The Disease is Spreading

Dan Banquer · « **Reply #20 on:** 27 May 2003, 12:30 pm »

WAY TO GO NATHAN!!!!! Those are exactly the kind of scope shots that tell you what's going on. The first shows the rampant clipping in detail and the second shows how compressed this stuff really is. Most pop music, if reasonably well recorded has a 20 to 30 db peak to average ratio. Your second scope shot shows more like 6 db peak to average. That's the kind of evidence more people need to see and understand.

GO NATHAN!!!!!!

nathanm · « **Reply #21 on:** 27 May 2003, 03:42 pm »

FYI The Exit-13 track is a joke, that song was deliberately mastered at 'continuous overlevel' against Red Book standards. There's a huge warning on the CD about how it could blow up your stereo. (Needless to say it's REALLY loud - 28 minutes of noise basically heh heh!) I just put that up there for grins, as it isn't a true case of the issue at hand, but yes it does show a gross example of what the clipped waves look like. So far I haven't found anything that looks like the Rush CD yet. The graphical waveforms really can tell you at a glance what's been altered to be loud-as-hell and what hasn't.

Carlman · « **Reply #22 on:** 27 May 2003, 08:59 pm »

I don't know if Nathan has the newer album, 'Rush of Blood to the Head' but, it's recorded very loud and has an overall unnatural sound to it. I don't know if it was intentional, though.
It's as if they were going for the same effect as Radiohead's albums. But, I think Radiohead monkees with their sound during recording whereas Coldplay's seems like more of an engineering afterthought.

Just some music to investigate for this cause...

nathanm · « **Reply #23 on:** 27 May 2003, 10:52 pm »

Well, let's get those albums submitted to the Redvu site! The more mainstream bands we get on there the better.

Remember that Mill Vanilli farce from way back? They had consumers flocking back to the stores returning their CDs! (In a fit of the most hypocritically executed display of righteous indignation I ever saw I might add. Cripes, you should be ashamed of buying a Milli Vanilli album in the first place, not pissed because the frontmen on stage aren't actually the ones singing! Sheesh!)

Anyway, my point is this: imagine if there was the same phenomenon with over zealously peak-limited pop CDs being returned to stores in droves! Maybe then these record industry nitwits would get a clue or two. I'm not holding my breath on that one though, but it's a nice fantasy!

If I may get off on a tangent for a moment: Another thing which I think hinders the realism factor of recorded music is the idea that the mix should be completely balanced and every instrument heard perfectly. That's why they use so much compression and EQ, to get things to blend together. Well, WHY? Why can't the crash cymbal mask the rest of the mix a little bit for a moment when it's struck? What's wrong with a guitar solo that pops out of the mix? I mean, it's like there's no punctuation to the music. If you stand near a live band not everything fits perfectly together. When the drummer plays a fill it's usually a little louder than the beat. This is all good stuff. To compress every track into a neat little puzzle piece and then put the puzzle together to me just seems a bit bland. You need more contrast in there!

mgalusha · « **Reply #24 on:** 28 May 2003, 02:12 am »

Picked up the Led Zeppelin "How The West Was Won" set today. Great music but more butchery during mastering.

According to Cool Edit there are no clipped samples but there are a hell of a lot of them at 0db. The image below is for Dancing Days from disc 2. Note the huge 3db dymanic range. Sorry, it actually drops to -6db in places.

Click here for the full sized version

In addtion, there is almost no energy above 10K. That may be from poor on location recording (1972) but it still sucks.

Frequency Analysis. It looks even worse in a linear view.

nathanm · « **Reply #25 on:** 28 May 2003, 06:10 am »

What a whole lotta loud!

Mike- make sure to submit that stuff to the redvu site Paul's got set up. The more stuff we get up there the better.

These peak limiter plugins claim to 'softly compress the peaks' so that you can't tell, but personally I think it's a load of horseshit. I bet these flat, low dynamic recordings are having a negative psychological effect even though the average person doesn't notice exactly what's going on. Perhaps in the form of general fatigue and malaise over time. Hmmm. You'd think the industry would look at an album like DSOTM and equate tonal contrast with public approval. Hmmm...

I was just looking at the WAV file I made from a Mapleshade recording. Quite a different story! And yes, would you believe Mr. Sprey actually does have a clipped drum hit in there! One or two on the entire song that is! Heh! I highlighted these two brief moments in yellow. This is a song called "Love Is The Key" on the Michael Carvin "Drum Concerto At Dawn" album. No peak limiters here! This sucker has musical content that is just audible above the tape hiss to drum whacks that peg the meters! Nice!

Ravi · « **Reply #26 on:** 28 May 2003, 06:42 am »

Wow Nathan, that Mapleshade comparison is really eye-opening (and ear opening). No wonder those disks sound so damn good. To bad some of the bands I like aren't recorded by them.

Ravi · « **Reply #27 on:** 28 May 2003, 06:45 am »

Forgot to add, great work on getting this site together. The more we make this known, the better the chance of some bigshots actually taking note of what we think of this horrible trend

Paul · « **Reply #28 on:** 28 May 2003, 09:38 am »

These graphs and comments are all great. Dan and Nathan have sent some good stuff directly to redVU.com too.

I dont want to inadvertently copy stuff I shouldnt ( from posters at AudioCircle or indeed from AudioCircle upon whose diskspace they reside ). If its not clear in your post, please PM me if its okay to take a copy of images or quotes for local storage on the http://redVU.com site. Or just email them off to [email protected] too.

The webmaster will be back in the saddle very soon, I promise

-paul

mgalusha · « **Reply #29 on:** 28 May 2003, 02:35 pm »

Paul,

I'll shoot a copy over to you at redvu.com. You're more than welcome to copy the images and text if you like.

I appreciate all the work that goes into maintaining a site, so a big thanks to you.

Mike

George W · « **Reply #30 on:** 31 May 2003, 10:00 am »

I have the latest Coldplay cd and you are correct, it is badly compressed. I've always noticed that some of my cd's sound much worse than others...today I've been checking them with cool edit and now I know why. All of the poor sounding cd's are heavily limited in dynamic range; it truly is a sad state of affairs. Here is a comparison of one of Creed's latest offering and Enya's "Pilgrim"

Creed's "Freedom Fighter"

And now Enya's "Pilgrim", from one of my better sounding albums

As you can see the Creed album is rediculously compressed. Considering that I enjoy a lot of this type of music, this trend is making me question whether I really want to build better speakers...perhaps the cd's will just be even harder to listen to on a high resolution system. In any case I am uploading some graphs to the new website, including Coldplay's "Rush of Blood to the Head" and Santana's "Supernatural." I confess I am a bit pessimistic but I really hope we can institute some sort of change, or at the very least a greater awareness of the harm being done. What fun is building a great system if there's no good music to listen to?

Tonto Yoder · « **Reply #31 on:** 31 May 2003, 12:17 pm »

I remember the magazine "Digital Audio" in the early days of CD. One valuable aspect IMO was the list of short or long CD's: since people were just getting into buying CD's, it was a good thing to buy a CD with 60 minutes of music rather than those with just 35 or so (assuming that the extra 25 minutes was musically worthwhile).

The situation seems similar with compressed/non-compressed CD's--the wide dynamic range of a non-compressed CD doesn't necessarily make it better (if the music itself sucks), but it'd be nice to know when one is considering a purchase. Alternately, one might choose to buy even a heavily compressed CD if he really wanted the music, but it'd be nice to know the limitations before purchase. Of course, the musically brillaint, non-compressed CD would be the Holy Grail.

RussKon · « **Reply #32 on:** 31 May 2003, 12:35 pm »

"Considering that I enjoy a lot of this type of music, this trend is making me question whether I really want to build better speakers...perhaps the cd's will just be even harder to listen to on a high resolution system."

from personal experience over the past several years i agree with your assertion.... about 1/3 of my music collection is now very hard to listen to because i have upgraded my system extensively.....

the better system is well worth it.... listening to a great recording is an amazing experience... anything by diana krall is a total joy....

Ravi · « **Reply #33 on:** 31 May 2003, 05:15 pm »

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to email some of the Record labels who are doing this?

I think if they get enough of us individually complaining, they may atleast listen. Or, we can even do a petition, and get all the people on AudioAsylum, HD, Madisound, and here to sign it and send it all the corporate heads. If they get enought of us complaining, they may atleast re-consider. We can use the new website as a reference for all the statistical data and proof to back it up.

nathanm · « **Reply #34 on:** 1 Jun 2003, 03:57 am »

I hope the Redvu site continues to grow and more people add ideas for it. At some point a few well-placed letters to the big audio and music mags would be good to raise awareness. But of course, the site is in its infancy so...

Wouldn't it be cool to have a big database of music where you could plug a certain album into a search engine and then you could see the waveform and the stats for that album? Kind of a "this CD kinda sucks, let's check the stats" kinda thing. Major project I know, but an interesting concept.

If we could get the opinions of the recording engineers who actually work on these albums that would be hugely beneficial. I think it will be important not to point fingers at them directly, but to find out the TRUE cause of why this slaughter of dynamics is being done and who is really making these decisions.

Why not make two mixes? One compressed one for radio\car audio use and an untainted one for those whiny audiophiles!

It seems so simple...

Dan Banquer · « **Reply #35 on:** 1 Jun 2003, 10:23 pm »

If all goes well I expect that this web site will start to gain popularity in 3 to 6 months, and it will start having an effect on the industry in 1 to 2 years. That's my guess.
From what I understand from the recording engineers I talk to it's the producers and sometimes the musicians who want their stuff to be the "loudest" to get noticed. I guess they think that folks like Nathan are unable to use a volume control.
That's a strange thought now isn't it.

nathanm · « **Reply #36 on:** 1 Jun 2003, 10:41 pm »

Quote from: Dan Banquer

Producers and sometimes the musicians who want their stuff to be the "loudest" to get noticed.

Get noticed by who? Those music fans who take their SPL meter along with them when they go record shopping?

Customer: Hi there, I'm looking for a CD that's really loud!

Store clerk: What's the name of the band?

Customer: Oh, I hadn't really thought about that. I just want to get the loudest CD possible! Metallica, Godsmack, Jewel, Mandy Patinkin, whatever, it doesn't matter as long as it's dead loud!

Clerk: Um, could you be more specific? I need a band or album title or something, sir.

Customer: Tell you what, why don't you play these five CDs here all at the same time. Whichever one is loudest I will buy.

Clerk: We can only play one song at a time, sir.

Customer: Well geez, how am I supposed to find the loudest one!?

Clerk: Well, we do have this test CD. There's a 14KHz square wave recorded at -20db on it.

Customer: Cool, is that loud?

Clerk: Yeah, it's pretty loud I guess. Really annoying too.

Customer: Okay, but is there anything louder than that?

Clerk: You could turn up your stereo louder I suppose.

Customer: I don't have a volume control. I run my CD player straight into the power amp. Whichever CD is louder is the one I listen to most often. I guess I will try that test CD, it sounds like it will be really fucking loud!

Clerk: Thank yoiu sir, that will be $18.95

Customer: I can't wait to try it out, it's gonna be soooo loud! Yeah!

Brad · « **Reply #37 on:** 1 Jun 2003, 11:44 pm »

Quote from: nathanm

Why not make two mixes? One compressed one for radio\car audio use and an untainted one for those whiny audiophiles! It seems so simple...

Sure, why not double the work in order to satisfy the other .001% of the audience

Actually, I'm all for it, but I don't think it would sell $-wise.

Dan Banquer · « **Reply #38 on:** 2 Jun 2003, 02:29 am »

I understand your cynicism Nathan. Try to remember this; The record companies are losing sales because they treat so much of their new realeases as junk, and not all people who buy recorded music are 14 to 18 years old. The demographics are changing. Note that Norah Jones gets a few grammys with a well recorded CD, and sells millions of copies. The change is just starting, have patience.

nathanm · « **Reply #39 on:** 2 Jun 2003, 04:09 am »

Quote from: Brad

Quote from: nathanm
Why not make two mixes? One compressed one for radio\car audio use and an untainted one for those whiny audiophiles! It seems so simple...

Sure, why not double the work in order to satisfy the other .001% of the audience

Double what work? Run the mix through with whatever settings the mastering engineer wants, and then just make one without the peak limiter. It would probably take 2 minutes. It's the compression of the dynamic range that is the problem, not the other signal processing they are doing. I don't think time is a factor on this, it's running on a DAW anyway.

And the notion that these mono-dynamic mixes are "satisfying" the audience is bullshit. If the music is good people will like it. They don't give a shit about the fucking overall volume. The idea that they are more excited by this peak limited stuff is cooked up in the heads of record execs and is merely an illusion - a false premise that truly does not exist. Tools in the hands of the ignorant - that's exactly what it is. I would also say that the opposite may be true, and that recordings with no dynamics are more fatiguing in the long run. You would think the industry would take a hint from Pink Floyd - massive record sales from a band with very dynamic music. Loud music does not make people like it more. They know what volume level they feel confortable with and they will turn the knob accordingly.

Let's say I like to listen at 70db and I put in another CD that's coming out at 88db do you think I'm gonna sit there and say "Oh yeah, this rocks!" No, I'm gonna turn it down so it's at 70db, where I want it. Their whole logic for using peak limiting is blown out of the water right then and there. This isn't just me; I see it all the time. People want the global volume where they want it, if a CD is louder or softer they will adjust accordinly. That's why we have fucking volume controls in the first place. But with these peak limited monstrosities now you just have a steady stream of flat, monotonous music. Boring!

The point is that bureaucrats and marketing assholes are making these decisions the technical people should be making. THAT is the problem here. The idea that louder CDs sell better is if anything, a simple coincidence. I have never doubted the stupidity of the record buying public, but I would have to defend them on this one - they aren't THAT stupid fer cripes sakes!