[Steve999]

Just listened to Poor Boy on Apple Music on History Never Repeats. I am not A/Bing but "I never see her face at about 1:10 is absolutely killer on this mastering or reissue or whatever we want to call it. It seems even worse than it was on True Colors (which I assume was the original album the song was on).

Edit: My pleasure to help!

 

[bigshot]

Does the chirp appear in the exact same spot in the recording every time you play it, regardless of whether the volume level is loud or soft? Because if that's the case, it's probably just sloppy engineering on the album.

 

[Steve999]

Thanks for doing this Steve.

That track must have the same mastering as the Enz of an Era CD, which is good beause the Enz CD is a desirable early 80s release, long out of production and doesn't have any of the loudness wars treatment. Good music too.

And yes, I never see her face is another part that the chirp is heard.

Anyway, I agree it is a sort of sibilance (and indeed I am sensitive to sibilance) in the sense it is usually heard on the vocals where one might get some sibilance. However, to my ears anyway, it sounds very similar to the chirp when you ff/scan a CD or the sound you hear on a faulty disc, but not a series of chirps. The other thing, on some music I can hear it but not necessarily on vocals. I'll post some tracks as I come across them during listening sessions.

You're most welcome!

Same problems on Apple Music's version on The Best of Split Enz--History Never Repeats, by the way.

 

[Steve999]

Does the chirp appear in the exact same spot in the recording every time you play it, regardless of whether the volume level is loud or soft? Because if that's the case, it's probably just sloppy engineering on the album.

It's not his imagination. The extreme sibilance is highly repeatable in the exact places he described. I'd say it's extremely sloppy engineering, just off the cuff. We can let the pros weigh in if they want.

 

[gregorio]

What is it and what causes it?

From the information given it's not possible to narrow it down to one specific cause. Your description suggests a digital click/clip but if it is, there are several different potential causes all of which produce much the same sort of sound. For example it could be a physical fault with the disc the file was ripped from, which temporarily overwhelms the error correction, it could be an inter-sample peak causing clipping or it might not be something on the digital side at all, it could be a very short distortion/overload from the amp or HPs/speakers, which could sound virtually identical.

I'm just wondering if it is a glitch on the actual CD or the ADC in the studio.

It's very unlikely to be a glitch with the ADC in the studio. Firstly, ADC glitches are rare and secondly, it would be very surprising if all the musicians, engineers and producer missed the glitch (or decided not to fix it) during all the phases of recording, editing, mixing and mastering. Having said this, I have been "very surprised" in the past, not so much by missed ADC glitches but another cause of digital clicks; I recall many years ago analysing "The Streets" first big album hit with a class of students and was more than a little surprised to hear several "editing clicks", a real rookie error and to this day I don't understand how they could have been missed or not fixed. BTW, an "editing click" is one of those "different potential causes", it occurs when an audio file is cut at a non-zero crossing point and the speaker/HP driver thereby being asked to make an impossible instantaneous movement, which results in a "click". It's the same basic problem that some CD players suffered from, using FF or starting playback halfway through a waveform and effectively asking the speaker to move from zero amplitude to a significantly different amplitude instantaneously. The solution is simple, a very short (couple of milli-secs or so) inaudible "fade-in" which should always be applied when editing an audio file (except if it's edited at a zero-crossing point anyway) or in the case of a CD or any other digital audio player, implementing a "fade-in" every time Play, FF, RW or Stop is selected (which has been standard for many years).

G

 

[bigshot]

I think it might have been a corrupted file they used for distribution that no one noticed.

 

[old tech]

Does the chirp appear in the exact same spot in the recording every time you play it, regardless of whether the volume level is loud or soft? Because if that's the case, it's probably just sloppy engineering on the album.

Yep, in fact on some songs like that poor boy example it is so ingrained that I'd notice it more now if it wasn't there.

 

[bigshot]

And it's on different streaming services with the same chirp. And people have verified that they hear it too. That means it's on the master file that was distributed.

 

[old tech]

I think it might have been a corrupted file they used for distribution that no one noticed.

But it is not the only one. I noticed this on several CDs over the past two decades.

 

[bigshot]

If they're all burned into the master, the distribution arm of the labels aren't doing checksums to prevent data corruption.

 

[old tech]

From the information given it's not possible to narrow it down to one specific cause. Your description suggests a digital click/clip but if it is, there are several different potential causes all of which produce much the same sort of sound. For example it could be a physical fault with the disc the file was ripped from, which temporarily overwhelms the error correction, it could be an inter-sample peak causing clipping or it might not be something on the digital side at all, it could be a very short distortion/overload from the amp or HPs/speakers, which could sound virtually identical.

It does sound more like a digital artefact than sibilance. It is the same chirpy sound sometimes heard on digital TV broadcasts when the signal becomes choppy - but just one chirp.

It is possible that it is an editing click as you describe below and creating a waveform which distorts amp or speakers. In fact, given that what I hear and the editing clicks both sound like hitting the ffwd button on early CD players, yours probably is the logical explanation. It also explains why in the past I could sometimes hear it on the FM radio (presumably they were playing a CD).

It's very unlikely to be a glitch with the ADC in the studio. Firstly, ADC glitches are rare and secondly, it would be very surprising if all the musicians, engineers and producer missed the glitch (or decided not to fix it) during all the phases of recording, editing, mixing and mastering. Having said this, I have been "very surprised" in the past, not so much by missed ADC glitches but another cause of digital clicks; I recall many years ago analysing "The Streets" first big album hit with a class of students and was more than a little surprised to hear several "editing clicks", a real rookie error and to this day I don't understand how they could have been missed or not fixed. BTW, an "editing click" is one of those "different potential causes", it occurs when an audio file is cut at a non-zero crossing point and the speaker/HP driver thereby being asked to make an impossible instantaneous movement, which results in a "click". It's the same basic problem that some CD players suffered from, using FF or starting playback halfway through a waveform and effectively asking the speaker to move from zero amplitude to a significantly different amplitude instantaneously. The solution is simple, a very short (couple of milli-secs or so) inaudible "fade-in" which should always be applied when editing an audio file (except if it's edited at a zero-crossing point anyway) or in the case of a CD or any other digital audio player, implementing a "fade-in" every time Play, FF, RW or Stop is selected (which has been standard for many years).
G

Thanks for the interesting info.

 

[gregorio]

But it is not the only one. I noticed this on several CDs over the past two decades.

What Bigshot is suggesting would be very unusual but certainly not impossible, neither are any of the suggestions I've made. If you've noticed these clicks on sibilance, that would indicate a higher likelihood that inter-sample peaks maybe the culprit, in which case it wouldn't manifest as a click/clip until the master/CD was converted into another format (say for streaming).

G

 

[bigshot]

I have a friend who worked in the distribution department at a music licensing house. He handled the catalogs of all the artists who were represented there and sent out masters when someone licensed the music. I'll ask him if that would be a possibility and see if they do data verification passes to prevent corruption. I'll see him at Christmas.

 

[old tech]

What Bigshot is suggesting would be very unusual but certainly not impossible, neither are any of the suggestions I've made. If you've noticed these clicks on sibilance, that would indicate a higher likelihood that inter-sample peaks maybe the culprit, in which case it wouldn't manifest as a click/clip until the master/CD was converted into another format (say for streaming).

G

I've noticed it on CDs and other formats eg MP3 and streaming codecs, but the other formats are just duplicating what is heard on the CD rather than creating it after conversion. I don't believe it is sibilance though at times, for example when the chirp occurs on vocals (as is often the case) it does sound a bit like sibilance, so it could be correlated as you say.

 

[gregorio]

I've noticed it on CDs and other formats eg MP3 and streaming codecs, but the other formats are just duplicating what is heard on the CD rather than creating it after conversion. I don't believe it is sibilance though at times, for example when the chirp occurs on vocals (as is often the case) it does sound a bit like sibilance, so it could be correlated as you say.

It could still be inter-sample peaks, it depends on how big the inter-sample peaks are and how much headroom your CD player allows for them. It could also be the HPs, most headphones have a presence peak around 8-10kHz and that's also where a lot of sibilance energy also lives, so you might be overloading the cans. I've come across this myself, noticing a click in exactly the same place even with several different makes of cans but in the audio file itself, nothing. This can also quite commonly occur in the low freqs (80-200Hz) for the same reason, a lot of bass energy in the mix, plus bass boost in the particular speaker/cans and at the absolute waveform peak you've got a fraction of a second's worth of overload distortion. A manufacturing flaw or damage to a sector on the CD (which is greater than the error correction can handle) is also a distinct possibility.

G