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."
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:1, Interesting)
Records have extremely low dynamic range. In other words, they are flat.
Does this explain my change in taste? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't help, but think that softer stuff like that has a much lower chance of being compressed into distortion.
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, you should LOVE MP3 if you like the random crappy distortions LPs have.
Just take a look at what frequency domain corrections used to correct the horrible bias of LPs.
Vs them, MP3 is HiFi^2.
Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
1.: Record producers did try to fit the sound for low-fi at least as far back as the seventies. This was done to make sure the songs were still recognizable on your transistor radio at the beach or on the tape deck in your car.
2.: *My* MP3s sound just fine, thank you.
Re:Meh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MP3 compression does not... (Score:5, Interesting)
If they can't tell the difference then they probably have little business talking about the subtleties of music production and recording formats.
Even better is the idea of producers (gasp) altering the mix to suit MP3s better. Maybe they should look up the original purpose of mastering compressors, especially those with a lat/vert mode. Yup - they're there to compensate for the limitations of your precious, precious vinyl.
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Interesting)
I do encode my mp3s using LAME at 192 kbps and even though I would not characterize the sound as sucky, I could detect a difference between the mp3s and the original (CD played on a 13 year old relatively higher end Sony CD Player). The article is on the mark, the bass and the punch of drums at the bottom end is not as strong. I do not detect differences on the high end, perhaps because of my aging ears.
It could be that the mp3s encoded in the latest version of LAME could have closed the gap but it is also likely that the difference is exacerbated by the fact that I am playing the mp3s via the laptop's headphone jack hooked up to the stereo amp. I wish someone would manufacture an mp3 player with better analog output circuitry designed not for headphone / earphone listening but for hooking up to hifi components.
Re:The article was mostly about audio compression (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t13193.html [hydrogenaudio.org]
and this:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t132.html [hydrogenaudio.org]
See how these people are trying to manipulate Slashdot moderation just to regurgirate their spam.
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and just look at how easily and elegantly they are dealt with. A simple pair of R-C filter networks which are, in essence, a mirror-image of the RIAA pre-emphasis networks used in the amplifier(s) driving the cutter head on the record lathe. The RIAA emphasis curve is a true open standard, and with careful selection of components, it's trivial to execute a proper de-emphasis stage.
So, no bit-juggling, no psychoacoustic algorithms, just smooth analog correction that can easily be within 1% of standard across the entire audio frequency band. And the RIAA curve isn't the first attempt at getting this right - there were other emphasis schemes in the early days (old Columbia, RCA, others) which proved less effective than the RIAA standard which was eventually adopted universally. But all of this was worked out 50 years ago..
To sum up, I have no idea what you're on about with this 'horrible bias of LPs' comment. Those issues were dealt with long, long ago.
Re:Not about lossiness... (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth is only a very small portion of the people care for real audio quality and the rest are easy to be convinced by apparent loudness. I did some tests with the musicians I work with. I played the exact same mix twice, but one mix was limited (a tool to make the mix sound louder). Everyone chooses the louder one as sounding better. So nowadays I admit to being guilty of supporting the loudness war, not because a like it, but because I have too.
Re:The article was mostly about audio compressionh (Score:1, Interesting)
What microphone has a S/N ratio of 146+ dB (needed to achieve your 24 bit resolution according to S/N ~ 6.02*bit resolution+1.761)?
Where can I download 1000 songs for $1?
Re:The article was mostly about audio compression (Score:3, Interesting)
You keep putting the blame squarely in the hands of the format. I put the blame Firmly in the hands of the Audio engineers. you guys know you are destroying the sound.
I record live events with a mixture of equipment. From high end binaural mic's coupled with a portable DAT recorder to my chump-change cheapie using a personally matched pair of cheapie electro's into a mp3 recorder. and EVERY single time I get far superior recordings than the best audio engineers produce and release. I get full dynamic range that my gear can handle. I hear things that I never hear on the published and processed to death recordings. and finally I get a stereo separation that when you close your eyes you feel like you are there. Many people call my recordings "spooky" for how clear the sound and imaging is. and yes I know what I am talking about I bootleg recorded at a concert that was later released on SACD. My recording from the 3rd row was far superior with my junk recording gear.
YOU can do that, but you guys refuse to produce good audio you produce that compressed crap that has your standard EQ settings on it and somehow your processing smashes the stereo separation so hard it sounds like crap. Do you have a preset in protools that is designed to smash everything to the point it sucks? because it sounds like it. I can tell you after listening to a CD or SACD WHAT studio it came out of I can hear the destruction you guys did it's like a fingerprint.
Re:...still own LP's - which which were compressed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Radio in general (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And people wonder why I still own LP's (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct to a point. But there are also limits as to what the human ear can distinguish. The 44.1 Khz, 16 bit format of CD and standard WAV recordings was settled on for marketing reasons, not technical ones. That resolution came about because the Marketing Department at Phillips, in the early 1970s when this was being developed, had three criteria for CD.
- The CD had to be 5 1/4 inches wide to fit in the space for a car radio
- A CD had to hold 70 minutes of music so that you could put all of Beethovan's 9th symphony on it
- That was the maximum bit density they could achieve at the time
Put all three of those together and you get 44.1 khz at 16 bit resolution. At the time, it sounded "good enough". Nobody thought it was perfect. It has a number of advantages and Phillips thought it would sell. They were right.There is a general consensus among hi-end audiophiles today that with 96 khz at 24 bit resolution, as you find in the little used DVD-Audio format, does have sufficient detail to be indistinguishable from analog.
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work with a mastering engineer that had specialized in vinyl and he talked about some of the things he would have to contend with when working with records. He mentioned that those problems became really evident after digital had really taken off and become established only to introduce the 'resurgence' of releasing 7inch 'remix' records and having to explain to his clients why the records sounded so much different from the existing digital masters.
Besides the obvious problem of space (signal with a lot of low-freq content can significantly reduce the amount of recording time on one side of a record, for instance, so a lot of modern music, rap, r&b, and rock) would have to be heavily sonically modified to be pressed onto vinyl) in general the low-end and high-end of the source is *very* heavily EQed on the front end (before etching) and then given the 'reverse' of the same EQ on the back-end (after detected by the needle).
Such heavy handed EQ is necessary to 'deal' with the limitations of the format and because there is no such thing as perfect EQ there is always a change in the tone of the original source.
I suspect, but admittedly have no proof, that much of what is 'appealing' to vinyl is the learned tonality of all of this processing. I am not even saying that the process is 'good' or 'bad' I merely mean to suggest that it is there and a large part of that 'vinyl sound.'
A similar process is done with cassette tape recording to address the limitations of the high-end of audible signal and noise.
As a personal anecdote, when I first started working with digital I admit that I, too, first considered digital to be 'cold' and 'sterile'. But after working with digital more I discovered that the REAL problem with digital was its veracity. Working in analog is often a lot of 'pushing' the waveform to 'extract' a certain sound out of the tape (with FANTASTIC effect -- NOTHING sounds like drums and guitars, recorded VERY hot, to virgin 24-track 2" tape. NOTHING. but you achieve that sound not because analog is better but because of what happens when you do analog 'wrong'.). With digital you get EXACTLY what you put down so in order to achieve a 'sound' you have to generate that sound before you press record on the digital deck. When we first learned this, we would sometimes track drums on 2" analog first (citing my previous comment about 2"), and then dump it to digital to do the rest of the record (that is done a lot less now -- almost never -- we were being lazy).
Most of getting 'good sound' out of digital was more a matter of relearning how to record to the newer medium
Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait (Score:3, Interesting)
i think it's a mistake to think of the iPOD (or other digital portable players) solely as a tool to carry music with you as you travel. Instead, think of the iPOD as the source of all music for your stereo system. Instead of plowing thru 200 LPs, 100 cassette tapes, and 500 CDs (roughly my collection), everything is in one physical item, easily cross-cataloged so you can find a given type, performer, composer, etc.
And, back in my college days, ask me whether I'd have preferred to carry an iPOD or 6 crates of LPs up three stories to my dorm room!
Re:Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it isn't. It's the smartest possible choice. There is no loss of stereo separation in LAME "joint stereo" (actually, mid/side or matrix stereo), unlike in intensity stereo encoding, which isn't even implemented in LAME. How LAME works by default is that it analyses each frame separately to see whether it is more efficient to encode the frame in LR or MS. Most of the time, not every frame is encoded in "joint stereo". If there was an audible effect to stereo imaging from using MS encoding, the stereo image would continuously pump back and forth as the encoding method changes. Never heard of anyone complaining about that happening...
The drawback to MS encoding is that LAME is only optimised for stereo listening - if the compressed track is played back through a Dolby Pro Logic decoder, the quality of the rear channel sound can suffer audibly in some cases. In Dolby Stereo, the rear channel is L-R, just like the S channel in MS encoded stereo. LAME only optimises the decoded LR stereo signals for audible artifacts, not the S signal when listened to as is. As far as I know, that is the only scenario where using LAME in LR mode exclusively has been shown to improve sound quality. In all other situations, it performs much better in automatic LR/MS mode, or "joint stereo", so the encoder can decide where to use the bits available.
See this [freeuk.net] old page for an explanation of MS encoding. There's lots to be found on the topic in Hydrogenaudio's archives, but I can't be arsed to do a search right now.