Why your audio is bad and why you can't do anything about it
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2023
- Will a new turntable, cartridge, DAC, amp, speakers improve your audio? No. Your audio is already bad and there's nothing you can do about it. ❤️ Support My Channel ❤️ www.buymeacoffee.com/davidmellor
This has to be the best commentary on audio I've ever heard.
I totally agree I am extremely impressed with The amount of thought he puts into his answers and explanations and I am so glad that somebody is willing to tell the truth about this stuff I always had kind of the same feeling is what he's saying it's amazing wonderful wonderful teacher
On your point at 13:45 - you're right. I worked for a few years at a mastering house in London with three other mastering engineers. The bloke who had the most (and most well-known) clients was the guy who didn't care about the audio quality at all. He simply smashed the hell out of the dynamics. The next most popular wasn't so cavalier, but he had considerably fewer clients. The other two (including me) spent a lot of time doing their best to persuade their clients that louder isn't better, and we had the fewest clients. Nobody wanted their release to sound less loud than everyone else's, and that was that.
Audio Masterclass: The Truth Will Always Offend
Lathe Of Heaven: You Are So Right!
We have had the same experiences as mastering Engineers.
Musical tastes are always going to be musical tastes, nothing will change that
The loudness wars Sucked, now we have much music that's cold and clinical and almost lost that perception of warm real engineers knew as distortion.
it happened when anologue went to Compact Discs and again with Compressed Mp3s
people have got so familiar with this sound they can no longer tell the difference.
there are a few exceptions to the rule.
Back in the 70s, there were direct disk recordings,where the musicians played live directly into an analogue mixer and outputted onto the cutting lathe . No tape recording ! If the musicians made a mistake, they had to start over! The result was the most incredible sounds I ever heard. Google Sheffield Labs
Well, a small token thank you for not selling out your soul for money.
@@ammej768 Or Studio 55, also engineer would fire up the small AM transmitter until FM took over and wyed output and had producer tune in a car with the 1 speaker as another safety😀
@@ammej768I bought a bunch of those when they first came out. To this day, I don’t think I’ve heard anything better.
When good recordings sounded audibly flawless on my speakers, is when I realized there was no need to upgrade any further. No missing spatial effects, imagined, or otherwise. Truth be told, I had been hooked on whatever I could get out of it for decades. Currently, my speakers are better than my hearing can ever be again. The only downside being, it leaves me nothing further to talk about other than the actual music itself.
Past weekend, I ended up putting on my original Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" album that I had not heard for quite a few years, just picked randomly out of my collection. It was a stark reminder of how and why I got hooked on this hobby in the first place, before digital anything, and to stop overthinking/second-guessing my system just because the ad/marketing mechanism tells me to.
The last two albums by Talk Talk and Mark Hollis' unique solo album are testament to how audio should be mixed and mastered. They are my antidotes to the brickwall sound of the loudness wars. I really believe that in the realms of pop and rock, the space and dynamics to be found in those albums will never be heard again.
Oh yes, I have those three albums on CD and each time I listen they leave me in awe. Both the music and the sound are superlative.
It will be found again. But we need some intelligent people to come back to music. If everyone is disillusioned then of course it will always be crap. Break the cycle.
One or several engineered by Phil Brown whom I met in London in the 90s.... and just read his book where he talks alot about those sessions.. awesome book!
Talk talk we’re the first big gig I saw. It was the colour of spring tour. They were just incredible and set me firmly on my musical journey. What a band.
are we talking Spirit of Eden? it's an absolute masterpiece....
AMEN to everything you said. It's truly mindboggling that this still continues despite popular services like Spotify having loudness normalization turned on by default, meaning it _doesn't_ sound louder, just worse. By the way, some modern vinyl releases were obviously made from a digital -4 LKFS damaged master. Good thing there is so much great pre-1995 music to discover!
I find many pre -95 mixes very shallow and lacking in bass. There are very few recordings I like from that period and they're all live acoustic recordings, preferably pure stereo miced.
@@dingdong2103 Vinyl was limited in the level of bass which could be recorded on it. Too high a bass level could cause the grooves to be deep enough that the stylus could skip and wide enough that the running time of the record would be reduced, or adjacent groove sections would be distorted. However, bass was once considered to be something which was not overtly audible in the mix, but rather underneath the other instruments as reinforcement or a foundation, something which would be noticed more by it's absence rather than it's actual presence.
@@dingdong2103 once upon a time stereo systems had a graphic equalizer built in. Also if you have a subwoofer there should be a separate volume control so that if you want more bass you can dial in more bass yourself.
@@allanmoorhead9492 That was an issue that was rectified by the RIAA correction and affected only a couple of records such as the infamous Chaikowsky 1812 overture with the cannon shots.
@@dingdong2103 The purpose of RIAA equalisation was to compensate for the "constant velocity" characteristic of disc cutters, which caused signal amplitude to be increased at the bass end and reduced at the treble end. Equalisation reduced the bass and increased the treble before cutting, and the pre-amplifier reverses this on playback. This allowed more space for the groove (extended playing time) and also reduced noise (which is mostly at the treble and and competes with the treble signal content).
Grateful to you for creating such a video. The topic is almost a taboo among audiophiles, a lot of them seem to believe that it's not an issue at all, or that the loudness war is over. Needless to say, the majority of people is not even aware that this is an issue, so it's good to talk about it.
Clarity on sounds. Love your confidence and direct no-nonsense delivery. Thank you
As a fellow sound professional, I too completely agree. I’ve often been bored to death by amateur “audiophiles” telling me they’ve spent more money on their domestic (unbalanced) all-analogue garbage than I’ve spent on some professional set ups, but telling me that I’m getting it all wrong.
Notwithstanding the gross inaccuracies inherent in 20th century electro-mechanical sound reproduction technology, Psychoacoustics, the tympanic reflex, and a phenomenon known as the Head Related Transfer function all play a massive role in what each of us perceives. These effects on our response to sound are now far greater in magnitude than the achievable minimum distortion levels of modern recording, mixing and mastering tools.
It’s great to see that what I’ve been patiently - and impatiently! - explaining to people since 1986 is now becoming common currency beyond pro audio circles.
There are only two parts of the signal chain where we need “expensive” analogue equipment - the input and output transducers. Downstream of the input DAC and upstream of the output DAC and final amplification stage everything can stay in the practically flawless digital realm.
Great video, I think it just helps re-frame the issue that while we are worrying about 0.001 vs 0.0001% distortion they are adding back single digit levels to the source material. It also explains why despite the technical limitations, I do often enjoy vinyl versions better even though I have a nice digital setup as well. It also explains why I often like my original CDs from the time of release over the remastered versions. Thank you for the enlightening discussion!
Although, it's not as simple as that, unfortunately. I spent nearly 20 years as a vinyl-cutting engineer (I also did CDs etc) between 1990 and 2010. It was quite often the case that the audio I was sent was 'mastered' already. Often this would be a CD master, that had been compressed and limited to death already, or it would be a stereo mix... which had been compressed and limited to death already.
My task was to try and find a way to transfer that to vinyl such that it would play back OK on a turntable. If you bought any of those records, they would be as compressed as the CD masters. No way to undo the damage. I was on a constant quest with clients to get them to provide uncompressed audio files from which to make two masters. The vinyl master I made would be a lot less compressed/limited than the CD master. But at all times, I had the artists, producers and record labels emploring me to 'cut it louder than anything I've ever done before'.
*Insurrection Industries* It's a pleasure and a coincidence to find your comment here on a non-videogame related video, but audio. And sorry for being pretty off topic again but... would you release Gamecube component with audio? I hope so.
Never imagined being audiophiles apart from gaming haha.
@@JnL_SSBM unfortunately we care too much about audio and would only add audio if we could do an excellent DAC that exceeded the built in DAC. We have started looking into it, and even got an audio precision analyzer to begin that investigation. It will actually be rather expensive to do it to the level we could accept.
@@insurrectionindustries1706 We MUST care about audio quality, and I hope we use ESS Sabre 9218P DACs or similar...
? arise when output specs claim 0.00000 whatever distortion and if no speaker Xmax given. Output anything close to 'expected' wattage max with 0.4% THD shows likely human checking/verification of spec in around 90db/w/m sens and is range where generally accepted human ears notice is distorted.
I am 75. I, too, experienced all of this audio evolution and de-evolution. I relate to everything you say. My Junior High graduation present was a Grundig PORTABLE RADIO, and it was the greatest tech thing that I knew existed at the time - 1962, When I was 20 - 1967 - I was fortunate enough to work for an 8-track cassette recording company locally. We bought new albums directly from a local record store, carefully placed the vinyl record on a professional grade turntable and stylus, and recorded a master tape of the pristine original on a professional grade reel-to-reel tape deck. After that, we were able to repeatedly create high quality recordings piggy-backing to multiple recorders, cranking out a high volume for the 8-track market, which was voracious at that time. Albums in your car! OMG! Anyway, I got to keep those pristine albums, played only once (well, some played more than once). I was not thinking of investment value at the time. Likely I was high, too). I have 500-600 vinyl records, most of which are in good shape, and some of which are in excellent shape. I am either going to buy a good record player and listen to them all again, but that seems tedious, as I can listen to any sone I desired digitally, usually by asking Siri. If that doesn't work, Alexa usually can. So, I ned to create a log of them for sale. If any of you are interested in inquiring about a specific album or albums, I have most rock albums dating from 1964 theu the mid-70's, and qutre a few others.
Where are you located?
@@robertbrinton7754 I live in Santa Barbara, CA. I've lived here continuously since 1962, though it has been my hometown since 1953, when my family lived abroad for a while. Santa Barbara had the only venue large enough to attract the big name bands, and we often got to see all the big groups, mostly before they were famous, as they would stop in Santa Barbara on the way to or from a gig in SF or LA. The company who produced the shows also bought 8-Track tapes to selll at a huge "Music Emporium". I got free backstage passes to all the shows. Jimi Hendrix (he burned his guitar less than 10 feet away from me, offstage), the Doors, the Airplane, Big Brother, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, Santana, The Mothers of Invention, Sweetwater, the Who (my roommate, a drummer, caught a drumstick thrown into the crowd by Keith Moon while the rest of them distroyed their guitars and amps), Love, Cream, and more. I also got to see the Yardbirds and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental band play live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1968. Those were good times. Best.Music.Ever. Last note - in 1967-68, tickets to these events ranged from $2.50 - $3.50, never more. As I said before, we had backstage passes, so we didn't have to pay those exorbitant prices! lol I never figured out how they made money, since the venue was relarively small. Maybe they did it for the gas money, as they were all in vans and busses back then.
They sourced 8 tracks from commercial vinyl? Im confused.
@@JustinEdwords I'm confused too -- maybe they were pirating the music?
Nice...but now I can no longer afford vinyl. Stange Days.
13:45 Dan Worrall already won that competition with his "I won the Loudness War" +2.3 LUFS track. His channel is an excellent almost borderline ASMR resource for DAW. I couldn't understand why I couldn't listen to all of Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity (released in 1995) without feeling fatigued, even with the volume lowered. Until you and others on CZcams and other articles explained the Loudness War.
Oh yes! Dan's the man. Great in-depth technical knowledge, and wonderful, bitter, no-prisoners British humour/sarcasm. The listener's volume knob has been replaced by the engineer's limiter fader... what could go wrong?;)
So grateful to Dan for finally winning the Loudness War
Correct.
Thank you for explaining several things i didn't understand about modern recording. Good video.
Indeed AMEN to that. Even my children reject almost everything that is thrown at them recorded after the mid 90ties. As I make and record classical music I do not have to participate in the loudness war but if I ask the mixed to be mastered I mostly get it back too loud with little dynamics. The sweet voices and violins are gone, why? Obviously things needed to be louder. Not in my book, so I fully agree with your statement that the audio is already bad once you buy or stream it. I use a more than average quality pair of speakers placed to my liking in my livingroom and enjoy music not the technology (in your livingroom the music is largely (80%) influenced by the room size and acoustics anyway). Same goes for the DAW and monitor speakers I use, listen carefully and try to recreate the venue and scale it down to livingroom size. I do like the down to earth way you present your topics on this channel. Keep up the good work and spread the word.
Loved your views on this. Yes, Dynamics is everything in music & when you kill that, you kill the soul of the track itself.
You sir have described exactly what I experience with new music.
The best way I can describe it is that I feel like the space is missing between the instruments. The space between lead and backing vocals is not there any more. The roomy sound has gone. 😢 This is also evident when playing older music through a good quality led bar graph. Older music has gaps, waves, peaks and troughs in the music that are evident by the dancing lights. Todays music is almost a flat line of ON all the time and only pushes further into the red with every beat of the kick drum.
The result is something a little flat and lifeless where older music seems to breathe more and change directions. Its sad that the labels are pushing a product and really stifling the artwork
That’s because most stuff today is so heavily over compressed that you totally smashes the dynamic of an “honest” recording. IMO using a compressor as a sound design tool is beeing way overdone today, and a compressor is harder to master than you think. You have to have a good ear and be able to judge when it’s too much and when it’s just fab.
Absolutely Agree !
Thank you for posting this video. It needed to be said.
Great video! Excellent points! I recently subscribed and LOVE your content! ❤️
I worked for years as a Radio/TV Engineer, and did both maintenance & operations. The rule was, never let the VU meter enter the RED, except for occasional (and unavoidable) peaks. Then there were the DJs, who had to be reined in, because they felt emasculated whenever the needle dropped below "0."
Eww good point and keep an eye on that dang 500hz band (likes to creep) and in my case is when I notice something's clippin..
I honestly think that many musicians & producers, these days, WANT to drive the mike amps into clipping, because it makes the music sound "louder."
@@Pootycat8359 for those folks recommend a good 70s marantz, Sansui and the like with QS and drive some good Vegas or do like me n Rick Rubin used to do lay down in the back seat in a Impala with the rounded glass back window with a nice system, turn the (enhanced low end at lower volume which tapers as vol knob turns up) "Loudness" feature 'On' throw in a safety copy then have a listen. I will say the 90's-00s 'nice' home receivers you had to crank lot louder to achieve similar low end output. After transferring some rnb LPs to digital I left the same settings and when transferring some Whitesnake VUs did not show clipping but after multiple attempts realized I was 'stuck' with piercing high end which I will need to dump to some DAW and see if I can limit high end and widen low to mid so I can enjoy like others including tracks like Prince's Controversy....
Lucky you! I had once to dial in some compressors for a small station. Job description: "make it as loud as you can." And I did that. I recorded oldschool two of the loudest stations around as example, got me CDs of those recorded tracks and went to work. A fellow older tech just said: "I don't envy you, you will be finished, when everything looks like a square wave!" And the dude was right. Luckily streaming brought back a lot of fidelity. But FM radio? That is loudness hell!
I would expect better of FM stations, but then, hard rock is hard rock! (Teeth chattering, ears oozing blood....). I was Chief Engineer of a small "Easy Listening" FM station, and an engineer for a classical FM station, that was fanatical about high-fidelity, so I was never subjected to such torture.
The reason I subscribe, is that you are obviously knowledgable, experienced and best of all: thoughtful and pragmatic. I reject snobbery and audio voodoo. You have the rare ability to delineate nonsense from sense.
A lot of people involved in production, especially before Smash Out All Dynamics and Smash Pitch and Time To The Grid became predominant, aren't snobbish or interesting in voodoo. They just want the nicest cleanest full range for the artist's original intentions that can be obtained for the budget.
I totally agree with you! 🤘🏼 I just try and up the overall volume so my songs won’t sound too amateurish compared with other music, but I keep leaning towards the mid 80s in terms of loudness and mixing.
Great video. It's sad that even remasters of older music are being ruined by this. I don't think it's the only reason current music sounds awful, but I certainly notice this problem with it. Lot's of clipping distortion and muddy sound.
Spot on as per usual David.
It is the dynamic range reduction that the loudness wars results in, that I find most annoying. I have never been a fan of vinyl (even when that was all there was) but I have vinyl records from The 70s & 80s with greater dynamic range than the CD re-issues, taking all the life out of the performance. Particularly galling as vinyl could only achieve 45 or 50dB dynamic range where CD was capable of 96dB (in theory).
Radio play was one of the driving factors that started off the loudness wars. I was technical manager of a major pop studio in the 80s & 90s, when the Record Labels wanted their single to be loudest when the DJ played it, thus grabbing the attention of the listener.
Radio was the original problem. Stations wanted to be the loudest on the dial. On FM stations there was a strict limit on the frequency deviation of the carrier signal. FM-100 in Memphis compressed the music where every frequency used the entire allowed range. This started in the early 1970s. Back then I only encountered this on vinyl when I would purchase a compilation album that would have as much as 20 tracks on a single platter. (10 per side). The only way to do this is by compressing the sound. The difference was obvious. It is insane that the industry would apply this to source material on a CD and lose much of the character the CD allow in music reproduction.
so very well presented, I understand that now with streaming services and Atmos , the standardization of LUFS has helped reigned this in a bit. To elaborate on this topic a little more..., what also came along with digital mixing is the time alignment and pitch correction that is now a standard among so many engineers and creating musicians. So very impressive to make good from bad performances, It has potentially damaged the recording in the sense that it has de-natured Music like Factory Food. Its easy, convenient, consistent, etc... But those pre 95 recordings had so many subtle timing and pitch movements that makeup a musicians 'Feel', if its so 'corrected' it may as well have been entirely programmed within the computer for the most part. big love to all who love their Art!
The algorithm recommended your videos/channel and I'm enjoying it! Great content, great discussion points. Really engaging too. :)
Wonderful explanation, clear and comprehensible. Thanks.
I heard an artist showing the production steps she did, and when she added the compressors it just killed all life in the song. And now I can't listen to her without feeling sad about how good it could have sounded. 😢
That's the thing that kills me is we live in a digital age where most music is consumed by digital files. So why the heck can't musicians release a dynamic album and a compressed album so their listeners have a choice?
Thanks for that really interesting video. It seems to partly explain the CD vs Vinyl argument that just goes on and on. I’ve always found this hard to understand before your video. My own interest as an oldie is in classical and 1960s and 70s rock for the most part. So I may literally have never experienced the problem though I suppose your video may help to explain why more recent re-issues never seem as good as the original versions! I just put it down to my memory and preferring the ‘old sound’. Perhaps the ‘old sound’ really was better?
I wonder if this loudness / Distortion / clipping problem affects current classical recordings? I have a few recent classical CDs and I’m not aware of any particular recording problems. Far from it, in fact I reckon modern CDs of classical music sound really great for the most part. Modern recording techniques are much better than they were in the 1960s and early 70s.
I made my living in the technology of pro audio for 40 years. You’re spot on. Subscribed.
Great topic - thanks for discussing it so openly 👍👍
Thank you. Younger people often do not understand this. I was told by my female friend recently (once again) how my audio levels are "uneven". I tried to pry more details out of her (her vocabulary when it comes to synths and sound recording is somewhat mediocre) and I eventually realised what she was referring to. I don't really master my own tracks, at least not in the ways most people do it, and when you look at my waveforms, they look like those from the 1980-s. There are distinct peaks and throughs, it's not all driven to maximum height, and clipped with little discernible difference between peaks and throughs, the way all commercial recordings past the year 2000 look. The thing is, however, I think that younger people are so used to music sounding this way they don't appreciate this nuance. Older adults in my age group, however do, even though they don't always understand why. They tell me that "your EDM sounds way mellower, less "mechanistic" or "less computer-like" or "more like analog instrument" or "your ambient is way more atmospheric" or "there's something unique about it", there is some kind of "special magic", etc. and I just smile and thank them. This is no magic, of course, I distinctly recall the era when the music "went bad" and figured out why pretty quickly. It sucks, of course, but hey, at least you can fix things when it comes to the music you write. And if not, then at least you can have your way when performing live.
Good stuff! I just purchased one of your tracks on Bandcamp, will get some more soon.
Or just don’t hang w ppl who are conditioned by pop / pop tart commercial music but. Sounds great. How can I hear your stuff?
Ironic! As the recording and mastering equipment has improved to almost perfection ,the standard of the music recorded has plummeted. As an audiophile I despair at the quality of most ,but not all,new music. And now they're going back and remastering old stuff and bloody ruining that too. Some of it sounds like it's been recorded in my metal shed or in my bathroom. It's impossible to listen to and It's even starting to sound crap on our alexa. Please someone ,see sense.
Well said sir. Well said.
Excellent explanation, well done!
Fantastic video! I never understood how an audiophile could ever prefer vinyl as a source over digital. It's the mastering that the medium either does or doesn't allow. Very Marshall McLuhan--the medium IS the message!
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. Never understood, okey dokey.
@@67Pepper Huh?
This discussion is as old as digital, and I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. Regarding vinyl, I think a lot of the things people like most about it is the experience. They like pulling the record from its sleeve, cleaning it, placing it on the turntable, etc. I think a lot of people also like that vinyl imparts a warm sound to the recording, although they might not actually admit that. It has been interesting to watch this discussion over the last 40+ years, because people used to complain about the sound of ALL CDs, not just those mastered after 1995 (or any arbitrary date). In the 90s I used to think I needed vinyl to be a true audiophile, and that my CDs (no matter how old or what master) were inadequate. Now I'm old enough to not care so much about this stuff (still very much into audio, but I don't care to spend a fortune on music I can only listen to at home). It's just funny to hear that now people are seeking out the very same CDs that everyone used to hate 40 years ago. At this point I won't be surprised to hear about people preferring the sound of 128kbps MP3s over hi-rez WAV files at some point in the future. There's some kind of psychoacoustic nostalgia going on.
This is the exact reason why my CD's prior to 1995 are priceless to me. Music and the sound of it pretty much went down the toilet in the mid 90's.
I'm just an amateur producer but after many years of careful listening, failing, going back and forth DAW and analogue as well as different monitoring sources and environments, I completely agree! Sometimes I make a track and get carried away by jamming, forgetting that my ears have become dull. The next day, I wonder how the mix could end up so crowded, dense, rough, and dirty when the night before I felt like I had just come up with the next polished club hit. Then I go back to getting the gain staging and track levelling right, reducing harmonic fx settings and voilà: clarity and "air" to breathe sound much better, especially at higher volumes.
Interesting and informative video.
Thank you.
I have to say that the vinyl version of Natalie Merchant's new album sounds fantastic. Also I would point to Steven Wilson's recent albums for outstanding mastering. Even his Dolby Atmos mixes sound awesome.
@audiomasterclass
After close to 40 years as a recording, mixing and digital mastering engineer, I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said.
I think it’s all about the genres and methods of consumption. My kids play their music off their phones using ear buds or Bluetooth (in car). They certainly don’t invest in hifi equipment ….
I’ve even noticed that they’ll rarely play a song from beginning to end!
For others fidelity matters. I guess that’s why spécial recordings and pressing were produced mainly in the classical domain.
So the question is:
“When does good audio matter”?
Future video topic?
Thx for your videos.
I totally agree with you, and this Phenomenon is now the scourge of live sound and concerts as well. Technology has come to the point that all those plugins can be used in a live environment. and producers telling the sound guy to "make it sound like the CD". It used to be you could only mix what the band played, and it music was dynamic and exciting. This is what made the live concert experience worth going to. Now you might as well get a good set of headphones and listen to the CD on your couch.
You are spot on. Best mastering ever was from the 70's. I heard a story from a guy in the biz that in the 90's music was mastered for listening in a car and not a room so they compressed the heck out of it so the music volume didn't change while driving. Dynamic range limited to 3dB.
Great explanation, and big "amens" to your comments on what is technically distortion ("warmth", etc). It seems the "make it sound like that" movement has progressed beyond the walls of the recording studios. I do livestream audio mixing for our local church, which has a rather large congregation for a small town (on ProTools DAW, with signal coming from Yamaha CL5 on a Dante network); and we have received pressure to mix our worship band's music so that our live broadcast "sounds like that" -- meaning like a mega church's worship band YT videos that have been post-mixed, EQ'd, etc. The "like that" is often not requested for better musicality, but just to imitate -- mostly cranking the drums, especially the snares; and back those vocals off so they're not so forward in the mix. It can be tough to balance what my ears hear as musical, with the "make it sound like that".
Regarding albums that have been victim to loudness war, I am using the ReLife VST-Plugin by Terry West on usually 8 out of 10 new albums. It works to a certain degree and can often make an album listenable again.
When a befriended musician had his album mastered he had the same problems. They killed most of the dynamics and he wasn't happy with the result at all. He ended up having the whole mix lowered by 6 dB and the issue was gone. No brickwalled waveform entirely.
It's nice to see you're aware of the fact that records limitations yielded specific type of mastering which, for short, is just lossy in a way. Or, (record lovers close your ears) compressed.
Thank you, that is all I can come up with...... so much insight, truth and facts it cuts away all of the beliefs and ideas around Audio. Lovely!
The funny thing is that one of the great selling points of CD was it's much greater dynamic range..
Only to get it squished back to the absolutely minimum.
However there's also another issue these days: Heavy compression / limiting is now considered an acceptable "effect/texture" and there are artists that actively seek it on their recordings!
yep.. it's sad because CD is a great way to listen to Vinyl transfers in the car. ... shows off that dynamic range in an incredible way when not compressed.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 Huh? Does your car have no road or engine noise? How do you hear any dynamic range beyond 15db in a moving car? Can your ears withstand 120db, while you're driving in 70db of car noise, and only getting 50db of dynamic range? I used to take my records and record them onto cassette with maximum compression so I could hear them while driving. Of course, once you stop and park, you can fully enjoy great dynamic range if you didn't compress it. I don't want to sound too critical; you do what you enjoy doing. I'm just questioning how this is even possible for you.
@@theclearsounds3911probably drives an electric car in some utopia that only has electric cars & the worlds quietest asphalt ever made 🤔
@@markjacobs1086 Either that, or he doesn't understand what "dynamic range" actually is. No judgment from me; I just want to know what he's enjoying, and how.
I’m pretty happy with most of my collection of SACD and DVD-audio 5+1 discs, played through a Pioneer digital system and good loudspeakers. Not all have been mastered to fully benefit from the multi-channel possibilities, but some are completely magical. But I listen less to music as I now play in a band on another system, 2+1 with an emphasis on bass.
Just discovered your channel, and I love it.
I absolutely love your channel. Thanks from France :)
Great video. It's mastering engineers that think they can saturate the digital signal that is at the root of the problem. Also, I think ear fatigue and the older age mastering engineers are issues also. Since they've lost higher ranges in their hearing, they tend to push the high end, creating much more harsh sounding recordings. Another issue is the monitors that they're using to master the files. I've found that whenever they're probably using more vocal-present monitors, causing their mixes have a much more congested sound to them. I'm a TV editor and recording musician. I listen on Genelec stufio monitors that are very true. I find that older recordings sound much better on them than more recent recordings. Good luck with your channel :)
I’m not a professional but as music lover I agree, older music(original versions not edited) sounds better than all mainstream music produced today. I really hate the typical harsh sound of music today, I feel ear fatigue especially when raising the volume. For this reason I don’t listen any modern average CDs or music on streaming. Of course there’re amazing modern recordings properly done and mastered, from some labels that actually care about quality.
Some engineers and musicians do not have a great hearing either, many of them suffer from tinnitus which could be caused by this loud music. I think they tend to push high end to recover some transients, going to make it even worse making the artifacts more audible. Even possible some speakers with a too much bass/mid centric sound could alter decisions, thinking this sound correct. Maybe also some speakers with a wrong setup on too high treble setting because of hearing impairing. I noticed noise floor can be boosted with high treble, even if this noise maybe is not really that much audible in normal conditions, so you're going to clean more than what is necessary.
I love The The and had all their CDs since the 80s. Recently I had to repurchase the "Infected" album (don't lend your beloved CDs) and all that was available was a 2002 remaster. After listening to the whole thing my skin was crawling, such was the crime the mastering had perpetrated on this musical masterpiece. I gave the 2002 remaster away and luckily found an original 1986 edition on Discogs which I will thoroughly enjoy till the day I die.
Great example, still love the old Matt Johnson work.
@@monkmusic5994 Matt Johnson is one of the great British songwritwers of all time. His lyrics are still relevant and the instrumental arrangements are superb.
What a stupid name
@@nunofernandes4501 I saw the the live (dusk tour) with chubby Johnny Marr a couple of metres from me in a club in Hannover/Germany. Matt was a bit disappointed, because there were only 50 people. They performed great!
@@monkmusic5994 I wish I were there.
This was very informative. There are a few occasions when these tools are justified: a) if somebody actually likes the distorted sound b) if the speaker / amplifier is not loud enough in a certain frequency range. For example, I'd like to use compressor on the piano because I can make it louder while using smaller speakers. Especially soft piano play sounds better with compression. I also like to use compression on sound when watching movies, often the speech is not loud enough while the music is too loud. Finally, I really like distorted sounds (guitar or singing). At the same time as with everything - using too much distortion or compression degrades the sounds - so I agree, it is important to talk about it.
Good explanation, I have notice that in many records for along time since the digital ones begin, even remasters of old records despite some clarity and stereo image in other parts seems messy and dull.
Thanks for the explanation.
This is a decades-old subject. The "loudness wars", are pretty much over. It occurs to me that you might not be listening to the right records. There are hundreds of records made every year that are not limited to death and sound astonishingly great. When people started figuring out that very loud, over-limited recordings actually sound smaller and less loud after they hit the F.M. Broadcast chain, they started mastering more quietly. There will always be over-limited records out there. I just don't bother listening to them. In general, audio has never sounded as great as it does now. Full Stop.
FM commercial radio has to be the worst of all narrowest dynamic range but then their primary objective is deliver adverts at maximum volume possible and then fill in time between them at the same setting
Yeah, I agree that the blanket statement "Anything recorded after 1995 sounds like crap," is incorrect. Sure, that's true for many recordings. However, absolutely false for just as many; if not more. Listen to Steve Hackett's Under a Mediterranean Sky. It's a gorgeous sounding album and it was released in 2021. I'd say Saga's Symmetry album sounds equally as brilliant. For another album that's simply an outstanding recording, there's Black Light Syndrome by Bozzio Levin Stevens. It was released in 1997. I also dare say that many classical music albums recorded in the early 2000s also sound great.
Really? Now that they've destroyed all the good music, the loudness wars are over? Really? Then why is ALL of the Giles Martin remixes on the LATEST Beatles releases (2022) COMPRESSED and LOUDED? Why? The 'loudness wars' are NOT over, by any measure, "Ivan".
@@cjay2 - Not all remasters are created equal. For instance, Shout Factory did a great job with ELP's debut and Tarkus, but crappy for Brain Salad Surgery. Sony's remaster of that is much better. Also, the earlier remaster for Saga's Heads Or Tales isn't great, but the latest remaster is much better. I'm not disagreeing about loudness wars. I'm just saying to pay attention to reviews and such so you know whether or not a remaster is worth getting. Also, when there's a Japanese pressing and the album is a real favorite, get it. Japanese pressings are generally superior, but they're expensive.
This is certainly not true, still a lot of albums get released today with poor quality, and I am not talking about mainstream music. Aside from that, there's still so many great albums from the past (rock, jazz, blues, fusion) that are only available as horribly compressed masters. The loudness war is far from over. You could say that the loudness war is over, when you'll have a chance to buy any album from the past at a satisfactory sound quality. Until then, saying that the loudness war is just misleading.
I’ve also been present at mastering sessions over the last 3 decades (including abbey rd) and can witness everything you’ve said.
Love your perspectives on audio and have been watching your videos recently since they popped up on my feed! Great stuff.
With the loudness wars, it’s tough getting the loudness of productions to modern levels with just in-the-box mixing tools. Things can sound really sterile in the clean digital world. However, with things like the Presonus Console plugins, Waves NLS buss, and the multitude of available tape emulation plugins, I’ve been able to get a heck of a lot closer than ever before. It’s all probably too loud honestly, but if you’re trying to get “competitive” masters in the box, there are ways to get there cleanly in the box (-8 or -7 LUFS). Just checking some of my favorite recent rock records, the masters are hitting sometimes -5 LUFS!
I love throwing an api-2500 before the final limiter on the master and pushing it with the analog setting on, to about 8 or 9 db’s. At least in the waves version, you can get it pretty dang loud with the soft clipping that’s emulated from the api-2500 with analog on and it’s pretty cool how clean it remains as long as you don’t push the needle completely balls to the wall. Waves Vinyl is pretty good for mastering too, adds a different dimension to things.
Not to forget using plugins like Saturn from fab filter, with saturation on busses processed in M/S for non-linear saturation like what happens in the analog world. That, with all of the plugins I mentioned earlier, have been tremendous at reproducing not just a loud signal, but a loud and truly warm one at that.
The biggest gain in my understanding mixing and mastering was understanding the whole process. That each step is treated separately and with great reverence for the honest expression of the recordings at hand, and most importantly, listening with my ears more so than visual cues on the DAW.
But along with watching your videos, I’ve still got a lifetime of learning left, it never stops!
I am extremely impressed with the amount of thought that you put into your answers and explanations bravo you're a true master and you tell the truth thank you
Very good explanation!
I wonder if it's also apply to classical and jazz cd music as the sound quality demands are different than other geners ?
Do they Master differently as such?
I think if a label thought that the processes I talked about would sell more classical and jazz then they would be doing it. I might investigate this separately but what I hear casually is usually clean. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Performances on solo instruments, or possibly duets, are the best way to check this. Piano, harpsichord, harp, flute, and violin all seem to be very good example standards that we know well exactly how they sound in real life. Good recordings are so good that even on modest equipment the result is almost shockingly realistic as if the performer is physically present in the room.
100000% agree with you. I only hope that with the loudness standards of music streaming platforms will help to resolve this issue, because loud music will be automatically turned down while the music with good dynamic range will be preserved at its original volume and actually to even sound louder because of the preserved transients.
This of course won't fix already-overcompressed music but at least there is going to be some sort of punishment for those who keep pushing the limiting and compression to their absurd limits
Well said. Great explanation.
You bring up some great points, dear Sir. Well said. Music sources, in general, are extremely important in a HIFI chain or synergy. 😊
It's a shame! We could have such beautiful recordings! A few companies do just that, but not enough, and their musical offerings are often mundane.
It's a funny old world. When the CD was introduced in 1982 it rapidly became the source of choice at hi-fi shows. I recall attending a couple of shows in 1983 / 84 and just about every exhibitor had a copy of the Dire Straits Love Over Gold album on CD and vinyl. I still have my original copies (vinyl from 1982 and CD from 1983 which I bought after my first player - a Philips CD 104 - in 1984). To my ears the CD sounds more natural than the LP and of course lacks all the surface noise. Naturally for the time, the dynamic range is huge. However did they manage a number 2 hit with Private Investigations given how quiet it is for the most part? Another example of great recording / mastering is Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World from 1989. The hit single Wicked Game is a masterclass in less is more. Sadly the track succumbed to the loudness war and had the life compressed out of it on the "Best Of" compilation from 2011.
Wicked game is a great recording even better on the original vinyl
I have the Original 45's pf those, And they sound Brilliant.
Bless you for mentioning Dire Straits' Love Over Gold on CD! I also have the original CD release, and "Telegraph Road" stands out as a quintessential example of how to use CD technology properly. As a presentation audio format, CD is technically perfect. It has the dynamic range to represent a bare whisper to almost a rifle shot; clearly beyond the vast majority of what speakers and amplifiers are capable of reconstructing without adding a ton of their own distortion. The fact some prefer old LPs is down to smart mastering to respect the limitations inherent in vinyl. But CD audio doesn't have them, so it represented the potential to do even better than the best vinyl, in that you could hear more, noise free and repeatably, play after play after play. A vinyl album or tape have finite replay lives, subtly and (hopefully) imperceptibly changing over each play, wearing down, losing signal strength, distorting as grooves are worn, or developing faint echos as the magnetic domains experience crosstalk when the tape spools and successive layers of tape rest on top on each other. CD being digital, experiences none of this. And while a CD can rot and be scratched, you won't hear those errors on account of error correction built into the format, until they finally pass a threshold. They go from being not present--period, one moment, to painfully obvious the next. Before this happens, you can copy a CD, 100%, bit-for-bit. With a little stewardship, it is the ultimate in preservation potential. Vinyl can only be preserved by never playing it. Analog tape cannot ever be preserved; it's like sand at the top of an hour-glass. Playing tape only speeds up the sand-fall rate. "Telegraph Road" demonstrated for me that, with CD, it's possible to have all of your audiophile vinyl cake, and eat it noise-free forever. The trouble is: few ever used the technology this way, the way its signal-processing engineers designed it for us, to be that perfect playback format for human hearing that no analog system, because of physics, could match. Not for the first time, technically perfect tools in the hands of the forces of disarray gave us something less perfect than what existed before. The potential in them remains, however, unchanged. It's a question of better education to unlock. And maybe a bit of taste.
Spot on, no mastering house today would be allowed to release that mix (or Brothers in Arms for that matter) with their original dynamic range.
Yes, all greatest hits albums are ruined with compression now.
Do you have a copy of the Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World CD from before the compression wars or are you stuck with the Greatest hits version and it annoys you every time you try to listen to it?
Just found this channel last night...love it and I'm not even a huge HiFi guy (sound engineer by formal education), but these insights are great!
Thanks for this. You are absolutely right. Thankfully, classical recordings have been far less susceptible to the loudness battle.
Not really... A lot of soundtracks are affected by huge compression, for example all Studio Ghibli soundtracks, the oldest (like Nausicaa from 1986) are perfect. Even Telarc had admit they apply soft clipping, compression and peak limiting to their CDs to be competitive, the DSD is not edited and have the full original dynamics. The same for all new Deutsche Grammophon recordings. While usually classical recordings do not have the same loudness of other genres, not mean they are not compromised in some way.
Brilliant! Agree absolutely! I regularly review albums and am always harping on about poor, compressed, distorted, sound quality. A relief when the occasional nicely mastered one comes along. If you want to hear an example of excellently recorded AND mastered sound, try David Hughes album ‘This other Eden’. Start with the track ‘Jelly babe’ - stunning (even though it’s from 1999!). Interesting comment also re vinyl sound - I have a nice hifi system and comprehensive LP collection played on a Linn LP12 record deck, and many vinyls do sound better than their cd equivalents. David D
Thankfully, I started buying CDs in 1986, and averaged (including birthday and xmas gifts) a CD a week. So I've still got roughly 500 CDs from a period prior to 1995. I listen to them, or lossless rips of them, as often as possible. Once I started hating the loudness war in the late 90s, I made a point of going back and getting used CDs with original masters of things before they were gone. So almost half of my CD collection is that stuff. It's like ear bleach. So much easier on the ears over time.
Exactly.
I like your spirit...thank you for giving your time
You also have potential intersample clipping. Where none of the samples individually clip, but the reconstruction filter on the DAC does. And they don't necessarily clip the same, under the same conditions, in the same inter sample intervals. CODECs in phones and PCs have become no longer susceptible to this issue a long time ago unless maxed all the way out, primarily because they simplified the hardware and removed actual variable gain, but i wonder whether the same can be said of HiFi gear.
This also makes me think, can we train an AI to undo the damage and restore some DR? I mean the information that used to be there is still sort of there. Near the would-be clipping peaks, you have added bursts of harmonics. Perhaps this is something i can experiment with, but i actually 99% expect to fail.
Given that AI has burst upon us so recently and the results for text, images, and video to an extent, are so amazing, it wouldn't surprise me if next year or a couple of years we could listen to 'loudness war' music in perfect hi-fi. DM
I would respectfully push the date of the "loudness war" back to the mid 70's. I've worked in both studios and broadcast as an engineer. The loudness war started at least in the US, in the mid '70's Program directors were pushing for louder levels on air as the belief was that louder would get more listeners. I was personally involved with some of the early triband on-air processing systems and later the Orban on-air systems. All had the goal of reducing the dynamic range so they could maximum modulate their transmitters. Many systems I saw had VU meters that would just twitch at around Zero VU on decoded audio. When I worked as a mix engineer, many producers would want the master louder would tell me, "Now, make it sound like radio." Having worked in radio, I knew exactly what they wanted.
My "day job" was in radio but I was never very far from the studio. In the late 70's, I was reading articles about highly compressed audio causing listener fatigue, so I who was chief engineer of a major market AOR station at the time, turned down the processing on our Orban processor. I got an angry call a day or so later from my Program Director who wanted to know why we weren't as loud as our competition. I explained about listener fatigue and he agreed to a compromise, if he didn't have to touch his volume control in his car the processing would be acceptably loud at least for one rating period. Our next rating period was the best ever and in fact the best an AOR had ever done in our market. I can't say that was all because of the lower loudness but I can say that our listener duration was way above our competition.
The loudness war started with radio stations and the technology has allowed even the home studio to "sound like radio" so they do.
Thanks for this. It explains a lot. Over the last six months I have poured about $10k into building a Hi-Fi rig that even audiophile snobs would consider respectable. Pair that with a sub to a lossless streaming service and I guessed that something like you explained here must be going on. It isn't because I'm so terribly smart, it is self-evident by the number of choices one has for remasters of many classic recordings and the simple fact that no matter what you play them on, many of these remasters are nothing but a dumpster fire of distortion. It is obvious that there must be a lot of unwashed fingers in the pie for there to be 2004, 2011 and 2017 digital remasters of the same 1982 recording.
Some of the distortion is so bad I worry that my behemoth 300 watt power amp blew the tweeters on my speakers. Fortunately, since I use a PC as a source, I can switch to my cheap desktop sound system with two mouse clicks. Different DAC, amplifier and speakers, and in every case the distortion is still there, although it is usually significantly less prominent on the cheap system. I have even made a playlist of the worst offenders as a reminder if I should ever forget that it is in fact the recording that is bad. It is getting to be a looooong list.
@Douglas Blake Thanks, this was an eye-opener and it should prove useful to help find some less offensive digital remasters.
@@dirtroadie5747 you are a trooper to push 300w through a tweeter, if that is your aim look into ribbon style or studio monitors. My converted 12v setup my 500w PDX Alpine Block Amp can only hold 1 ohm stability for about 20 minutes. Good thing it's a 5 channel so will need for now to give up on bridging and run coils separate.
What I hear from modern recordings whether that be from streaming, radio, TV or recently purchased CD's is that everything sounds as loud as everything else ? There are few examples I find of dynamics, quiet passages, loud passages. To be successful nowadays in the times of short attention spans and so much choice, artists, producers and engineers must be tempted to grab your attention and keep it for as long as possible with an onslaught of sound which does not allow for dynamics, building the track from low entry level through various high and low passages as the music progresses. Everything that is there to make money is in your face from the start and stays there. This may be an over generalisation but looking ay much of modern pop, chart, rock etc now on an electronic equaliser just shows a big flat line up at the top of the screen.
wise words, at all. Thanks for this video!
I understand what you’re saying. When I stream a playlist on Tidal, most of the older CD quality recordings are played at the volume I initially set which is comfortable listening. Then, a HiRes or a MQA mix comes in blasting. It sounds like I’ve increased the gain to ear bleeding levels. I have to reach quickly to reduce the volume. Terrible!
One of the most lifeless and clinical CDs I own is 1987 "Nothing like the sun" from Sting. A full DDD recording. The follow-up CDs sounded better, the best arguably the 1997 "Brand New Day", which also got a good review from Bob Katz. But I also own newer CDs that also sound good. It all depends on the artists and how they influence the way it should sound. My favourite example is the 2009 CD "Touch Yello" from Yello. It sounds powerful, crisp and clean. I bet that Boris Blank, the sound mastermind of Yello, dictated the mastering.
I agree on all points here pretty much. But i wouldn't say it's up to the mastering engineer to make the track louder. That is best done within the mix. Taming dynamic ranges on individual tracks will result in a less compressed or distorted sound coming out of the mastering stage. Intentional distortion in the mix is like that electric guitar you mentioned. And like you also said, tastefully adding distortion or saturation can sound great. Specific distortion like adding some third order harmonics can be almost invisible in terms of distortion but add loudness. it can be used to keep transients down without them being noticably tamed unless you hear an A/B comparison. Making electronic music i do this a lot. And i use this to give the track more energy. Making the sound staying in place with a bit of forcefullness to its sound. Soft clipping in the mastering stage can be great to make the midrange more present and pop out of the speakers more. But even better done in the mixing stage to bring certain sounds forward. I like louder sounds to be less dynamic and quieter sounds more dynamic. Just like a lead vocal being compressed to sit firmly front and center in a mix, and have a bass and strings surrounding the vocal with emotional dynamics to enhance the vocalists performance and the message and emotions the track asking for to deliver. In EDM it feels good with powerful aggressive sounds up front, and dynamic sounds in contrast behind them. That contrast adds a sense of depth mixing that gentleness in the background to support the bold agression of the sounds in front which are intended to be in focus. But all this stuff is genre specific. The mixing stage is there to enhance the intended experience of the composition. The mastering stage however does more. It can bring that last bit of emotional impact home, and the presence and balance that will bring the intended feel of the song to be experienced the same way by consumers regardless of what the listen on. The one thing that seperates a highly dynamic track to a track that isn't having a lot of dynamic range left. Is for one, the energy and presence of it. A track that is played next to this loud track will sound like its lacking energy, sounding a bit tired so to speak. And energy is percieved as exciting. Just like in an orchestral piece where you have the quiet parts that are calm and gentle, and the loud parts which excite the listener and keeps them alert. In EDM it can be the same, only that the overall dynamic range is reduced a lot compared to an orchestral piece. You can have these huge and energetic choruses or drops and the mellow verses and the breakdowns which are more dynamic and often containing more texture and detail. So the tracks uses the dynamic shifts in the arrangement to make the track a sort of journey to experience. Have music become too loud? Well, yes! ...but also it depends. What is the experience you want the listener to have. And ofc there is the topic of making money. Then you need ot be competitive. But not only in loudness. Loudness is not enough. A track can be a great experience when its loud and bold. and a gentle and calm track can't quite match the louder track in loudness. But it can get close but it will ofc also end up having sacrificed some dynamics, mostly the transients. But the goal for me making electronic music is that when im in the mastering stage, i want to enhance the musical experience fitting the genre. And getting loud in the mix so the mastering can be mastering without necessarly making the track louder by driving the limiter hard. But even the limiter can add a bit of energy but it can also dull the track. For streaming services is not hard at all to reach the more or less required loudness range without degrading the sound as long as you get that loudness out of the individual tracks in the mix instead from the limiter in the mastering stage. Even a track with low dynamic range can be percieve to be dynamic by creating contrasts withing the arrangement as well as the mix. Perceived dynamic can be achived through automating filters, panning, changes in the stereo width, bringing in the louder sounds occasionally and giving them movement in varios ways. the contrast between short and long transients of different sounds. making good use of delay and reverbs and separating those a bit more from the source sounds to make it sound more spacious but keeping part of the source dry and what ever. There are as many tricks as there are audio engineers. Turning the volume knob up doesn't give the same result and feeling of energy on a higly dynamic track as a less dynamic agressive track being played at low volume. The agressive track will sound more exciting. But with that said, it also depends on the genre and the context. There are so many varials and a lot more to say about all of this. But i'll end this comment here. Cheers!
You are so right!
Some pirate sites solve this in a big way - having a catalogue of all possible Album releases, like original vinyl, remasters, casettes, CDs, web sources, you name it. Having access to that means that you can decide which mastering you want to hear and hey, there’s nothing stopping you from purchasing any version of the same album and actually paying for it to support the artists. What you get is sort of a democratic choice of what exactly you enjoy hearing.
name one of these sites please so I can check it out. Thx
Yeah buddy tell us
@Swen-bk3kz Fiesty comment, but with current times and events, I can concur.
You had me worried for a while that my Dark Side Of The Moon CD was mastered after 1995. Having checked, it's from 1992 and it sounds great btw. I've never bothered with any of the recent re-issues vinyl or otherwise.
Pink Floyd probably gets extra care and attention. DM
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
@@AudioMasterclass The original vinyl records of DSotM were terrible quality: I remember many people at the time taking their copy back to the shop, sometimes several times. On CD releases, there is a slight background hiss in the quiet parts. This is instantly recognizable as noise from operational amplifiers in the original recording and mixing equipment, most likely the ubiquitous uA741 or LM741 or one of its near equivalents. Engineers in that era did indeed put all the love they could into making the most faithful, highest fidelity audio reproduction possible.
I would favor any Pink Floyd mastering that James Guthrie is involved with.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, but I couldn't prove it until now. Thank you for this explanation!
Thanks for this very to the point video 👍👍.
It'd be interesting to hear the artists point on this, because in the end the added distortions are part of the art, as it is presented to their ausdience. i.e. others than the original band add their artistic touch (sometimes heavy handedly) to their original art. Are they involved in that process, do they generally agree with the decisions?
The thing is, that mixing and mastering are necessary, and there needs to be some artistic freedom.
But maybe, similar to transmissions soccer games where audiences can now choose which camera to watch, there will be some music where one does get the original recordings and the mix and master as one or several filter settings left for the audience to listen to as given or edit to their hearts content. Likely most such edits will be subjectively better to at most one person, but there could be e.g. fan sites choosing the best versions and publishing the settings.
I think what David's talking about here is management /executive decisions to throw away the creative variations chosen by the artists.
As for multiple views, sometimes artists will choose to release raw tracks of a song or, for video, multiple camera angles of a concert, to see what fan edits people make. Usually with some way to vote.
Finally, a wise voice in this crazy industry, including homerecording. Let us create art!
Great video. Very interesting, thanks!!!
Thanks! My two best take home-points from this:
The point on cutter head heating with constant high level HF follows naturally from what I already "know" about the vinyl manufacturing process. Though the thought has never occurred to me.
A friend of mine has a Studer A80 at home, modified with a stereo head. Most of what he plays on that sounds absolutely jaw droppingly good. My nagging suspicion all along has been that it's the recordings, not the medium or the player. He buys ridiculously expensive copies of safety copies, all pre masters, never having gone through the final stages of adaption to any commercial release. Dynamics and low distortion? Oh, yes!
I may even buy myself a good ADC to try copying some of his tapes to CD some day. I suspect little will be lost.
You're dead-right: it's all the recording. An Mp3 from a well recorded source on an iPod sounds better than a $100k turntable playing an 180g vinyl of an inferior recording.
Even better, copy it to cassette for more fun! (See previous video)
I completely agree that the big issue is "make it sound like that" compounding over time. Then the tools started being developed to help engineers push the levels more and more. But not all music made after 1995 suffers from the loudness wars.
I self-produce my music to make the best-sounding records I can. I specifically tell the mastering engineers I work with that I don't want to even be in the ballpark of the loudness wars.
Indie artists can create music however they want. That includes making albums with dynamic range! Hopefully the loudness wars start going the way of the dodo thanks to the volume adjustment algorithms that streaming services are putting in.
My last album, "Etheric Wings" featuring a string orchestra, can sit on a playlist including "loudness wars" style masters without having crazy jumps in volume. But all that extra distortion they add is painfully apparent, so hopefully, labels will start learning to start letting music sound good again.
My first CD player was big and expensive; the first three CD's included one by Kitaro and I was absolutely amazed at its dynamic range, delicate high notes and near silence at times broken only by distant bird calls; gradually ramping up in intensity.
My first cd was Kitaro as well! I bought it while new york having never been in a CD store before and the flight cracked the case but the cd was good.
I've noticed newer music forced me to turn the volume down instantly and crank it up on older tunes. My listening source changed naturally towards instrumentals that are internationally produced and older music. Doing so I've experienced better imaging and quality that is natural to me. Thank you for the breakdown that makes total sense.
You are totally spot on with everything you said. I would add that if you want to upgrade the sound of your audio choose the music you listen to carefully. Look for artists on independent label who have a bigger hand in the production. Its not a guarantee it will sound better but a good place to start.
As a music lover and someone who appreciates good audio I feel that critical listening is something your not born with and takes many years to develop. Someone who is not too bothered about quality of audio and happy just to listern to music on there phone BT speaker will never learn this ability and so if they can hear an even balance in the mix ( more or less ) then they are happy. In order for that to happen the music has to be compressed to a fraction of a DB of the maximum head room. After all the people who are critical listening to expensive audio equipment are a minority compared to the people who are just music lovers.
I agree with this message! Over my years of listening to CD I found myself gravitating to audiophile CDs, recorded by passionate enthusiasts who care more about the quality than the profit. This meant moving away from the music of my youth, prog rock, and towards jazz and classical.
Don’t get me wrong, I love most genres and I have loved listening to new music. However, a year ago, I bought a turntable. The same model I bought in 1990, the first time around, as it were. I have extensively upgraded it beyond anything my 30 year old self could have dreamed of.
Result, I am now listening to all my old music as well as the music I have been listening to on my CD system. My tastes haven’t changed after all, I am drinking from the fountain of youth. Genesis, Camel, Rush, Pink Floyd all sound as good today, to me, as they did back in the day. What’s more, jazz has never sounded better with many specialist labels producing stunning versions of classic albums. By the way, if you want to know what Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, should sound like, seek out the 45rpm version mastered by Kevin Grey, from Pallas, you will be astonished.
If the labels want to kill off vinyl once and for all, they can, however, they’re too stuck in their own groove, so they won’t. 😄
I have that Rumours 45rpm recording. Damn it's good! And when I ripped and viewed it on my audio editor, it was awesome, full dynamic range.
This is something that has always bothered me, even though I don't have a lot of experience with audio, when listening to some albums or tracks I do find them weird. For example, Adele's 21 Album is, for me, a prime example of this, always on 0db in the meters and rarely moves down. it just sounds busy and as if nothing has room to breathe in the mix. This has also became a problem when I try to record some albums on cassette, it just seems that having a mix always on 0db stresses out the tape and maybe saturates it a lot more. On the other hand, things seem to be getting better. I have recently experimented with Dolby Atmos music, and I know that sometimes Dolby Atmos music mixes don't sound that good, but in some cases it does partially resolve the problem of the "no room to breathe" as it seems to have more channels than just stereo. I haven't actually measured the improvements but it does sound roomier by ear, even when just listening in stereo systems with a Dolby Atmos stereo downmix going on. As I said, I do not have a lot of experience with audio so this could be partially wrong.
Maybe one day the spectrum will lower it's grip on you, and you will listen with your ears, and not your eyes. The album sound nothing like you describe, it only looks like it.
The problem with Dolby Atmos is that the mix-down goes via a algorithm and each individual sound is basically a object that is placed or panned by the available count of loudspeakers that the customer have.
How is that a problem @@DrNoize ? If the listener only have two speakers for example we couldn't really expect Dolby Atmos to do anything about that?
@@jimsteinmanfan80 With Dolby Atmos we are missing the whole part of analog summing in the mixdown. Here a bit of explanation:
czcams.com/video/bZuQfrofjMs/video.html
Wonderful video, sir!
0db is the voltage limit for digital, what they are missing are analogue transient overdrive capabilities, like tape could, like valves could. Waste of time with digital recording, and then it can also overload and distort the analogue circuitry for seconds. The preamp feature in Foobar can assist to some degree with both issues.
How true, how true. There is another tendency in modern recordings that is increasingly disturbing: breathing noises of the singers. One wonders by now whether one is a lung doctor at work or a music listener....
It wouldn't surprise me if the breath noises are overdubbed in. DM
Not only that but even the sounds of the singers saliva splashing around as they move their mouths. That's high definition gone too far in my books.
There is this song, 'Liberty' by Anette Askvik which high res audiophiles seem to love when it's time for a wank session with their newly acquired gear. It sounds like she is kissing your ear and occasionally tickling your ear drums with her tongue. Not for me, if i need ASMR there are channels dedicated to that stuff.
@@AudioMasterclass It's scary to think there's some studio assistant sitting at a Pro Tools screen all day, flying in samples from a Best Busy Breaths library CD
@@KingKong-mp6gj if you dont like such tracks, go cover it up with distortion and noise thru your hardware or listen to some other muddy tracks.
I agree completely. I hate when they smash/destroy the dynamics. That isn't the way music sounds in real life. When I mix and master my bands music, I try to keep at least 10 db of dynamic range. Some parts might get to 12-15 db. It sounds more live and more alive. It has movement and emotion. We play death metal, so it is VERY unusual for that genre to have dynamic range and I don't use triggers or samples. Sound more real to me.
Thank you for your comment, which I appreciate. There are two issues going on here and I only covered one in the video, which is distortion. The other, as you say, is dynamic range and I will have more to say on that in a future video. DM
@@AudioMasterclass for the record, I don't use distortion. Maybe a bit on the bass guitar to get it to cut through the mix. Saturation.
Brilliant. Engineered since the 80s and emphatically agree with you. I think the Only pushback can come from independent labels but they're probably too scared to make records with dynamics.
Thanks. That is the best description of this confounded mess that I have ever heard about the cd loudness wars, vinyl sounding better, mixing and mastering methods, etc! I have cds of old albums that sound good and some that sound bad. The Rolling Stones 2009 remasters are notorious. I almost never buy new cd music b/c of this issue. And I buy very little new vinyl. Mostly I fill holes in my back catalogue. For instance, I bought an Isaac Hayes rare soundtrack two-fer the other day on cd cut in 1969. It sounds good on cd even though that cd was pressed in the last 20 years? sometime.
I was born in 1988, and about 98% of the music I listen to came out before I was born. The loudness war is probably the main reason for this, but also because I personally think that the quality of music from about 1997 onwards took a major nose dive in terms of lyrics and composition.
The loudness war hasn't started in 1995. It always existed. Bob Ludwig talks about it in an interview of how important it was for him to learn how to cut loud masters to vinyl in the early 70ies in order to be competitive. (it's more accurate to say it started in 1995 for the CD medium because it's true that in the early days of the CD transfers wer unnecessarely quiet, and then went to super loud, never lingering in the "optimal" region :)). and to be fair the pre '95 CD don't sound that grat either, they sound thin and very low, not utilizing the whole dynamic range of the CD, mainly because they wer transfered directly from an already vinyl "optimized" master, with weak low end and such.
You are correct of course, and there's also AM radio. I think though that 1995, as I said, is a useful reference point in this, when things got suddenly worse IMHO. DM
@@AudioMasterclass I agree. that's when things got really "crunchy" :)) ... or better yet :((
the sad thing is everybody hates the CD nowadays ... interestingly not so much digital, but the CD, when, obviously, it's not the medium's fault. You can get absolutely beautiful masters on CD if everything is done right, and it's so much more evolved (I purposely didn't say better) than vinyl. but the industry and the powers to be always screw up everything for the almighty $. And don't get me started on the vinyl revival ... a little common sense will tell you that 8 out of 10 (and I'm being nice here) transfers are done from digital so basically you listen to a digital master ... from vinyl ... (duh!). Fred Flintone technology :).
You can also "blame" starting in 1980 speakers featuring paper cone woofers that contain 5 mid-range and 'space age' tweeters and setups with 'quick' ic and chips in lieu of heavy sometimes finicky fet stereos with 'tower' robust capacitors with equally heavy speaker cabinets. I noticed while listening to an 1988 AT40 the industry apparently set 'Rock' artist songs and assigned an apparent eq curve where bass/low end dropped out and was 'given' to Soul/R&B/Black (was still an official genre) tracks. It is noticeable on releases I have of an 88 Whitesnake 12" single and of course Twisted Sister. For all of those brothers and sisters who took to the streets (installed systems in their cars as to avoid parents and police) back in the day myself included, who was reminded music was too loud even when it wasn't (played on a fet or old similar receiver like a Sansui or Sherwood in my case) I salute you.
A topic close to my heart. I have spent too much time trying to source early copies of cd album releases for exactly the reasons you mention but it is worth it. Music needs to have quiet as well as loud. Pre 1990 cd’s of the AAD type provide the best compromise for me if you are shopping in that era.
Thanks for this excellent video, you've confirmed everything I've known for some time now. Thankfully, there are still original 1980s and early 90s CDs available to buy on auction sites (and Charity Shops!) and they still sound terrific, just as the recording engineer envisaged. It's somewhat ironic that the mastering of CDs (that have a greater inherent dynamic range) is routinely brick-walled, while the vinyl release of the same album has greater dynamic range because the physical characteristics of vinyl require much more sympathetic mastering. I guess it fits into the current record industry agenda that "vinyl sounds better" so they can continue charging extortionate prices for the latest vinyl releases, re-releases and limited edition box-sets.