HOLY COMPRESSION BATMAN!!!

[JoLLyRoGer]

[RANT]

Jeebus craptastic mastering!!! I picked up a copy of Monster Ballads - Platinum Ed. yesterday which contains many of my favorites from that time.

Remembering the Bob Dylan thread yesterday, I popped the CD into my PC and pulled up Track 1 on a wave editor program we use at band practice to rough-track our ideas before we go to record; you won't believe what I saw!!

WARNING: What you're about to see is Skid Row's "I Remember You" (one of the best power ballads to come out of the 80's Hair-Metal age) reduced to nothing more than a wall of compressed noise. - Not for the faint of heart!

What The Crap!?? :|

Now you tell me.. where's the dynamic range and sound quality in that?? What's more is all of the tracks on the entire CD look like they were given the same treatment.

I honestly just sat there slack-jawed for a minute or two before shaking my head and dumping the CD in the garbage. It's really sad how record lables are butchering the hell out of sound quality these days...

[/RANT]

JR..

 

[Syrch]

Yup and many people who buy music and high end equipment to enjoy high quality material are fed up with this

 

[SagaLore]

Sorry, I'm not a big audio guy - can you explain what I'm looking at in your wave software? I thought that's how music was supposed to look?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Sorry, I'm not a big audio guy - can you explain what I'm looking at in your wave software? I thought that's how music was supposed to look?

range should be waiiii greater..i think

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Sorry, I'm not a big audio guy - can you explain what I'm looking at in your wave software? I thought that's how music was supposed to look?

You should have that many peaks bouncing off the top. It SHOULD look roughly like it does from the 0-25 sec point the whole way through. Instead, everything is mashed up at the top like you see from roughly 0:50 to 3:00. Theres just no dynamics, theres no lows or highs or in betweens.
Its binary.
ITS EITHER REALLY FVCKING LOUD...........(or nothing at all)

 

[glen]

Post a picture of a recording without that much compression.

 

[HendrixFan]

If you think thats bad, check out the Audioslave CD, or worse, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I avoid newer remasters if at all possible, because the older pressings of CDs (mid to early 90s) wont have such compression. For artists that I really care about, I pick up new vinyl and transfer it over myself. You can't beat Radiohead's OK Computer on vinyl.

 

[davestar]

hmm... you probably shouldn't have admitted that you picked up a copy of Monster Ballads

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Sorry, I'm not a big audio guy - can you explain what I'm looking at in your wave software? I thought that's how music was supposed to look?

Notice how all of the peaks are squared off and the the 'body' of the song is almost as loud as everthing else.

Basically the details have been squashed out of it to achieve a louder overall mixdown at the expense of dynamic range and good sound quality.

What you're seeing is the over use of compression and over-clipping of the resonant and harmonic peaks which ultimately lends to distortion and degraded sound quality..

 

[SP33Demon]

Well you did buy a monster ballads CD so you were asking for trouble, god knows how much they compressed it. I'd be curious to see the difference between that and Skid Row's original CD.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: davestar
hmm... you probably shouldn't have admitted that you picked up a copy of Monster Ballads

What can I say? I'm a sucker for the 80's and as far as a compilation disc goes, I though the track arrange ment was great. The sound quality on the other hand clearly is not.

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: SP33Demon
Well you did buy a monster ballads CD so you were asking for trouble, god knows how much they compressed it. I'd be curious to see the difference between that and Skid Row's original CD.

Thats what I'm wondering myself.

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: SP33Demon
Well you did buy a monster ballads CD so you were asking for trouble, god knows how much they compressed it. I'd be curious to see the difference between that and Skid Row's original CD.

I'd be more interested in hearing it (if I could; mine are not the most well-trained ears).

 

[HendrixFan]

Here are some pics I just took for comparison.

This is from the Audioslave self titled CD and you can see the peaks are clipped and most the song is capped as loud as it can go.

Here is a track from the 1987 pressing of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland. The 1997 Remasters are clipped, so I listen to the older Reprise "RE-1" pressing shown here.

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: JoLLyRoGer

Originally posted by: davestar
hmm... you probably shouldn't have admitted that you picked up a copy of Monster Ballads

What can I say? I'm a sucker for the 80's and as far as a compilation disc goes, I though the track arrange ment was great. The sound quality on the other hand clearly is not.

If you like it, you like it. No apologies or excuses needed.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: glen
Post a picture of a recording without that much compression.

Since you asked...
Here is a sample of "Already Gone" off of an Eagles CD that I bought sevearal years ago (around 1993). Although the disc does not play near as loud, the overall dynamic range and sound quality is excellent because nothing is compressed or clipped off. Basically the reproduction is true to the master it was taken from.

See the difference?

JR..

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: HendrixFan
Here are some pics I just took for comparison.

This is from the Audioslave self titled CD and you can see the peaks are clipped and most the song is capped as loud as it can go.

Here is a track from the 1987 pressing of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland. The 1997 Remasters are clipped, so I listen to the older Reprise "RE-1" pressing shown here.

I'm not a big audio guy either, but would I be right in assuming this is to compensate for the "loudness" button or effect on modern stereos?
A song has to be of one audio range (loud) in order to be heard throughout, if you have a properly varied track the lows will be barely audible and the higs extremely distorted using the loudness button.
I haven't documented it or anything, but that seems to be in line with my experience.. I never use loudness except by accident, it muddies the quality I feel.

Is this trend an extension of the bass over all phenomenon?

 

[thomsbrain]

brick-wall limiters are amazing tools. the sounds you can get from snare and kick drums using a brick-wall limiter are awesome. and i DO think they should be used on the master, too. but i agree that most mastering jobs push the input into the limiter too high, and the distortion across the mix really makes it hard to hear detail.

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: djheater

Originally posted by: HendrixFan
Here are some pics I just took for comparison.

This is from the Audioslave self titled CD and you can see the peaks are clipped and most the song is capped as loud as it can go.

Here is a track from the 1987 pressing of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland. The 1997 Remasters are clipped, so I listen to the older Reprise "RE-1" pressing shown here.

I'm not a big audio guy either, but would I be right in assuming this is to compensate for the "loudness" button or effect on modern stereos?
A song has to be of one audio range (loud) in order to be heard throughout, if you have a properly varied track the lows will be barely audible and the higs extremely distorted using the loudness button.
I haven't documented it or anything, but that seems to be in line with my experience.. I never use loudness except by accident, it muddies the quality I feel.

Is this trend an extension of the bass over all phenomenon?

"loudness" controls generally boost the lows (and sometimes highs) a bit to compensate for you running the volume too low. as volume increases, your perception of low frequencies increases, so if you can't run the volume high, you can use the "loudness" control to compensate for the diminished perception of bass. but you're right, most of them just muddy stuff up by boosting the low-mids along with the lows, so i steer clear of them in most cases.

 

[spidey07]

That blows. Is there anything we can do to tell them to knock it off?

I mean the chesky recordings are always well done.

 

[ArchCenturion]

Do they do that compression stuff, in an attempt to make it harder to copy or something? It seems to me that technology and music quality should be improving, not getting worse.

 

[HendrixFan]

While one impact of compression is making the quiet parts louder, there is a problem with that. If the song is designed to have a varied volume (think Hurt by Nine Inch Nails), then the loud parts lose their significance.

As was mentioned in the other thread, the larger concern is that everything is too loud. While that seems obvious, I'll try and explain. When you have the volume pushed up to the limit there is distortion present. Algorithms are used to "soften" the distortion, but it is still present. You can feel the difference when you listen to a heavily compressed album loudly. Afterwards there is a sense of fatigue that sets in. You don't have that with a properly mastered CD.

If the mix is too loud, then you will be unable to hear the subtlety of the music. You will be unable to make out the dynamics of an artist's vocal range, a guitar (acoustic especially), or even the drums. You will only be able to make out the "loud" parts of each instrument as the quiet parts are drowned out by the sheer volume and also by the distortion. The compression quite literally compresses the dynamic range. Its like listening to music through a telephone, you lose so much.

 

[HendrixFan]

Originally posted by: ArchCenturion
Do they do that compression stuff, in an attempt to make it harder to copy or something? It seems to me that technology and music quality should be improving, not getting worse.

It has nothing to do with copying, as all audio CDs have no encryption. By compression, we don't mean some sort of encryption. Think of it like a hat. When you sit on the hat you crush it down. It becomes "compressed". Thats what happens to the music, it gets crushed down.

The sad thing is that CDs have a dynamic range of over 90db (cant remember the exact number off hand). Most CDs are mastered these days with less than 10db of dynamic range, completely removing the audio possibilities of a CD. Why does this happen? The music is mixed in the studio properly (usually). When they get sent to the mastering plant to get pressed to disc, they get equalized and the volume gets boosted. This is pushed by the record companies who think louder is better. Customers actually agree. If you were to play a song for someone (that is mastered properly), and play the exact same song 3db louder; then ask them which "mix" sounds better, most would tell you the louder one. In order for the music to sound "better" than a competing track, it is mastered loud. For about a decade now it has been a race to make their artist sound "better" than another by making it louder. The amount of compression present on many new CDs is just disgusting.

 

[spidey07]

Hendrix,

to add to that I think a CD has like a dynamic range of 100 db. It seems that these modern recordings only use like 10 of it. your pictures show the dramatic loss in dynamics between the two.

 

[vi edit]

I'd be curious as to what Disturbed's 10000 Fists was compressed at.

Even at low volumes in a CD player, it sounds just cranked and muddled in quality. I would assume it's compressed beyond recognition in production, no?