The Death of High Fidelity 377
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Rolling Stone has an interesting story on how record producers alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Without enough low end, 'you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord.' The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness. After a few minutes, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song."
lolbull (Score:2, Informative)
i think what matters what is where the sound is coming out from
speaker/headphone quality etc
This article seems dubious (Score:4, Informative)
Compression is a horrible thing, of course, because essentially what is happening today is that even those of us who buy CDs hoping to avoid the artifacts of lossy formats are subject to some random guy deciding during mastering that "hey, this will stand out more against the competition if the whole thing is really loud and unsubtle". But to tie this against MP3 is a very far stretch of the imagination, IMO.
not just mp3's (Score:2, Informative)
The first thing I think of though is not how can we improve the delivery medium, but rather why are equalizers not considered at all? Especially in digital media where the EQ can be activated from the song's information itself! Use the EQ to bring out the artificial loudness, but leave the details there for the people who want to disable the EQ and just listen to the original piece.
But of course this does not fix the problem they discussed with the band they mentioned had fewer pauses in their songs. That's just an unfortunate choice on the part of the producers, and has actually opened my eyes a bit as to the lack of control an artist has on their own music.
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
You don't compress differently when exporting to MP3 than you do when exporting to CD. Let's not look upon an MP3 as a majestical format where audio mysteriously takes on a life of its own and sounds strikingly different. It doesn't. An MP3 is simply the same signal that you find on a CD transformed into the frequency domain, frequencies with lesser engery quantized greater, or dropped if below the absolute threshold of hearing, some spatial information discarded (depending on the encoding mode), and written out as a bitstream. An MP3 is certainly a degraded version of the original signal, but the degradation can't really be compensated for via compression. If anything, EQ would be a better solution.
I really think this article is completely off-base. Compression is completely unrelated to MP3, it's a technique used independently of the format.
Dynamic Range! (Score:5, Informative)
MP3 compression is yet another issue.
MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
I think you resumed in two sentences the whole "audiophile" dilemma. Let's face it, modern recordings suck and no processing will change that. Meanwhile, well intentioned but ill informed people will debate endlessly if vacuum tubes are better than transistors, if analog is better than digital, if lossless compression is better than lossy.
Raising these subjects is flamebait, the people who defend vacuum tubes or analog recordings are comparing their own favorite recordings with modern recordings, not the absolute value of the audio equipment itself.
One of my own favorite musics is a recording of the nine Beethoven symphonies, done by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1962-1963. I have several versions of these in both analog medium, tape and LPs, and also in CDs, which I have ripped to mp3 to carry in my portable player. To rip the mp3 I used the CDs, not any of the analog versions, because the sound is cleaner in the CDs.
OTOH, I have also some other CDs of those same pieces, same orchestra, same conductor, same recording company, done entirely in digital formats. I think they aren't as good as the old ones. The reason? Not because they are digital, but because of the difference between a Karajan in his 30s compared to the same man 20+ years later. Or it could also show the difference between the criteria used by Deutsche Gramophon in the 1960s and the 1980s.
However, one thing I'm sure of is that if a CD copy of an analog recording is better than an analog copy of the same recording you cannot say digital sound is inferior. And if an mp3 copy of a CD containing music originally recorded in analog format sounds better than an LP of exactly the same recording, you cannot say mp3 has intrinsic fidelity problems.
Re:Who sells MP3? (Score:2, Informative)
Radio in general (Score:5, Informative)
Next time you have the radio on, listen closely...those little crackles in the background is not noise from a bummy signal, it's distortion from over-processing the already over-processed song.
Music that's older (recorded when the technology wasn't so hot) comes pre-clipped because they didn't have amazing compression devices to keep everything in check so the varying levels max out. It's not as bad since it were tubes causing the clipping (and they have a softer sound), but it sounds awful.
Anonymous because this is my profession.
MP3 compression does not... (Score:5, Informative)
The authors have no idea what they are talking about and are probably a combination of prejudiced and stone deaf.
Not about lossiness... (Score:5, Informative)
You can still hear most of the dynamic range on a well encoded MP3 or Vorbis file, IMHO. If it's present in the first place, that is.
Never mind discussing whether FLAC or MP3 or OGG are the best ; what does it matter if the master has already been sabotaged by marketing, compressed to sound "loud" so that it gets instant attention on the radio? Yeah, sure, it gets attention ; the same way a fire alarm or a fog horn does, by inflicting an ear-cringing reflex.
-- Butch Vig, producer and Garbage mastermind
Lower frequencies (Score:5, Informative)
Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat.
Wait, I thought that the MP3 compression was basically achieved by cutting the sound into overlapping chunks, performing a DCT on each chunk, discarding the less important bins according to a psychoacoustic model and compression the thing like in a ZIP file? If so that means that the frequency scale stays linear, and so there would be little interest in getting rid of frequencies under say 30-35 Hz since they represent about 0.15% of the data in a plain old track sampled at 44,100 Hz.
So the MP3 compression doesn't actually discard the "low end" as they call it, does it? Wouldn't the "flatness" they're talking about be due to how frame sizes affect transient (short) sounds and makes them softer?
Video Illustration of the Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loudness War (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loudness War (Score:1, Informative)
As a hobbyist electronic music composer... (Score:2, Informative)
Basically, people often don't realize that compression/limiting started as a handy tool for the mixing engineer.
Sometimes you need a good way of making something sound louder while increasing its harmonic content, and a limiter can do just that.
Also, when done in proper amounts, compression of the entire track can cause the recording to sound more unified.
The fact that these tools are used for destroying recordings these days is rather disturbing though. I recently got Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Stadium Arcadium" album, and I simply cannot stand listening to it because of the clipping and lack of dynamic range. It's rather sad, because the songs themselves are composed nicely, but are harmed by the doings of a producer. It all sounds lifeless and dull, simply lacking the finesse of a proper instrument recording.
Re:not just mp3's (Score:3, Informative)
It's amazing that half of these threads are a rehashed circle-jerk on analog/digital/mp3 compression concerns. The point of the article is that the music was intentionally made loud and thus the amplitudes of the dynamic range are consistently being chopped in modern recordings, thus nullifying the point of using an independent Amplifier to modify the sound to how you want it.
Take Heavy Metal music of the 1970s to today. Take Judas Priest for an example. The album British Steel showed an incredibly crisp, dynamic sound with distinct separation of all music tracks. If you thought the bass wasn't full enough, you adjusted the eq on your own. Today's latest release of 2004 Angel of Retribution has an album were effectively all songs are AT ELEVEN. It sucks. It produces a muttled sound across the disc.
If you want another example, take a look at RUSH. Take a Wave sampler and compare the same tracks on their original recordings back in 1982 to the re-masters of today. I'll take the absence of sound (greater peak differentials in the Sine Curve) of Signals 1982 than today's remasters. Take a listen to the latest RUSH disc. When Neil Peart's drums sound muffled, you know something is truly screwed up in the recording industry.
Re:The article was mostly about audio compression (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. There may be no digitisation (but only if the entire mastering process has been analogue as well), but there is a lower limit to the detail that can be reproduced: none of the process steps (the cutting process on the master, and the various pressing steps) can reproduce the input signal down to the molecular level.
IIRC you can't reproduce much more accurately than with 16-bit digitisation.
Vinyl does have a superior sampling rate to CD (although the same limit as above applies).
The dynamic range of vinyl is much more limited than that of CD, though. The dynamic range depends on the thickness of the record and the groove pitch, but most commercial recordings are limited to 50 dB or so, so for most music you do need some compression.
The dynamic range of a small group of musicians is something like 90 dB, an orchestra can reach 120 dB, so in practice you need compression for any recording.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
In tests, MP3s made with LAME at the default settings are usually very hard to distinguish from the original. The test is to play the original (A), then the MP3 (B) and then a random choice of the original or the MP3 (X). The listener then has to guess if X was the original or the MP3. This is repeated several times until the results are statistically valid. In most cased people, even audiophiles with high end equipment, cannot accurately determine which one X is.
It's all about flexibility (Score:3, Informative)
I do it to future proof my collection. At some point down the line everyone will move away from lossy codec X to lossy codec X2 which will provide higher compression (as in file size). Some time later lossy codec Y will be introduced which will offer further benefits over codec X2, and so on... Most DAP's will also adopt these codecs and possibly drop support for some of the earlier ones.
If someone had their music on X they would then have to re-encode their entire collection over the years like so: X -> X2 -> Y
By this point, after 3 re-encodes with lossy codecs from the original source (say, a CD) you *will* notice the difference. And at some point you'll have to re-rip your entire collection again. And when you have 10.000 tracks this can become a daunting task.
Or, you can avoid all this and just keep the collection on a lossless format, which can then be converted to any other lossy or lossless codec with a simple script or with programs such as transkode. I've been through the experience of ripping hundreds of CDs, I'm not in a hurry to do it again if I want to take advantage of newer codecs.
So for me, FLAC and other lossless codecs aren't about sound quality, they're about flexibility.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
Bits in audio are all about dynamic range.. you still need all the bits for loud music as well as quiet music.
16 bits gives you 96 dB, and 24 bits gives you 144 dB. This is why 16bit is "good enough" for most music, but recording is almost always done at 24 bits to allow for more accuracy of level adjustments and mixing. Then down-mixed to 16 bits.
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
All lovers of "the vinyl sound" should read your post.
It's actually worse than that: there were several standards for vinyl equalization. Since 1954, the RIAA equalization [wikipedia.org] has been the de-facto standard, but there were literally dozens earlier, which means if you play it back on the wrong equipment you get the wrong sound. And, as you say, even with the right equipment the equalization was hardly a perfect process.
Two definitions of word 'compression' (Score:5, Informative)
Audio compression means to reduce the amount of difference between the loudest and softest sounds of an audio recording or signal. This is what a guitar stompbox pedal like the MXR Dyna-comp does or what the NE571 Compandor IC does.
File compression is to transform the time-domain voltage samples of a digital audio recording, convert them in frequency domain, and discard data below a certain threshold.
Compression means to make smaller. Audio compression reduces volume range and file compression reduces file data size. But they are completely different concepts.
Both types of compression are done on audio recordings by the music industry. Both affect the resultant product.
But they are completely different processes that affect the music in completely different ways. And many of the music professionals quoted in the article couldn't tell or honestly didn't know the difference.
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Informative)
For mastering and mixing of course you need more bits, so that you preserve 16 data-ful bits at the end of the process.
24 bit CDs would do *nothing* to preserve sound quality *after* dynamic range compression. The data has already been lost, adding more 0s doesn't get you anything.
More bits on the master recording might help, but that has nothing to do with the CD format, and everything to do with the mastering process.