Perfect example of why we are losing fidelity.

ledhed

Thought a lot of you guys would find this interesting. I read an article dealing with this a few years ago but this makes it much more clear...

A short video showing one of the major problems of the record industry.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ


Some more links and information can be found here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120637

TennesseeOutlaw

That was very interesting.. I really have never noticed that in my music, but Ill put some old and new cd's to the test..

Josh

SLOCOOKN

Try old VS new Van Halen...

shack

I've been saying for years that current music is produced "too hot". Too much and overbloated bass. Same for percussion.

TennesseeOutlaw

Though I listen mainly to very "bass heavy" music, I would much rather have it played as it was recorded.. Although, Id say most of the bass in my type of music was produced by some beat machine; nonetheless, music should be presented the way it was intended... Why do they do this in the first place?

markmarc

A bigger problem was pointed out in a recent Stereophile editorial column. Some recording session are compressed from the studio before being sent to headquarters and then off to the factory. The end result is mp3 rather than AAC sound quality. The musicians need to stand up and demand that the original master be transferred in a non-compressed state along each point.

Early B.

It's ironic that many musicians don't even know what sounds good.

I think this post is mostly referring to redbook CDs (although many jazz redbooks sound pretty decent). The better (i.e., more transparent) your system becomes, the more you'll likely seek out well recorded music.

ninerbj

A very good example of this would be the last Rush album, Vapor Trails.
It was mastered so hot that it's almost impossible to distinguish who is playing what at times.

This all was started to get ones song noticed on the radio by bumping it hotter than the others. Unfortunately, every record company followed suit.

jdhdiggs

My brother is currently working both as a musician and a studio producer. I asked him about this and he said that they need to do it to compete and that "loud rules" when it comes to sales. In fact, they do their final master on a POS boombox since that is what a large protion of their audience will be playing it on.

jkn

This topic has been floating around the musician focused forums I've hung around for several years now. Rush's Vapor Trails is a great example - someone has an article that goes into detail on that album (I probably have it tucked away at home somewhere). I picked up Nirvana's compilation a year or so ago and almost can't stand listening to the "remastered" versions...

I've read a number of articles on the overuse of compression and the trend towards always louder is always better (ha) - compounding the over-compression problem is radio stations typically compress their signal to smooth things out - making everything amazingly worse. Of course, at one point in the past this wasn't a problem since all recordings weren't already pushed to the wall.

Lack of dymanics, depth, etc... it's very frustrating. And well mastered albums almost can't compete anymore with people who don't appreciate that type of thing - it just sounds too "quiet" to them.


A very good article by Bob Kats on compression is here:

http://www.digido.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7

bikezappa

Music has only two real dimensions
1. Amplitude (Loudness)
2. Frequency (Highs and lows)

This compression or making all the music recorded at the same loudness level sucks. It takes most of emotion and drama out of the music. FM stations have been compressing music for many years because more people will hear the station if it is compressed and played loud. If your in your car and the FM station is playing classical music with a quiet section you may miss hearing it and turn to another station playing compressed loud music. It's about maximizing FM distance range and it makes music suck.

It appears that compressed music is all about the money and not about the quality or emotion in music because it is being taken out. As a musician if you music is not compressed and loud you don't get recorded or played on FM because it has less chance of being sold or heard. Remember that most people wouldn't know good recorded music if it bit them in the ****.

Don't buy these crap CDs and don't listen to comressed FM. The only uncompressed FM that is left is music on NPR stations that play classical, folk and jazz.

We are all circling the drain.

shack

One of the reasons I quit listening to FM was due to the local "remix" of music. Stations seemed to think it was cool to add additional material to a track (usually bass or percussion). It made it unlistenable IMO. I buy very little current music because I never hear anything I like (at least not over the airvwaves). XM is the only souce of airplay music I hear and very little of it could be considered "current".

Lsi9

I like to listen to Rock, perhaps my fav, but I don't listen to it on the stereo ...for this I prefer Jazz and now classical. I just purchased 2 cds; Mozart's complete requiem and Chopin's Complete Nocturnes. Another type of music I like is African but this genre intermittently suffers from compression. Its not hard to hear.

Midnite Mick

jdhdiggs wrote:

My brother is currently working both as a musician and a studio producer. I asked him about this and he said that they need to do it to compete and that "loud rules" when it comes to sales. In fact, they do their final master on a POS boombox since that is what a large protion of their audience will be playing it on.

The problem that I see with this is the people playing the music on the POS boomboxes don't buy cd's anyway. I find this a bit wrong in that the people that don''t really care about sound quality are the people that would be downloading everything for free, thus no revenue from the product. I think if one is to produce a cd that is of the best quality possible, maybe more people that care about it would buy it.

I know I listen to music now that I would have never listened to prior to buliding my system just because I can now see the beauty in it.

Just my .02
Mike

jdhdiggs

POS boomboxes don't have AV ins for I-pods though... The fact of the matter is most people DON't care about GOOD sound, they just care if it makes a noise and they can bop their heads to it. They do their recording tracks through $20K studio monitors, but the boom box is the final test. It is sad....

Midnite Mick

They still play most downloadable formats, burnt to cd....including mp3.
Yes it is very sad. Hopefully, the future will change.

Mike

unc2701

This is actually one of the reasons why LP's sound better- if you try to cut an LP compressed w/ everything hot it goes completely to **** and it's unacceptably bad (although, I have heard some recent LPs where they did do this). On the other hand, any jackass can burn a CD that's compressed all to hell.

The industry trends make CDs sound a lot worse than their full potential.

danger boy

this is really sad. that in todays amazing technology advances.. and how far we've come in recorded music in the past 40 yrs since the Beatles took the world by storm.. and we're compressing music so much that this is the best we can do. WTF?

Did recorded music peak in the 70's and early 80's then? It seems for the most part the past 10 yrs with consumers preferring personal audio being a MP3 player.. that we've lost the battle for good hi fidelity. Sad, really sad.

WilliamM2

I like to listen to Rock, perhaps my fav, but I don't listen to it on the stereo ...for this I prefer Jazz and now classical.

Just curious, If rock is your favorite, why not listen to it on the stereo?

Midnite Mick

Kind of ironic but the better your stereo gets the worse poorly recorded cd's sound.

Mike

Lsi9

WilliamM2 wrote:

Just curious, If rock is your favorite, why not listen to it on the stereo?

I tend to listen to rock in the car or on the ipod when using piublic transportation. There are certain cds that I can listen to on the stereo though.

wingnut4772

I thought U2's Vertigo album sounded pretty bad - not the music- but the cd sound quality. I wonder if that's just me or if it was also recorded too hot.

Refefer

I wasn't aware of this, but it really explains a lot of the reasons that since I built my two channel I've shyed away from Rock music to Classical and Acoustic sessions. In Acoustic sessions, I've found that they tend to do a fairly decent of recording the music without it being "hot". I mean, there's no damn point to recording it hot. As for classical, that would kinda defeat the purpose.

I always knew there was a reason I hated listening to newer Rock on my system, and now I know why I've found it to sound like crap.

It also explains why Bob Dylan was so pissed at the recording industry's recording standards these days.

This is damn scary. I want my audio back!

Refefer

Here's a link to the Bob Dylan interview: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2006/08/22/bob-dylan-professional-rabblerouser/

WilliamM2

I can't imagine not listening to rock, just because the recording doesn't sound as good as jazz or classical.

Although there are some CD's I prefer, for the quality of the recording, it's the music that matters. Or maybe I am just lucky, I have about 400 CD's, and probably purchased at least 300 of them prior to 1992 or so. Maybe they are better than what is available now.

ben62670

Sounds like a marketing ploy to get us to buy SACD's so we can get the quality we used to get in regular Cd's

hearingimpared

bikezappa wrote:

Music has only two real dimensions
1. Amplitude (Loudness)
2. Frequency (Highs and lows)

The only uncompressed FM that is left is music on NPR stations that play classical, folk and jazz.

We are all circling the drain.

NPR Philly/Wilmington 90.1 FM They play awesome jazz and classical. They even play old, Old, OLD LPs that are scratched and noisy but the music and performances are incredible.

ledhed

ben62670 wrote:

Sounds like a marketing ploy to get us to buy SACD's so we can get the quality we used to get in regular Cd's

If only, a real ploy would have ALL the Cds I want in SACD.

Also, if you found the perfect reference level, the recording shouldn't be as bad right? Just way too loud to stand probably.

bikezappa

hearingimpared wrote:

NPR Philly/Wilmington 90.1 FM They play awesome jazz and classical. They even play old, Old, OLD LPs that are scratched and noisy but the music and performances are incredible.

In Bosten WGBH plays LIVE jazz in the evenings sometimes and the BSO live on Friday afternoon. You would be amazed at how good the music sounds uncompressed with a good FM tuna and antenna. They play records and it's fun to hear the scratches and pops with the large dynamic range.

These stations I fear will go the way of the dotto bird if we don't support music playing NPR stations. Some of the local college stations play interesting music but the quality of the sound is hit or miss.

I was listening to a local FM rock station at home and they played a great old Beatles tune. I went over and turned it up and it was nothing like the original recording. There were NO dynamics in it. I turned it off. Sad. But maybe they broadcasted this crap to a larger area.

The problem is that FM is compressed and marketed for car only.

petrym

I listened some of my daughter's stuff recently and it was so overdone I couldn't listen to it for more than 30 seconds. Back it off you "sound engineers"!

disneyjoe7

Is this problem industry wide, ok is just Rock or isn't everything Rock, Country, Jazz? I find this subject interesting due to the fact I have some CD's that sound great others that sound like ****. Sad the ones that sound the best to me are older Rock or newer Country.