Why the majority of your CDs sound horrible.
Jan 11, 2007 at 6:28 AM Post #46 of 217
Alot of CD's sound bad,
much worse to my ears than most records cut on 2" tape.
Especially CD's using early digital EQ,
and early digital compression.
(Think those Digi 882 systems...
very_evil_smiley.gif
)

Yeah, 2" tape has a little noise,
but I'll take a smooth waveform w/ some noise,
over a 44.1k digital SAW grating thru my ear.

SACD & DVD-A 24bit/96k
...actually sounds alot smoother than...
CD 16/44.1k

Thru good speaker or phones,
the difference is actually more than a little noticeable.

I was skeptical too.
Sh!t just sounds better & smoother.

Hopefully higher rates will eventually be as smooth...
...w/o so much highend outboard gear.

However...
with some colored euphonic outboard...
and good converters...
...30khz even sounds good.
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not j/k

Real heads know.
biggrin.gif
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 8:01 AM Post #47 of 217
I listen to rock, sadly nearly all rock albums suck ass from a compression/clipping POV. They are frequently fatigue inducing and lacking in dynamics. They are universally loud or thin and a lot of it is unpleasant as much as I like the music.

I'm not a big jazz or classical fan but frequently find myself listening to it just because it's well recorded. It acts like a palette cleanser before my next wince inducing rock song. Sad really, though it might explain my 'phone and amp preferences to some extent.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 4:11 PM Post #48 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by MuseMan /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I hava a cd by The Cure - Disintergration. it says, 'mastered to be played loud'. I have to turn it up louder than my more modern cd's. Does this mean it is mastered better?

BTW, this topic has made me depressed.
frown.gif



Yes, that pretty much does mean Disintegration is mastered better. It wont distort the louder you play it, because it's not clipped (or, rather, it wont distort until your equipment does). Muse, on the other hand, and especially their new album, will distort to phuq, because they compress and then compress and then compress some more. Their new album is one of the worst I've heard for it, and given that I've written articles about this phenomenon, I've heard a lot of bad ones (Keane's latest being the worst).

Listen to the "stripped", "minimal" acoustic jazz-type track on the new Muse back-to-back with an original Ryko CD by Nick Drake - the Muse track, despite being superficially intimate and lowkey, is as loud and flat as hell - no crispness, no weight, no precision, no sense of a room with musicians in.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 5:46 PM Post #49 of 217
Jan 11, 2007 at 6:29 PM Post #50 of 217
The "Loudness Treatment", aka Compression & Increase Gain is also used for another purpose---to try to cover up what is essentially lack of skill from musicians---especially vocalists.

Try (loudly)singing "Do Re Mi" starting high, going progressively lower, then starting low and going progressively higher.

You will notice that at a certain point, your voice "drops off" and loses it's "oomph". This would be recognized as your "range limit", since when you try to sing past it, you sound, well, like crap.

Often they will take the vocal track from some subpar vocalist, which may have many clumps of "drop offs", and apply heavy compression. Now, where their voice lost power, it seems to have remained constant. And where their voice had the most power, where it really glowed, now seems similar if not the same as the weakest part.

This is independent of "total-loudness" by the way. You can open up a track in an audio editor, and see a waveform that looks "good", with no visible clipping, etc. And even in such a case, they could still have butchered and destroyed the magic of the track with heavy compression on the individual tracks which were then mixed. So even when it "looks good", it very well may not be. The only way to know is listen.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 6:34 PM Post #51 of 217
Whoever mastered Daft Punk - Discovery made an absolute disaster. "One more time" for instance is so compressed that at each downbeat you can hear the mids and highs dropping in volume and in between beats, everything would go up in volume....slowly. It sounds as if the the song would breath in during a downbeat and breath out in between beats. Attack and release times seemed to be set at few seconds, threshold set really low and compression ratio really high. Awful.

http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Daft...e=UTF8&s=music
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 6:43 PM Post #52 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by DJGeorgeT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Whoever mastered Daft Punk - Discovery made an absolute disaster. "One more time" for instance is so compressed that at each downbeat you can hear the mids and highs dropping in volume and in between beats, everything would go up in volume....slowly. It sounds as if the the song would breath in during a downbeat and breath out in between beats. Attack and release times seemed to be set at few seconds, threshold set really low and compression ratio really high. Awful.

http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Daft...e=UTF8&s=music




This is a special kind of compression, where the peak of one instrument or group (drums or bass) is used to turn down the volume of another group of instruments.
Just another instrument of torture out of the chamber of horrors of compression. Really sick suff, that is.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 8:33 PM Post #53 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by DJGeorgeT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Whoever mastered Daft Punk - Discovery made an absolute disaster. "One more time" for instance is so compressed that at each downbeat you can hear the mids and highs dropping in volume and in between beats, everything would go up in volume....slowly. It sounds as if the the song would breath in during a downbeat and breath out in between beats. Attack and release times seemed to be set at few seconds, threshold set really low and compression ratio really high. Awful.

http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Daft...e=UTF8&s=music


There are some bands out there that do this sort of thing intentionally to obtain a certain distinct sound. While I don't know for sure, I had thought that Daft Punk was one of those.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 8:42 PM Post #54 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by mirumu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
There are some bands out there that do this sort of thing intentionally to obtain a certain distinct sound. While I don't know for sure, I had thought that Daft Punk was one of those.


All the songs in Discovery are have been hyper compressed and this leads me to believe that it was not used as an FX. An FX is generally applied in and out. I sincerely detest One more time because of the hyper compression. It could have been a nice track, but instead it is overcompressed and muddy. Another effect of overcompression is to muddy the music. The highs are severely affected.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 9:23 PM Post #55 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by mirumu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
There are some bands out there that do this sort of thing intentionally to obtain a certain distinct sound. While I don't know for sure, I had thought that Daft Punk was one of those.


This seems akin to buying a new piece of clothing and vomiting on it for the purpose of "giving it a certain distinct look (and smell)".
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 9:29 PM Post #56 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by SeagramSeven /img/forum/go_quote.gif
This seems akin to buying a new piece of clothing and vomiting on it for the purpose of "giving it a certain distinct look (and smell)".


Not exactly. There is music that is based on Wall-of-sound harmonics and melodies that doesnt leave much room for dynamics, and there is absolutely no use for them either. Its just "big wall" consisting many layers.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 9:31 PM Post #57 of 217
Jan 11, 2007 at 9:43 PM Post #59 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Not exactly. There is music that is based on Wall-of-sound harmonics and melodies that doesnt leave much room for dynamics, and there is absolutely no use for them either. Its just "big wall" consisting many layers.


I agree. I'm no fan of compression by any means, I actually was complaining about it in another thread shortly before this thread was started, but on the odd rare occasion it can be used effectively. As far as Discovery goes, I was referring mostly to the volume changing effect, not compression across the album in general. I'm only speculating about it being intentional, I've certainly not heard any official comments either way.
 
Jan 11, 2007 at 9:47 PM Post #60 of 217
Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Not exactly. There is music that is based on Wall-of-sound harmonics and melodies that doesnt leave much room for dynamics, and there is absolutely no use for them either. Its just "big wall" consisting many layers.


I read an article from an soundengineer saying something like this:

"Hopes and Fears" by Keane has a higher RMS than "Raining blood" by Slayer. And Keane should not be louder than Slayer".

But the true scandal is not the compression. Compression is a matter of taste (well, like ******** your pants) after all. But a clipping CD is not a CD anymore. It's simply defective.
What makes it so difficult for these people to understand that it's not possible to have a sound louder than 0db pressed on the stupid CD?
 
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