How CDs are remastering the art of noise?

[Bruce Lindfield]

There was an interesting article in yesterday's Guardian Newspaper about how sound quality on some new CDs is being compromised by excessive compression and digital EQ'ing to make them louder!

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/stor...992465,00.html

Most of the CDs I buy aren't like this - as I mostly go for older stuff or Jazz and Classical that is mastered for acoustic clarity, rather than pure volume!

But I wondered what other people thought about this - also whether this is being done to cater for download audiences ?

I had also wondered that I like "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" but don't really like any later Chilis albums - maybe this is the answer?

[keb]

It's because every band wants their CD louder than the others. Slam everything through a limiter and turn your music into one big clipped squarewave mess. It's horrible.

I read an article in a magazine lately where some mastering engineers chimed in on this (they generally advise their clients against mashing everything, but they will do as their clients ask (and pay for) in the end), and one predicted it's destined to become a real "dated" sound, like gated-reverb drums from the '80s.

Which means it'll be retro-cool again in 20 years. Well, maybe. Gated reverb drums still aren't cool!

In the meantime, I hope that some new rock artists/bands will be brave enough to try to stop this runaway train.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Yes, but why are people putting up with this - or are they just not buying these CDs/albums?

[baba]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

But I wondered what other people thought about this - also whether this is being done to cater for quicker downloads?

?

This shouldn't have any effect on file size and resulting download speed. Compression of audio frequencies during mastering is different than file size compression.

I'm all about dynamics and I think this trend sucks. I agree that it will eventually be tossed out and the sound will date the era.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by baba

This shouldn't have any effect on file size and resulting download speed. Compression of audio frequencies during mastering is different than file size compression.

Yes you're right, but I was sort of thinking that if people clicked on a sample and heard this incredibly loud and bright sound it would "sell" them the album and they woudn't necessarily think about how "wearing" this could be in the long run...?

Also that those downloading are less likely to notice or care about the loss in sound quality, if they are only listening on small earbuds and want the sheer volume to counter outside sounds?

[Marcus]

It's a shame that such a compromise is being made to sacrifice quality for volume. I have yet to notice this because of my esoteric taste in music, but if I did, I would not put down the cash for the album. This is purely speculative, but I assume this is happening because of the killing Apple Inc. has been making off the iTunes music store. The sound quality off of purchased iTunes tracks is rather atrocious if you're a sound geek, but then again, most that are downloading are not.

[lemur821]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

Yes, but why are people putting up with this - or are they just not buying these CDs/albums?

I don't think most people can tell. They might be pick an album with more dynamic range as the better sounding one if you A/Bed it with a more squashed album, but most people don't know what to listen for.

The thing that bugs me the most is the loss of dynamics. I can live with a large amount of distortion, but I can't help thinking how much better a given recording might be if it were able to grow louder and softer. It really makes otherwise good songs very boring.

The really crazy things are that it's a complete waste of time because every CD player and radio already has a volume control and because we're at the point where we can destroy our speakers with this stuff, which is much harsher than even playing a quieter album with the volume control up.

Originally Posted by Marcus Alan

This is purely speculative, but I assume this is happening because of the killing Apple Inc. has been making off the iTunes music store. The sound quality off of purchased iTunes tracks is rather atrocious if you're a sound geek, but then again, most that are downloading are not.

This is a different kind of compression. Downloaded music uses data compression which is all about finding a more efficient way to represent the audio. You lose some highs and the quality of the sound drops a little, but dynamics are largely unaffected. The article here is about dynamic compression. They're chopping off the tops of the waveforms as they bring the levels of the quiet parts up, adding distortion and removing all dynamics.

[paintandsk8]

Very important topic that has slowly been getting the desired attention. It actually came back to my attention again yesterday, I played two CD's back to back, Corinne Bailey Rae's recently released self title and Common's "Ressurrection" (1994). Which do you think was louder Rae's soft wispy vocals over an acoustic guitar, or a rap album? The Corinne Bailey Rae album was easily twice as loud as Common's due to the phenomena described above.

I did a little digital audio work a while back, audio books actually. I mastered some 30 hours of digital recordings. I applied some moderate compression just enough to level out major dynamic changes and just slight clipping. What's the first thing out of the customer's mouth, Why's it so quiet?

I think the public has been slowly desensitized to over compression and it has become the overwhelming norm. Nowadays, people associate loud consistent volume with quality. Music w/out compression now sounds weak and inferior to the average listener. I don't think it will ever stop people from buying music either. Great music isn't dependent on great recording, although it can be a great help. Many of the great jazz, blues, folk, and country albums were recorded w/ sound quality that would be considered horrible by todays standards, but nonetheless the music is praised.

I think baba is right, this is a trend, the initial media coverage we are seeing now is the beginning of a slow end to these practices.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Actually I think one of the reasons Blue Note albums were so successful is because of the great sound, which still stands out today - but it was such a simple approach - just stick a pair of mics in front of the band playing live!

But those bands sounded so good live and acoustically, that they didn't need any EQ'ing or Compression!

[poptart]

All radio broadcasting and TV broadcasting is compressed, most TV is highly compressed. You notice it when adverts come on and they seem really loud, or when the music in a film kicks in and it again seems really loud.

The use of compression to gain volume is not new and has been used for decades to achieve the same goal - to appear louder.

I agree that this effect can ruin the audio enjoyment for those us us who have the ears to hear it or understand what is going on. In fact many dance tracks are deliberately over compressed just for novelty.

Don't forget if you go to a loud live music event - your ears also compress the sound.

Dynamics in music are important, however to the uneducated they know ko different. Interestingly on the topic of CD's, in the 80's when records were being withdrawn they had developed a new pressing process that gave a sound quality near that of CD but without the bit grating, but it was abandoned as CD was cheaper to produce and cheaper to package etc. We live in a world where the economics are more important than the art.

[cowsgomoo]

it can be appropriate sometimes, sometimes it's not...

records aren't always meant to sound like the musicians all playing together in the room into one microphone... and sometimes good things happen when recording engineers push the boundaries of what's appropriate... e.g. Geoff Emerick really had to break a lot of Abbey Road rules to get Paperback Writer mastered with so much bass on it... the result was an 'unnatural' sounding record and a milestone in pop electric bass clarity

Oasis's records, their early singles especially, would lose a lot of their character if they hadn't been mixed with huge amounts of compression to maximise the square-wave wall of sound... look at those records through a spectrum analyser and it's like a flat line all across the frequency range on max... you don't have to like oasis to see my point.. that this kind of thing can be used to add character and power to rock recordings

I think maybe people ARE mixing more with the consideration that the tunes will be listened to on earphones, and squashing the dynamic range so that the quiet bits don't get drowned out by your surroundings and the loud bits don't burst your eardrums... no, it's not ideal for many styles of music but it can be appropriate

[Kelly Lee]

Yea, what they are doing to music today sucks. I like dynamics to my music. I can't stand it when some of the old albums I have are "digitally remastered" to todays standards.

Anyways, here is another good read about it: The Death of Dynamic Range: A Chronology of the Compact Disc Loudness Wars

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

That's exactly the problem with Rush's "Vapor Trails" album. Rip Rowan from Prorec made an interesting analysis about it. The site has been down for a long time, but fortunately fellow TBer Smash provided a link to a cached version of the page:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:...a&ct=clnk&cd=1

[lemur821]

Originally Posted by cowsgomoo

I think maybe people ARE mixing more with the consideration that the tunes will be listened to on earphones, and squashing the dynamic range so that the quiet bits don't get drowned out by your surroundings and the loud bits don't burst your eardrums... no, it's not ideal for many styles of music but it can be appropriate

But this is a function that should be in the portable devices, not in the tracks themselves. You can compress anytime, but when you sit down in your dead quiet listening room with hundreds of watts at your beck and call, there's no way to get the range back.

It's an aesthetic decision of course, but that doesn't mean that many artists aren't making it poorly. It's an aspect of composition that lots of people just haven't grasped yet.

EDIT: Using greater dynamic range doesn't mean losing the character of the sound anyway. You can always compress individual sections to get whatever edgy distortion you like but vary the volume between them. You keep the sound (exactly the same sound, in fact) but get the addition dimension of dynamic range. If you listen to a recording like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (picked because I'm listening to it now) you'll hear a good 20 dB between the loud sections and the quiet ones. If you listen to a few newer recordings you won't even be able to make that comparison, because there are no quiet sections. What we're losing here is a whole dimension of musical expression, and what we're gaining is... nothing. Literally nothing. If you wanted to make a recording have the clipped buzz we all know and love but also incorporate dynamics it would be trivial to do so. Never will a contemporary recording have a moment in which you're straining to hear a delicate passage and never will you literally dive out of the speaker's focus when that first tubular bell comes in way louder than you expected. You'll never sit wondering just how loud this tune is going to get and whether you should be going for the volume knob. As we squash the life out of music, we lose the healthy respect a dynamic track engenders. It's pretty cool to have music you're actually a little afraid of.

RE-EDIT: By the way, Tubular bells, although it does have more range than your average album these days, doesn't come anywhere near the musically useful limits of dynamic range. It could cover twice as many decibels and still not even be using half of the wise maximum range.

[agreatheight]

Originally Posted by lemur821

I don't think most people can tell.

Plus 1 million. In my mastering experience, when asked to pick the better sounding recording, 90% of people pick the louder recording, all else being equal.

[yawnsie]

A while ago, my ex-band did a recording session with a producer/engineer who, though not exactly on the level of Bob Erzin or Phil Spector, knew a few people in the know. When the session was done and he came to master it (I know it's not ideal to get the same fella to master you but we were on a budget), he gave us the choice between a more old-school sound, or a tighter, compressed sound. Even though it was our choice, he did gently urge us to go for the compression; his argument was that the best way to get the attention of A&R men, radio stations, etc, was to have a loud, squashed recording. I think that we eventually went for the old-school sound, being 70s throwbacks. I very much doubt that's the reason why I'm not writing this backstage at Maddison Square Garden, and I know that one fella isn't indicitive of the whole industry, but I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who do think like that.

[Jazz Ad]

I bought the Led Zep II CD a couple months ago.
They say it's been remastered. I call it a crime.
It became all boomy and compact.
Yuck.

[SirCanealot]

Yeah, this is something that has been really annoying me lately now I can notice it.

Like, Men Women and Children's debut album... I love those guys, but their CD sounds like ****. I remember my ex bought their CD and put it on... I come upstairs and she's like "What do you think?" and the first thing I do is kick her off my computer ("BACK TO THE LAPTOP, *****!! ), then look at the waveform in foobar2000 to confirm it looked like the utter piece of crap I was listening to.

Muse's new album is the same... way too loud.

I can't listen to the Chille Peppers too much any more.

It's crap. One of my favourite CDs is Dark Side of the Moon, which I stole off my dad. Original pressing, I think (has a pretty old date on anyway... sounds so good)

One thing I always find amusing is Tool's new album, 10,000 days... When it comes on after something else, I always find myself pumping the volume up a little bit more. It's interesting because Tool are always playing around with volume. I guess they'd just stab any producer trying to make their CD too loud :P

If anyone can be bothered, would anyone like to take a look at the mixing on 10,000 Days? Or what proggy would I use?

I agree though that certain albums just wouldn't have their "in-your-face" sound without the compression. Sometimes it is needed for the sound. But there's limits for everything, and it's constantly being crossed these days...

Edit: By the way, the loudness wars will decrease the quality of ripped files/mp3s. Since there is now more "motion" in the signal, the encoder will need more bits to keep the same level of quality. In high-effectiency encoders such as VBR mp3 (LAME) or Ogg-Vorbis this does not matter so much and the overal filesize will just be slightly higher, but I've heard so many old constant-bitrate mp3 files that sound completely awful because of this :/

[Peter McFerrin]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

Actually I think one of the reasons Blue Note albums were so successful is because of the great sound, which still stands out today - but it was such a simple approach - just stick a pair of mics in front of the band playing live!

Maybe--I happen to think that the classic RVG Blue Note sound has great-sounding horns and drums but terrible piano and bass.

I agree with most of the comments put here, though. Good music of any genre makes use of dynamic shifts to affect tension and mood. And to think that one of the big selling points of compact discs 20 years ago was the extra 30-40 dB of dynamic range they had!

[Jazz Ad]

Well if we talk about jazz, ECM Records must be mentionned.
Constant quality over the years, signature label tone and not a hint of overcompression.