The worst thing is that even well recorded older music gets 'remastered' and they crank up the volume and compress everything. It just destroys the music. I often have the first CD releases and they just sound better than the 'remastered' versions.
@Douglas Blake and I think they’re engineering for the most common devices like peoples Bluetooth speakers snd sound bars and ear buds where compression can make the music seem fuller and louder
More recently & to an extent currently: This is, of course, a P S Audio site. In order to extract the best sound from current, standard CD's, AND, SACD's, I've purchased Paul's best CD Transport, & D to A Converter. I have a handful of SACD releases, & I think that these are mastered more carefully, and, "sound better." There's some hope, I feel!
The worst thing is when your favourite streaming service replaces the original recording with the "remastered" that sounds awful due to loudness compression. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?
it's not just on the recordings, some headphones/earbuds from large consumer brands use DSP to compress dynamic range to make it sound "more detailed".
same thing happened for a while with photography. HDR showed all the details everywhere and looked like...candyland lol. nothing looks real and contrast is robbed from the images. interesting how photography and audio overlap in a lot of ways.
@@osirismarbles5177 Ugh, man, I have been complaining about the photography version longer than music. By some point almost all of the popular/visible photography became the same fake low-quality trash... bit like modern popular compressed + pitch-corrected singers; It makes good singers sound terrible, and certainly doesn't make bad singers sound good! They all become bland generic synth-voices.
@@googIesux lol exactly. who's your favorite artist? who cares! they all sound exactly the same today! whole world is compressed and depressed smh. Octave records should put out their own streaming radio.
Hi-fi industry as a whole needs to protest against the loudness crap! I believe future generations will be turned off on hi-fi due to this. Teenager today listen to favourite band won't want expensive system later on in life because it won't sound good due to the prior recording. PS audio and Naim audio have their own recording studios for latest talented artists and internet radio station. But as a audiophile and hi-fi manufacturers we must try to get through to the mainstream radio record labels ect that this loudness is killing future generations music. Maybe if hi-fi manufacturers from cables speaker's amplifiers ect join together create a industry hi-fi global recording label which I believe can bring future generations into hi-fi.
In the early 90's I was part of an effort of the San Diego Audio Society and the public radio station at San Diego State University to broadcast high dynamic range music. And that was for a special broadcast. We supplied the station with the turntable, arm and cartridge and a selection of content. Much Pomp and Circumstance and members of the Society were all listening at home for the broadcast. Me being one of them. The music started, a crescendo, and the station signal went off the air. The signal came back shortly after, the music continued, another loud passage and the stations signal went down again. This happened a couple more times and then the station engineer stopped the broadcast of "high dynamic range" content. The cause of this was that the transmitter had limiters such that if it was asked to broadcast content outside a relatively narrow dynamic range it would shut itself down for a minute or so. I have no idea if transmitters of today have this kind of feature, but I suspect they do.
Intresting! AIR AM FM service in India used to play vinyls from their collections as CD players still didn't made into government run broadcasting studio up until 2000. I used to listen regularly during 80s and late 90s. Never heard any occurance of such an incidence. Perhaps the equipments were from old analogue era, wasn't upgraded due to paucity of funds or red tape
@@rogerwalter2500 I'm a Computer Engineer not an RF Engineer. But as best as I understand it on the FM Band the FCC ( Federal Communications Commission ) allocates a channel and frequency. And the FM ( Frequency Modulation ) can only deviate from the center frequency by so much. If you exceed that your out of your lane. So to prevent that the transmitter only will go so far from mid frequency and shut down if asked to go wider. Two things force it too wide. #1 Dynamic Range exceed, #2 Frequency response exceed. If the transmitter is told to go to like 30Khz it will shut down.
@@wilcalint Sorry Bill, but nope. I'm not a RF Engineer either, but I am a BSEET and BSTC (Electronic Engineering Tech & Telecommunication Engineering Tech). To paraphrase your lane analogy, the allocated broadcast (carrier) frequency and the frequency response/dynamic range are not even on the same State highway, let alone lane. The frequency response and dynamic range are attributes of the signal and have nothing to do with the location of physical broadcast frequency on the FCC spectrum. But yes, the radio stations will have limiters on their output, for both frequency and dynamic ranges. One must remember that most terrestrial radio listening is in the car or on a clock radio in the bedroom or kitchen. So broadcasting a signal out at 30kHz would be a waste of the station's energy. Because in either of those stated situations, the 30khz would be lost to poor equipment and environment. So the station will roll off the signal with filters, @PS Audio would know better here, to limit it to say 100Hz to 15kHz. The same goes for dynamics, but it's a compressor in this case not a limiter. Just imagine all the people calling in and complaining because they only hear the middle and end of a song. If they were broadcasting at just CD dynamics (about 96dB), this a possible outcome. With all of the road/wind noise and the blender/espresso noise, who can hear all of the quiet details of a ppp section of an orchestra piece. Either way, limiters and compressors have been used in broadcasting for over a hundred years or so, but this is for signal usability not frequency allocation management. But, BIG BUT, these technologies do not belong in a recordings mix, with the exception of frequency roll offs for the physical limitations of the vinyl and tape formats. Sorry for the ramble, cheers all.
@Douglas Blake You would hope so. But, also defined in this thread by Lee Brown see above. The FM transmitted signal is closely controlled by the FCC and the transmitters have built in protection systems that can result in a temporary shut down, or something. "But yes, the radio stations will have limiters on their output, for both frequency and dynamic ranges" - Lee Brown see above So maybe if the content contains something at a high enough frequency the transmitter will not let that be transmitted. How it does that I am not an expert. What I encountered years ago was the transmitter shut down for a short time. And that regardless of how loud the content was. Maybe its done differently today with compression. We were all very confused at the time as some of the shutdowns were during very quiet passages of the music.
To make matters worse, those compressed recordings are broadcast over radio where they are compressed and boosted and gated again, resulting in something not unlike noise. And then they wonder why the music industry is dying. Because you are destroying everything enjoyable about music!
I’ve got The Audiophile Masters Vol I vinyl. Superb!!!! Now I’ve got 2 Octave Records CDs. Awesome!!! Paul, you put your money where your mouth goes! They are truly a revelation in listening experiences! Bravo!!!
@@Andersljungberg Octave Records is PS Audio’s own record label and new recording studio. The Audiophile Masters series are compilation samplers vinyl albums/CD/SACD/Files of their various artists’ recordings. I highly recommend them!
@0:32 "I'm that kind-a snob" There is no snobbery, whatsoever, in avoiding butchered results. Would you be a snob if you did not want to watch a movie that was out of focus? Paul, please never debase yourself or apologize to the incompetent yahoos at the studios, or to folks that never heard properly recorded music. If there are people that like compressed music, then more power to them. It makes them happy. They do not apologize to folks that prefer properly recorded, mixed, and mastered music. So please do not make yourself out to be on the wrong side of the equation. @0:54 "Why do we have to continue this stupid loudness wars?" "we" is the wrong pronoun. It is "Why do 'they' have to continue this stupid loudness wars?" "We" have no choice. "We" have to listen to what the studios release. If you like the melody, then it comes in only one size. It is what it is. Whatever the handful of people in the studio do, the entire world has no choice but to take it as is. So why do the studios release such lousy sounding hit songs? Because none of them ever heard a high-end stereo. None of them has any clue (I mean zero clue) how a professionally set-up pair of FR30s sound. Did you ever have a neighbor whose teenager blasted their stereo, with the bass turned up? ...and the amps clipping and the sound was distorted? Well those children now work in the studios, thinking that what they heard as a child sounds good. Those children never made a stop along the way to "Sound By Singer", or any other high-end store, between the time they blasted distorted music to the time they are mixing and mastering in a studio. @1:32 "It's way too dynamic", referring to the radio station's excuse. They must be lying, because I do not believe that they do not have a compressor at their disposal. It is easy to compress sound, and they have to know that. I suspect that they were telling the truth that the music was dynamic, and they simply used that as an excuse because they did not care for the songs (just a guess). Paul, you can make a compressed version of the same songs. Then see what excuse the radio station gives you.
It's probably about the record companies who want their song to be a hit, so they think that there must be a high volume of music from basically the first second. Then there are at least one or two generations who have grown up with MP3 music. when you rip a CD to MP3 then software also seems to compress the actual dynamics from the disc. An example dire Straits Brothers in arms
I do not think that the facility of a professional studio is so cheap. But maybe the producer himself can be the problem. Who wants the song on the record to be a hit
in my experience frequency completeness and detail trumps loudness in liking. a recording with missing deep bass and trebble, as present from bad mp3's, only starts to induce a feeling of energy through high loudness and volume. a full frequency range of the same song feels louder (meaning more energy rich) even at low volume, as the sub bass foundation, mid range flow and trebble expansion are present. shitty speakers can't resolve these frequencies, but with the current on average better speaker tech a full range sound can out- energy a circumcised but loudness boosted song at the same level. this is teh cure to the loudness wars. a double-win
Last Saturday, a local radio station here in the Netherlands did a 3 hour long Paul McCartney special with most of the music played from original releases on vinyl and I was completely stunned by the audio quality! Why? It gave their FM broadcast processor some work do, instead of 'leveling' modern tracks that are almost flat in dynamics.
Is it the same with new releases on vinyl and hi-res? . We know that record companies can do different masterings depending on which medium they are to be published on
Surely all Audiophiles appreciate well recorded music. BUT... why would you "cut off your nose to spite your own face", by disregarding music that you enjoy, but is less than perfectly mastered?? No System is perfect, no recording is perfect.
If people knew the extent to which what we perceive is just kinda made up on the fly, they might look at this differently. A great way to appreciate this is to watch the saccades of your eyes using a video camera or something. While there's something to be said for fidelity, the only thing that matters in the end IMHO is how much you enjoy the music.
Some of the CDs from the 90s are so compressed from the loudness wars that when you play them on a good stereo, where you can hear moderately loud ‘quality’ sound at about 30% up on the volume control, those CDs at that volume sound terribly distorted; they sound more clear when you back off the volume control a bit, but then they don’t seem as dynamic and textured as they would’ve been if they hadn’t been over compressed to death. Excessive compression in CD mastering for ANY music genre is an ignorance and stupidity of epic proportion. 🤬
@@shipsahoy1793 I agree. But if you are OCD on the technical stuff, you will never enjoy music, regardless of how it's presented. Less about the tech, less about the kit, just enjoy the music. Otherwise what is the point of it all??
@@kawasakiaddiction6296 I don’t disagree, but sometimes you pay good money for a recording that you really like, and then you’re insulted by the fact that you’ve been ripped off (basically). On inexpensive equipment, you may not have realized there was a problem at all. Let’s face it, if you weren’t concerned about recording integrity, you wouldn’t (maybe shouldn’t) be spending the money on CD’s. There were popular recordings of past decades reissued on CD with poor quality in the 80’s, followed by the remastering rip-offs, and then the “aggressive” mastering of the 90’s with recordings new and old. And all this was further confused by efforts to manufacture DACs and filters that would really increase profit margins and be low cost. What a freakin’ mess. The average person barely had a proper sense of analog before digital, and then the water got extremely muddy with the growing pains of the digital age. To this day, many people still do not fully understand analog or digital audio technology, before we even throw wi-fi or BT streaming and digital audio codec’s into the pot, and there is hardly anyone around that knows full well how to approach the design or implementation of both worlds (analog and digital). We now even have switching PSU’s and Class D power amps modifying perceptions as well. I personally believe that society tries to move too quickly with any technological advancement, not fully understanding the ramifications of their actions due to $$$ concerns. There are also marketing myths and other forces and myths always playing into things. Btw, I used to ride Kawasaki’s myself… loved ‘em ! 🤣✌️👨🏻
@Douglas Blake Been there, done that. It was great when there was no better alternative. My 70's and 80's classics now reside on CDs where the resolution makes me feel like I have a Studer and the master tapes in my living room.
I think unfortunately its about what slams hardest and is audible on a system in a very loud club or a bar with many loud annoying talking and yelling people (the places where charting songs are spread most to the masses probably). I think thats really what has driven it for so long but I could be wrong
Sadly, really well recorded & well mastered music is a money losing proposition right now. But so was vinyl 10 years ago and look at that now. Times will change, stand strong in what you believe in. Be that guy who never gave up his convictions.
Back when I was in radio - in the 1980s, we compressed everything - and this was a CLASSICAL music station! Our engineer said It was adjustable, but not by anyone other than him. The music I played on jazz shows was compressed, and I hated that, but that was the way it was. So your station playing your Octave stuff - either radio has changed, or they don’t realize they’re doing it or they’re using dynamics to cover for the fact they don’t like it.
All radio stations pass their signal through a box like an Orban Optimod, which includes both a compressor and a peak limiter. This is to avoid ovemodulating the transmitter and running afoul of FCC regulations. The engineer running the mixer in the studio can actually control the compression, because if they don't run the signal levels into the red, it will compress less at the transmitter end.
@@gotham61 Thanks for the better description. It’s been so long, I worried I might have had that wrong. So there’s no way Paul’s station would be able to take full advantage of an Octave record anyway. But I do know that commercial stations do even more compression than jazz or classical stations because so many of their listeners are in cars where you can’t hear the soft passages in the music that has no dynamics to begin with.
@@jonl1034 Yeah I mean in this case compression is not bad, sometimes for radio it is just necessary. But for this reason a lot of the times artists release 2 versions of their music as well. A normal version and a radio version which is often cut down to be shorter and to the point but also less dynamic so you can hear the music in a noisy environment and with suboptimal audio equipment.
If you seek dynamics in FM Broadcast, then listen to your local university station. There is nothing for them to gain by being the loudest for the longest. Rather they pride themselves on broadcasting music like you are in the concert hall. Our local stations even have done live concert recordings of the local symphony orchestras and they are remarkably high in quality and full dynamics. They are funded by their listeners so they have to produce what listeners are willing to pay to hear.
Couldn't we start a worldwide community bringing together music lovers, musicians and audiophiles under a "stop loudness war" moniker? We would surely start small, but then we could manage to gather some interest from musicians and music addicts alike. Moaning about compression within the (too tiny) audiophile circle is useless and will yeld no result, it's everyone else that need to be sensitized, especially those who are killing their ears with highly compressed sound through their earbuds. I for instance refuse to buy audiophile records just because they sound great, I want the music I like, of any kind, to be decently mastered by professionals with a "musical conscience". Period.
I had a funny experience with that. I am a musician, our last record came out on CD, I can not listen to it, it sounds awful on my system, but when I hear it on the radio it sounds perfect.
1:32 - This is true. I mean, try playing a highly dynamic recording in a car... You wouldn't hear most of it. Unless you have some super-deluxe ultra-isolated spaceship car or something, but that's not most cars. - Radio-audio needs to be suitable for most general scenarios, and most locations in the world with any population is noisy. Noisy enough that high dynamic range won't work, it will just sound weak. - You generally don't "listen to the radio" sitting in a quiet room, let's be real.
@@johnb6723 radio transmission broadcasts are fairly heavily compressed. Streaming services on the other hand don’t compress, they just turn the volume down to match their standard
ive found many new artists and albums listening to Qobuz only because i too like to hear top quality recordings.i dont even listen to some of my old music from top bands just because they dont sound great. for me its all about the recordings, then the music..
I'm with you. There are some oldies that hold up, but many that don't. And, on a resolving system, it's hard to listen to the bad ones. Back in the day, I would always be thrilled if an album was on the Warner Bros label, as I knew it would be well recorded. But some of my favorites were on MCA, which sucked. The worst label though had to be RSO. Those recordings were horrible.
in the country I live in we have a music FM. channel with a lot of loadness. much bass to treble. it is not the channel with the best sound quality, not in my car
It's kind of like the age old question: Are you more of a music lover or an audiophile? Of course in a perfect world, it would be great if you can have all available music uncompressed and enjoy it on whatever high quality equipment you have but that's not always going to be realistic. Fortunately, I think most music is recorded fairly well and some of it is recorded exceptionally well. However, music is suppose to either enlighten, enthrall, or capture your imagination in some way or not. If I like a piece of music, I will listen to it. If I don't, I won't regardless of the quality. I'd rather listen to a nostalgic, emotional piece of compressed or marginally recorded music that takes me somewhere than some ultra clean, superb recording that does nothing for my heart or soul. I'm lucky that I can have my cake and eat it too when enjoying music a majority of the time but good music is still good music regardless of its quality. However, for those who only enjoy the highest quality sound all the time, turn off your equipment and take a walk somewhere and listen to the things around you. Can't get more uncompressed and natural than that.
So it's 10:43 pm and I'm having my nightcap and listening to one of my Tidal lists. My integrated and it's VU meters are loafing along with me in Class A, and then BAM ahhh, Malibu by Hole comes on 🔊📢. Yes I like some of Hole's music. And no I didn't accedentlly rest my cocktail on the remote. The loudness war assaulted my senses while I was vulnerable dang it😢 🍸
Got to think about the transmitter power. Your playing along at 100kw then bang the music asks for 3-6 db, woa your transmitter just went bang, and that's a big bang. Radio edits are normalized to not ask the transmitter to double its output power.
I suspect one of the reasons for compression is to be able to play music in the car. With all the road noise, dynamics would be quite a challenge to hear. Nevertheless, if you want to hear music the way it should be played, it would be nice if uncompressed versions were created for those who listen at home on good systems.
The thing is almost all devices that play music in a car have compression abilities built-in; certainly all phones and most music players have compression/normalization settings built in.
@@rogerwalter2500 Again though, those devices all have ways of compressing the dynamic range themselves so you don't need to destroy the dynamics for EVERYONE.
any radio studio worth their salt has the dsp's necessary to normalize, make mono compatible and street-noise-floor compress songs automaticaly and in real time. even the dsp i use on my computer has that capability.
It depends. Overcompression and heavy limiting can work, it's a sonic aesthetic. Some metal music and aggressive dance music benefit from the squished together, loud and punchy wall of sound. It really depends what you want to achieve musically
Same here Paul, theres many songs I like, but if the recording is poor, eventually they go in my bin, shame, Randy Crawford the very best of, for instance, Can't play the bugger, Most of my charity shop finds, will proberbly go in the bin, accationally you will come across a treat.. Regards, Antony Warrington England..
Sadly, A LOT of the loudness is the fault of musicians. I mix TV/Movies and the occasional band and no matter how receptive they are to the idea of preserving dynamic range or seem to understand it's no longer necessary to crush their music, the second they compare their songs to other music they get nervous and ask for it to be louder (and then usually louder again)
SOMETIMES it's the artists, more often it's the producers who tell the artists they need that compressed, loud sound to catch the attention of people listening on replacement $7 ear buds they bought at the gas station.
Who is responsible for the loudness war? The Artist,the sound engineer ,the radio stations or the record company? As you said Paul ,there is loads of music I'd love to listen to but can't. It sounds absolutely crap on my system. Doesn't any of those people i mentioned like good music?
Unfortunately it's the music industry radio station record labels ect. Mainstream media consumers don't really notice unfortunately when said consumer has better income and would like to try hi-fi will hear no difference and stay with their latest Amazon Google Sony ect sound bar's. If the hi-fi industry as whole start their own recording studios and get mainstream artist then that's a start. Manufacturers from cables speaker's amplifiers ect if they can create their very own industry recording label then hi-fi will have a great future.
@@rusedgin i cant blame that, the monetary system works as intended and its only going to get worse. i blame the monetary system as a whole that incentivize that behaviour.
@@sudd3660 The compression these days is often truly beyond the pale. Overall, I think you're probably right. If it didn't sell, they wouldn't do it. As to who is responsible for the loudness wars, I don't purport to really know. One could probably write a doctoral dissertation on that. 😂
I believe that so many dynamic recordings are at the mercy of the recording engineers who will abuse the dynamics making you reach for volume control in loud passages and back to hear the softer. Generally speaking annoying. At the opposite end is a guy like Alan Parsons who was infamous for really compressing his analog recordings. What's the answer I don't know.
I asked this question years ago to our local station which was always louder when changing to that radio station They said...'it's because we have transmitters from the 80s to the present day' what that ment god only knows!!
Paul must be referring to green days remake of totos Africa. I enjoy their music but played on a high end system is does t sound the best. Bit I will keep playing it anyways 😀
I'm confused. Wouldn't digital radio broadcast obliterate the dynamics problem? In other words, wouldn't digital radio broadcast allow for high dynamic range? If so, why didn't digital radio catch on?
I think it's because you need to have a more constant level for radio-listening to work in all kinds of environments. - High dynamic range can sound weak when there's any other noise. Like I said in another comment, try listening to highly dynamic music in a car. It will sound like there's a lot of volume-drop and you'll miss a lot of information in between the peaks. - The same counts for environments like shops or malls and what have you. - Besides that, all music that comes from one and the same broadcast needs to be normalized anyway to have a constant average. - If you want high dynamic range, get the record or stream it and sit in a quiet room.
I'm quite convinced that a lot of people who mix/master/produce records or audio in general don't even realize it these days because it has become the norm. I mean, I sometimes hear albums that have great sounds, like... just great engineering of beautiful sounds and effects of instruments and electronics, no matter what it is, and then the level of the overall album is JUST too high to do it justice. I mean, not even "brickwalled", but still high enough that it's too much and overwhelming volume sometimes. - I mean, if only they pulled it back even just a bit, it would've been thát much better. - But I seriously don't think they really know or realize that and they just look at whether or not they're within the limits. Again, not even flattened and clipped, but just shallow in terms of dynamics with this "squished" compression-sound to it that doesn't need to be there.
I mix/master/produce records. Can you give me your favorite example of a popular song that is done well, and one that's done poorly in your opinion? I just want to see what the delta is.
@Douglas Blake Oh, I was looking for your personal opinion. I don't care about lists.. I just wonder sometime what people are listening to when they make these comments. I have heard loud albums that sound great, and quiet ones that sound like crap and everything in between.
Hey, u reminded me of something... They need to compete!... And compete in what, when as soon as music is published all streaming services will do "F-bomb you, we are turning it down by X dB measured by a standard"
It's true for technical reasons. - Try playing a highly dynamic recording in a car... You wouldn't hear most of it. Unless you have some super-deluxe ultra-isolated spaceship car or something, but that's not most cars. - Radio-audio needs to be suitable for most general scenarios, and most locations in the world with any population are noisy. Noisy enough that high dynamic range won't work, it will just sound weak. - You generally don't "listen to the radio" sitting in a quiet room, let's be real.
Why would you listen to that in a car? LOL I know how it works on radio, but those rules mattered like 30 years ago. Current technology is much better, and more quiet. And radio? Everybody is streaming now.
Paul, instead of insulting and belittling the people who make these recordings, calling them stupid and needing to have some sense knocked into them, perhaps it would be more helpful to try and understand why they mix things to sound that way. And trust me, it's not due to ignorance of what good sound is. Back in the 60s and 70s, people would actively listen to music, They would sit down in front of their hi-fi and listen attentively without doing anything else. Today, apart from audiophiles, that's mostly over. People listen to music as a background to other activities like driving, or cooking, or just walking around, and they listen on earbuds connected to a phone, in a car going down the highway, or on a small Bluetooth speaker. They want the music to be there, but to remain at a constant non distracting background level, so wide dynamic swings are not welcome. In a car the music has to compete against the noise of driving, so if it had wide dynamics, the driver would be constantly reaching for the volume control to keep things at the "just right" level. They effectively become a human compressor. I'm a bit surprised by the response from the radio station, because all radio stations pretty much flatten the dynamics of their signal anyway, on its trip from the studio to the transmitter.
Right on. ... and on top of all that: Paul seems to have missed that The Loudness War is over. If one is not willing to go that far, I'd say that The War has left its global thermonuclear stage, at least.
Dynamics is waste and hurt the music in most of the places/locations. Let me explain: We audiophiles need to understand that there is a other side of the coin and compression is not used just because they feel for doing that or that it is fun. Audiophiles are a minority group (less than ~1% of the population) that are sitting at the perfect spot in our dead silent and treated room with speaker carefully placed in it. The majority (the others 99%) of music consumers play the songs in the car or jogging or whatever. There compression is a must yes you read right it is a must. The ambient noice is so high that if you play something with high dynamic range and in the soft/low parts of the song it will be below the noise levels of where you are. And can only be enjoyed and heard clearly in the dedicated listening space.. But if we apply loudness then we can hear it in the car for example and the performance is not gone.. Try it your self. Take your favorite track that has great dynamic range and with quiet passages. Play it in your car while driving somewhere and you can't hear and enjoy it in the quiet parts if you don't turn it up more than you usually have it turned up.. to get it above the noice floor.. but then the louder parts will be to loud! You see totally useless in a noisy environment. That track is not ment to be consumed in a nosy environment at all. Who do the record labels want to target and profit from, the 99% group or us 1%.. So it will never go away when we need it then there is other mixing considerations there compression is used to on individual objects to enhance certain aspects but that is to much info to provide here this is long enough already. Happy listening! 🥰💕🎵🎼🎶
@@geddylee501 Agree 👍 But it is not a analogy it is a example of a different listening location that is generally more noisy. If you have Spotify premium you have on some android apps a setting called "Volume level" and the available settings is "Loud/Normal/Quiet" and the description is for it "Adjust the volume for your environment". So you can adjust for 3 different "compression" levels depending were you are when you consume it. Pretty nifty and not all apps on different OS has that setting. But it is great when/if we are in our listening room that we can use the least amount of compression that Spotify alow us by selecting quiet. 👍
Yes, but I don't like the thought that the primary use of music is a soundwall in a noisy environment. Actual listenining can be a overwhelming experience, and every artist who thinks their music is worth to be listened to should think about releasing dynamic mixes of their music.
Then why don’t f…g studios create several masters?, one master recorded with compression for people listening in their cars or jogging and another master without compression for people listening from home, plain simple.
I agree 100% with Paul. If people do not have good equipment and cannot listen to music with good sound, then there is something wrong with the sound equipment they have and not the music. yes too many speakers do not have such a good sound and there are many of them, must have loadness otherwise they sound flat!
I avoid loudness wars because those recordings just don't sound good to me. I don't care why that is exactly. Producers are afraid or don't know better because the use of LUFS by streaming services reverts the loudness gain they applied. And it's the radio station's responsibility to compress to their specific needs. Producers shouldn't second-guess them.
As far as radio, most listening environments, at work or in the car, have too much background noise to enjoy music that is overly dynamic. It falls too low to hear or, conversely, reached levels excessive for comfortable listening. The world in general is too loud for fine listening.
Because people listen to the radio in their cars or it is played at public places, places with background noise and then you simlpy can't hear the quiet parts of uncompressed recordings, and people would complain. On the other hand, radio stations should have a compressor and be able to compress the music themselves, so probably they just didn't like the music.
False: On Spotify it's optional. - I've A/B'd albums between the CD and Spotify with any kind of "normalization" turned off: No difference. I even got confused as to which one was playing, so it was practically blind at some points. - It's to the point that I wondered why the hell I'd even keep the CDs, other than being a fan of some or collecting them and occasionally playing them. - What's more is that you can easily demonstrate it to yourself using one of the most popular bands today. Try Rammstein's earliest and latest albums and there will be a huge jump in the average level. They're not evened out in any way (with the preserved setting).
@@michaelangeloh.5383 I guess Spotify lies to artists then (asterisks mine): "Loudness normalization Audio gets delivered to us at different volume levels. We use loudness normalization to balance soft and loud songs, creating a more balanced uniform experience. Note: The web player and 3rd-party devices (e.g. speakers and TVs) don’t use loudness normalization. We adjust tracks to -14 dB LUFS, according to the ITU 1770 (International Telecommunication Union) standard. We normalize an entire album at the same time, so gain compensation doesn’t change between tracks. This means the softer tracks are as soft as you intend them to be. We adjust individual tracks when shuffling an album or listening to tracks from multiple albums (e.g. listening to a playlist). *** Loudness normalization means we don’t always play your track at the level it’s mastered. *** Target the loudness level of your master at -14dB integrated LUFS and keep it below -1dB TP (True Peak) max. This is best for lossy formats (Ogg/Vorbis and AAC) and makes sure no extra distortion’s introduced in the transcoding process. If your master’s louder than -14dB integrated LUFS, make sure it stays below -2dB TP (True Peak) to avoid extra distortion. This is because louder tracks are more susceptible to extra distortion in the transcoding process." artists.spotify.com/en/help/article/loudness-normalization
@@TheDanEdwards It sounds strange, but they actually perform TWO levels of normalization. They perform one level of normalization to a predefined maximum volume setting in LUFS that varies from streamer to streamer, and that's the version that goes into their library. Then settings in the client determine whether additional more agressive normalization is performed in the client or not. Several artists have performed tests using digital tracks they then uploaded to Spotify (to name one, it's the one they tested) and found volume was reduced from the original digital file when the file was made available for streaming with volume normalization turned to "off" or "loud" (depending upon the client) and then additional processing is done when normalization is enabled or set to other levels like "normal" or "quiet."
@@VideoArchiveGuy I would think they have one setting for pop music and another one for classical music. Usual is -13 or -14 LUFS for pop music and -20 LUFS for classical music, I think.
ppppppp…..fffffff. Way back when, the Absolute Sound decided to describe dynamics as the musical Dynamics went from the softest Pianissimo all the way to the loudest Fortissimo.
Im guessing great dynamics comes at the price of a pissed off optimod in the air chain, not allowing the FM side to go beyond that narrow shoulders they have, just guessing. I blame the FCC and trying to pack everything in on the dial, thus “up is louder” to punch through everyone else lol
I don't listen to contemporary music much or maybe almost not at all due to their high compression. It's a torture to my ears. If that would make me a snob, so be it.
I stay far away from any "Digitally Remastered" or 25th anniversary album releases. IMHO "Brick walled", hitting clipping levels type recordings may damage sensitive audio playback equipment. Nowadays vinyls sound better than CDs coz it can't take such insanely compressed loud recordings due to its own physical limitations
Yes, and before they stopped making records in the 80s, they were still trying to push the envelope…that’s why sometimes even on the best turntables and cartridges set up right, your needle could still pop out of the groove from a poorly cut record.
Well, I've heard some ridiculously loud and flat vinyl records, to my disappointment. - I think frickin' Marilyn Manson's ones don't even make a difference, even those from the '90s, but that's probably because of bad engineering in the first place. - But really, LPs sadly aren't a guarantee to not have brickwalled or overly loud mastering. Somehow they still managed to do it, even though it's true that most of the time they tend to not suffer from it (as much).
@@michaelangeloh.5383 I agree. There was also a trend pushing more playing time onto each side, so shorter lead-ins, moving music closer to the label, challenging the auto shut off mode, and the obligatory tighter spacing for quiet passages. Not to mention wow and flutter, tracking error, rumble, and record warpage, cleaning issues, the disc integrity itself, and even packaging issues, It’s amazing that vinyl and its sound actually survived as well as it did. 😉
But they can do different masterings depending on where the music is to be published. one guy thought that music on hi-res files could have better dynamics than the same album on cd. There are also those who believe that albums can sound more dynamic on vinyl than on CD. it may be that the record companies have the opinion that those who buy music on CD generally have a cheaper stereo while those who listen to vinyl or on hi-res have a more expensive stereo
Myea, as long as it's not compressed into actual distortion, like the much-criticized "Deaf Magnetic" for instance. - That one is just not tolerable to any sane person. Loads of people aren't able to hear it and the fans eat it up, but there's such an audible distortion on top of the sound that it sounds like your speakers are broken (and the first time I played the CD I thought it was my stereo setup). - But I think there are also lots of records that... might be loud, with less dynamic range, but still sound very good and enjoyable. - Though, fatigue sets in sooner and it's just bad for your hearing then because of less volume-drop.
Can't do that once it's compressed into a wall of undecipherable mush. Think about it, it's effectively every note played and sung at the loudest volume possible.
I know with Metallica's Death Magnetic the idea was to make the guitars sound more crunchy. Strange choice. The follow up record (hardwired) cleaned this up. There was also some kind of problem with the CD format that I dont understand. They said the Hardwired record was split into 2 for better sound quality. That record is 77 minutes long double album while the prior was 74 minutes on 1 disk. I wonder if lowering dynamics uses less data??? No idea.
Weezer did Africa and it pissed me off because they did absolutely nothing to make it their own. Whoever you talked to at that radio station was full of crap if based on so many others in the same industry who will tell you clean and dynamic works better with their processing than music that's already been chewed up.
Regarding the loudness wars, i was a big fan of Oasis in the 90's. But man they albums are recorded(mixed) so poorly and loud, you just can't listen to them on a good system. It's just no good, I prefer to listen to their live material over the official albums.
I think there are great recordings of the past, as well as recordings that suck. Today is no different. Some artists care about the reproduction quality and others don't. You just have to sift through them and find the ones that ring your chimes.
🙋♂️IMHHO….this doesn’t make you a snob…. Anymore than choosing what restaurant or food you eat There are so many places and foods to choose from… and we only have so much time and money so why waste it on something that we don’t like 🤷♂️ … as for radio I stopped listening pretty much in the late 80s mostly because of commercials at that time and I was able to put in a CD player and a sound system (separate tweeters mid range and woofers with amps)🤗😎😍😍😍
i just dont agree on the: there is so much good music these days?? After the 90's, it was done with all the good music. Music went to crap these days. Very few good artists and bands left.
Over compressed is annoying - but so is overly dynamic sometimes. It depends on the context. If I'm listening to music on my own a dynamic recording is great. If I'm trying to concentrate, or talk to others over dinner, while overly dynamic music is playing it's problematic. I would love there to be a setting, like a tone control, that allowed you to compress the music on the fly. So when you wanted dynamics they were there and when you didn't you could turn compression on.
Agreed, it's especially annoying watching a 're-mastered' TV special (granted, not Hi-Fi), that attempts to remove background noise by expanding the dynamic range -- muting out the low passages, unfortunately some of the words get cut off and speech becomes unintelligible
The loudness wars are part of the music industries politics as well. Also, as powerful as music is and if you make it sound worse you can seriously dumb down an entire population of people.
and then streaming services use standards to measure loudness and turn it back down, I have seen tracks as being down as -10 to -12dB, (youtube will literally spoil it) just a major waste of literally free dynamics
Loudness wars will never go away and it's sad really but there is a good reason for that. People don't care. They don't want to invest hundreds $$ to hear dynamic track. for 90% of people even 50$ is too much on pair of headphones or speakers and those transducers are just cr*p. They are usually V shape tuned and they fail utterly and completely at even remotely hitting the correct frequencies asked by the track as there is about 30-50% of total tonal loss (you won't actually and literally hear a lot of stuff in the track). So when you play a dynamic track you can't hear anything worth hearing and as soon as you increase volume a bit it just sounds awful. distortion, crackles, sharp frequencies untuned... And with such disaster of transducers when you play compressed track suddenly transducers sound more "lively" because you don't have to crank the volume up and there is a lot of frequencies going at the same levels thus those that wouldn't be played due to crappy transducer now come through while the rest is just screaming and sounding so flat. And thus the reason why loudness war is here to stay. Such speakers are much more active with loudness war and people perceive that as a good thing.
@@bsadewitz you do... anything sub 100 brand new is just utter garbage... starting at 200$ you may get good enough resolving transducers to start grasping at what propper dynamic track is.
Thanks Paul. But about the dynamic: If you play it loud then you have that dynamic, but I guess you have to play it loud, otherwise you don't hear some of it. And if people want to play something in the background (the radio is playing) then they want, let's say, a medium volume and not sometimes loud and sometimes not. Phil Colin's In the Air Tonight is a good example. If I relax then I listen to it with power, slowly getting louder. But for background music first I hear very little and then it LOUD. So in a way I understand these radio guys.
The point was, with background environment noise the quiet parts of dynamic tracks can't be heard at moderate volumes. To hear everything the volume needs to be raised.
I have a really nice desktop setup over 9 W class A and R2R dac. For Spotify I use a pair of B&W Pi7 true wireless in ears, spubda grwat it not hifi but its mighty bass and easy going buy its not for high fidelity dynamics.
Most people prefer music compressed. They turn it down when it gets loud and turn it up when it gets quiet. I prefer music compressed in the car, and I bought the car partly because it had the best in-car system money can buy. Audiophiles moaning about it is an irrelevance. I play dynamic music and movies at reference level and everyone else hates it. This is fine as I've whittled everyone else down to no one else.
But how else can I enjoy Bad Kanye Sheeran Minaj?? The loud bass and tight amazing auto tune singing tells me that song is enjoyable so I don’t have to choose!!!
you can't uncompress already processed track. You can uncompress it while you are mixing the original recordings but once it is rendered you can't do anything about it. All you can do is mess with frequencies as whole and with the master volume.
Expansion comes with distracting artifacts, even in systems like DolbyC and HiFiVHS where the expansion and compression were designed as a pair. Slap on a mismatched one and you'll notice.
I don't care about compression in audio recordings I just want to know why they turn it into a in un useable crap. It would seem to me they don't know how music sounds.i could put out better recordings on my mix board eq and casset deck than some CDs I've have pay good money for normal recordings. Just this point they think people are dumb to the fact they can't hear the fact is it substandard. People are smart so why do they baffle them with bull picky. It's like this if I can't have it my way then no body can.any body that can use a mix board and make things sound better then those over compressed music we love so much So buy the cd lp ora recording of and it's sounds like crap then let them know get your buddy's family any one that can rise a complaint and make it so or have Paul's studio redo it he will sell millons.ok maybe more take that capital am rca ect...... Peace to all...
Your whispered untold message at the end of the video hasn't gone unnoticed... ;)
The worst thing is that even well recorded older music gets 'remastered' and they crank up the volume and compress everything. It just destroys the music. I often have the first CD releases and they just sound better than the 'remastered' versions.
For a while, Spotify would have both the original and the remastered versions of albums on there and I would always choose the original.
@Douglas Blake and I think they’re engineering for the most common devices like peoples Bluetooth speakers snd sound bars and ear buds where compression can make the music seem fuller and louder
More recently & to an extent currently: This is, of course, a P S Audio site. In order to extract the best sound from current, standard CD's, AND, SACD's, I've purchased Paul's best CD Transport, & D to A Converter. I have a handful of SACD releases, & I think that these are mastered more carefully, and, "sound better." There's some hope, I feel!
The worst thing is when your favourite streaming service replaces the original recording with the "remastered" that sounds awful due to loudness compression. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?
@@crys_o agreed! A reason I’ll never get rid of my CDs
it's not just on the recordings, some headphones/earbuds from large consumer brands use DSP to compress dynamic range to make it sound "more detailed".
same thing happened for a while with photography. HDR showed all the details everywhere and looked like...candyland lol. nothing looks real and contrast is robbed from the images. interesting how photography and audio overlap in a lot of ways.
@@osirismarbles5177 Ugh, man, I have been complaining about the photography version longer than music. By some point almost all of the popular/visible photography became the same fake low-quality trash... bit like modern popular compressed + pitch-corrected singers; It makes good singers sound terrible, and certainly doesn't make bad singers sound good! They all become bland generic synth-voices.
@@googIesux lol exactly. who's your favorite artist? who cares! they all sound exactly the same today! whole world is compressed and depressed smh. Octave records should put out their own streaming radio.
Perhaps they should release uncompressed versions for people that can hear and compressed versions for those who can not.
Hi-fi industry as a whole needs to protest against the loudness crap! I believe future generations will be turned off on hi-fi due to this. Teenager today listen to favourite band won't want expensive system later on in life because it won't sound good due to the prior recording. PS audio and Naim audio have their own recording studios for latest talented artists and internet radio station. But as a audiophile and hi-fi manufacturers we must try to get through to the mainstream radio record labels ect that this loudness is killing future generations music. Maybe if hi-fi manufacturers from cables speaker's amplifiers ect join together create a industry hi-fi global recording label which I believe can bring future generations into hi-fi.
I'm sure that they realize 90% couldn't care less.
In the early 90's I was part of an effort of the San Diego Audio Society and the public radio station at San Diego State University to broadcast high dynamic range music. And that was for a special broadcast. We supplied the station with the turntable, arm and cartridge and a selection of content.
Much Pomp and Circumstance and members of the Society were all listening at home for the broadcast. Me being one of them. The music started, a crescendo, and the station signal went off the air. The signal came back shortly after, the music continued, another loud passage and the stations signal went down again. This happened a couple more times and then the station engineer stopped the broadcast of "high dynamic range" content.
The cause of this was that the transmitter had limiters such that if it was asked to broadcast content outside a relatively narrow dynamic range it would shut itself down for a minute or so.
I have no idea if transmitters of today have this kind of feature, but I suspect they do.
Intresting! AIR AM FM service in India used to play vinyls from their collections as CD players still didn't made into government run broadcasting studio up until 2000. I used to listen regularly during 80s and late 90s. Never heard any occurance of such an incidence. Perhaps the equipments were from old analogue era, wasn't upgraded due to paucity of funds or red tape
@@rogerwalter2500 I'm a Computer Engineer not an RF Engineer. But as best as I understand it on the FM Band the FCC ( Federal Communications Commission ) allocates a channel and frequency. And the FM ( Frequency Modulation ) can only deviate from the center frequency by so much. If you exceed that your out of your lane. So to prevent that the transmitter only will go so far from mid frequency and shut down if asked to go wider. Two things force it too wide. #1 Dynamic Range exceed, #2 Frequency response exceed. If the transmitter is told to go to like 30Khz it will shut down.
@@wilcalint Sorry Bill, but nope. I'm not a RF Engineer either, but I am a BSEET and BSTC (Electronic Engineering Tech & Telecommunication Engineering Tech). To paraphrase your lane analogy, the allocated broadcast (carrier) frequency and the frequency response/dynamic range are not even on the same State highway, let alone lane. The frequency response and dynamic range are attributes of the signal and have nothing to do with the location of physical broadcast frequency on the FCC spectrum. But yes, the radio stations will have limiters on their output, for both frequency and dynamic ranges. One must remember that most terrestrial radio listening is in the car or on a clock radio in the bedroom or kitchen. So broadcasting a signal out at 30kHz would be a waste of the station's energy. Because in either of those stated situations, the 30khz would be lost to poor equipment and environment. So the station will roll off the signal with filters, @PS Audio would know better here, to limit it to say 100Hz to 15kHz. The same goes for dynamics, but it's a compressor in this case not a limiter. Just imagine all the people calling in and complaining because they only hear the middle and end of a song. If they were broadcasting at just CD dynamics (about 96dB), this a possible outcome. With all of the road/wind noise and the blender/espresso noise, who can hear all of the quiet details of a ppp section of an orchestra piece. Either way, limiters and compressors have been used in broadcasting for over a hundred years or so, but this is for signal usability not frequency allocation management. But, BIG BUT, these technologies do not belong in a recordings mix, with the exception of frequency roll offs for the physical limitations of the vinyl and tape formats. Sorry for the ramble, cheers all.
@@Brown_Sound And so we have a probable reason(s) why the radio station turned down Pauls content.
@Douglas Blake You would hope so. But, also defined in this thread by Lee Brown see above. The FM transmitted signal is closely controlled by the FCC and the transmitters have built in protection systems that can result in a temporary shut down, or something.
"But yes, the radio stations will have limiters on their output, for both frequency and dynamic ranges" - Lee Brown see above
So maybe if the content contains something at a high enough frequency the transmitter will not let that be transmitted. How it does that I am not an expert. What I encountered years ago was the transmitter shut down for a short time. And that regardless of how loud the content was. Maybe its done differently today with compression.
We were all very confused at the time as some of the shutdowns were during very quiet passages of the music.
Thanks Sir for the info
To make matters worse, those compressed recordings are broadcast over radio where they are compressed and boosted and gated again, resulting in something not unlike noise. And then they wonder why the music industry is dying. Because you are destroying everything enjoyable about music!
I’ve got The Audiophile Masters Vol I vinyl. Superb!!!! Now I’ve got 2 Octave Records CDs. Awesome!!! Paul, you put your money where your mouth goes! They are truly a revelation in listening experiences! Bravo!!!
Is this also a record label company with the same name? and are available in the discs to buy in Europe, such as Sweden?
@@Andersljungberg Octave Records is PS Audio’s own record label and new recording studio. The Audiophile Masters series are compilation samplers vinyl albums/CD/SACD/Files of their various artists’ recordings. I highly recommend them!
@0:32 "I'm that kind-a snob"
There is no snobbery, whatsoever, in avoiding butchered results.
Would you be a snob if you did not want to watch a movie that was out of focus?
Paul, please never debase yourself or apologize to the incompetent yahoos at the studios, or to folks that never heard properly recorded music.
If there are people that like compressed music, then more power to them. It makes them happy.
They do not apologize to folks that prefer properly recorded, mixed, and mastered music.
So please do not make yourself out to be on the wrong side of the equation.
@0:54 "Why do we have to continue this stupid loudness wars?"
"we" is the wrong pronoun. It is "Why do 'they' have to continue this stupid loudness wars?"
"We" have no choice.
"We" have to listen to what the studios release. If you like the melody, then it comes in only one size. It is what it is. Whatever the handful of people in the studio do, the entire world has no choice but to take it as is.
So why do the studios release such lousy sounding hit songs?
Because none of them ever heard a high-end stereo.
None of them has any clue (I mean zero clue) how a professionally set-up pair of FR30s sound.
Did you ever have a neighbor whose teenager blasted their stereo, with the bass turned up? ...and the amps clipping and the sound was distorted?
Well those children now work in the studios, thinking that what they heard as a child sounds good.
Those children never made a stop along the way to "Sound By Singer", or any other high-end store, between the time they blasted distorted music to the time they are mixing and mastering in a studio.
@1:32 "It's way too dynamic", referring to the radio station's excuse.
They must be lying, because I do not believe that they do not have a compressor at their disposal. It is easy to compress sound, and they have to know that.
I suspect that they were telling the truth that the music was dynamic, and they simply used that as an excuse because they did not care for the songs (just a guess).
Paul, you can make a compressed version of the same songs. Then see what excuse the radio station gives you.
I feel the same about 'vertical video'!
It's probably about the record companies who want their song to be a hit, so they think that there must be a high volume of music from basically the first second. Then there are at least one or two generations who have grown up with MP3 music. when you rip a CD to MP3 then software also seems to compress the actual dynamics from the disc. An example dire Straits Brothers in arms
I do not think that the facility of a professional studio is so cheap. But maybe the producer himself can be the problem. Who wants the song on the record to be a hit
in my experience frequency completeness and detail trumps loudness in liking. a recording with missing deep bass and trebble, as present from bad mp3's, only starts to induce a feeling of energy through high loudness and volume.
a full frequency range of the same song feels louder (meaning more energy rich) even at low volume, as the sub bass foundation, mid range flow and trebble expansion are present.
shitty speakers can't resolve these frequencies, but with the current on average better speaker tech a full range sound can out- energy a circumcised but loudness boosted song at the same level.
this is teh cure to the loudness wars. a double-win
Last Saturday, a local radio station here in the Netherlands did a 3 hour long Paul McCartney special with most of the music played from original releases on vinyl and I was completely stunned by the audio quality! Why? It gave their FM broadcast processor some work do, instead of 'leveling' modern tracks that are almost flat in dynamics.
Is it the same with new releases on vinyl and hi-res? . We know that record companies can do different masterings depending on which medium they are to be published on
Surely all Audiophiles appreciate well recorded music. BUT... why would you "cut off your nose to spite your own face", by disregarding music that you enjoy, but is less than perfectly mastered?? No System is perfect, no recording is perfect.
If people knew the extent to which what we perceive is just kinda made up on the fly, they might look at this differently. A great way to appreciate this is to watch the saccades of your eyes using a video camera or something.
While there's something to be said for fidelity, the only thing that matters in the end IMHO is how much you enjoy the music.
Some of the CDs from the 90s are so compressed from the loudness wars that when you play them on a good stereo, where you can hear moderately loud ‘quality’ sound at about 30% up on the volume control, those CDs at that volume sound terribly distorted; they sound more clear when you back off the volume control a bit, but then they don’t seem as dynamic and textured as they would’ve been if they hadn’t been over compressed to death. Excessive compression in CD mastering for ANY music genre is an ignorance and stupidity of epic proportion. 🤬
@@shipsahoy1793 I agree. But if you are OCD on the technical stuff, you will never enjoy music, regardless of how it's presented. Less about the tech, less about the kit, just enjoy the music. Otherwise what is the point of it all??
@@kawasakiaddiction6296 I don’t disagree, but sometimes you pay good money for a recording that you really like, and then you’re insulted by the fact that you’ve been ripped off (basically). On inexpensive equipment, you may not have realized there was a problem at all. Let’s face it, if you weren’t concerned about recording integrity, you wouldn’t (maybe shouldn’t) be spending the money on CD’s.
There were popular recordings of past decades reissued on CD with poor quality in the 80’s, followed by the remastering rip-offs,
and then the “aggressive” mastering of the 90’s with recordings new and old. And all this was further confused by efforts to manufacture DACs and filters that would really increase profit margins and be low cost.
What a freakin’ mess.
The average person barely had a proper sense of analog before digital, and then the water got extremely muddy with
the growing pains of the digital age.
To this day, many people still do not fully understand analog or digital audio technology, before we even throw wi-fi or BT streaming and digital audio codec’s into the pot, and there is hardly anyone around that knows full well how to approach the design or implementation of both worlds (analog and digital). We now even have switching PSU’s
and Class D power amps modifying perceptions as well. I personally believe that society tries to move
too quickly with any technological advancement, not fully understanding the ramifications of their actions due to $$$ concerns. There are also marketing myths and other forces and myths always playing into things. Btw, I used to ride Kawasaki’s myself…
loved ‘em ! 🤣✌️👨🏻
Just take those old CD's off the shelf
I'll sit and listen to them by myself
Today's music been compressed to shit
I like that old time Compact Disc
@Douglas Blake Been there, done that. It was great when there was no better alternative. My 70's and 80's classics now reside on CDs where the resolution makes me feel like I have a Studer and the master tapes in my living room.
I think unfortunately its about what slams hardest and is audible on a system in a very loud club or a bar with many loud annoying talking and yelling people (the places where charting songs are spread most to the masses probably). I think thats really what has driven it for so long but I could be wrong
Totally agree.
Sadly, really well recorded & well mastered music is a money losing proposition right now. But so was vinyl 10 years ago and look at that now. Times will change, stand strong in what you believe in. Be that guy who never gave up his convictions.
When I hear an artist launches a remastered song, I avoid it.
I love the dynamic originals.
Back when I was in radio - in the 1980s, we compressed everything - and this was a CLASSICAL music station! Our engineer said It was adjustable, but not by anyone other than him. The music I played on jazz shows was compressed, and I hated that, but that was the way it was. So your station playing your Octave stuff - either radio has changed, or they don’t realize they’re doing it or they’re using dynamics to cover for the fact they don’t like it.
All radio stations pass their signal through a box like an Orban Optimod, which includes both a compressor and a peak limiter. This is to avoid ovemodulating the transmitter and running afoul of FCC regulations. The engineer running the mixer in the studio can actually control the compression, because if they don't run the signal levels into the red, it will compress less at the transmitter end.
@@gotham61 Thanks for the better description. It’s been so long, I worried I might have had that wrong. So there’s no way Paul’s station would be able to take full advantage of an Octave record anyway. But I do know that commercial stations do even more compression than jazz or classical stations because so many of their listeners are in cars where you can’t hear the soft passages in the music that has no dynamics to begin with.
@@jonl1034 Yeah I mean in this case compression is not bad, sometimes for radio it is just necessary. But for this reason a lot of the times artists release 2 versions of their music as well. A normal version and a radio version which is often cut down to be shorter and to the point but also less dynamic so you can hear the music in a noisy environment and with suboptimal audio equipment.
100% agree with you Paul.
If you seek dynamics in FM Broadcast, then listen to your local university station. There is nothing for them to gain by being the loudest for the longest. Rather they pride themselves on broadcasting music like you are in the concert hall. Our local stations even have done live concert recordings of the local symphony orchestras and they are remarkably high in quality and full dynamics. They are funded by their listeners so they have to produce what listeners are willing to pay to hear.
Couldn't we start a worldwide community bringing together music lovers, musicians and audiophiles under a "stop loudness war" moniker? We would surely start small, but then we could manage to gather some interest from musicians and music addicts alike. Moaning about compression within the (too tiny) audiophile circle is useless and will yeld no result, it's everyone else that need to be sensitized, especially those who are killing their ears with highly compressed sound through their earbuds.
I for instance refuse to buy audiophile records just because they sound great, I want the music I like, of any kind, to be decently mastered by professionals with a "musical conscience". Period.
I had a funny experience with that. I am a musician, our last record came out on CD, I can not listen to it, it sounds awful on my system, but when I hear it on the radio it sounds perfect.
"Can't play it on radio due to dynamic range", then they BLAST the commercials.
No thanks to radio.
1:32 - This is true. I mean, try playing a highly dynamic recording in a car... You wouldn't hear most of it. Unless you have some super-deluxe ultra-isolated spaceship car or something, but that's not most cars. - Radio-audio needs to be suitable for most general scenarios, and most locations in the world with any population is noisy. Noisy enough that high dynamic range won't work, it will just sound weak. - You generally don't "listen to the radio" sitting in a quiet room, let's be real.
One way would be to have a compressor on the car radio equipment itself, rather than on the recordings played on the radio.
@@johnb6723 radio transmission broadcasts are fairly heavily compressed. Streaming services on the other hand don’t compress, they just turn the volume down to match their standard
ive found many new artists and albums listening to Qobuz only because i too like to hear top quality recordings.i dont even listen to some of my old music from top bands just because they dont sound great. for me its all about the recordings, then the music..
I'm with you. There are some oldies that hold up, but many that don't. And, on a resolving system, it's hard to listen to the bad ones. Back in the day, I would always be thrilled if an album was on the Warner Bros label, as I knew it would be well recorded. But some of my favorites were on MCA, which sucked. The worst label though had to be RSO. Those recordings were horrible.
Agree!
I would miss the variable loudness.
And the pre out to record the music with the for me improved sound.
Seems most audiophiles are oblivious to the fact of human hearing performing per the the Fletcher Munson equal-loudness curves.
Unfortunately, radio stations have to compress their signal in order to reach more distant listeners.
in the country I live in we have a music FM. channel with a lot of loadness. much bass to treble. it is not the channel with the best sound quality, not in my car
It's kind of like the age old question: Are you more of a music lover or an audiophile? Of course in a perfect world, it would be great if you can have all available music uncompressed and enjoy it on whatever high quality equipment you have but that's not always going to be realistic.
Fortunately, I think most music is recorded fairly well and some of it is recorded exceptionally well. However, music is suppose to either enlighten, enthrall, or capture your imagination in some way or not. If I like a piece of music, I will listen to it. If I don't, I won't regardless of the quality. I'd rather listen to a nostalgic, emotional piece of compressed or marginally recorded music that takes me somewhere than some ultra clean, superb recording that does nothing for my heart or soul.
I'm lucky that I can have my cake and eat it too when enjoying music a majority of the time but good music is still good music regardless of its quality. However, for those who only enjoy the highest quality sound all the time, turn off your equipment and take a walk somewhere and listen to the things around you. Can't get more uncompressed and natural than that.
Please get Anatomy of a Drowned Shrimp to record at Octave Studios. The world deserves their music.
So it's 10:43 pm and I'm having my nightcap and listening to one of my Tidal lists. My integrated and it's VU meters are loafing along with me in Class A, and then BAM ahhh, Malibu by Hole comes on 🔊📢. Yes I like some of Hole's music. And no I didn't accedentlly rest my cocktail on the remote. The loudness war assaulted my senses while I was vulnerable dang it😢 🍸
Got to think about the transmitter power. Your playing along at 100kw then bang the music asks for 3-6 db, woa your transmitter just went bang, and that's a big bang. Radio edits are normalized to not ask the transmitter to double its output power.
Music engineered for transistor radios simply is what it is...music for transistor radios.
Do all remasters put compression on recordings or do modern remasters remove the compression?
I suffered through CD’s in the early 1990’s they were horrible and not loud enough
I suspect one of the reasons for compression is to be able to play music in the car. With all the road noise, dynamics would be quite a challenge to hear. Nevertheless, if you want to hear music the way it should be played, it would be nice if uncompressed versions were created for those who listen at home on good systems.
The thing is almost all devices that play music in a car have compression abilities built-in; certainly all phones and most music players have compression/normalization settings built in.
And also to play thru itsy bitsy tiny speakers on laptops and mobiles
@@rogerwalter2500 Again though, those devices all have ways of compressing the dynamic range themselves so you don't need to destroy the dynamics for EVERYONE.
My latest is Nightwish and Within temptation
any radio studio worth their salt has the dsp's necessary to normalize, make mono compatible and street-noise-floor compress songs automaticaly and in real time. even the dsp i use on my computer has that capability.
It depends. Overcompression and heavy limiting can work, it's a sonic aesthetic. Some metal music and aggressive dance music benefit from the squished together, loud and punchy wall of sound. It really depends what you want to achieve musically
I wish I could give you two thumbs up for that video.
Send your vinyl releases to WFMU in Jersey City, theyll play em for ya guaranteed!
Blame radio stations, particularly FM.
From their perspective, if it isn't ALL LOUD, it won't sound good at the edge of the coverage area.
I share your opinion Paul.
The loudness wars are a cancer to music. I absolutely hate it. I have many albums plagued by it. It is sad really.
Same here Paul, theres many songs I like, but if the recording is poor, eventually they go in my bin, shame,
Randy Crawford the very best of, for instance,
Can't play the bugger,
Most of my charity shop finds, will proberbly go in the bin, accationally you will come across a treat..
Regards, Antony Warrington England..
Sadly, A LOT of the loudness is the fault of musicians. I mix TV/Movies and the occasional band and no matter how receptive they are to the idea of preserving dynamic range or seem to understand it's no longer necessary to crush their music, the second they compare their songs to other music they get nervous and ask for it to be louder (and then usually louder again)
SOMETIMES it's the artists, more often it's the producers who tell the artists they need that compressed, loud sound to catch the attention of people listening on replacement $7 ear buds they bought at the gas station.
As a person with some knowledge in broadcasting. Check out the undo/declipper of the “Omnia 9”.
Which Africa cover is he referring to? I only know Weird Al’s but that was a few years ago..
Very likely that same Weezer/Weird Al cover.
Who is responsible for the loudness war? The Artist,the sound engineer ,the radio stations or the record company? As you said Paul ,there is loads of music I'd love to listen to but can't. It sounds absolutely crap on my system. Doesn't any of those people i mentioned like good music?
dont forget to blame the consumers, people buy there recordings, or even listen to it on radio help them continue to produce this bad quality music.
@@sudd3660 You can also blame a different economic environment that doesn't allow for middle class to afford high performing equipments
Unfortunately it's the music industry radio station record labels ect. Mainstream media consumers don't really notice unfortunately when said consumer has better income and would like to try hi-fi will hear no difference and stay with their latest Amazon Google Sony ect sound bar's. If the hi-fi industry as whole start their own recording studios and get mainstream artist then that's a start. Manufacturers from cables speaker's amplifiers ect if they can create their very own industry recording label then hi-fi will have a great future.
@@rusedgin i cant blame that, the monetary system works as intended and its only going to get worse.
i blame the monetary system as a whole that incentivize that behaviour.
@@sudd3660 The compression these days is often truly beyond the pale. Overall, I think you're probably right. If it didn't sell, they wouldn't do it. As to who is responsible for the loudness wars, I don't purport to really know. One could probably write a doctoral dissertation on that. 😂
I believe that so many dynamic recordings are at the mercy of the recording engineers who will abuse the dynamics making you reach for volume control in loud passages and back to hear the softer. Generally speaking annoying. At the opposite end is a guy like Alan Parsons who was infamous for really compressing his analog recordings. What's the answer I don't know.
But does it go hard in the club?
I asked this question years ago to our local station which was always louder when changing to that radio station They said...'it's because we have transmitters from the 80s to the present day' what that ment god only knows!!
Paul must be referring to green days remake of totos Africa. I enjoy their music but played on a high end system is does t sound the best. Bit I will keep playing it anyways 😀
Weezer's cover of Africa? Yeah, not that good.
I'm confused. Wouldn't digital radio broadcast obliterate the dynamics problem? In other words, wouldn't digital radio broadcast allow for high dynamic range? If so, why didn't digital radio catch on?
I think it's because you need to have a more constant level for radio-listening to work in all kinds of environments. - High dynamic range can sound weak when there's any other noise.
Like I said in another comment, try listening to highly dynamic music in a car. It will sound like there's a lot of volume-drop and you'll miss a lot of information in between the peaks. - The same counts for environments like shops or malls and what have you. - Besides that, all music that comes from one and the same broadcast needs to be normalized anyway to have a constant average. - If you want high dynamic range, get the record or stream it and sit in a quiet room.
@@michaelangeloh.5383 Oh! That's a very good point.
I'm quite convinced that a lot of people who mix/master/produce records or audio in general don't even realize it these days because it has become the norm.
I mean, I sometimes hear albums that have great sounds, like... just great engineering of beautiful sounds and effects of instruments and electronics, no matter what it is, and then the level of the overall album is JUST too high to do it justice. I mean, not even "brickwalled", but still high enough that it's too much and overwhelming volume sometimes. - I mean, if only they pulled it back even just a bit, it would've been thát much better. - But I seriously don't think they really know or realize that and they just look at whether or not they're within the limits. Again, not even flattened and clipped, but just shallow in terms of dynamics with this "squished" compression-sound to it that doesn't need to be there.
I mix/master/produce records. Can you give me your favorite example of a popular song that is done well, and one that's done poorly in your opinion? I just want to see what the delta is.
@Douglas Blake Oh, I was looking for your personal opinion. I don't care about lists.. I just wonder sometime what people are listening to when they make these comments. I have heard loud albums that sound great, and quiet ones that sound like crap and everything in between.
Hey, u reminded me of something... They need to compete!... And compete in what, when as soon as music is published all streaming services will do "F-bomb you, we are turning it down by X dB measured by a standard"
'It wouldn't work on radio' ? What? Who are these fools?!....
It's true for technical reasons. - Try playing a highly dynamic recording in a car... You wouldn't hear most of it. Unless you have some super-deluxe ultra-isolated spaceship car or something, but that's not most cars. - Radio-audio needs to be suitable for most general scenarios, and most locations in the world with any population are noisy. Noisy enough that high dynamic range won't work, it will just sound weak. - You generally don't "listen to the radio" sitting in a quiet room, let's be real.
Why would you listen to that in a car?
LOL I know how it works on radio, but those rules mattered like 30 years ago. Current technology is much better, and more quiet. And radio? Everybody is streaming now.
Paul, instead of insulting and belittling the people who make these recordings, calling them stupid and needing to have some sense knocked into them, perhaps it would be more helpful to try and understand why they mix things to sound that way. And trust me, it's not due to ignorance of what good sound is.
Back in the 60s and 70s, people would actively listen to music, They would sit down in front of their hi-fi and listen attentively without doing anything else. Today, apart from audiophiles, that's mostly over. People listen to music as a background to other activities like driving, or cooking, or just walking around, and they listen on earbuds connected to a phone, in a car going down the highway, or on a small Bluetooth speaker. They want the music to be there, but to remain at a constant non distracting background level, so wide dynamic swings are not welcome. In a car the music has to compete against the noise of driving, so if it had wide dynamics, the driver would be constantly reaching for the volume control to keep things at the "just right" level. They effectively become a human compressor.
I'm a bit surprised by the response from the radio station, because all radio stations pretty much flatten the dynamics of their signal anyway, on its trip from the studio to the transmitter.
Right on.
... and on top of all that: Paul seems to have missed that The Loudness War is over.
If one is not willing to go that far, I'd say that The War has left its global thermonuclear stage, at least.
Why does Paul always whisper good bye ? Is it a compression thing or what ?
Dynamics is waste and hurt the music in most of the places/locations.
Let me explain:
We audiophiles need to understand that there is a other side of the coin and compression is not used just because they feel for doing that or that it is fun.
Audiophiles are a minority group (less than ~1% of the population) that are sitting at the perfect spot in our dead silent and treated room with speaker carefully placed in it.
The majority (the others 99%) of music consumers play the songs in the car or jogging or whatever. There compression is a must yes you read right it is a must.
The ambient noice is so high that if you play something with high dynamic range and in the soft/low parts of the song it will be below the noise levels of where you are. And can only be enjoyed and heard clearly in the dedicated listening space..
But if we apply loudness then we can hear it in the car for example and the performance is not gone..
Try it your self. Take your favorite track that has great dynamic range and with quiet passages. Play it in your car while driving somewhere and you can't hear and enjoy it in the quiet parts if you don't turn it up more than you usually have it turned up.. to get it above the noice floor.. but then the louder parts will be to loud! You see totally useless in a noisy environment.
That track is not ment to be consumed in a nosy environment at all.
Who do the record labels want to target and profit from, the 99% group or us 1%..
So it will never go away when we need it then there is other mixing considerations there compression is used to on individual objects to enhance certain aspects but that is to much info to provide here this is long enough already. Happy listening! 🥰💕🎵🎼🎶
Your in-car analogy explains things very well
(not that I'm a fan of compressed rubbish)
@@geddylee501 Agree 👍
But it is not a analogy it is a example of a different listening location that is generally more noisy.
If you have Spotify premium you have on some android apps a setting called "Volume level" and the available settings is "Loud/Normal/Quiet" and the description is for it "Adjust the volume for your environment".
So you can adjust for 3 different "compression" levels depending were you are when you consume it.
Pretty nifty and not all apps on different OS has that setting. But it is great when/if we are in our listening room that we can use the least amount of compression that Spotify alow us by selecting quiet. 👍
Yes, but I don't like the thought that the primary use of music is a soundwall in a noisy environment. Actual listenining can be a overwhelming experience, and every artist who thinks their music is worth to be listened to should think about releasing dynamic mixes of their music.
Well stated. I said pretty much the same thing in another comment.
Then why don’t f…g studios create several masters?, one master recorded with compression for people listening in their cars or jogging and another master without compression for people listening from home, plain simple.
I know you might not want them to do that but don't they just crank the compressor at the radio station anyway?
Making a point by whispering in the end 😅
00:05 - How?...
I agree 100% with Paul. If people do not have good equipment and cannot listen to music with good sound, then there is something wrong with the sound equipment they have and not the music.
yes too many speakers do not have such a good sound and there are many of them, must have loadness otherwise they sound flat!
I avoid loudness wars because those recordings just don't sound good to me. I don't care why that is exactly. Producers are afraid or don't know better because the use of LUFS by streaming services reverts the loudness gain they applied. And it's the radio station's responsibility to compress to their specific needs. Producers shouldn't second-guess them.
i would rather have dynamic range then massive amounts of compression Listen to most of Becker and Fagan albums
As far as radio, most listening environments, at work or in the car, have too much background noise to enjoy music that is overly dynamic. It falls too low to hear or, conversely, reached levels excessive for comfortable listening. The world in general is too loud for fine listening.
can anyone tell me why they can not play music from ps audio on the radio?
Because people listen to the radio in their cars or it is played at public places, places with background noise and then you simlpy can't hear the quiet parts of uncompressed recordings, and people would complain. On the other hand, radio stations should have a compressor and be able to compress the music themselves, so probably they just didn't like the music.
Don't forget that all streaming services not only compress dynamics, they readjust volume to reach a normalized loudness value (in LUFS.)
"they readjust volume to reach a normalized loudness value (in LUFS.)" - what about services that have an option to turn off normalization?
False: On Spotify it's optional. - I've A/B'd albums between the CD and Spotify with any kind of "normalization" turned off: No difference. I even got confused as to which one was playing, so it was practically blind at some points. - It's to the point that I wondered why the hell I'd even keep the CDs, other than being a fan of some or collecting them and occasionally playing them. - What's more is that you can easily demonstrate it to yourself using one of the most popular bands today. Try Rammstein's earliest and latest albums and there will be a huge jump in the average level. They're not evened out in any way (with the preserved setting).
@@michaelangeloh.5383 I guess Spotify lies to artists then (asterisks mine):
"Loudness normalization
Audio gets delivered to us at different volume levels.
We use loudness normalization to balance soft and loud songs, creating a more balanced uniform experience.
Note: The web player and 3rd-party devices (e.g. speakers and TVs) don’t use loudness normalization.
We adjust tracks to -14 dB LUFS, according to the ITU 1770 (International Telecommunication Union) standard.
We normalize an entire album at the same time, so gain compensation doesn’t change between tracks. This means the softer tracks are as soft as you intend them to be.
We adjust individual tracks when shuffling an album or listening to tracks from multiple albums (e.g. listening to a playlist).
*** Loudness normalization means we don’t always play your track at the level it’s mastered. ***
Target the loudness level of your master at -14dB integrated LUFS and keep it below -1dB TP (True Peak) max. This is best for lossy formats (Ogg/Vorbis and AAC) and makes sure no extra distortion’s introduced in the transcoding process.
If your master’s louder than -14dB integrated LUFS, make sure it stays below -2dB TP (True Peak) to avoid extra distortion. This is because louder tracks are more susceptible to extra distortion in the transcoding process."
artists.spotify.com/en/help/article/loudness-normalization
@@TheDanEdwards It sounds strange, but they actually perform TWO levels of normalization.
They perform one level of normalization to a predefined maximum volume setting in LUFS that varies from streamer to streamer, and that's the version that goes into their library.
Then settings in the client determine whether additional more agressive normalization is performed in the client or not.
Several artists have performed tests using digital tracks they then uploaded to Spotify (to name one, it's the one they tested) and found volume was reduced from the original digital file when the file was made available for streaming with volume normalization turned to "off" or "loud" (depending upon the client) and then additional processing is done when normalization is enabled or set to other levels like "normal" or "quiet."
@@VideoArchiveGuy I would think they have one setting for pop music and another one for classical music. Usual is -13 or -14 LUFS for pop music and -20 LUFS for classical music, I think.
ppppppp…..fffffff. Way back when, the Absolute Sound decided to describe dynamics as the musical Dynamics went from the softest Pianissimo all the way to the loudest Fortissimo.
Im guessing great dynamics comes at the price of a pissed off optimod in the air chain, not allowing the FM side to go beyond that narrow shoulders they have, just guessing. I blame the FCC and trying to pack everything in on the dial, thus “up is louder” to punch through everyone else lol
I don't listen to contemporary music much or maybe almost not at all due to their high compression. It's a torture to my ears. If that would make me a snob, so be it.
HiFiMan Sundara (?) pluuged into the headphone jack of a desktop PC - surely you could rustle up a DAC somewhere? ;-)
The loudness war will die with ICE cars. 😉
I stay far away from any "Digitally Remastered" or 25th anniversary album releases. IMHO "Brick walled", hitting clipping levels type recordings may damage sensitive audio playback equipment. Nowadays vinyls sound better than CDs coz it can't take such insanely compressed loud recordings due to its own physical limitations
Yes, and before they stopped making records in the 80s, they were still trying to push the envelope…that’s why sometimes even on the best turntables and cartridges set up right, your needle could still pop out of the groove from a poorly cut record.
@@shipsahoy1793 the sad part is , once it is remastered, the original dynamic range is lost , forever !
Well, I've heard some ridiculously loud and flat vinyl records, to my disappointment. - I think frickin' Marilyn Manson's ones don't even make a difference, even those from the '90s, but that's probably because of bad engineering in the first place. - But really, LPs sadly aren't a guarantee to not have brickwalled or overly loud mastering. Somehow they still managed to do it, even though it's true that most of the time they tend to not suffer from it (as much).
@@rogerwalter2500 - Sometimes they're proper remasters, though. They do exist. Occasionally even actual reMIXes.
@@michaelangeloh.5383
I agree. There was also a trend pushing more playing time onto each side, so shorter lead-ins, moving music closer to the label, challenging the auto shut off mode, and the obligatory tighter spacing for quiet passages. Not to mention wow and flutter, tracking error, rumble, and record warpage, cleaning issues, the disc integrity itself, and even packaging issues, It’s amazing that vinyl and its sound actually survived as well as it did. 😉
But they can do different masterings depending on where the music is to be published. one guy thought that music on hi-res files could have better dynamics than the same album on cd. There are also those who believe that albums can sound more dynamic on vinyl than on CD. it may be that the record companies have the opinion that those who buy music on CD generally have a cheaper stereo while those who listen to vinyl or on hi-res have a more expensive stereo
Sometimes we just need to step back and enjoy the music.
Myea, as long as it's not compressed into actual distortion, like the much-criticized "Deaf Magnetic" for instance. - That one is just not tolerable to any sane person.
Loads of people aren't able to hear it and the fans eat it up, but there's such an audible distortion on top of the sound that it sounds like your speakers are broken (and the first time I played the CD I thought it was my stereo setup). - But I think there are also lots of records that... might be loud, with less dynamic range, but still sound very good and enjoyable. - Though, fatigue sets in sooner and it's just bad for your hearing then because of less volume-drop.
Can't do that once it's compressed into a wall of undecipherable mush.
Think about it, it's effectively every note played and sung at the loudest volume possible.
Best produced music today are in music and games. Oh the irony.
The band that covered "Africa" was Weezer, I agree totally unlistenable. So over compressed that it sounds just horrible.
I know with Metallica's Death Magnetic the idea was to make the guitars sound more crunchy. Strange choice. The follow up record (hardwired) cleaned this up. There was also some kind of problem with the CD format that I dont understand. They said the Hardwired record was split into 2 for better sound quality. That record is 77 minutes long double album while the prior was 74 minutes on 1 disk. I wonder if lowering dynamics uses less data??? No idea.
Weezer did Africa and it pissed me off because they did absolutely nothing to make it their own.
Whoever you talked to at that radio station was full of crap if based on so many others in the same industry who will tell you clean and dynamic works better with their processing than music that's already been chewed up.
Regarding the loudness wars, i was a big fan of Oasis in the 90's. But man they albums are recorded(mixed) so poorly and loud, you just can't listen to them on a good system. It's just no good, I prefer to listen to their live material over the official albums.
and not educated and not having knowlege what brand great any more Sony, Apple Samsung ear buds and being desensitized by what cheaper to buy
What doesn't anybody mention Billie Eilish!? The production is 👌 And it's mainstream music!
I think there are great recordings of the past, as well as recordings that suck. Today is no different. Some artists care about the reproduction quality and others don't. You just have to sift through them and find the ones that ring your chimes.
@@pcm9969 So true! I discover formidable albums 3 or 4 times per week and I'm overwhelmed.
🙋♂️IMHHO….this doesn’t make you a snob…. Anymore than choosing what restaurant or food you eat
There are so many places and foods to choose from… and we only have so much time and money so why waste it on something that we don’t like 🤷♂️ … as for radio I stopped listening pretty much in the late 80s mostly because of commercials at that time and I was able to put in a CD player and a sound system (separate tweeters mid range and woofers with amps)🤗😎😍😍😍
i just dont agree on the: there is so much good music these days?? After the 90's, it was done with all the good music. Music went to crap these days. Very few good artists and bands left.
Over compressed is annoying - but so is overly dynamic sometimes. It depends on the context. If I'm listening to music on my own a dynamic recording is great. If I'm trying to concentrate, or talk to others over dinner, while overly dynamic music is playing it's problematic.
I would love there to be a setting, like a tone control, that allowed you to compress the music on the fly. So when you wanted dynamics they were there and when you didn't you could turn compression on.
Most software-players have that... Foobar has it, Spotify has it, some receivers can do it internally...
Agreed, it's especially annoying watching a 're-mastered' TV special (granted, not Hi-Fi), that attempts to remove background noise by expanding the dynamic range -- muting out the low passages, unfortunately some of the words get cut off and speech becomes unintelligible
The loudness wars are part of the music industries politics as well. Also, as powerful as music is and if you make it sound worse you can seriously dumb down an entire population of people.
and then streaming services use standards to measure loudness and turn it back down, I have seen tracks as being down as -10 to -12dB, (youtube will literally spoil it) just a major waste of literally free dynamics
Loudness wars will never go away and it's sad really but there is a good reason for that. People don't care. They don't want to invest hundreds $$ to hear dynamic track. for 90% of people even 50$ is too much on pair of headphones or speakers and those transducers are just cr*p. They are usually V shape tuned and they fail utterly and completely at even remotely hitting the correct frequencies asked by the track as there is about 30-50% of total tonal loss (you won't actually and literally hear a lot of stuff in the track). So when you play a dynamic track you can't hear anything worth hearing and as soon as you increase volume a bit it just sounds awful. distortion, crackles, sharp frequencies untuned...
And with such disaster of transducers when you play compressed track suddenly transducers sound more "lively" because you don't have to crank the volume up and there is a lot of frequencies going at the same levels thus those that wouldn't be played due to crappy transducer now come through while the rest is just screaming and sounding so flat.
And thus the reason why loudness war is here to stay. Such speakers are much more active with loudness war and people perceive that as a good thing.
You don't have to invest hundreds of dollars.
@@bsadewitz Oh yes you do...
@@bsadewitz you do... anything sub 100 brand new is just utter garbage... starting at 200$ you may get good enough resolving transducers to start grasping at what propper dynamic track is.
Thanks Paul. But about the dynamic: If you play it loud then you have that dynamic, but I guess you have to play it loud, otherwise you don't hear some of it. And if people want to play something in the background (the radio is playing) then they want, let's say, a medium volume and not sometimes loud and sometimes not. Phil Colin's In the Air Tonight is a good example. If I relax then I listen to it with power, slowly getting louder. But for background music first I hear very little and then it LOUD. So in a way I understand these radio guys.
dynamics stays the same no matter the volume. low quality dynamic range cant be fixed after its done to a piece.
The point was, with background environment noise the quiet parts of dynamic tracks can't be heard at moderate volumes. To hear everything the volume needs to be raised.
I have a really nice desktop setup over 9 W class A and R2R dac. For Spotify I use a pair of B&W Pi7 true wireless in ears, spubda grwat it not hifi but its mighty bass and easy going buy its not for high fidelity dynamics.
0:30 / 3:44
Avoiding the loudness wars... and we forgot about the Ukraine war ....
Most people prefer music compressed. They turn it down when it gets loud and turn it up when it gets quiet. I prefer music compressed in the car, and I bought the car partly because it had the best in-car system money can buy. Audiophiles moaning about it is an irrelevance. I play dynamic music and movies at reference level and everyone else hates it. This is fine as I've whittled everyone else down to no one else.
Lol funny
But how else can I enjoy Bad Kanye Sheeran Minaj?? The loud bass and tight amazing auto tune singing tells me that song is enjoyable so I don’t have to choose!!!
Who even listens to radio anymore?
Me lol, Jazz Fm in the uk, its bloody awful quality :(
you can uncompress compressed music. maybe Paul something you should put in your preamps I just take $10 for every item you put it in, can't say fairer than that. now this is a contract. ®©
just have a dial on the front to uncompressed and to compress by +/-10 DB.
you can't uncompress already processed track. You can uncompress it while you are mixing the original recordings but once it is rendered you can't do anything about it. All you can do is mess with frequencies as whole and with the master volume.
@@sermerlin1 well you can you can divide it up and isolate certain parts and remaster it
@@hoobsgroove no you cant as once rendered thats it. Done deal.
@@sermerlin1
course you can you can isolate any part of music and split up into multiple tracks
Expansion comes with distracting artifacts, even in systems like DolbyC and HiFiVHS where the expansion and compression were designed as a pair. Slap on a mismatched one and you'll notice.
I don't care about compression in audio recordings I just want to know why they turn it into a in un useable crap. It would seem to me they don't know how music sounds.i could put out better recordings on my mix board eq and casset deck than some CDs I've have pay good money for normal recordings.
Just this point they think people are dumb to the fact they can't hear the fact is it substandard.
People are smart so why do they baffle them with bull picky.
It's like this if I can't have it my way then no body can.any body that can use a mix board and make things sound better then those over compressed music we love so much
So buy the cd lp ora recording of and it's sounds like crap then let them know get your buddy's family any one that can rise a complaint and make it so or have Paul's studio redo it he will sell millons.ok maybe more take that capital am rca ect...... Peace to all...
Or, people don't want to be snobs??