Rant: Digital Remastering [PICS]
Jan 1, 2008 at 5:17 PM Post #91 of 104
Quote:

Originally Posted by FrederikS|TPU /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Vinyl is great, but complicated. The best vinyl I have ever heard is an old Ortofon direct cut vinyl.

OT: Where did you get your Steely Dan - Aja MFSL? Big Steely Dan fan, but never been able to find and MFSL in the stores. Would love to hear how it compares to the original.




eBay. There's like 15 copies on right now..
 
Jan 5, 2008 at 5:37 PM Post #92 of 104
You can't tell the whole story by looking at waveforms with new mixes. Some of these hacks are compressing some of the tracks of a multitrack.

The new Zeppelin TSRTS has the vocal and keys compressed to nothing leaving the drums and guitar with some range. It sounds real bad.
 
Jan 5, 2008 at 6:48 PM Post #93 of 104
Quote:

Originally Posted by regal /img/forum/go_quote.gif
You can't tell the whole story by looking at waveforms with new mixes. Some of these hacks are compressing some of the tracks of a multitrack.

The new Zeppelin TSRTS has the vocal and keys compressed to nothing leaving the drums and guitar with some range. It sounds real bad.




I know! And the waveforms certainly tell that story.. so I'm not sure what exactly you mean here..

You're right, these waveforms don't mean ALL that much, but it can give you a good idea on how well the CD is recorded even before listening to it.



For example, this waveform clearly indicates how bad this song sounds.



I have this Bob Marley song, and it sounds just as bad as the waveforms look.






-Nick
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Jan 5, 2008 at 7:04 PM Post #94 of 104
Quote:

Originally Posted by nick20 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I know! And the waveforms certainly tell that story.. so I'm not sure what exactly you mean here..


He's saying that the engineer could compress some of the instruments but not others before the final mixdown, making the final waveform look good but still having a mostly compressed sound.
 
Jan 21, 2008 at 12:21 PM Post #95 of 104
Anyone know what black sabbath issues I should get? I heard the castle remasters are the best. True? Could someone give me the waveform of a castle remastered song?

Anyways, this one's a doosie.

The first one is the 2001 remaster while the 2nd is the 1995 first issue





 
Jan 21, 2008 at 1:23 PM Post #96 of 104
I understand that anxiety about this amongst people who listen on good equipment in quiet environments, but if you've ever tried to get decent volume on a car stereo or iPod from a recording with full dynamic range, you'll know why most modern music is mastered so hot. Getting the punch from the drums isn't such a benefit if you've just cranked the volume up to 11 to try to hear above environmental noise!

Personally, I am worried by the loudness war, but the reason for my worry is that I am more likely to think that a hot recording sounds great than a cool recording ... especially on rock music. With Jazz or Classical (especially chamber music) there's less incentive for the producers to master hot: I guess that I have a lot of properly mastered recordings in these genres. (Case in point would probably be the consciously uncompressed recordings on TelArc conducted by Robert Shaw, which have so much dynamic range that I can barely listen to them.
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)

Yet the boost in volume that came with the Loudness War still sounded good to me, and many of my CDs must be hideously brickwalled. There's a method in all this sonic madness. (And yes, I know that hot recordings are irritating to the ear because of all those squared waves ... it turns out that people in general either don't notice or don't care.)

[Edit] Another thing that struck me about the Loudness War video on YouTube was that because the peak of the drums was cut off, the ratio of reverb to attack on the drums was dramatically different, given the impression of a really clunky production job. I wonder how much of the music that we hear today that has absurd reverb on it and a very artificial "boom" actually has that because of hot mastering rather than because it was performed by a bunch of chimps with no musical taste.
 
Jan 21, 2008 at 1:50 PM Post #97 of 104
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sordel /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I understand that anxiety about this amongst people who listen on good equipment in quiet environments, but if you've ever tried to get decent volume on a car stereo or iPod from a recording with full dynamic range, you'll know why most modern music is mastered so hot. Getting the punch from the drums isn't such a benefit if you've just cranked the volume up to 11 to try to hear above environmental noise!


You have a very valid point. Music is mastered hot because it sounds good on cheap equipment--better than music with dynamic range, which can sound "farty" on a poor system (if you'll pardon my slang term for overexcursion
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). Luckily, inexpensive equipment is improving to the point that people are starting to take notice because they can hear clipping and experience listening fatigue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sordel
Another thing that struck me about the Loudness War video on YouTube was that because the peak of the drums was cut off, the ratio of reverb to attack on the drums was dramatically different, given the impression of a really clunky production job. I wonder how much of the music that we hear today that has absurd reverb on it and a very artificial "boom" actually has that because of hot mastering rather than because it was performed by a bunch of chimps with no musical taste.


Compression tends to bring out low-level sounds, which in the case of the relatively bare track in the video, brought out the reverb tail of the gated snare. It's true that compression and limiting can--and often does--ruin the balance of the mix. The mastering engineer should be the person who applies the most compression to an overall mix, so it's his or her job to compensate by tweaking it so that the music still sounds good compressed.
 
Mar 1, 2008 at 8:12 PM Post #100 of 104
Does anyone out there know if the Bob James remasters or the Supertramp remasters are better or worse than the original CD releases of same. I know that those two are miles apart in style, but I like them both a lot and want to get CD's of some of their stuff but don't know if I should try to get remasters or go on eBay and pick up originals. I own thw Warners version of Bob James and Earl Klughs' "One on One" on CD, and it sounds a bit muted to me as opposed to when it came out, and I wonder if the Koch remaster would be brighter.
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Mar 1, 2008 at 10:25 PM Post #101 of 104
Holy carp Lois at the Black Sabbath graph. After listening to some MFSL LP's I found used I was very impressed by not just the dynamics but also the subtle microdynamics.
 
Mar 2, 2008 at 3:08 PM Post #102 of 104
I only just became a MFSL convert myself very recently. The Yes - Fragile release is an UNBELIEVABLE improvement. I've NEVER heard the album sound this good. Well worth the money for any would-be audiophile with an appreciation for Yes. Absolutely stunning!
 
Apr 13, 2016 at 9:13 AM Post #103 of 104
Actually it's arguable that the MFSL Steely Dan waveform is not ideal either as it leaves some dynamic range on the table by being "too quiet". Those max peaks come nowhere near the max of what they might. You can bring up the maximum peak levels almost to the absolute maximum before clipping and not freak out most modern DACs, but even you took it down to say 95% of max you'd get closer to full dynamic range.


To be clear, I'm not talking about adding any compression, just making sure you use all the available dynamic range on the CD. That MFSL is fairly old, when the Sony spec said not to raise levels above a certain point so you don't flip out early DACs. Steve Hoffman figured out early on that warning was bunk; if you look at many of his mid-80s masterings, they peak out in the high 90s or even 100%.



Actually, there is a disadvantage to peak-normalization(applying gain so that all songs
on an album peak at 0dB full scale(or .5dB below that): Humans do not judge
loudness by peak levels; they judge it by average levels(close to but not exactly
RMS). So with tracks peak-normalized on the CD, some tracks will sound louder than
others, requiring frequent volume adjustment during a whole album listening .
Additionally, peak normalizing to the least dynamic track, you would need to
peak-limit a more dynamic track, throwing away all those peaks & dynamic range,
just to make it sound as loud as the more compressed one.

When mastering, I would adjust the track levels on the album by how loud
they sounded to me, not by how high they peak. This means some less dynamic
songs may peak highest at -6dB FS, yet *sound as loud* as other, more dynamic
tracks on the album which peak closer to full-scale. This ensures less need for
the consumer to adjust their volume after every other song, especially while
concentrating on a task such as driving.

Look up Bob Katz's "K metering" system for the plug-in that assists with mastering
levels set by loudness and not by peak.
 
Apr 13, 2016 at 11:51 AM Post #104 of 104
Yeah I had that version and got rid of it after listening a few times.
 
The original CD sounds anemic by comparison to the remaster and the original LP.  I ended up finding the DCC gold disc for $25 on Amazon used in excellent condition.  Keep an eye out for that one.  Otherwise I heard the Japanese hybrid SACD was good too.
 
Just noticed the last post here was from 2008.  :-/
 

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