Clearly, a balance has to be found. I became a Norah Jones fan only after hearing her music properly mastered. I liked her alright before, but the Norah Jones Collection masters are just so good, hearing them definitely brought me in to the NJ camp. But some level of compression can make it a lot easier to actually hear what's going on in the quite parts. That said, some albums are just SO compressed it's insane. 
 
 
Humorously, the last time I checked, the most dynamic "album" listed was a recording of a dude cooking eggs. If you look at the albums with 0 as their score, there are some...interesting? genres of "music" out there.

 

[RRod]

  Humorously, the last time I checked, the most dynamic "album" listed was a recording of a dude cooking eggs. If you look at the albums with 0 as their score, there are some...interesting? genres of "music" out there.

 
Running through my sound effects tracks, I get a low of DR -73 (yes minus

)** and a max of DR33. I think my highest music track was around DR27, but I'd have to rescan.
 
**The track is 6s long, so I'm sure that's problematic.

 

[what?]

I recently digitally recorded some of my friends 'rare/collectable' vinyl, i believe the results are excellent because... well you have a listen and tell me what you hear, i will be happy to share my thoughts
 
 
https://we.tl/suORDtjzZc

 

[what?]

https://we.tl/r8cw8Tvbxf
 
 
 
https://we.tl/NhxSzeXIoV
 
 
 
 
https://we.tl/GeTc8RSU9d

 

[nick_charles]

  I recently digitally recorded some of my friends 'rare/collectable' vinyl, i believe the results are excellent because... well you have a listen and tell me what you hear, i will be happy to share my thoughts
 
 
https://we.tl/suORDtjzZc

 
 
A DR of 11 is decent but nothing extraordinary compared to a lot of classical stuff (even in mp3 format) but there is an appalling amount of surface noise! If this were my only exposure to the medium I would say this does not qualify as high fidelity. However I did grow up on vinyl so this is nothing new but even so this is pretty dire SNR wise  I am stunned that we put up with this for so long and that so many people still do  

 
 
There is also a lot of clipping

 
 
 
From my collection Karajan's Beethoven 9th (ADD) (1962) 3rd mvt comes in at 19 as does Mahler 3 (Inbal, 1983) and a few other. My worst is Elvis Costello (When I was cruel) which never gets above 6 and has many 4s !!
 
I note with amusement that ripping with an old Lame 3.97 gives a bigger DR (19) than an extracted wav file (18) (using FooBar 2000) but lame 3.98 gives the same DR of 18

 

[what?]

"decent but nothing extraordinary"  
 
 
when I listen A/B back to back i hear things and i ask myself what sounds different and why,
 
did anyone re-eq or mix the recordings differently from the original vinyl ?  was the engineer under pressure to get the finished product out the door quickly
 
was a faithful reproduction of the recording the band originally released on vinyl made ? 
 
was it ever released in digital and would that be a good album to have in my portable device?
 
 
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEvBm01cWhk

 

[nick_charles]

  "decent but nothing extraordinary"  
 
 
when I listen A/B back to back i hear things and i ask myself what sounds different and why,
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEvBm01cWhk

 
 
You are comparing a 24 bit LP rip with a video rip of unknown quality from some unknown digital source which is then converted to 192 AAC (or something like that) it is hardly a significant comparison and in any case you have no way of knowing how different the mastering on the two sources is for starters. The youtube file is however blissfully **much** less noisy which is immediately obvious, the LP rip is terribly noisy. 
 
FWIW The audio from the youtube clip I extracted has a DR of 8 but my downloader captured it with only 125Kbps set aside for the audio [shrug] so again not meaningful as such

 

[RRod]

Original CD release of VH comes out as DR12, fwiw:
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
 Album: Van Halen
 Artist: Van Halen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
DR    Peak    RMS    Duration    Title [codec]    
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
 DR12     -0.98 dB     -16.30 dB    3:35    01 - Runnin' With The Devil      [flac]    
 DR12     -1.59 dB     -16.79 dB    1:41    02 - Eruption      [flac]    
 DR11     -2.28 dB     -16.06 dB    2:37    03 - You Really Got Me      [flac]    
 DR13     -1.95 dB     -16.73 dB    3:49    04 - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love      [flac]    
 DR12     -1.85 dB     -16.63 dB    3:46    05 - I'm The One      [flac]    
 DR13     -1.78 dB     -17.95 dB    3:29    06 - Jamie's Cryin'      [flac]    
 DR12     -2.51 dB     -17.15 dB    3:00    07 - Atomic Punk      [flac]    
 DR12     -3.58 dB     -17.79 dB    3:41    08 - Feel Your Love Tonight      [flac]    
 DR13     -2.29 dB     -18.09 dB    3:23    09 - Little Dreamer      [flac]    
 DR13     -2.58 dB     -19.25 dB    3:20    10 - Ice Cream Man      [flac]    
 DR14     -1.18 dB     -17.77 dB    3:00    11 - On Fire      [flac]    
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
 Number of files:    11
 Official DR value:  DR12
    
 Sampling rate:          44100 Hz
 Average bitrate:          934kbs 
 Bits per sample:          16 bit
    
Dr14 T.meter 1.0.16 
==============================================================================================