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."
I'm so lost in love (Score:4, Funny)
Now that is one tough, durable fellow. I would have split my own head open with a .44 slug by the start of the third album.
Air Supply [airsupplymusic.com], now there was a real band! ;)
You know what? I've heard what this guy means!! (Score:3, Interesting)
How it is done (Score:5, Informative)
When finished tracks are sent to be 'Mastered', they are usually compressed a little bit, or a lot, depending on the taste of the Mastering Engineer. Compression in this case doesn't refer to encoding audio in a compressed format, rather a compressor is a dynamics processor, with it you can set a threshold above which the sound will be modified based on a ratio like 2 or 3 to 1. So for a 2 to 1 ratio any sound that is above the threshold will be reduced by half.
This was initially done back in the old days when you had at best 45 dB of dynamic range to work with on your recording medium, a very noticable noise floor, and material with a dynamic range of 120 dB (Live Rock). Obviously you can't stuff 120 dB into a 45 dB (cassette tape(if you are lucky)) dynamic range, So the material was compressed to fit within the dynamic range. Also because of the quality(lack thereof) of consumer audio equipment and the previously mentioned very noticable noise floor, most music is compressed into the top 3-5 dB of whatever medium it is recorded on.
Nowadays, we have a playback medium with a 96 dB dynamic range and close to a 96 dB noise floor, but because people got used to the way it used to sound, they want to keep hearing it that way. Pretty much the only recorded materials that truly benefited from the increase in dynamic range allowed by CD's and digital recording are orchestral works, and the people that listen to these avidly, and care about the recording truly reflecting the performance, still want more!
The other aspects of 'Mastering' are a great deal more subtle, equalization and level matching between tracks are things that most people do not notice unless it is done badly. At the end they turn the result up to the top of the mediums allowable dynamic range and start printing tens of thousands of them at a few cents apiece.
If you think a cd has clipped samples recorded on it the best way to check is to rip the track off the disc into a PCM (Non Lossy, Non compressed, Non MP3)format at 16 bit/44.1 (Redbook native format) and look at the samples in question with a wav editor. If you have blown up the waveform to the point where you can see a single sample, and the tops of the waveform are at the cieling and flat, then complain to the recording engineer, because it is probably his fault.
BTW make sure it is a clean non scratched cd, any unrecoverable data loss can appear as a clipped waveform, and is heard as such depending on the smoothing filter on the output side of your cd player.
Re:How could he differentiate one album from anoth (Score:3, Funny)
No, Geddy Lee is not Nancy Wilson, silly rabbit.
Think about it: (Score:4, Funny)
Starting to get spooky, isn't it.
Re:I'm so lost in love (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very valid complaint (usually made by those within the industry). When you master each track so that they are all 'loud', you are essentially removing any difference in gain between these channels (also an objective measure). Thus, the music is percieved as 'better' for those people who have music systems incapable of producing the full frequency range at a relatively even sound pressure level. For those of us able to hear the difference, the music is far less dynamic than it should be.
If it's too loud, you're too old! (Score:4, Funny)
According to Weezer... (Score:2, Funny)
psxndc
I totally agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
to the same LOUDER IS BETTER butcher job Rush's Vapor Trails went through. One example is the song "Here Comes the Pain" on Slayer's latest album. I can barely make it past the intro because it simply sounds so terrible. Or if I really want to listen to it, I turn my volume down so my speakers don't peak or bottom out. Turning metal DOWN??? That just ain't right. Damn their sound engineers to hell.
On the other hand, In Flames' latest album entitled Reroute to Remain sounds absolutely beautiful on any speakers I play it on. Same holds true for other Nuclearblast artists such as Old Man's Child and Dimmu Borgir. Kudos to foreign audio engineers!
Re:I totally agree. (Score:5, Funny)
> I can barely make it past the intro because it simply sounds so terrible.
Probably that's why it's called "Here Comes the Pain"..
Re:I totally agree. (Score:2)
Finally! Another "In Flames" fan. Another album in the same style of music that was also engineered perfectly was Emperor's "Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise" CD. Simply brilliant work.
Bingo! (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother tought me this 20 years ago when he showed me how to make tapes. I would sit there and stare at the VU meter throughout the WHOLE song, turning down the record volume slightly every time it hit red. Then rewind the song, and now with the volume properly set, record it.
Later I learned to let a bit of red slip in there, to taste. If its loud and distorted, its just pure garbage.
Personally I do not like rock and roll. But if its lound and 'clear' I can dislike it with a sort of appreciation...
Re:Bingo! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, this is most likely the problem. It probably isn't a louder is better trend. More than likely, it is the next generation of recording engineers that learned on Avids and cheap PC based eqipment, and ignored the whole measurement part. They ruined the whole job market for the experienced engineers. Now, no longer able to get work for more than $20/hr when they were getting $50-$75/hr, the experienced guys go to low-key post houses and mix sound effects into TV and radio commercials. At least that work is steady.
Of course, I've been called an elitest pig for suggesting that the Avid jockeys out there should not have gotten to where they are now with so little time learning to do the job. Now there are tons of these cheap engineers that are only good as long as the producer does not know how to read a VU meter. I say reap what you sew, and I'll stay an elitest. Perhaps when someone finally realizes what went wrong, it will be like the Cobol programmer's watershed of the late 90's.
Re:Bingo! (Score:3, Funny)
There's hope yet...
Re:Bingo! (Score:4, Interesting)
Try explaining to a client why they should someone hire a good Avid editor for (say) $150/hr (or audio- or lighting- or camera-person) when they can have their son do their company's commercial on the family's Final Cut Pro machine with their $700 digital camera?
I'm a TV guy and very interested in where the market is going to go in the next few years. I know your comment was about music production but it's really the same thing...people who used to get paid decently can't get work because potential clients don't understand that they're paying for experience.
I'd rather work in sports...
Vapor Trails (Score:5, Interesting)
to the same LOUDER IS BETTER butcher job Rush's Vapor Trails went through.
The article mentions that artists usually don't have a choice in the matter, but Geddy Lee himself did Vapor Trails. He stated in interviews that he was having breakdowns because everything was digitally clipping, but that he was reassured that it sounded okay by the rest of the band.
Re:Vapor Trails (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rush is not "Heavy Metal" (Score:3, Funny)
No kidding. (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully, surround music formats (DVD-Audio & SACD) will convince the tried & true engineers that they don't have to slam recordings at -0.1 dBFS like they've been doing with CDs.
A nice 24 dB of headroom allows for dynamic range in muxic, as well as loud transients. This is something you don't get when your music is an L2 brick.
Re:No kidding. (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Actually... (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, a small amount of noise actual can improve the signal representation! But that is a rather long discussion.
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 reconstructio
Re:It is not the bits.. (Score:5, Informative)
1) please for the love of god, SPELL THE WORD "NYQUIST" CORRECTLY.
2) latency is dependent on how large the input buffer is, and how often it is emptied. doubling the sample rate should, therefore, have the same effect as halving the buffer size, as it forces data to be clocked out of the buffer twice as fast. this is why the latency halves when the sample rate doubles.
3) let me quote you here.. "What does 96Khz do for you as a consumer? Well, with 44Khz audio interfaces, consumer level stuff is not always the most perfectly matched. As such, aliasing happens. Get 2% phase in a cap or resister and then multiple this over the signal path...Nyquest? Nyquest ain't gonna help you out when the alising is dipping into the audible portions of the sound. Remember 44khz gives you 22 IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERFECT." --- that was a collection of pseudo-babble and technical non-sense. total shit. sorry, guy, but i had to call you on that. aliasing is a phenomenon wherein the input signal is sampled at a rate unsuitable with the nyquist cutoff- in that instance the sample is "faked", and the sampled signal that results is of a lower frequency (but usually harmonically related to) the source sound - it is a mis-representation of the input signal, like jaggies in a computer generated picture. it has absolutely nothing to do with phase smearing, which is more of a time-based issue between two or more distinct signals canceling each other out at an audible rate.
4) I happen to own a Kurzweil K2vX (basically a K2000 with the sampler module, orchestral and contemporary ROM blocks built in). once again, you've got a logic flaw- in actuality, the kurzweil samples MANY of it's instruments at MUCGH LOWER RATES than 48k. SERIOUSLY. just click the "MASTER" soft button, then SAMPLE, then check out some of the built in samples-- the piano is sampled at about 22k. this is because the most relevant portions of the instrument in question need only to be sampled precisely. your kurzweil sounds good because of the relatively clean internal processing and D/A converters that are built into the keyboard (MUUUUUUUUCH better than the coverters built into other keyboards of the same ilk).
5) in theory, yes, 96k was made to correct issues with regard to aliasing. however, the cost of incorporating this high frequency sampling rate is a high one-- companies whose converters are cheaper will be unable to accurately pace themselves during the sample process (perhaps a cheap crystal) and will produce much more jitter-- each sample of a 96k wave is supposed to be evenly spaced.. like a drummer, it has to "keep the beat". well, imagine if the drummer was epileptic. that's what happens with cheap converters). so the introduction of 96k products in the consumer field is a nightmare for the time being.
6) with regard to dual inline converters that sample at 44.1, but "double up"-- if done correctly (meaning, if CLOCKED correctly.. see above for the jitter issue), than there is NO DISCERNABLE DIFFERENCE in the QUALITY of the sample-- if the converters (2 of them, remember?) are assigned as A and B, and each fires at the correct interval (A B A B A B A B), than they can "interleave" a 96k signal with NO PROBLEMS and NO DEGRADATION OF THE SIGNAL ITSELF. i have no clue where you got that idea.
7) you made a bit of a joke regarding word clock.. but i think you may really wish to research the definition, because perhaps buying one of those would improve the sound of your recordings FAR MORE than dicking about with "nyquest" theorums and fantasies.
buh bye.
Sampling frequencies and filters (Score:5, Informative)
First, minor point - 96 kHz sample rate gives you 48 kHz theoretical bandwidth - Nyquist frequency is exactly one-half the sample rate. Not 44 kHz.
So, here's the real point. Higher sample rates allow you to pass higher bandwidths through the ADC (and theoretically through the DAC). However, those higher bandwidths get shrunk when they hit the amplifiers (consumer, even pro-sumer products rarely use high-bandwidth amplifiers), further shrunk when they hit your speakers (know how many speakers will produce anything above 22 kHz? Simple answer - not yours. Unless you spent several tens of thousands for your high-efficiency ribbon tweeters), and even further shrunk when they hit your ears (though, some people can indeed hear above 20 kHz. I can hear up to 26 kHz, but then, I've never been to a concert or club without earplugs). The acoustic coupling they claim happens in mid-air (which is true - put a 40 kHz tone and a 44 kHz tone out - you get difference tones at 4 kHz, 8 kHz, 12 kHz, etc.) only occur if your speakers can get those high-frequency tones out in the first place... which they probably can't.
So, what's the real point?
Better anti-aliasing filters on the ADC side. If you are sampling at 44.1 kHz, under the Redbook standard, you have to be down 40 dB at 22.05 kHz. However, you want to pass 20 kHz with no filtering, which means your filter has to be as brickwall as possible (about -200 dB/octave... sheesh!). 3rd order filters can't even do that properly, so most anti-aliasing filters start rolling off around 16 kHz, some even earlier (especially in digital video cameras. I know, I've tested 'em).
So instead, set your filters to be down 40 dB at 48 kHz ('cause you're sampling at 92 kHz). Now your filter only has to be about 36 dB/octave to pass 20 kHz untouched, and that both increases your flat bandwidth and decreases phase distortion (the -3 dB point is a 45 degree phase inversion, and every 3 dB after that is another 45 degrees of delay).
That's why sampling higher improves things - no brickwall filters.
-T
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It is not the bits.. (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but you seem to misunderstand the situation. What the sampling theorem [wikipedia.org] tells us is that as long as the input signal is bandlimited to frequencies below one half the sampling frequency, it can be reproduced exactly by the DAC. (nb: this is for samples which have not been quantized) The reconstruction is taken care of by what is commonly known as a reconstruction [bores.com] filter. You are correct that the samples of a sine wave near the Nyquist frequency will look like a triangle wave, but once passed through the reconstruction filter what comes out is the original sine wave.
Note that the requirement that the signal be bandlimited means, for example, that one can not have as input a triangle wave near the nyquist frequency, because, as you correctly stated, a triangle wave of such a frequency contains harmonics which are greater than the nyquist frequency. Typicaly, they would be removed by an antialiasing filter at the input to the ADC.
Of course, I realize that it is not possible to implement an ideal reconstruction filter, and also that quantizing the signal introduces distortion which it is not possible to remove.
Re:Newbie here (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Newbie here (Score:3, Informative)
Headroom is measured relative to the highest l
Re:No kidding. (Score:5, Interesting)
What annoys me is the poor audio engineering in movies and DVDs today. I have fine hearing, but I often have to turn on the subtitles because if I turn up to hear alot of the dialog, other sections of the movie will fry the voice coils on my speakers. I like dynamic range and all, but there's such a thing as a signal that is too low.
Re:No kidding. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No kidding. (Score:4, Informative)
One of the reasons I will never buy a multimedia device again...
With a DVD-Drive in my computer, hooked up to my TV, I just add "-aop list=volnorm" to mplayer's list of options, and the volume is evened out quite well, and I don't have to buy a special reciever that costs $100 more than everything else, I just do it with a handful of CPU cycles, and my $30 SB LIve soundcard.
Nope your Definitely NOT alone (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No kidding. (Score:3, Informative)
I have mastered for many formats. However, CDs do not require that they be bricked like has become the trend. And CDs aren't even the worst offenders, actually! Console games are even wor
Re:No kidding. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Dynamic range.
Don't you want to balance it so that the loudest sounds on the CD correspond to (something slightly less than) the loudest "expressible" value?
Yes, but that's not what this is about.
Dynamic range is the difference between the loudest and quietest audible sounds on the CD.
When you're mixing something, you're creating a 'mood', and you do this by varying the loudness of each individual component (instrument, voice, etc..)
Isn't it common practice to optimize the loudness of the recording right at the analog source while you're recording it?
Seems like you're confusing recording with mixing - when you record the components (instruments, voice, etc..) you do optimize while you're recording it - but each piece is done individually (it's rare to have different pieces all recorded together on the same track.)
However, when you're mixing, you have to balance all of the pieces together - you don't want the drums and keyboards to drown out the singer.. and you're trying to make it 'artistic' - you want to convey emotion at specific places, such as slowly building to a climax, and then suddenly fading..
The problem is that many record execs say "mix it hotter" (make the soft stuff louder), instead of allowing the artist to decide what should go where..
Imagine if you were a painter, and you were doing something that (for it to convey what you want it to convey) some of the colors should be muted.. but the art gallery told you that you must saturate all of your colors instead (otherwise they won't pay you for the piece - and if you didn't do it their way, not only wouldn't they pay you, but your contract says that you're not allowed to sell it to anyone else, and that you'd still owe them a work - and that you'd still owe them money for the rent on the studio while you were making the painting they won't buy but won't let you sell to anyone else.)
Re:No kidding. (Score:4, Informative)
You're exactly right: This article might be a bit misleading -- It has nothing whatsoever to do with loudness, as loudness is up to the player/amp. It also doesn't have anything to do with "lack of headroom" (because they aren't dumb enough to actually clip on a digital medium because that sounds like unbelievable garbage). The problem is that it's very common nowadays to turn an entire song into what I guess one could call "mono-level": They compress it, from a dynamic range perspective, so that instead of a soft passage being 12db less than a loud passage, it's 3db. They do this because, quite honestly, the average consumer demands it -- People get upset if they have to turn their stereo up in the car to hear the soft sections, and then get shocked when a loud chorus comes on.
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...
How digitizing a signal works (Score:4, Informative)
First off, while everyone bashes analog, the analog signal is what you want to measure. When you convert to digital, two things happen:
1) sampling in time. The sampling in time reduces the maximum frequency that can be represented to half of the sample rate. This is not a big deal, since you really can't hear much over 22KHz (for CDs) anyway. Just make sure that you have a good lowpass filter so that signals don't alias.
2) quantization. While the analog signal has an infinite range, you would need an infinite amount of bits to represent each signal as digital. While modern hard drives have gotten enormous, they still are not infinite. So, quantization restricts the valid levels to a finite number, and also restricts the minimum and maximum levels that the digital signal can represent.
Generally, for signals with a large amount of frequency content (what you kids call 'music' these days), there is a large amount of peaks. However, the peak is not what gives the impression of loudness. The effective amount of power, referred to as the RMS, is a better indicator of loudness than the peak levels. The peak of a sinewave is 141% of the RMS of a sinewave. More complicated signals will have a peak-to-rms ratio much higher (1000% or more).
So, when you are digitizing a signal, if you keep the input range of the converter constant and keep increasing the input signal amplitude, you will be increasing both the peaks and also the RMS levels. Once the peaks hit the maximum level that the ADC can represent, the peaks start getting clipped - but you can still increase the RMS. However, as you start clipping the signal more and more, you increase the amount of distortion in the signal.
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
Limbaugh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limbaugh? (Score:2)
Re:Limbaugh? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Limbaugh? (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, you work with Ann Coulter? That must really suck.
Re:Limbaugh? (Score:5, Funny)
I was told I could play my radio at a reasonable volume between the hours of 11am and 1pm. Also I seem to have lost my stapler and I also did not get any cake last time there was a birthday and I could poison you all and burn the building down and I will too.
huh:? (Score:2, Funny)
They oughta know... (Score:2)
Its well known to speaker salesmen (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Its well known to speaker salesmen (Score:2)
11 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:11 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:11 (Score:2)
Radio broadcast (Score:2, Redundant)
Of course all radios should/would/could normalize their playlists
Re: Radio broadcast (Score:5, Informative)
> It's all about the radio. If your song has a lower volume than another one, it'll just sound Lame when it'll start.
> Of course all radios should/would/could normalize their playlists
I just wish they wouldn't blast the commercials out even louder than the music.
Re: Radio broadcast (Score:3, Insightful)
Radio solution (Score:2)
Re:Radio broadcast (Score:2)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Is he a pirate? (Score:4, Funny)
Rip Rowan recounts rummaging Rush recordings.
Exchange rate (Score:5, Funny)
The Death of Dynamic Range (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Death of Dynamic Range (Score:5, Funny)
I took it all for granted; how was I to know?
More range is better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More range is better (Score:3, Informative)
1 Year old article. (Score:5, Informative)
Dynamic range problem is real though. This is why you whould avoid mainstream, "radio-ready" artists and bands. Another excellent reason to buy indie music.
If you want to see how bad the problem is, get yourself a copy of the latest Foo Fighters CD and listen to the album with decent headphones. (Grado sr-80/125 or Seinheisers of equal quality). It's just noise.
A little song (Score:2, Funny)
There is trouble with CDs
For the rockers want more volume
And the amps ignore their pleas
The trouble with the rockers
(and they're quite convinced they're right)
The say the amps are just too puny
and the volume's just too light
~~~
CD vs Vinyl (Score:5, Interesting)
Its just a phase... (Score:5, Insightful)
Conspiracy Theorists Unite.. (Score:3, Funny)
Better watch your back.. those RIAA goons can be sneaky..
I don't see how things could change. (Score:2, Interesting)
Mastering engineers use all sorts of multiband compressors and loudness maximizers so that if you use the CD in a multiple CD charger, you don't have to ride the dial and ajust the level to make it sound even.
That means that the louder one goes, everyone bassicly has to follow so that they are not the softest playing CD in the set...which most people will
In the case of Rush .... (Score:2, Informative)
More cowbell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More cowbell (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More cowbell (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More cowbell (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wonder if a monkey can keep a beat, that'll show 'em. Hey, you know you aren't doing a good job if a beat-box can replace you.
Personally, I think what music needs is some of the cooler instruments out there. I can't imagine why none of the metal bands out there have heavily used low-pitch chimes, or tympani. It would have such a different sound than people are used to that they'd certainly get serious airtime. And in case your monkey of a drumer can't handle it, I can certainly find millions of Jr. High band students that can replace him in an instant...
What I want to see is a drummer for a mainsteram band stand up in the middle of a song, and go over and play the vibraphone for at least a minute or so. That would show they aren't all chimps with sticks.
Alternative solution for loud recordings (Score:2, Interesting)
http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/
Five? (Score:2)
TK421 modification (Score:5, Funny)
What? WHAT? (Score:3, Funny)
This guy doesn't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Rush was on like a 6-year hiatus. They produced the album (along with another longtime Rush producer guy). Do you think that they would have put out an album that didn't sound like they wanted it to?
Vapor Trails does sound different. There's more distortion, the amplifiers are more overdriven, being pushed to their maximum more... But that is more a style thing than anything else. There's been a lot of Rush stuff that has been very clean, very free of distortion, very clear.
And Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Niel Peart have said that they chose to make things 'louder' and less clean to give the album a bit more of a 'jam' feeling. They wanted to get back to their roots, and distinguish themselves from the different clean and synthy sounds they had in the '80s.
So... Vapor Trails doesn't sound loud and overdriven because it is engineered poorly, or because not enough effort went into producing it... it sounds that way because that's the sound Rush was going for
And for the (slashdot) record, Vapor Trails has generally been recieved well by fans, and has gotten very good reviews. And I like it, so you KNOW it's good stuff.
Re:This guy doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This guy doesn't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Rush has been getting progressively heavier and louder since Roll The Bones. Boy, was that album a mess. Someone in another thread mentioned how Presto was too bright and lacking in bass. Well, for RTB, producer Rupert Hine overcompensated by clipping all the highs, too. Neil Peart does really cool stuff with cymbals. You'd never know it from RTB. The mid-range is so overwhelming, I can't tell the difference between my home theater setup and my clock radio when playing that CD.
Once they got out on tour for RTB, everyone told them how much better the new stuff sounded live. That was the end of Hine's association with Rush. They went back to Peter Collins, whom they had worked with through the '80s, for Counterparts. He brought in some guy nicknamed "Caveman" to engineer. The result was a very broad range of sounds. Some of the more complex arrangements, like Nobody's Hero and Cold Fire were quite clean and crisp, like '80s Rush. But heavier songs like Animate and Stick It Out have a dirtier, garage-band sound. IIRC, Geddy used an old amp with burned-out tubes to get that big, thick, heavy bass sound.
And it's been all downhill (or uphill, depending on your opinion of Rush's synth-happy days :-) ) from there, which leads us to Vapor Trails. They decided to take their time with that album, mostly because Neil had completely dropped out for a couple of years. They spent over a year in the studio. And when your as well-established* as Rush, the record companies don't meddle as much as they would with some flavor-of-the-month copycat band. So Rush certainly got the sound they wanted out of Vapor Trails. And if the results sound loud on the album, you should have heard it live. Damn.
*: Rock and Roll Speak for "old". :-)
Re:This guy doesn't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Geddy Lee (who was the only band member present for the mixing) has said a lot of the clipping wasn't discovered until late in the process and he ended up trying to compensate for it in the mixing. That may well be why (as the article elaborates) the guitars, bass, and drums all clip at the same times; Geddy decided that the only way to cover up the drums clipping was amp the guitar so it was clipping.
Agreed with you on Vapor Trails. Best Rush album since Moving Pictures, and I might even say best since Hemispheres. Then again, I can't really rank Rush albums; there've been times that Presto or Hold Your Fire are what I'd call the best.
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.
Someone did another good analysis recently... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/clippi
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.
Compression could save hearing (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The Real Reason (Score:3, Insightful)
When is louder better? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what can we do about this? It would be nice with some analysis software to evaluate individual CDs. Not that software can tell you how good something sounds, only the ear can tell you that. But still it is good with some subjective meassures instead of only objective meassures. But that is not all. How about releasing two masterings only differing in the volume. One of those too loud, and another one that is simply scaled just enough to not cause clipping. So people could listen to whatever version they prefer, or even mix the two in a way that would actually reproduce the original with more than 16 bits of quality.
What would be even better was a new format and a standard somehow forbiding this practice. From the article it sounds like they are pushing the volume about 9dB too loud. How about a format the forbids an average volume higher than the -18dB of the range allowed by the given number of bits. The problem is that everybody wants to have the highest volume, so standardizing a volume below what will cause damages to the sound seems like a good plan.
Of course requiring a lower volume will loose some bits of quality. 18dB equals to 6 bits of your samples, so my suggestion would be to use 32bit samples which is a nice number and 8 bits more than I have heard about anybody using. Sure it is not going to happen with CDDA, but it is about time to get a replacement format anyway. Unfortunately I'm afraid those designing that stuff today are not focusing on quality, but a lot of other stuff like screwing their customers as much as possible.
to hell with compressed dynamics! (Score:3)
Just like a nicely balanced black-and-white photograph will have black blacks (but not too black) and white whites (but not too white), a well-mastered CD's content should fall between the media's minimum and maximum dynamic range.
The parallels between photography and music start to fall apart when you bring normalization into the picture. If you are familiar with Photoshop, you know that you can tweak the blacks and whites in a photo so that the blacks are black and whites are white with the Level tool. This is normalization. When you normalize, you either expand or compress the information to fit between a maximum and a minimum value. This works great with photos, but not as well with music, especially if the source material is bad.
If your source material is not recorded at the proper levels for CD mastering, normalization can definitely put it in the proper range, but it comes at a price. If the source is too quiet, normalization will raise the noise floor and may introduce or enhance undesirable artifacts. If the source is too loud, normalization can compress the sound so the differences between loud, medium, and quiet are not as distinct as they should be. Imagine a smooth gradient from white to black suddenly becoming scrunched towards the edges so there is a wide band of mushy gray in the middle).
All this can be summed up with the phrase:
junk in, junk out
Misleading title (Score:3, Informative)
It's not about loudness being good or bad. It's about the (alleged) misunderstanding by execs in the recording industry that make them think they are making louder music. In fact they are not. Once you hit the limit of what the digitization can record, any further attempt at loudness doesn't actually work, since loudness is caused by the size of the *change* in value, not the value itself. (A sine wave that wavers between +40 and +60 is exactly the same volume as one that wavers between -10 and +10) by making the waves "top out" they actually make it quieter by truncating the top of the wave off, resulting in a long period of time during which the speaker won't be moving at all. Had they made it "quieter", by reducing the amplitude, they would have actually gotten a louder sound because the speaker would still be *moving* during that time instead of stuck against the stops not moving any air.
So he's not complaining about volume. He's complaining about losing the tops of the waves because the amiplitude has been punched up to the point where they hit the flat top of the representable range. This is not more volume. It's more distortion.
More volume comes from that knob you turn.
Linear PCM vs. logarithmic (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always wondered about why (more or less) permanent audio storage formats like CDs or DAT use linear PCM when it's fairly clear that the human auditory system uses a logarithmic transfer function. Wouldn't we be better off using 16 bit logarithmic samples instead of linear samples on CDs and such?
Note also that the article points out the legitimate uses for pushing up the volume without any distortion. For example, many pre 1980s recordings are now getting a second workover: the original release was on vinyl, then there was the simple 1980s digital transfer to CD, and now many classical recordings (e.g. most of Rudy Van Gelder's recordings for Blue Note) are released a third time after 24 bit remastering and mixing. (Plus there are the Japanese 20 bit releases from the 1990s.) This does make sense, since you when transfering your final 24 bit mix to a clunky old 16 bit audio CD, you need to make sure that you keep the volum as high as possible without introducing distortion, coz if you don't, you lose detail in the softer passages due to the fact that you have to drop the least significant byte of each sample. So louder is in fact better, as long as you don't clip the peaks.
AC/DC is an exception, IMO (Score:3, Insightful)
Waveforms of intellectual property (Score:3, Funny)
Liner notes from the White Stripes album Elephant (Score:5, Interesting)
"All songs on this record recorded to eight track reel to reel at Toe-Rag Studios, Hackney, London, England by gentleman Liam Watson in Apil 2002 except track 4 recorded at the BBC Maida Vale studio by Miti"
I haven't seen liner notes like this (i.e. referring to the recording process) on a rock album in a really long time.
This was the same album that was sent to radio stations in vinyl only, the speculation being, they were trying to avoid it being uploaded to a P2P network. But accoring to an interview, vinyl is their preferred listening medium, and they wanted people to hear it in that same manner.
I have both versions of this album, and I must say, that the vinyl disc, on a VPI Aries Scout [vpiindustries.com] and a tube phono preamp are not subtle.
And the detail! It sounds glorious!
Crap FM compression, the US leads the way as usual (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to live in Britain, and travel to the US frequently. Now it's the opposite way around. In all this time I have had the strong impression that US FM and TV audio is horribly compressed and disgusting compared to Britain. (This is by no means a more general point about the two countries. I'm not trying to stir up anything.)
Anyway, I recently watched the Foo Fighters DVD single of "times like these" and it has US and UK versions of the video. To my ears, the mix for the UK video was quite different and much better. It had more punch... so I wonder now if engineers perhaps pre-crappify video soundtracks for the US market. Perhaps the Foo Fighters engineer thought he could compress the signal to broadcast standards and achieve a better result than if it was left to the TV stations.
My theory is that the BBC lead the way with reasonable dynamic range in the UK, because if they needed more powerful transmitters the taxpayer picked up the bill, and so commercial TV had to follow their lead. (But it's all pure speculation!)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Fine, have it your way - 1000 items (Score:3, Insightful)