[Beagle]

Quote:

why does Californication sound so terrible (as does oasis' whats the story morning glory, eric clapton's "layla"). I it because of poor recording techniques, poor studio recorders, was the engineer deaf? What gives?

It is because of money. Not the lack of it for recording purposes, but greed. As was pointed out above, compression is used to flatten out those awful dynamic ranges, to make the quiet acoustic guitar intro to the song the same level as the crunching distorted multi-electric guitar chorus. By doing this they believe they are catering to the lowest common denominator, the idiots who only notice or can hear music when it is loud, so the music labels insist that the engineer smash the sound so it's all at the same level : LOUD.

So consequently, albums and songs have now been turned into television commercials, you know, the way a commercial when it come in is so much louder than the program you were watching?
By "grabbing peoples attention", they figure to sell more units. To hell with sound quality. The consumer who shells out $15 for a CD gets to hear a recording on his system as it used to sound over AM radio. Wow!

What is truly funny is that I can actually identify compressed recordings right over a crappy car radio. You hear that crunched guitar, hear all the upper mids and highs get squashed after hearing a pretty clear keyboard/acoustic/vocal up to that point.

I am wondering if warning labels should be made mandatory, indicating if compression was used and also indicate the dynamic range of the recording, instead of advising us that someone may have said a bad word in the lyrics.

 

[gloco]

Beagle, thanks for the clarification and information, your reasoning makes perfect sense as to why they use compression. You answered my question! Thanks again, and i think its a shame that we get stuck with inferior recordings because they want everything to sound LOUD so it gets out attention. I always wondered why the **** the commercials that come on are so damn loud (it really irks me), but you know what i do everytime? I lower the volume down! And your right about songs on the radio, it is pretty easy to tell which ones will sound just as bad on cd, crunched guitars, meshed/squashed-like sound, its awful on my ears man!

George

 

[Beagle]

gloco: Here's another thing you can do to see how far levels have come in the past 12 years. Listen to a rock CD release (not a recent re-master) purchased from 1988-93 and set the volume at a comfortable level. Now, without adjusting the volume, put on a rock CD released during the past year or two. Notice how much louder the most recent CD is. I notice this especially when I am recording onto MD or cassette. It's pathetic. The level just stays in a straight line in one spot, there is no fluctuation whatsoever. Although one perverse benefit is that you can just set the level to just below max at the beginning and not have to worry about going into the red.

 

[gloco]

Your right again Beagle! I have been recording lately on my MD and have noticed the levels stay at one spot! I thought there was something wrong with the signal at first until i played the disc back. And your right about setting the levels with newer cds, with older cds i usually run a peak search to find the loudest point on the whole album, i dont do this any longer. Very screwed up!

George