[castleofargh]

while reading "K-weighting" I thought about bob katz and his K system for gain. because ... brain. so when I saw his picture in your link, it became definitive proof of my psychic powers. or funny luck. but one of those for sure! ^_^
 
and thanks for the detailed explanation, I indeed just flew over the general idea in my post and it never hurts to know more.

 

[drtechno]

So the sampling rate/bit-depth war has been raging and most would agree that 16/44.1 is sufficient for human hearing.

"High-resolution" music websites tend to distribute different masters of songs.

Vinyl recordings tend to be different masters of songs.

SACDs often contain different masters of songs.



Why can't we just have good 16/44.1 masters all around? I can convert my 24/96 library to 16/44.1 and it sounds exactly the same but when I rip my CDs the master is really terrible a lot of the time. Why don't mastering engineers just distribute their better-mastered music on the CD platform?

I'm just really dumbfounded by the whole concept.

well a few years ago the record companies and a few high end mastering engineers forced a "level standard" they mastered and remastered tracks. What they are doing is bringing out the signal to analogue and clipping the signal ever so slightly with a modified converter. If you look you will see that the "digital" signal doesn't conform to a physical waveform any more. The internal's rms value is greater than its signal peak. now when this bastardized signal hits a dac it rebuilds it as best it can and of course the signal is 3 db higher than a linear audio signal that was recorded up to 0dbfs.

 

[drtechno]

   
'Crest factors have fallen, and RMS values have risen, no doubt...'
Please explain how RMS values can rise, but loudness hasn't changed much in the last 20-30 years.
 

 
 
please look at my other post.
 
I decided to air the music industry's dirty laundry

 

[pinnahertz]

  well a few years ago the record companies and a few high end mastering engineers forced a "level standard" they mastered and remastered tracks. What they are doing is bringing out the signal to analogue and clipping the signal ever so slightly with a modified converter. If you look you will see that the "digital" signal doesn't conform to a physical waveform any more. The internal's rms value is greater than its signal peak. now when this bastardized signal hits a dac it rebuilds it as best it can and of course the signal is 3 db higher than a linear audio signal that was recorded up to 0dbfs.

Excuse me, but the above makes no sense.  
 
There's no published or adhered to "level standard" other than to push it as loud as you can to "win" the "loudness war", and stay at 0dBFS or below.  And for certain genres and projects, even that is not done.  
 
There's no need to clip in the analog domain, and quite a few good reasons not to.  Digital domain clipping would be far more controlled.  I recognize than individual projects may be handled differently because of opinions and local mythology.   There are many types and degrees of clipping with results ranging from inaudible to highly destructive. 
 
You cannot have an RMS value greater than a peak value in any waveform.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_mean_square

 

[gregorio]

 
I decided to air the music industry's dirty laundry

 
Before airing anyone's dirty laundry, you would be wise to find out what "dirty" and "laundry" actually mean. Otherwise you'll just come across as someone with no idea what they're talking about and just making stuff up to fulfil some agenda!!
 
G

 

[drtechno]

  Excuse me, but the above makes no sense.  
 
There's no published or adhered to "level standard" other than to push it as loud as you can to "win" the "loudness war", and stay at 0dBFS or below.  And for certain genres and projects, even that is not done.  
 
There's no need to clip in the analog domain, and quite a few good reasons not to.  Digital domain clipping would be far more controlled.  I recognize than individual projects may be handled differently because of opinions and local mythology.   There are many types and degrees of clipping with results ranging from inaudible to highly destructive. 
 
You cannot have an RMS value greater than a peak value in any waveform.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_mean_square

you see there was a few master engineers and record labels got together and remastered cd that way. they called it a form of clean limiting.
of course there was modifications to the converter so the clipping isn't audible.
 
If you actually measured the modern mastered cd's digital waveform (by exporting it into a program) the rms value is more than it should be.
 
the only way you can get the rms value of the signal to be greater cleanly is to clip the inputs of an ADC. because its at the threshold of the digital domain.
 
If they didn't do that it would sound weak like a local band recording.
 
yes there are hard limiter plug-ins but those are never used because they color. But you'll hear one of the semi-pros talk about them at times on a different forum.

 

[drtechno]

   
Before airing anyone's dirty laundry, you would be wise to find out what "dirty" and "laundry" actually mean. Otherwise you'll just come across as someone with no idea what they're talking about and just making stuff up to fulfil some agenda!!
 
G

Can you actually give me a proper rebuttal? Maybe you need to take a break from this site and come back when you can objectively post something other than snide remarks.
 
BTW I'm not making this up.
 
because I watched one of them do it in 2003.
 
and the non-disclosure agreement I signed is over.

 

[pinnahertz]

  Can you actually give me a proper rebuttal? Maybe you need to take a break from this site and come back when you can objectively post something other than snide remarks.
 
BTW I'm not making this up.
 
because I watched one of them do it in 2003.
 
and the non-disclosure agreement I signed is over.

Member for 1 day, 10 posts, and already asking an 8-year member with over 1400 posts to take a break from the forum.  Nice form.
 
"BTW I'm not making this up. and the non-disclosure agreement I signed is over."
 
Should be easy to prove then...right?

 

[gregorio]

  [1] Maybe you need to take a break from this site and come back when you can objectively post something other than snide remarks.
 
[2] BTW I'm not making this up.

 
1. Hang on, you post a subjective snide remark and then complain that someone else is posting a snide remark, there's a word for that!
 
2. Of course you are! You cannot modify an ADC/DAC to create a mix/master file which exceeds 0dBFS and you cannot have a sine wave/s with a higher RMS value than peak value. If you're going to make outrageous subjective claims which contradict the actual science, you're going to need a great deal more to support your argument than just hypocrisy!
 
G

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Surely he means exceeding the RMS/peak ratio of a sine wave or some other reference natural signal, that's the only interpretation that halfway makes sense.

Well, except for the part where there are literally thousands of digital plugins that let you do the same thing better.

I suppose the people he worked with told him to compress that way (with an analog loop to a rackmount limiter) because they don't know any better / because analog is "magic". The fact that HE also doesn't know any better than the people telling him what to do is well... :rolleyes:

 

[castleofargh]

 

   
Before airing anyone's dirty laundry, you would be wise to find out what "dirty" and "laundry" actually mean. Otherwise you'll just come across as someone with no idea what they're talking about and just making stuff up to fulfil some agenda!!
 
G

Can you actually give me a proper rebuttal? Maybe you need to take a break from this site and come back when you can objectively post something other than snide remarks.
 
BTW I'm not making this up.
 
because I watched one of them do it in 2003.
 
and the non-disclosure agreement I signed is over.

greg is a little too passionate for headfi's carebear atmosphere, and someday I'm afraid it will indeed cost him. now just by the way you talk, I'd bet you're an old member with a new account. those damn gut feelings... no objective proof, but they can feel so reliable sometimes ^_^.
 
back on topic, we all know of some famous mastering engineers with really crappy habits, but that doesn't make it a standard. I've seen bass clipping being abused to push the loudness war even further, at some point it was using the brain to rebuild the rest of the tone(it's surprisingly effective). of course that works up to a point and only with low freqs, and soon enough that too was abused to the point that it's now like another typical sound for some rap albums. but those stuff are malpractice not standards IMO. no professional should ever be ok with clipping an album, and if too many may have disregarded intersampling peaks when downsampling to CD or making a mp3 version, I'd still call that incompetence and not a standard.

 

[VNandor]

  no professional should ever be ok with clipping an album, and if too many may have disregarded intersampling peaks when downsampling to CD or making a mp3 version, I'd still call that incompetence and not a standard.

One doesn't exclude the other, unfortunately. You can call it both incompetence AND a standard.

 

[castleofargh]

a standard to measure incompetence? ^_^

 

[drtechno]

 
greg is a little too passionate for headfi's carebear atmosphere, and someday I'm afraid it will indeed cost him. now just by the way you talk, I'd bet you're an old member with a new account. those damn gut feelings... no objective proof, but they can feel so reliable sometimes ^_^.
 
back on topic, we all know of some famous mastering engineers with really crappy habits, but that doesn't make it a standard. I've seen bass clipping being abused to push the loudness war even further, at some point it was using the brain to rebuild the rest of the tone(it's surprisingly effective). of course that works up to a point and only with low freqs, and soon enough that too was abused to the point that it's now like another typical sound for some rap albums. but those stuff are malpractice not standards IMO. no professional should ever be ok with clipping an album, and if too many may have disregarded intersampling peaks when downsampling to CD or making a mp3 version, I'd still call that incompetence and not a standard.

I never talked to greg before, but his comment reminds me of another guy online on a different forum that does more of his British sarcasm than he did contributing to the forum.
 
I have ways to respond to people like that virtuously.
 
I agree, its not mastering, and because of this, I spoke out and got fired. My old boss got mad at me when I told him they are mutilating the cd, not mastering it.
 
Oh well, them keeping me quiet about it is over. so I decided to air it.
 
They actually ruined the cd format for the consumer. 
Plus ruining the depth of the mixes of my Audio engineering mentors that I interned for them.
they clip it just enough so that the dac will rebuilds it.
It was the only way they can get a dac to produce a signal hotter than it came in.
so if anyone makes a cd they have to either break the rules or it won't be a loud recording.
I think I mentioned they modified an ADC to do this wile capturing.
 
I posted this info on a recording forum and a mastering guy that trolls that site pm me and said: Hey, they already revealed it to the students. (that is fine and dandy, but not to any one else)
of course he replied differently on the post: " Yes it was revealed a long time ago "

 

[pinnahertz]

  you see there was a few master engineers and record labels got together and remastered cd that way. they called it a form of clean limiting.
of course there was modifications to the converter so the clipping isn't audible.
 
If you actually measured the modern mastered cd's digital waveform (by exporting it into a program) the rms value is more than it should be.
 
the only way you can get the rms value of the signal to be greater cleanly is to clip the inputs of an ADC. because its at the threshold of the digital domain.
 
If they didn't do that it would sound weak like a local band recording.
 
yes there are hard limiter plug-ins but those are never used because they color. But you'll hear one of the semi-pros talk about them at times on a different forum.

"you see there was a few master engineers and record labels got together and remastered cd that way."
 
Post specifics, examples, names.  Otherwise it's hearsay.
 
"they called it a form of clean limiting.  of course there was modifications to the converter so the clipping isn't audible."
 
Sounds very much like marketing terminology, or that assigned to a process that is not understood.  Clipping is never clean, though under some conditions can be inaudible.  Those would be very short duration clips only moderately above the clipping threshold.  However, "modifying" the inputs of an ADC would be a very hack way to do it.  If the results were even acceptable it would be a total accident.  
 
"yes there are hard limiter plug-ins but those are never used because they color."
 
Depends on what you mean by "hard limiter", then there's the correct application.  If abused, anything can color.  There are also "soft-clipper" plugins.  You can clearly see in waveforms of modern music that both are used with wild abandon, to excess, and way beyond the point of inaudibility.  
 
"But you'll hear one of the semi-pros talk about them at times on a different forum."
 
I would strongly caution against taking the opinion of one semi-pro as gospel...on pretty much anything.  But links to back that up would be appropriate.