Is Louder Better? 544
GoodNicsTken writes "Rip Rowan over at prorec.com did an
analysis of 5 different Rush CD's released from 1984 to 2002. The results show a definite trend in the recording/mastering style from each album. Rip contends that louder is not necessarily better as the record execs believe. The artist however, is often left with little choice in the matter."
Its just a phase... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm so lost in love (Score:2, Insightful)
But did an analysis of 5 CDs?!!!!
How about a random sample of 500, minimum... Sure, Rush don't have 500 albums, but that is the point... there is biased covarience - could be due to many many other factors other than the one being isolated.
Pity 'intelligent' people treat everything as a simultaneous equation and not subject to correlated deterministic factors.
Re:This guy doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Compressed all to.... (Score:3, Insightful)
To top that off almost all the radio stations in my area (Kansas City) add crap tons of compression on top of the already loud mixes. It's so bad you cna hear the compressor "breathe" on some songs.
Most indie bands record with a more natural sound. I think music sound good when it sounds like you are standing right in front of a band and the instruments sound as iff they would were the band set up where your stereo is.
Old news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, this has been going on for almost twenty years, starting around the time digital tape decks (like Mitsubishi, Sony, 3M) gained wider currency in recording studios. Digital audio sounds really harsh when you push recording levels, as opposed to analog tape, which has a "softer" limit.
Rowan makes a very valid point: radio stations are notorious for compressing their feed, mostly to get the hottest signal within their transmitter's power limit. Television stations are even worse. I recall taking a road trip with my band in a rented van that didn't have a cassette player; we were at the mercy of every Top-40 station and all of them were playing Phil Collins's "Sussudio" every ten minutes. Some of the stations flattened the signal so much that we thought it was some sort of remix just for robots (the drum machine was at least twice as loud as the lead vocals).
Where I don't concur is Rowan's placing the blame for this on the labels. True, the A&R people are the ones who have right-of-refusal on the final mix, but you can't let engineers, producers, and the mastering lab off the hook. I've been on the other side of the glass and I know that I've been guilty of patching compressors into a channel to keep the kick drum at a managable level, make up for a singer's lax microphone discipline, or "punch up" the final mix. Note that I'm not blaming the musicians; they do whatever they have to in order to get the track on tape. If that means Joe Frontman is going to sway back and forth like Bill Gates at a deposition, so be it. It was my job to deal.
Finally, not to sound too much like a Luddite, but back in the analog days, there was a limit on the number of effects you could employ, the limit being the number of physical units present in your studio rack. Now, with ProTools or Cakewalk, your limits are RAM and CPU cycles, both of which are cheaper to expand than buying more compressors, limiters, gates, reverbs, etc.
k.
Fine, have it your way - 1000 items (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst offender I have EVER seen, personally, is Green Day's International Superhits. It's way loud, and it peak-flattens all over the place. It's not too tragic since Green Day typically isn't a band that has a lot of nuance you'll miss, but it does make it sound overall weaker because the hard bits don't stand out.
Also, I'm not sure, but I think it's true of remasters of old albums (I'll have to see an old copy sometime to check for sure). Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" looked suspiciously peak flattened, and sure enough, it's a recent re-master. Great. Ruining good, old music too. For what it's worth, his new albums are second only to Green Day in terms of horrible peak flattening. And for albums with a lot of acoustic instruments, this is truly a crime.
So I hope this satisfies you. The effect is real, and it's unfortunate.
Remastering These Days (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, let me step on my soapbox for a sec..
As a music buff, a musician, and someone who's seen the musician's side of the music industry in nearly all its forms (garage, stage, touring, studio, etc)...
I will first say that getting music recorded is a fairly long-winded and convoluted process...
1) The sound you get out of the instrument's amp in the studio is not what you'll get on tape
2) In the mixing process, there is a great deal of EQ'ing, Compressing (this is what gives the LOUD), and various other things to get things to come together in a certain fashion. When all is said and done, the sound you had on tape before is now going to be totally different.
There are many many schools of thought on how best to master a recording. Some go for atmosphere, some go for candid honesty, some go for a super-polished sound, well, you get the picture.
However, the trend i'm seeing lately with a lot of old albums, is that they're getting remastered in a modern studio with the attempt at "Updating" them. I don't know if this is something rookies cut thier teeth on or something, but i've got a lot of horribly done CDs. I do realise that the difference of listening to stuff on my old, worn out vinyl or tapes as opposed to a CD will be fundamentally different just because of the analogue/digital conversion.
Sabbath albums that are gated so hard, that everything is muffled to hell, but the vocals are enough to spring THE ENTIRE MIX open and everything distorts.
Maiden albums where someone took the effort to attenuate the feedback from the guitars. This really blew me away. like "Dewd, Adrian Murray WANTED that there!"
I've got a few hendrix and yardbirds albums where everything was squashed into oblivion with a compressor/limiter (failed attempt at making something LOUD). Yes, the album is loud, but it doesn't *breathe*.
I've got a fleetwood mac album where everything sounds cold, thin and empty. Too much noise reduction. Noise reduction being my biggest beef.
IMHO, the bass guitar rattling the snare drum in an intro, the 60hz hum of the PA, all the delicious lil freaks of sound that come out of guitar amps..... to me, that's just as much a part of the music itself. I love the *noise*. My old vinyl was full of it.
When stuff gets too `polished' i think it loses too much of it's `soul' and becomes a little too mechanical. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on this, though, so to each thier own.
Re:More cowbell (Score:4, Insightful)
The Real Reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
So by mastering the CD the way they did maybe they were hoping it would still sound "good enough" from CD but so shitty as an MP3 as to make it worthless in that format. Unfortunately it seems it's worthless in any format.
I wouldn't think so. I'd think that by throwing the info away in advance, it'd compress better and sound closer to the "original" than if they'd put the right mix there in the first place.
I admit I'm not totally hip on audio compression to that level of detail, but when they're essentially throwing away sound by clipping it, then it's seems it'd be a heck of a lot easier to compress because there's less actual data there to compress.
Re:Clearly an analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh... I'm not sure I'd say that Rush is the same musical style. Hell, over the domain he used, you've got synthpop (Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows), grunge (Counterparts), and nu-metal (meaning Tool or Korn, mainly) (Vapor Trails).
Re:No kidding. (Score:2, Insightful)
See, that's the problem. They're no longer satisfied with just compression, they ARE actually clipping on the digital medium. Read the article, look at those images.. In fact, download any modern MP3 and load it up in your audio editor. It's just plain *clipped*.
Limiting/Compression will make quiet sounds louder, but it cannot make loud sounds louder. Clipping can, at the expense of distortion.
Re: Radio broadcast (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking at those oscillograms in this paper, the distortion is unacceptable. Just noticable clipping (on the 'scope) is said to be about 10% or so. The examples appear to be atleast 50% and this is uncalled for on a CD or vinyl record. On the radio, every manager wants a 'dial stopper' or a station that is louder than the rest. (Classical programming on any medium goes for dynamic range however.) All broadcasters have access to boxes that are intended to acheive this effect without forcing the signal to go beyond its legal limits. In a most extreme case, at an FM station in Northern California, the engineer showing us his equipment showed great pride he could keep his dynamic range below 1dB for most of the time! This may make the station stand out but it is at total cost to the quality of the audio.
A CD was intended to deliver 30dB of dynamic range. At -30dB, the total distortion is below 0.5% and adequate for consumer use. Sure 24bits at 48KHz is far better, but the old CD isn't all that bad. If you BUY music, one should expect the quality to be such that the enduser is in full control of the audio. To make it loud, overdrive a well designed input (on a mixer table) as one wishes. Surprisingly, except for cheap 'box radios' and 'PC soundsystems' most audio designs produce very good audio and dynamic range. The conclusion here is people want to hear their music clearly at the volume they wish to listen at. It is clearly pandering to the immature audience that a radio manager would ask an engineer to distort the audio beyond recovery before it gets to the transmitter.
Taking this to the CD is depriving the majority of the sound they wish to hear. There is no technical excuse to bury music in its own 'noise' on a high-quality medium. The radio engineer may want a 'loud' signal to attract the very young crowd and and please the management. Commercial interests may prepare highly compressed audio matterial for TV simply to anoy. Note that unless you mute the sound or change the channel, those commercials tend to "follow you" right to where you do your business. That is fine is fine if the advertiser wants to present itself like this. It should be noted that a well known method of blanking commercials from a videotape exploits the fact that the ratio of the RMS to peak values is too low. This along with detecting a highly saturated colour picture is almost 100% effective.
It is interesting the author picks on Rush, but it is true I own only their earlier works. The visual sample of "Vapor Trails" looks like white noise. The likes of "Rush" and Kim Mitchel with "Max Webster" produced some brilliant sound in their time and I have purchesed all of those CD's. Its sad that "Rush" atleast, went on to producing noise and alienating their original audience that would gladly have purchased the CD's if they were of any 'sound' value.
AC/DC is an exception, IMO (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Alex's decision to forgo solos is confusing, since he has a degree of finesse that is rare outside of jazz circles, but his always-good rhythm playing and ultra-dense chord structures are still there.
This has been a big controversy ever since the album was released, and I recall seeing an article very similar to this one in content and conclusion last fall or so.
After taking 6 years to record this album, including some really tough times, it's a shame to see it hamstrung by lousy production.
And as far as clipping goes, I don't need to see graphs to prove it's going on, I can HEAR it. Worse, if you turn the music up loud enough to hear all the details, your ears will get tired of the wall of sound. If you turn it down, you will miss what's going on in the music.
Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit it right on the head. The trend in radio lately has been to compress the hell out of the music they broadcast, and in turn, record companies have jumped on the bandwagon with CDs. Most music consumers think louder sounds better, and so that's what sells. It kind of makes sense even -- just listen to a recent mega-compressed track at a comfortable volume, then listen to a track from an old CD at the same volume. The older one sounds weaker, but only because it is softer. Adjust the volume again and it probably actually sounds better. But most consumers don't care enough to make that realization.
Back in the early 90s, a remastered CD was something that actually sounded much better than the initial digital transfer of a classic album. Nowadays, remasters accomplish two things: compressing the music until it's all one uniform LOUD volume, and lining the pockets of the record industry as die hard fans buy the same albums again.
Of course, this trend is not all bad. Not hearing soft sections of music in the car is a legitimate problem. I won't listen to classical music in the car because of this - I tend to stay within the rock genre because of this and only listen to classical and jazz in the quiet of home. It's too bad that record companies are now "solving" the problem by giving us this "one volume fits all" compression now. The ideal solution might be for car stereos to start including some sort of compression circuitry so that you can hear more of a tune over the road noise, but you get to hear it in its full dynamic glory at home. Heck, other things like TVs and DVD players could use this too. Sometimes a TV show or DVD will need some compression so I can hear the quiet parts but don't piss off the neighbors during the loud parts! Either that or maybe some sort of new audio format with two versions of each audio stream - normal and compressed. Of course we already have SACD and DVD Audio, yet another new format is just what we need...
another factor in music loudness (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it seems that producers and engineers have entered into a volume war...every record made must be louder than the last so that it stands out.
Re:It is not the bits.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Nyquest states that the highest frequency digital sampling can reproduce is half the sample rate. Think about that: that means that at that frequency you are getting only 2 samples per cycle of the wave. Connect the dots and you have a triangle wave. But what if the original signal was a sine wave? You've lost the shape of the original wave.
By reproducing a triangle wave, you've added harmonics to the sound that didn't previously exist. Granted, they are out of the range of human hearing, but they can still have an audible effect on the sound due to canceling and phase shifts. But take even a frequency at 1/4 the sampling frequency. Now you've got 4 points to reproduce the sine wave, but its still going to be a jagged approxamation. As you can see, more samples per second gives a better reproduction of the original signal. Of course, if we can hear the difference or not is debatable, but in theory, if it shows up on the osciloscope in the human hearing range, someone somewhere will hear the difference.
The bit depth is probably more important (think how many possible wave height (amplitude) steps you can use in a sample). Of course, your benefits increase expotentially. Example, there are 256 different sample values in 8-bit recording versus 65535 different values at 16 bit. The difference is _very_ audible. The sample rate difference between say 44.1KHz and 96KHz or even 48KHz is subtle, but its certainly there.
Of course, if you are using some shitty labtech headphones/speakers or whatnot, don't expect to hear it. Get some good, real speakers, not PC speakers.
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do CD players reconstruct the signal these days? When I was doing my EE there were graduate students working on polynomial reconstruction. I guess at that point CD's either just used a straight DAC to analog filter (cheap) or a linear filter into an analog filter. I'd think now CD players could have the brains to introduce to push the estimated error in the current sample's reconstruction to the reconstruction of the next sample if the output accuracy isn't great enough (say you have 20 bits in and 24 bits out and you really would like 32 bits out.)
I work in computer graphics and we add pseudo-randomness all the time to get a better reconstruction. But it's because we have an infinite frequency signal (the model) that we sample that only a few times per pixel. With a CD all of that should be done in the studio with no sampling error showing up at on the CD except in the form of a little noise. Truthfully my impression is that you need a low pass filter on CD audio maybe with a 3db at 17khz, just because there are so many CD's that are made by people without any basic understanding of the technology. If I were making a home stereo as opposed to a car/portable player I wouldn't do any filtering except for the limits of the amplifier stage, but have a "Amateur CD" button that did the filtering digitaly so that people might return some of these things if they were expecting a professionally made CD. I'd also use a decent DSP enough DSP to do have a "Cathode Tube" sound filter. Maybe have a simple ADC input so that the owner's children could use the stereo system as a guitar amp.
Re:Vapor Trails (Score:1, Insightful)
I find it strange that Geddy didn't involve other, more objective ears when mixing and mastering.
I wish the article had included plots of samples from the Moving Pictures album--in my opinion, one of the best-sounding albums ever--on vinyl OR CD.
IMHO, everything after the 'Grace Under Pressure' album sounds too cold and brittle compared to previous albums (which, admittedly, were recorded during the vinyl era and might have benefitted from the (hopefully not) long gone mastering expertise of the previous generation of mastering engineers. It's amazing how there appears to be solid proof that this progressive square-waving of those albums over time.
Perhaps, with the advent of satellite radio, the effort to over-compress will subside? It's my guess that this type of technology would afford the same amount of dynamic range as an unmolested digital recording.
-T
Re:Slashdot Kicks Another Pointless Can (Score:2, Insightful)
The purpose of a record label, in fact, the entire recording industry, was originally to connect the artists with the consumers. Now they sue the consumers and the artists are being shunned because of it. Sales are down because people are pissed off at the labels and their terrorist tactics. This is how they are "creating and meeting demand" -- through extortion and bullying.
As for the original topic, Rip is right on. Everything today is overproduced, overcompressed and so phony by the time it lands on a CD that the essence of the music and the dynamics are tossed aside for the "standards" of the industry with no regard whatsoever to content and clarity.
Go back and listen to Abbey Road. Dynamics, engineering based on sound quality and tonality, not make everything as loud as everything else. And there's an article floating around about the guy who is remixing Dark Side of the Moon into surround for DVD. He complained to Pink Floyd that some things were hard to understand and unintelligible and suggested to Roger Waters and David Gilmore that they be brought up in the mix.
Guess what? Those hard to understand passages were put there intentionally to MAKE PEOPLE LISTEN. American listeners have lazy ears and no conception of musical landscape and depth.
That's why people believe that an mp3 is CD quality. Less IS more -- less quality, more money to buy it.
Record labels used to sign acts because people liked the acts. Now they sign them because they sound exactly like everything else.
The industry is ruining our culture and should be gutted. If the RIAA would get out of our computers and stop trying to criminalize downloading, maybe we'd start to hear something that doesn't sound like Britney Spears again.
Destroy the industry and let the culture breathe again.