acdc remastered do more than increase volume they make the records more to stereo from the lacks of LP limitation to clearer separate the channels of stereo. makes more songs interessting of course you like the 70´s style of recording with difference stereo right channel 90db and left 70db on remastered was 90db ricght and 20db left this makes a big difference to music. new records are far more over the volume the records itself is normal but the difference in instruments compressed extremly Normalizer is the enemy pure volume increase less a Problem. music style goes to shitty sound on smarthphones it is sad to see this and it is harder to find new music because today everybody can make musikand publish to the world, old times you need a record label. doing concert for free and try to sell your music and today your touring because you need money cd sells doesnt matter. on merch you profit alot
Agree. After listening to a song, it almost sounds like my ears never got a break. The quiet parts of the song are the same volume as to loud parts now.
The "loudness war" is completely about compressing the dynamic range so a track will sound "louder" on the radio. It has almost nothing to do with bit rate. I data-compressed track with a low bit rate can have a wide dynamic range, and a dynamicly compressed track can have a high bit rate. The former will have natural volume levels, but sound harmonically distorted, while the latter will have an almost constant volume, even in the what were the quiet passages, but there should be very little harmonic distortion.
Even very experienced audio engineers mistake bit-rate for bit-depth. But true, data compression has absolutely sweet FA to do with reducing the dynamic range of a track via clipping and limiting to the point it just resembles white noise. What is happening is that the dynamic range is being reduced to nothing and therefore introducing its own kind of distortion, then on top of that poor quality algorithms are used to encode the final signal for distribution. To be fair to Eric though he does understand that FLAC is a lossless algo and that higher MP3 is practically indistinguishable as well. As a self-confessed audiophile I think he's got a pretty good grip on things. Like I said, I know many experienced audio engineers with gold and platinum records and they don't truly understand this stuff. Obviously you have done your home work!
+dandanthetaximan - you find it funny how people confuse dynamic range compression with data compression because you have studied this subject. You will have spent probably hundreds of hours researching this, so you have a much more sophisticated viewpoint. I get that you were probably being ironic, but I'm sure if you tried really hard you could see where the confusion ensues... But yes, the whole MP3 debate is often confused with the Brick-Wall Limiting debate. And then there is confusion and little consensus between bit-rates and bit-depths and what is necessary to make an astounding sounding recording. The truth is your average laptop is more than powerful enough to record/mix/master the best records known to man. But few people know how to do it. At least they don't know how to do all three stages well. We live in a golden age of recording, but no one knows how to use the equipment, including many professional recording engineers who keep propagating all the myths and misinformation, due to their misunderstanding because of working with analogue equipment previously, but they have authority so people listen to the. Sure, some of them get it, but many don't. We've been living in the digital age for a while, but it seems we haven't really come in to the digital age with as much success as we could have and to truly take advantage of it. Many people still misunderstand it. Or over-think it. Obviously you have a pretty good understanding yourself, and you will know the difficulty in trying to explain and communicate some of these concepts.
I think also that many musicians and recording engineers were more sympathetic to what constituted a more musical result pre-2000s. This is why vinyl LP records usually sound more pleasing to the ear, despite the obvious technical drawbacks of the format compared with later digital ones. Yes digital is superior but it is very rarely every written for and recorded to with any sympathy for a musically pleasing result. It's all about being LOUD and HARD and HARSH and FATIGUING and IN YOUR FACE.
Without wishing to split hairs, but still being a little pedantic: It's not the recording or mixing methods where the dynamics are being destroyed, in fact, quite the opposite. Today we have some very good clippers and expanders that help with all this. Clippers do reduce the dynamic range on a per track level but they allow signals to be higher without distortion. They enhance the signal to noise ratio . Limiting a track to death reduces the dynamic range by making the whole program signal resemble something not too different to white noise. Expanders along with gating also increase dynamic range, as compared to compressors which reduce it. All tricks in the bag. But it's important to make the distinction between all this per-track stuff when recording and while mixing. To correct your assertion, it is that dynamics are not being destroyed at the recording or mixing stage - they are being destroyed at the Mastering stage. Perfectly good recordings that have been released on CD that have been 'digitally remastered' later have been destroyed by over the top Limiting. See some of Rush's work. Also Metallica. To make a loud record you need to record quietly, then bump it up a little in the mixing, then you can go to town in the Mastering stage. Without destroying it of course. Digital recording is different to analogue recording where you needed to get the hottest signal possible to increase the signal to noise ratio and avoid buzz and hum from instruments without distorting the tape too much. All analogue tape distorts to a certain extent - that is what makes it sound so good, but too much is bad. With digital there is only 'good enough't and 'OVERLOAD - POPPING MY SPEAKER CONES'. There is no middle ground. But most DAWs are built on the analogue mixing console paradigm and are used by people who never used a real analogue desk, so to them, starting off with all faders set to a sensible -18dBFS seems strange, especially when most DAW faders are set to 0dBFS as default. They are worried about their recording being too quiet. Little do they know this is the secret to getting really loud recordings. And if you are using anologue emulation software in the form of vintage synths, then that doesn't help the signal path and flow either. See gain staging. Anyway, most people who record their albums do not mix it, and those that mix it do not master it - not at high level anyway. Sure, some tossers like me do all three - do everything - do every single stage to final burn of the CD or the choosing of the bit-depths for the MP3, but few do it very well. I'm pretty good, because I've been doing it a long time, and I'm also very technical as well as creative. Most people can't do all three stages well. So off you send your masterpiece and you will probably have recorded it poorly or mixed it poorly. You will probably hand the mastering house a master that is peaking at over -3dBFS, which limits the amount of processing you can put on it. But still you demand a loud master. So they Limit and distort and already distorted mix. Not good. You want to be handing them at the very least -6dBFS for the DSP to be able to weave its magic. To add on to this, they will probably compress it again, EQ it, all the while adding small digital artifacts. They will use Linear Phase EQ as well as it is mastering and that has drawbacks as well compared to minimum phase. Stuff like pre-ringing. Then they will use a Mojo EQ for some broadband signal processing. They will probably have another clipper on the master bus too. And then finally, the dreaded Limiter. With little headroom to play with they will push it as far as they can to -0.1dBFS - and there you end up with a totally buggered master/recording/mix - call it what you want. A good mastering house won't do this of course. They will tell you what they need you to give to them for a great final product. But they can't educate you on what it takes to make a great recording. Or a great mix. That is down to the artist. When you finally get the hang of it though, it just becomes second nature. You will be able to make great recordings, do great mixes and do pretty decent masters as well. Mastering is definitely the hardest part and the most black of the arts of the three, but it is doable, with the right tools and a few years study and practice, anyone can get there. You can even do naughty things like record and mix into compressors on the 2 bus. For Electronica and dance music anyway. Doesn't always work, but sometimes does. Still, you will keep you levels way low and you will export your final mix in 32-bit format with at least 6dB of headroom to then play about with final mixing and mastering.
kaan yazici true, they optimize their sound for the mainstream with beats, laptop speakers and cheap in ear headphones that come with your phone. But it makes sense as those people make up 99.9% of customers and they would have to come up with a seperate second version for the 0.1% of audiophiles.
Zsolt Sápi so-called digital distortion is different from the analog distortion you get from a tape machine or other gear (tube, transformer, &c.). Analog distortion adds harmonics (overtones and/or undertones) to the signal. Small amounts of this distortion is also called saturation, which can add a pleasing and warm quality to the sound source. To hear unpleasant digital clipping, on the other hand, all you have to do is push the signal over 0 dbfs on the Master volume in a DAW or any audio software and render the audio out as a wav file at for example 24bit and 44.1k resolution - yikes!
You say that the artist had no say about the loudness wars, but my experience was that everyone was caught up in it. 'Make it louder than everything else' was what I heard every day for many years. It came from the artists as much as the producers and record company executives.
Wow and here I was stressing out because I couldn't make my songs louder like the big boys but after this video, you made me realize that I should just stick with my own instinct and whats best for my music! Thank you!
5:05 - You mean *spectral* analyzer, not "special"! Because, you know, it _analyzes_ the frequency _spectrum_ of a sound signal. 6:30 - the signal is not "peaking out", as this would mean *clipping* , which becomes audible as _distortion_ . The signal is merely pushed to the possible limit by means of hard compression, a.k.a. "brickwall limiting". This means the signal is still nice and round on top and not chopped. Just zoom in for a close-up of a single wave transition. 14:00 - "If this was done to a record", it would sound just like the CD, only with added crackle and hum. You are confusing *hard limiting* with *clipping* - see above! What do you think they press the records from? Do you think they mix and engineer the same album _twice_ for different distribution formats? Also, how expensive your turntable was does _not make a difference to the compression of the audio material you play back on it_ . A $500 tone arm is not going to bring back the *dynamic range* lost in compression, because _that_ is the problem that the loudness wars are all about. Sorry to break it to you, John Snow, but _you know nothing_ about audio compression or loudness maximiziation. Next time around, ask an audio engineer. And get yourself a proper audio editor (heck, there are tons of free ones that are really good) that allows a _closer look_ at your material, so that you don't have to rely on some rudimentary viz feature of an MP3 player. Don't look for bacteria with a magnifying glass - get yourself a proper microscope, please. 15:35 - "Those peaks would be bouncing the needle off the record" OMG, I gotta stop watching. PLEASE INFORM YOURSELF PROPERLY AND STOP SPREADING NONSENSE! Thank you.
Loudness war is a thing of course, but techniques and technologies have evolved since 1980, so it's possible to reduce dynamic range with nice results.... Anyway comparing waveforms is pointless, only an A/B comparison at the same volume can reveal the difference and in some case, the new version may be an improvement.
Also, it's just waveform, the word 'waveformat' doesn't exist. The irony of talking about high fidelity audio on a video that's so noisy because of auto-gain is overwhelming. Drop some NR on there, fella! It is interesting to see how compression was used more in mastering over the years though.
This is still happening? I bought a 2019 release rock CD a few weeks ago (previewed the music on iTunes, and liked it). I put it in my home stereo system and couldn't make it midway past song #2, all I was hearing throughout was the thumping base drum overpowering the instruments and vocals. At least I was able to return it. To make sure it isn't my stereo, I played an original release of a 1975 Jefferson Starship record, and that sounded just fine... ;) Who on earth signs off on these Masters?
i dont think its music in general thats gone to shit, its just the stuff that gets radio play thats been made in the past fifteen years or so. Nowadays, all the real talent is on soundcloud or somewhere obscure doing cool shit
Soundcloud is pretty overrun with EDM, homemade rap, and people that think owning a copy of garage band makes them an industrial producer. It's getting harder and harder to find good stuff there.
Completely wrong. The cancer is everywhere, even on indie-artists that mix their stuff themselves. The loudness war has established a "norm", so now even indie-artists that are in full control of their music, look at this sh|t and think "that's how you master tracks". Most perversely, this even applies to current "retrowave" artists, that make 80's inspired music, but mixed so hot, if the 80's were a person, it would be rolling in its grave.
This is excellent, a real game changer for me, I know I’m a bit late in the game, since this post came out at three years old. But I’ll think twice now about how I send my finished garage band projects. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much!
Waves did not change at all from 1980 Crazy Train to the 1995 version. Not all remasters today are bad. Some are pretty good. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell and Kiss, just to name a few, have very good remasters in general. AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue remasters do sound like crap, though. You have to do some researching before buying a remaster to make sure it is worth it. Some are, others don't.
Who pirates music today? Like Spotify and Apple Music is so much more convenient. You pay (or not, then you have to hear commercials) a relativly small amount of money and you get instant access to all the music out there!
I'm hoping to learn about music production to one day be able to record and produce my OWN music, and this video was surprisingly informative for me. Pretty awesome stuff :D
I usually dislike the remasters, no point in those most of the time, and the original dynamic is usually fucked up, because it was mixed to be analog and already mastered anyway. That said, listen with your ears, not with your eyes. Mastering can be done good or poorly, you are not going to understand it from the wave file. Disturbed - Stupify, for example, may look like a green block to you, but its dynamics are perfect. Bruno Mars music look really like a green block, but it's mastered perfectly, loud and dynamic. Everything after 2005 will look like a green block, but they don't all sound the same, if you're honest. Last thing, if you hear clicks and pops, there's something wrong in your system. a minus 0.1 Db wave may sound shitty, but it can't produce clicks, it's impossible unless the signal gets pumped out before the preamp.
I read somewhere that when a digital audio signal gets converted to analog that there is an error of almost -/+ 0.5db that can happen (I think the exact number was something like .43db). So this source that made this claim suggested never to normalize audio above -0.5db so as to avoid clipping. So if a file is at -0.1db then yes, it could clip when played back. Also I am sorry but I forgot now where I read this and what the source was but it as recall it seemed like a reliable source.
The reason why old albums are remasterd with a lot of compression is so that they sound competative with modern music when listened too on what most people listen to music on these days at home - phones and computers. If they did not do this these old albums would sound so weedy by comparison that nobody would listen to them. When listening to music louder is always better until the level of discernable distortion rises beyond a certain point. If you have decent audio equipment and understanding neighbours you do not require aggresive compression to get decent volume, you can just turn it up as much as you want. Further your better equipment will be far more sensitive to distortion so aggresive compression works against you. This is why in the old days compression on most albums was less aggressive - it wasn't needed so much. This is also why today audiophiles who still use traditionasl hi-fi equipment moan about compression so much - the music isn't being mixed for them any more - it's being mixed to sound good through cheap headphones on phones and computers instead. On your phone and computer you can't turn it up. You have to rely on the strength of the source signal to get decently enjoyable volume. This is why modern music is often more aggresively compressed. It simply sounds better via MP3 on phones and computers that way. A further twist is that modern music is recorded and mixed using specific instrument tones and arrangements and specific techniques that reduce the perception of distortion under heavy compression. There's a big difference between how a Steely Dan track and a Taylor Swift track are arranged and what instruments are used with what tones/procesing. These techniques were not used for old albums which is another reason why heavily compressed remasters of old records often sound bad on good audio equipment. The subtle tones of Steely Dan's vintage guitars and rhodes pianos are destroyed by aggresive compression. The sort of heavily treated acoustic guitars and Massive/Serum etc soft-synth lines used in Taylor Swift songs can be compressed within an inch of their lives and still sound great - and more importantly loud in a good way.
Actually, thinking about it, I have a theory which I haven't heard of in any of the videos I've watched until now: in fact, I believe that the dynamic range is being killed and the whole sound boosted not because of radio, but because most people listen to their music on low quality earphones, which is factor one, and because iPods and also probably iPhones in Europe have a lower volume peak. So compressing the dynamic range and making the music louder makes it sound much better on your portable player and small earphones, specially on a player that doesn't deliver loud volume.
YOu are 100% correct. Speaking from personal experience, My last band's record that we recorded; when we were mixing and mastering the thing, we would literally test the songs to see how good they sounded on apple earbuds, on cellphone speakers, laptop speakers etc. The reason we did this was for quality control. I know it sounds odd, but like you said: that is what the majority of people listen to music on. I mean our songs sounded wonderful when we mixed them on the $80,000 monitors that were in the studio. but when you think about it, the average person doesn't have access to speakers like we did. So in the end, we would put limiters, compressors, etc on the songs to get them to sound good on the crappy little speakers that normal people use. I hate to admit it, but it was unfortunately the best option we could do. So yes you are completely correct.
It's not even about low quality earphones. My on the go earbuds are old school apple ones and old recordings sound totally serviceable on them. What doesn't sound good with dynamics are phone speakers and bluetooth speakers. It has a lot more to do with radio trends from back in the day though.
Nathaniel St. Paul: Why not two versions of album, for normal audio and for kids with phones? On CDs it makes no sense today because kids and other motherfuckers with phones don't buying CDs, but they buying it digitaly in MP3 on Google play etc... so if music companies destroying CDs it's for nothing, they are stupid morons and you too if you agree with that.
What sucks with streaming is you don't even know which version you're listening to. Also, I like that he refers to Foobar as a Program and not an "App"
A big thing that has to do with this too is how we listen to music these days. Back then, people sat down to enjoy music, and appreciate it for what it is more. Good sound was a luxury, and being able to hear the beautiful fidelity of a track was intriguing. Now a days what do we do? We run around with our smart phones and ear buds in, and suddenly we pay no attention to this detail. We want everything to be loud, we don't pay attention to detail, we don't appreciate music like we use to. There's a formula to making music now, like there is for a burger from McDonalds. I totally understand how you feel, and to be honest, I'm guilty of this too. I produce my own music and study Audio Engineering, and this topic has been mentioned before. This is how it works though. You got bands coming in that want all their shit loud now. No one focuses on the dynamics anymore.
Cesar All Guitar you should return to edit your comment periodically "I came across this video just some minutes ago. Good one." "I came across this video just some hours ago. Good one." "I came across this video just some days ago. Good one." "I came across this video just some weeks ago. Good one." etc.
What really pisses me off is when a classic album is remastered to CD and they make it too damn loud. Thats what they did to Purple Rain. I'm not buying that shit
Arthur Allen Brown he wasn't fighting for audio quality though. using MLK in the same situation as this dude would be MLK burning his own sheets each morning. :)
I make my own MP3 files from either FLAC or Wave sources i make myself, and i convert to 320Kbps CBR (Constant Bit Rate). I could go lower bit rate, and VBR, but this gives me peace of mind, and i don't care about the extra size (which is negligible when compared to either FLAC or Wave). I can buy storage if i need more space, but i can't buy quality if it isn't there to begin with. - "If you can buy storage, then why don't you keep the FLACs and Waves"? Because it's a hassle. The file size is much too big for what it does for me, and once you hear a 320Kbps file at a constant bit rate, you realize that you will most likely never need anything above that, because it will take the pickiest of picky listeners to detect anything truly substantial between these files, and the original source. As for the loudness war, the first time it seriously bothered me was in the album Death Magnetic from Metallica. It was much too unbearable for me. Going trough any single song was a chore that left my brain exhausted from cringing. I was just about to throw the damn thing out the window (literally), when i read about a "pirate" version of the album made from an uncompressed source originated from a video-game (Guitar Hero - Metallica). The difference is night and day. The album goes from a raw turd, to a polished gem. That was the day i started paying a lot more attention to the loudness affair.
Why not Ogg Vorbis? You can go up to 500kbps VBR. Sometimes a Vorbis 360kbps VBR can take up less space than a MP3 320kbps CBR. MP3 is outdated as fuck.
Constant at the same bitrate is strictly inferior to variable bitrate, and as others have said there are better formats now. The only reason why constant bitrate was used in the first place is because that was a lot easier to produce hardware for. with variable rate there is a lot more going on, but also better sounding. And for fucks sake - if you would actually care about the quality you would simply use the FLAC or whatever directly. storage is so cheap it is just insane to not use it.
Look at Opus, the successor/replacement, basically get a 192Kbps MP3 at about 128Kbps (no, you can't really hear any difference above 192Kbps except for very few songs like classical concerts with a multitude of instruments, then just up Opus to 192Kbps and it's about equivalent).
16:05 is that display not just a limitation of the band height? What happens if you reduce the volume? Does it still look similar or does the dynamic range 'return'? IOW if the display only shows up to 10 but the music goes to 15 you would not see the 10 to 15 range even though it is there. Just wondering.
The advent of Brick wall compression in the early nineties is to blame ... As a musician and a producer myself, loud is good but if everything is head butting the limiter, you start to lose a lot of detail.
I didn't know anything about all this but I stopped buying iTunes music about 10 years ago because it sounded like crap. Went back to buying second hand CDs and ripping them myself for my iPod. At home, I never used anything else than vinyl. Now I know why.
Mathead gotta be careful about ripping music from cds if you're using iTunes. I've had them update my ripped music with shity versions of the same recording when syncing.
Listen only to vinyl at home... it is ironic isn't it that many vinyl pressings sound better than CDs even though it is an inferior format for fidelity. The reason is that vinyl cannot handle the hypercompression that is done with modern digital music as it would cause mistracking, if it didn't burn out the cutting head when making the record in the first place. A well mastered CD easily sounds better than vinyl, but they are hard to come by.
Question! Is the _Shout At The Devil_ CD audio from a 80's released cd? Also curious about your copy of _Holy Diver_ by Dio, as I own a CD reissue from 1987. I have a _Pork Soda_ by Primus from 2005 that bears excellent dynamic range and no unnecessary distortion. Edit: I have a _Master of Puppets_ (from 2013) that's so damn loud, I get a small headache before "Battery" ends!
Ya know I've noticed this a lot recently. It's like everything I listen to is always brick walled. I think the first time I like consciously recognized it, I was playing music in my car, and switched from a newer song to some good ole Led Zeppelin. I noticed the song was like soooo much quieter, but then when I turned up the radio, it sounded so much clearer I didn't mind at all
Awe yes! Someone else who is fully aware of the shift in the cd becoming totally bastardized into this whole other medium...no dynamics...no timbre in the instruments and showcasing a shrill and dull sound. Yup. We are in a bad time. 80's was the best. I only buy music CDs made originally or pressed in the 80's up to the early 90's. I know and feel your pain! 😯
You dont have to use cbr - use abr and fix that to 92 or 198 - other option for headroom to get rid of compression-tint is use vbr 32 low to 128 (96 prefered) ( not really but a lot of bass is gone )- and now it will start cutting into the music getting rid of compression - anyway used this method around 2005-2009 with mp3.
Oops, I always do this "normalize maximum amplitude to 1" when working with audio files in Audacity. I do that because it makes the loudness of all my songs kinda be on a similar level. But I should not lose any information by doing that, right?
Additionally, it is using 256 kbps AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, made by the same group that invented mp3). AAC is more efficient at storing information than mp3's and a 256 kbps AAC translates to comparable or superior compression than a 320 mp3. Especially if the mp3 is compressed using LAME as the encoder; which adds a shelf at 16 kHz and a hard ceiling at 20 kHz. This can be seen using spectral analysis programs such as Spek.
Additionally, iTunes more and more offers "Mastered for iTunes" versions of songs which are usually quieter than the CD masters to avoid distortion caused by the data loss of the AAC compression.
The ironic thing about the loudness wars is the inability to be able to listen to the affected music loudly. Optimally compressed music can have it's volume cranked up with comfort and ease to a louder degree than ridiculously over-compressed music, which can only be listened to comfortably at low volumes.... that's if its listenable at all.
+Jaydee OldBoy I don't feel like the volume is ever comfortable. I find myself constantly switching the volume because some parts sound to loud and some to soft.
Listen Pink Floyd all my life and I say: 2011 Remaster of Pink Floyd albums - sounds way better, than originals. J.M. Jarre create new master recording of his Oxygene album and it's sounds amazingly great than original record. Carpenter Brut creates his tracks with that big level of loudness. Is Carpenter Brut doesen't understend how to create music?)) Just change scale with ctrl and you will see the peaks of the signal in that kind of loud records. I don't want heard a background noises of the original old record from the 1970, I just want to heard this music as it was planned. Sorry for my bad english))
80's? the loudness wars started in the 50's, record companies made 'hotter cuts' because they wanted their records to sound better than the other records in a jukebox.
This explains a lot. I just installed a very high end sound system into my truck and it is tuned for modern music. When I play rips from old CDs, I always have to turn up the system because it doesn't sound as loud as the modern music. I had to make a special presets for the various types and years of music I own. Is there a way to remaster the new music down to earlier music? Say GNR Appetite album standards?
It's called "Brickwalling" a perfect example of this was the very 1st version of The Beatles "1" CD and Vinyl editions. The guy who remastered the songs for that 1st version just compressed the shit out of those Beatles songs. It's the worst to listen to of The Beatles albums.
Yep, when vinyl was on the way out and CD's were brand new in the late 80's and early 90's this is where all of those wonderful sounding LP were tossed or sold for peanuts and the CD's became the place to take all of those recordings and transfer them by making them LOUD using compression by the many record companies. The average listener and buyer had no idea at first for the longest time that the music they were buying was brickwalled to the max like your Pink Floyd CD shows. The companies also would than slap on a label to sell yet another CD of a Classic vinyl LP buy calling it "Remastered" at the time too. This went on for years and music still does get put out this way no matter what format be it digital or some sort of newly remastered stuff calling it digital to analog or some other nonsense. The best thing to do is get your favorite old LP's and get a good turntable and rig and just needledrop the LP's and then transfer the WAV file to a blank CD. Oh, and don't forget to denoise or hand declick any pops or noise from the vinyl transfer before you make your CD's. It's the best way other than to own all the original vinyl. : -)
Appius - nope, modern vinyls are way worse than the old vinalys, and even the old ones can not compare to a CD. And add to that that they nearly always come from the same mastering, so the vinyl has all the same problems and then on top of that the shortcomings of analog. It is just morons throwing money out the window.
ABaumstumpf just because you don't understand or appreciate something that does not mean you can call morons people who do. How can you say vinyls can't compare to cds? Digital is way more practical, but come on Cds are lower quality by definition as at the moment you turn audio from analog to digital you cannot keep the full waveform of the sound, but just an approximation of it. Of course vinyls lose part of their meaning if the audio is recorded and edited digitally and only afterwards turned back to analog, but if the whole process happens analogically as it did with older records, it will have better quality. So yeah modern ones are not the same cause most of the ediding happens digitally,but still they can physically store more data than a cd, and they have a warmer sound which some people like.
Subscribed. Great video. May I add - I collect vinyl records and most modern stuff I've bought is still peaky and too loud. Usually not "as" bad as FLAC, but noticeable when you have an awesome pair of reference headphones. Buying on vinyl is really making the best of a crappy situation. It's not perfect, but better.
While you're about ten years late on this topic, I do thank you for teaching and explaining this for others. I think there are far worse examples than what you showed. One example is The Rolling Stone's album Sticky Fingers. The original and most recent albums are almost two entirely different albums in terms of how they are produced. The record industry is killing itself. I too have stopped buying albums because there is no quality control in terms of audio quality.
Hi Eric. I make music and I have to learn about mastering too. What you are saying in your video is misleading. First I can't agree music recorded now is worst quality than in the 80s...it's the other way round. Now music is a lot better quality. Second, you are using the term 'compression' in two different meanings. One is to compress bitrate and the other is compressing in mastering process. This are two different things. Compressing in mastering brings quieter parts up and louder down and is affecting the dynamism not the quality of the record. Compressing audio files (bitrate) is removing range of frequencies that human ear is less sensitive too and that indeed is lowering the quality of the record. So in other words, record with a more green range (you claim is better) can be a shit quality and the one with all green from the top to bottom (you claim is shit) can be a good quality. Compression in both meanings are affecting 'natural' sound...but there is nothing like 'natural' in recording anyway as records are going through sets of amps, mixers, mics and effects... if you wish to hear a natural music you need go to classical music concert where there is no single microphone used.
Sinneth: Please don't touch any music you kid, you know nothing. CD from 1990 has absolutely better sound than todays CDs. If sou don't hear it, it's your problem. We have much much better equipment today but loudness war. :-/ Try to listen some classic music, there is no loudness war, that is real sound. I hope one day other styles will sound same like classic music. I looking for old CDs, best sound is from 1988 - 1992, after 1992 it's shit, before 1988 it's shit too because bad quality recording. 1991 is the best. I don't lisen music in my home because loudness war, it's very boring music without dynamic. If you are recording music, you shoud thinkink about it because I want spend my money for music but I can't because people like you destroying it.
telling him to not touch any music. If he isn't ''touching'' any music how is he going to learn to make better quality stuff. btw no one uses CDs anymore old man, We got all the music we need on spotify, Soundcloud and other platforms. That is all I have to say now good day.
Sorry, dynamic compression is useful, if music is played on radio but it is terrible if you want to hear music at home or on headphones. I’m not in Metal. I like jazz, classical music and progressive rock and I think it is cruel what is done with the dynamic compression since the late nineties.
I remember the first digital recordings coming in the 80s - all audiofiles was on them and told this is shit on vinyl , same with studiomicrophones - new highend microphones from Japan took over the market - audiophiles this is shit - I remember ABBA soundengineer said something about them going back to old 50's microphones - apperently the voices came out better.
You did it. You win. Congrats, you've cut yourself off from hearing a ton of new music. First off you clearly don't know the difference between data compression, and audio compression. Also you're saying that having more dynamics is objectively better for all music, which is most definitely subjective, and I'd argue not the case. Also, any clipping you are seeing or hearing is coming from equipment on your end; major record labels fund a mastering process that more than ensures their product doesn't clip. You prove my point when you say you'll listen to the LP if they put one out; that LP would have the EXACT same dynamics as the digital version. They put modern EDM on vinyl, which has even less dynamics. What pushes the needle out of a groove is loud low frequencies especially panned to either side of a stereo track, not a lack of dynamics or sheer amplitude. The loudness war doesn't have to do with sample rates at all. Also the only way to have songs sound even remotely listenable when they are mastered to be that loud (I agree, sometimes, too loud) is to pay intense attention to preserving real sounding dynamics while mixing. You saying artists have no say in how a mastered song comes out is only about half correct, and in which cases the artist usually doesn't have the ear (or time/technical skill) that is necessary for making the ultra fine adjustments to dynamics and timbre that shape a track to sound real and musical while (hopefully) appropriately maximizing loudness. Always rock on, always listen to whatever you want, but nothing is going to get better by spreading an ill-advised negative opinion about such a vast body of work.
I use yamaha hs7s on isolator pads. I also am graduating from college with an audio production degree, and have been constantly training my ears since 2013.
Listen by ear as opposed to listening by...? I love the huge in your face sound of a lot of heavily compressed recent music. I also love more dynamic music like tunes before the late 80s. The Doors wouldn't be The Doors if they were mixed and mastered like EDM, and vice versa. The dynamics should fit the musical context of the song. That doesn't always happen, but it doesn't mean less compression is better.
"Also, any clipping you are seeing or hearing is coming from equipment on your end; major record labels fund a mastering process that more than ensures their product doesn't clip. " That is the biggest crosh of complete bullshit I have read about "the loudness war" in quite some time. Lmfao. You are absolutely clueless. Tons, and tons, and TONS of albums have very severe clipping.
alecman95 you mean information you don’t agree with? Isn’t that the same as fake news? Have you heard of the first amendment? Obviously you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be here posting your opinion.
I agree with mostly everything.. but '192kbps is pretty much lossless...' - I'm seriously no audiophile, I think 192kbps is just fine for anything, but 192kbps *MP3* is not what I'd call lossless.
Love this video man! I’ve been aware of the loudness wars and it concerns me because I am soon to embark on an audio system upgrade but what’s the point if all the music I will buy will sound like shit? Question for you, when it comes to vinyl, is it “defeating the purpose” to buy a record cut from a digital master vs an analog master?
I am neither in to metal nor am I interested in wave form analytics nor am I from the US. However, this video hit me hard just by coincidence and I found it very interesting and enlightening to see! I am really surprised that music industry destroys music with their loudness tweaks. Thanks for the video.
FLAC is not a "carbon copy" of a CD, that would be a .wav file. FLAC is a compressed file that uses a lossless compression. Apple never lowered the bit rate to save server space, you're making this up. Remastered music that was originally recorded on analog tape often goes through a process of "normalization" in which the wave file is peaked to max, but the dynamic range is NOT altered. You also seem to be confusing _audio compression_ with _file compression_ which are two very different things. Audio compression used to pack as much sound as possible on a track, to make that track seem louder didn't really happen until after 2000. Almost all industry recorded music seems to have been affected, even causing Metallica fans to complain, and demand Metallica release a better version. You're a hack that doesn't seem to know any more then the average Best buy employee.
good stuff mate! I always preferred a fixed192-320 bit rate over a variable bit rate, I have a pretty healthy Pioneer home stereo and can hear the lower end of variable bit rates, it's a shame what is being done to well recorded music these days. good video!
Personally get everything I can on FLAC, I personally find anything below 256 or so on MP3 already starts to taper off in quality so I don't bother with compressing them at all any more, the overall sizes are around 3x larger but it's basically irrelevant with how cheap hard drives are these days.
Ranndy, then you should go see a doctor and get your ears checked. For a given bitrate variable encoding sounds better. Why? cause not all parts of the song are equal. some contain more information then others and can not be compressed that much. With fixed bitrate that is the first thing to get distorted. With variable the whole song get an equal amount of degradation - in total less than with fixed and no extreme mushy parts either.
ABaumstumpf It's a lot about how good the encoder does the job, same bitrates can sound shitty or good. At least back when I was actually having music on my PC it drove me nuts before I figured it out because somebody gave me the tip
I figured this out years ago with television. Like the commercials were way louder than the actual program, so loud that you had to turn it down. Then the TV programs started to turn themselves up louder too.
IMO all the bands on rock radio sound the same . There is no clarity in their instruments . The whole illegal download gave way to people accepting shitty sounding mixes . Thanks for making this video and hopefully it motivates music lovers to invest in their music . Vinyl record collecting is not just a fucking hipster thing . It's about the fucking sound !! Great video , EC !!!!
Interesting. I like hifi music too. I have some questions: 1. What is the required memory, on the average, for flac coding an LP? 2. What is the required memory after your VBR compression to a given LP song vs. that of the same itunes song? 3. Why do you keep coding LP's which have a limited age instead of coding CD's? Thanks!
As an audio engineer I never try to master anything over -6 lufs as its the best mix on quality and loudness. Different genres need different mastering requirements, Rock and Jazz and more acoustic stuff needs a softer master, but Dubstep and Electro are supposed to be redlined to hell, if that makes since.
And in the pop genre nowdays a lot of the songs are a mix bewteen electronic and regular poppy stuff and so its mixed so hot. A lot of the "poppy" modern rock is like this too and i cant stand it..
I haven't done anything with music in a long time, but I remember this being my chief complaint when reviewing tracks. It's too loud. Try to get more SOUND out of the mix, not more noise.
My arguement against this rant: Claiming that something hitting the "red" is "peaking" and "clipping" when it is under the 0db ceiling is just plain, not accurate. Listening to modern music in a good car audio system should not sound distorted, at all. The entire point of intelligent use of compression is to reduce the harshness of the peaks and increase the volume of the actual desired sound. Is there a such thing as OVER-compression? Absolutely! ...but judging music solely on waveform is like trying to judge a photo's artistic integrity or clarity on a histogram. Both have their use, but this rant seems a little over the top and you aren't even playing the audio back for comparison to make your point. Compressed, modern remastered albums sound better at lower amp volume and should, if done correctly, sound tighter. I wouldn't disagree that dynamics and depth are lowered by compressing the sound but you are just trading said depth for tightness and clarity at lower amp volumes. Plenty of sound engineers are aware of the trade off and the digital technology lets them measure this very precisely. Most remasters are done by master engineers who bring up the root volume, lower the peaks and make sure the dynamics closely resemble the original recording. Most of these loudness-war rants are just pretty over-exaggerated and fairly inaccurate, imho.
good argument, but i don't think it is over-exaggerated. its preference and i think people like him just prefer music with its originally intended dynamic range. not compromised to sound 'better' on the radio or $20 boombox.
Hard limiting is sometimes referred to as also being clipping, depending on who you ask, because the effect on the sound can be nearly identical. This depends on the hardware you play it back on. Some equipment will overdrive from a clipped signal and start clicking, buzzing or popping, while others will avoid it by clamping the signal to its maximum value, which would produce the same effect as a hard limit to -0dB. Additionally there are other factors that make the practice of limiting with minimal headroom pretty bad. Some hardware is not precise enough to handle a near constant super-high amplitude signal, there can be minor fluctuations that cause actual clipping because there is so little headroom. Lossy audio formats are also known to not perfectly preserve the amplitude, so it can be a hassle if you want to quickly transcode a .flac or .wav into .aac or .mp3, if those source files lack a tiny bit of headroom. In fact this is even a problem with some files you get directly from stores, where the lossless formats are typically fine but the lossy formats absolutely do peak to -0dB. That was my only nitpick. I absolutely agree that it's not the look of the waveform that matters, it's how it sounds, and the added minimum amplitude can help a great deal when listening on something like cheap headphones driven by a phone. Also, a highly compressed dynamic range can be an artistic tool in itself, it can sound good when used properly, though that is very rarely the case when the goal is just to drive up volume.
Yeah but arguably a master sound engineer... like one hired to remaster an extremely popular studio album isn't going to be Joe Schmoe in his basement studio trying to measure this out. Arguing that sound clips on different hardware means you're playing music on crappy hardware. That isn't a real thing. Hard limiting is not ever referred to as "clipping" by anyone using correct nomenclature. Clipping is when you surpass the signal level. A hard limited track is a destroyed track but that doesn't mean it is clipping. Modern albums are not just compressed to sound good on a $20 boombox either. The sound is more full on studio monitors. It is about adding power to the final mix... this whole argument is to me acting like mixing and mastering aren't two different things. I agree this is subjective and a matter of taste but saying all this stuff about modern mixing removes dynamics and makes the sound distorted and worse is just pretty misguided imho.
They still have to kill transients in order to have room to raise the overall volume up. That makes a) dymamics to be lost forever b) this kind of compression in mixing or even worse in mastering makes music muddier especially in higher volumes. So when you have to use a limiter this means your ll be missing half of some instrument frequencies just because you were greedy in mixing. In other words, mud
Clever and clear ! Thanks !! On French TV new movies are processed the same for audio, and then we understand less and less what is said, this seems to come from what you show :-(
At the beginning of your video, you go on and on about FLAC (LOSSLESS) and how great it is and how it is a carbon copy of the CD, but yet you load MP3 (lossy) for your examples. What gives? I am not deny that the recording industry has lost their ways with dynamic range, because I agree with you on that. To them, louder = better. To us, dynamic range = better. Could you imagine Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody if it were mastered today? Ugh!
Good video. I really enjoyed it. Tool is recording their new album completely old school. From their instruments to a old school sound board to reel to reel tape and they are not going to allow it on digital download. I'm pumped!
Good job judging music by how it looks on a spectrometer. Not every album is Death Magnetic, you know? There are tons of great sounding productions that are compressed like hell and still sound great.
I compressed all my songs the other year down to 64bpm .i also found all equalizers always sounds clearer when all are set to zero. + or - both lowers sound quality
Yeah, that would be the general consensus for people who don't appreciate music. Seriously, you must not be paying attention to how bad a lot of music sounds nowadays. Within saying that though, EDM music sounds fine with less dynamics. So if you're a pop/EDM listener mainly then you're not going to hear what we're hearing.
Okay, you know that episode of south park where all the kids are listening to the music and think it's really good, but parents listen to it and it sounds like literal shit? That's a great example of how music without dynamics sounds like to people who know better.
On a good audio system or even decent headphones you can hear how badly most music is produced now'days, like almost any other item, you wouldnt spend your money on something that has issues, no use to you, or was just made lazily/unprofessionally.
Totally agree... Speaking out as a musician, there's nothing much you can change about that other than releasing vinyl... Too bad I spend way too much on guitars to buy either a turntable or music on vinyl...
I found this video just now. I'm not a big heavy metal fan, but I've noticed this on other types of music, especially if the music originally had a lot of dynamic range.
I agree.. Remastering should be to increase fidelity and clarity, not volume.
lo-fi the new wave the future is now old man
Ed Dana That's all the original 90's AC/DC catalog remasters were - a volume increase, which a lot of the albums needed.
acdc remastered do more than increase volume
they make the records more to stereo
from the lacks of LP limitation to clearer separate the channels of stereo. makes more songs interessting
of course you like the 70´s style of recording with difference stereo right channel 90db and left 70db
on remastered was 90db ricght and 20db left
this makes a big difference to music.
new records are far more over the volume the records itself is normal
but the difference in instruments compressed extremly
Normalizer is the enemy pure volume increase less a Problem.
music style goes to shitty sound on smarthphones it is sad to see this and it is harder to find new music
because today everybody can make musikand publish to the world, old times you need a record label.
doing concert for free and try to sell your music
and today your touring because you need money cd sells doesnt matter.
on merch you profit alot
s03t01o02 the hell?
Agree. After listening to a song, it almost sounds like my ears never got a break. The quiet parts of the song are the same volume as to loud parts now.
The "loudness war" is completely about compressing the dynamic range so a track will sound "louder" on the radio. It has almost nothing to do with bit rate. I data-compressed track with a low bit rate can have a wide dynamic range, and a dynamicly compressed track can have a high bit rate. The former will have natural volume levels, but sound harmonically distorted, while the latter will have an almost constant volume, even in the what were the quiet passages, but there should be very little harmonic distortion.
So this guy is Compostela off-point?
Thanks man, so much misinformation going around about this subject (oh and basically every other subject in the world as well ahaha)
Even very experienced audio engineers mistake bit-rate for bit-depth. But true, data compression has absolutely sweet FA to do with reducing the dynamic range of a track via clipping and limiting to the point it just resembles white noise.
What is happening is that the dynamic range is being reduced to nothing and therefore introducing its own kind of distortion, then on top of that poor quality algorithms are used to encode the final signal for distribution.
To be fair to Eric though he does understand that FLAC is a lossless algo and that higher MP3 is practically indistinguishable as well. As a self-confessed audiophile I think he's got a pretty good grip on things.
Like I said, I know many experienced audio engineers with gold and platinum records and they don't truly understand this stuff. Obviously you have done your home work!
+dandanthetaximan - you find it funny how people confuse dynamic range compression with data compression because you have studied this subject. You will have spent probably hundreds of hours researching this, so you have a much more sophisticated viewpoint. I get that you were probably being ironic, but I'm sure if you tried really hard you could see where the confusion ensues...
But yes, the whole MP3 debate is often confused with the Brick-Wall Limiting debate. And then there is confusion and little consensus between bit-rates and bit-depths and what is necessary to make an astounding sounding recording.
The truth is your average laptop is more than powerful enough to record/mix/master the best records known to man. But few people know how to do it. At least they don't know how to do all three stages well.
We live in a golden age of recording, but no one knows how to use the equipment, including many professional recording engineers who keep propagating all the myths and misinformation, due to their misunderstanding because of working with analogue equipment previously, but they have authority so people listen to the.
Sure, some of them get it, but many don't. We've been living in the digital age for a while, but it seems we haven't really come in to the digital age with as much success as we could have and to truly take advantage of it. Many people still misunderstand it. Or over-think it.
Obviously you have a pretty good understanding yourself, and you will know the difficulty in trying to explain and communicate some of these concepts.
but it does sound like shit when it's compressed.
What's up with the 1K dislikes? This guy is right!
Probably shitty music/mixes fans.
This listen on ear buds
@@rationalityfirst Or maybe people who genuinely didn't like the video?
@@biivamunner3122 People never seem to consider that possibility.
I think also that many musicians and recording engineers were more sympathetic to what constituted a more musical result pre-2000s. This is why vinyl LP records usually sound more pleasing to the ear, despite the obvious technical drawbacks of the format compared with later digital ones. Yes digital is superior but it is very rarely every written for and recorded to with any sympathy for a musically pleasing result. It's all about being LOUD and HARD and HARSH and FATIGUING and IN YOUR FACE.
It’s too bad they are destroying the dynamics of the music with the latest recording/mixing methods.
Without wishing to split hairs, but still being a little pedantic:
It's not the recording or mixing methods where the dynamics are being destroyed, in fact, quite the opposite. Today we have some very good clippers and expanders that help with all this. Clippers do reduce the dynamic range on a per track level but they allow signals to be higher without distortion. They enhance the signal to noise ratio . Limiting a track to death reduces the dynamic range by making the whole program signal resemble something not too different to white noise. Expanders along with gating also increase dynamic range, as compared to compressors which reduce it. All tricks in the bag.
But it's important to make the distinction between all this per-track stuff when recording and while mixing.
To correct your assertion, it is that dynamics are not being destroyed at the recording or mixing stage - they are being destroyed at the Mastering stage.
Perfectly good recordings that have been released on CD that have been 'digitally remastered' later have been destroyed by over the top Limiting. See some of Rush's work. Also Metallica.
To make a loud record you need to record quietly, then bump it up a little in the mixing, then you can go to town in the Mastering stage. Without destroying it of course. Digital recording is different to analogue recording where you needed to get the hottest signal possible to increase the signal to noise ratio and avoid buzz and hum from instruments without distorting the tape too much. All analogue tape distorts to a certain extent - that is what makes it sound so good, but too much is bad.
With digital there is only 'good enough't and 'OVERLOAD - POPPING MY SPEAKER CONES'. There is no middle ground. But most DAWs are built on the analogue mixing console paradigm and are used by people who never used a real analogue desk, so to them, starting off with all faders set to a sensible -18dBFS seems strange, especially when most DAW faders are set to 0dBFS as default. They are worried about their recording being too quiet. Little do they know this is the secret to getting really loud recordings. And if you are using anologue emulation software in the form of vintage synths, then that doesn't help the signal path and flow either. See gain staging.
Anyway, most people who record their albums do not mix it, and those that mix it do not master it - not at high level anyway. Sure, some tossers like me do all three - do everything - do every single stage to final burn of the CD or the choosing of the bit-depths for the MP3, but few do it very well. I'm pretty good, because I've been doing it a long time, and I'm also very technical as well as creative. Most people can't do all three stages well.
So off you send your masterpiece and you will probably have recorded it poorly or mixed it poorly. You will probably hand the mastering house a master that is peaking at over -3dBFS, which limits the amount of processing you can put on it. But still you demand a loud master. So they Limit and distort and already distorted mix. Not good. You want to be handing them at the very least -6dBFS for the DSP to be able to weave its magic.
To add on to this, they will probably compress it again, EQ it, all the while adding small digital artifacts. They will use Linear Phase EQ as well as it is mastering and that has drawbacks as well compared to minimum phase. Stuff like pre-ringing. Then they will use a Mojo EQ for some broadband signal processing. They will probably have another clipper on the master bus too. And then finally, the dreaded Limiter. With little headroom to play with they will push it as far as they can to -0.1dBFS - and there you end up with a totally buggered master/recording/mix - call it what you want.
A good mastering house won't do this of course. They will tell you what they need you to give to them for a great final product. But they can't educate you on what it takes to make a great recording. Or a great mix. That is down to the artist.
When you finally get the hang of it though, it just becomes second nature. You will be able to make great recordings, do great mixes and do pretty decent masters as well. Mastering is definitely the hardest part and the most black of the arts of the three, but it is doable, with the right tools and a few years study and practice, anyone can get there. You can even do naughty things like record and mix into compressors on the 2 bus. For Electronica and dance music anyway. Doesn't always work, but sometimes does.
Still, you will keep you levels way low and you will export your final mix in 32-bit format with at least 6dB of headroom to then play about with final mixing and mastering.
+123ubuntu666 that was awesome of you to type all that out, thank you
kaan yazici true, they optimize their sound for the mainstream with beats, laptop speakers and cheap in ear headphones that come with your phone. But it makes sense as those people make up 99.9% of customers and they would have to come up with a seperate second version for the 0.1% of audiophiles.
Zsolt Sápi so-called digital distortion is different from the analog distortion you get from a tape machine or other gear (tube, transformer, &c.). Analog distortion adds harmonics (overtones and/or undertones) to the signal. Small amounts of this distortion is also called saturation, which can add a pleasing and warm quality to the sound source. To hear unpleasant digital clipping, on the other hand, all you have to do is push the signal over 0 dbfs on the Master volume in a DAW or any audio software and render the audio out as a wav file at for example 24bit and 44.1k resolution - yikes!
i totally agreee this is really bad some equipment gets overdrive distortion from the high db levels in the later recordings
You say that the artist had no say about the loudness wars, but my experience was that everyone was caught up in it. 'Make it louder than everything else' was what I heard every day for many years. It came from the artists as much as the producers and record company executives.
Wow and here I was stressing out because I couldn't make my songs louder like the big boys but after this video, you made me realize that I should just stick with my own instinct and whats best for my music! Thank you!
5:05 - You mean *spectral* analyzer, not "special"! Because, you know, it _analyzes_ the frequency _spectrum_ of a sound signal.
6:30 - the signal is not "peaking out", as this would mean *clipping* , which becomes audible as _distortion_ . The signal is merely pushed to the possible limit by means of hard compression, a.k.a. "brickwall limiting". This means the signal is still nice and round on top and not chopped. Just zoom in for a close-up of a single wave transition.
14:00 - "If this was done to a record", it would sound just like the CD, only with added crackle and hum. You are confusing *hard limiting* with *clipping* - see above! What do you think they press the records from? Do you think they mix and engineer the same album _twice_ for different distribution formats? Also, how expensive your turntable was does _not make a difference to the compression of the audio material you play back on it_ . A $500 tone arm is not going to bring back the *dynamic range* lost in compression, because _that_ is the problem that the loudness wars are all about.
Sorry to break it to you, John Snow, but _you know nothing_ about audio compression or loudness maximiziation. Next time around, ask an audio engineer. And get yourself a proper audio editor (heck, there are tons of free ones that are really good) that allows a _closer look_ at your material, so that you don't have to rely on some rudimentary viz feature of an MP3 player. Don't look for bacteria with a magnifying glass - get yourself a proper microscope, please.
15:35 - "Those peaks would be bouncing the needle off the record" OMG, I gotta stop watching. PLEASE INFORM YOURSELF PROPERLY AND STOP SPREADING NONSENSE! Thank you.
I genuinely agree with everything you say.
1 thing to add tho: 0db is "normal", just because the signal hits 0db often it doesn't mean it clips.
Loudness war is a thing of course, but techniques and technologies have evolved since 1980, so it's possible to reduce dynamic range with nice results.... Anyway comparing waveforms is pointless, only an A/B comparison at the same volume can reveal the difference and in some case, the new version may be an improvement.
Thanks! I scrolled down to look for this comment. My faith in humanity restored! Thanks again! :-)
Above is correct. One can not probably show a problem without the proper tools. And why use such foul language.?.
Also, it's just waveform, the word 'waveformat' doesn't exist. The irony of talking about high fidelity audio on a video that's so noisy because of auto-gain is overwhelming. Drop some NR on there, fella! It is interesting to see how compression was used more in mastering over the years though.
This is still happening? I bought a 2019 release rock CD a few weeks ago (previewed the music on iTunes, and liked it). I put it in my home stereo system and couldn't make it midway past song #2, all I was hearing throughout was the thumping base drum overpowering the instruments and vocals. At least I was able to return it. To make sure it isn't my stereo, I played an original release of a 1975 Jefferson Starship record, and that sounded just fine... ;) Who on earth signs off on these Masters?
Sounds fine to me, but I'm deaf.
David S. Ha
Then how does it sound like anything?
Kevin Balogh thats the joke...
Kevin Balogh - nobel prize winner for understanding jokes
are you David Stewart's secret alternate channel
Loudness war wasn't all about limiting and peaks, it was about dynamic range, you made all the right points on all the wrong reasons.
You've confused sampling bit rate with dynamic compression. Both affect sound quality but for different reasons.
This actually explains why a lot of 80s rock music I have sounds quiet compared to present day music
i dont think its music in general thats gone to shit, its just the stuff that gets radio play thats been made in the past fifteen years or so. Nowadays, all the real talent is on soundcloud or somewhere obscure doing cool shit
MegaCyber I agree! I like the music these kids are making in their bedrooms on a computer and posting it for free!
SomeGuy i think all rap producers like that trend thats why they use it
Soundcloud is pretty overrun with EDM, homemade rap, and people that think owning a copy of garage band makes them an industrial producer. It's getting harder and harder to find good stuff there.
Completely wrong. The cancer is everywhere, even on indie-artists that mix their stuff themselves. The loudness war has established a "norm", so now even indie-artists that are in full control of their music, look at this sh|t and think "that's how you master tracks".
Most perversely, this even applies to current "retrowave" artists, that make 80's inspired music, but mixed so hot, if the 80's were a person, it would be rolling in its grave.
@@lyxar777 they're probably trying to mimic analog saturation tbh, tho you're right not always very well.
This is excellent, a real game changer for me, I know I’m a bit late in the game, since this post came out at three years old. But I’ll think twice now about how I send my finished garage band projects. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much!
Waves did not change at all from 1980 Crazy Train to the 1995 version.
Not all remasters today are bad. Some are pretty good. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell and Kiss, just to name a few, have very good remasters in general. AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue remasters do sound like crap, though.
You have to do some researching before buying a remaster to make sure it is worth it. Some are, others don't.
question: "why i dont buy music anymore"
answer: because i can download song in the internet for free
thats a good answer.
Who pirates music today? Like Spotify and Apple Music is so much more convenient. You pay (or not, then you have to hear commercials) a relativly small amount of money and you get instant access to all the music out there!
like, not ALL the music out there...like, alot of taylor swift,yeah,like
Denature69 in fact taylor's music has been on spotify for some time now
The struggle is real if you listen to tool or anything similar
I'm hoping to learn about music production to one day be able to record and produce my OWN music, and this video was surprisingly informative for me. Pretty awesome stuff :D
If youre hoping to learn about music production - run like hell. This video is a pile of garbage.
Just taught myself some new mastering tricks and am trying it on more recent productions. So i can appreciate an informative video like this
People always look at me like i'm dumb when I discuss this, or bring it up. Great video man!
I usually dislike the remasters, no point in those most of the time, and the original dynamic is usually fucked up, because it was mixed to be analog and already mastered anyway.
That said, listen with your ears, not with your eyes.
Mastering can be done good or poorly, you are not going to understand it from the wave file.
Disturbed - Stupify, for example, may look like a green block to you, but its dynamics are perfect.
Bruno Mars music look really like a green block, but it's mastered perfectly, loud and dynamic.
Everything after 2005 will look like a green block, but they don't all sound the same, if you're honest.
Last thing, if you hear clicks and pops, there's something wrong in your system.
a minus 0.1 Db wave may sound shitty, but it can't produce clicks, it's impossible unless the signal gets pumped out before the preamp.
ChristianIce or it's a beat to shite vinyl.
Remasters solely exist to make money.
That's because the fl limiter doesn't have any other mode than Peak compression, which I absolutely hate.
I read somewhere that when a digital audio signal gets converted to analog that there is an error of almost -/+ 0.5db that can happen (I think the exact number was something like .43db). So this source that made this claim suggested never to normalize audio above -0.5db so as to avoid clipping. So if a file is at -0.1db then yes, it could clip when played back. Also I am sorry but I forgot now where I read this and what the source was but it as recall it seemed like a reliable source.
porcodio
The reason why old albums are remasterd with a lot of compression is so that they sound competative with modern music when listened too on what most people listen to music on these days at home - phones and computers. If they did not do this these old albums would sound so weedy by comparison that nobody would listen to them.
When listening to music louder is always better until the level of discernable distortion rises beyond a certain point. If you have decent audio equipment and understanding neighbours you do not require aggresive compression to get decent volume, you can just turn it up as much as you want. Further your better equipment will be far more sensitive to distortion so aggresive compression works against you. This is why in the old days compression on most albums was less aggressive - it wasn't needed so much. This is also why today audiophiles who still use traditionasl hi-fi equipment moan about compression so much - the music isn't being mixed for them any more - it's being mixed to sound good through cheap headphones on phones and computers instead.
On your phone and computer you can't turn it up. You have to rely on the strength of the source signal to get decently enjoyable volume. This is why modern music is often more aggresively compressed. It simply sounds better via MP3 on phones and computers that way. A further twist is that modern music is recorded and mixed using specific instrument tones and arrangements and specific techniques that reduce the perception of distortion under heavy compression. There's a big difference between how a Steely Dan track and a Taylor Swift track are arranged and what instruments are used with what tones/procesing. These techniques were not used for old albums which is another reason why heavily compressed remasters of old records often sound bad on good audio equipment. The subtle tones of Steely Dan's vintage guitars and rhodes pianos are destroyed by aggresive compression. The sort of heavily treated acoustic guitars and Massive/Serum etc soft-synth lines used in Taylor Swift songs can be compressed within an inch of their lives and still sound great - and more importantly loud in a good way.
I somewhat knew this already, but it was great to see it on the spectrum analyzer and you explained it very well. Thanks!
(Lack of) Provenance is the dirty little secret of the music industry. This is why I only buy original 60's and 70's issues. Thanks for posting
Actually, thinking about it, I have a theory which I haven't heard of in any of the videos I've watched until now: in fact, I believe that the dynamic range is being killed and the whole sound boosted not because of radio, but because most people listen to their music on low quality earphones, which is factor one, and because iPods and also probably iPhones in Europe have a lower volume peak. So compressing the dynamic range and making the music louder makes it sound much better on your portable player and small earphones, specially on a player that doesn't deliver loud volume.
Huh. That's actually a good plausible theory there...
YOu are 100% correct. Speaking from personal experience, My last band's record that we recorded; when we were mixing and mastering the thing, we would literally test the songs to see how good they sounded on apple earbuds, on cellphone speakers, laptop speakers etc. The reason we did this was for quality control. I know it sounds odd, but like you said: that is what the majority of people listen to music on. I mean our songs sounded wonderful when we mixed them on the $80,000 monitors that were in the studio. but when you think about it, the average person doesn't have access to speakers like we did. So in the end, we would put limiters, compressors, etc on the songs to get them to sound good on the crappy little speakers that normal people use. I hate to admit it, but it was unfortunately the best option we could do. So yes you are completely correct.
It's not even about low quality earphones. My on the go earbuds are old school apple ones and old recordings sound totally serviceable on them. What doesn't sound good with dynamics are phone speakers and bluetooth speakers. It has a lot more to do with radio trends from back in the day though.
Only a little bit true...it's mostly down to marketing.
Nathaniel St. Paul:
Why not two versions of album, for normal audio and for kids with phones? On CDs it makes no sense today because kids and other motherfuckers with phones don't buying CDs, but they buying it digitaly in MP3 on Google play etc... so if music companies destroying CDs it's for nothing, they are stupid morons and you too if you agree with that.
What sucks with streaming is you don't even know which version you're listening to. Also, I like that he refers to Foobar as a Program and not an "App"
Thanks for the video. I honestly did not realise that is was harder to make vinyl 'too loud' like that have been doing with music over the years.
I have been saying this for years. I am recording a new album with this in mind the whole time. Thanks Eric, I am a new sub now.
A big thing that has to do with this too is how we listen to music these days. Back then, people sat down to enjoy music, and appreciate it for what it is more. Good sound was a luxury, and being able to hear the beautiful fidelity of a track was intriguing. Now a days what do we do? We run around with our smart phones and ear buds in, and suddenly we pay no attention to this detail. We want everything to be loud, we don't pay attention to detail, we don't appreciate music like we use to. There's a formula to making music now, like there is for a burger from McDonalds. I totally understand how you feel, and to be honest, I'm guilty of this too. I produce my own music and study Audio Engineering, and this topic has been mentioned before. This is how it works though. You got bands coming in that want all their shit loud now. No one focuses on the dynamics anymore.
I came across this video just some minutes ago. Good one.
u didnt ai did, me too
Cesar All Guitar
you should return to edit your comment periodically
"I came across this video just some minutes ago. Good one."
"I came across this video just some hours ago. Good one."
"I came across this video just some days ago. Good one."
"I came across this video just some weeks ago. Good one."
etc.
One of the best videos about the subject. good job!
How much you got on the set of vicegrips mate?
What really pisses me off is when a classic album is remastered to CD and they make it too damn loud. Thats what they did to Purple Rain. I'm not buying that shit
Man is talking about music while his audio is fucked and goes to the right.
I find this the most ironic.
Actually, one channel has reversed waveform.
It's a youtube video from a web cam, not a fucking Netflix Original. Chill out.
Doctor Martin Luther King had bad audio too, but truth is truth
Arthur Allen Brown he wasn't fighting for audio quality though. using MLK in the same situation as this dude would be MLK burning his own sheets each morning. :)
how do i get that foobar2000 trackwave plugin?
I didn't know anything about this!...cool video Eric
One CD I have from 2008, when viewed in a waveform, is quite literally a perfectly straight green bar.
Death Magnetic
just download version from guitar hero :-D
Try zooming in and you will see it's not quite a straight bar.
Cygnus' Edge LMFAO
Oh ..Like Metallicas new album?
I make my own MP3 files from either FLAC or Wave sources i make myself, and i convert to 320Kbps CBR (Constant Bit Rate).
I could go lower bit rate, and VBR, but this gives me peace of mind, and i don't care about the extra size (which is negligible when compared to either FLAC or Wave).
I can buy storage if i need more space, but i can't buy quality if it isn't there to begin with.
- "If you can buy storage, then why don't you keep the FLACs and Waves"?
Because it's a hassle. The file size is much too big for what it does for me, and once you hear a 320Kbps file at a constant bit rate, you realize that you will most likely never need anything above that, because it will take the pickiest of picky listeners to detect anything truly substantial between these files, and the original source.
As for the loudness war, the first time it seriously bothered me was in the album Death Magnetic from Metallica.
It was much too unbearable for me. Going trough any single song was a chore that left my brain exhausted from cringing.
I was just about to throw the damn thing out the window (literally), when i read about a "pirate" version of the album made from an uncompressed source originated from a video-game (Guitar Hero - Metallica).
The difference is night and day.
The album goes from a raw turd, to a polished gem.
That was the day i started paying a lot more attention to the loudness affair.
yeah I only listen to stuff in 320 kbps CBR, if its not I make it 320 kbps CBR haha
Why not Ogg Vorbis? You can go up to 500kbps VBR.
Sometimes a Vorbis 360kbps VBR can take up less space than a MP3 320kbps CBR.
MP3 is outdated as fuck.
Constant at the same bitrate is strictly inferior to variable bitrate, and as others have said there are better formats now.
The only reason why constant bitrate was used in the first place is because that was a lot easier to produce hardware for. with variable rate there is a lot more going on, but also better sounding.
And for fucks sake - if you would actually care about the quality you would simply use the FLAC or whatever directly. storage is so cheap it is just insane to not use it.
Look at Opus, the successor/replacement, basically get a 192Kbps MP3 at about 128Kbps (no, you can't really hear any difference above 192Kbps except for very few songs like classical concerts with a multitude of instruments, then just up Opus to 192Kbps and it's about equivalent).
16:05 is that display not just a limitation of the band height? What happens if you reduce the volume? Does it still look similar or does the dynamic range 'return'? IOW if the display only shows up to 10 but the music goes to 15 you would not see the 10 to 15 range even though it is there. Just wondering.
So much availability of knowledge, you explained it so good - thank you.
The advent of Brick wall compression in the early nineties is to blame ... As a musician and a producer myself, loud is good but if everything is head butting the limiter, you start to lose a lot of detail.
I didn't know anything about all this but I stopped buying iTunes music about 10 years ago because it sounded like crap. Went back to buying second hand CDs and ripping them myself for my iPod. At home, I never used anything else than vinyl. Now I know why.
Mathead gotta be careful about ripping music from cds if you're using iTunes. I've had them update my ripped music with shity versions of the same recording when syncing.
Listen only to vinyl at home... it is ironic isn't it that many vinyl pressings sound better than CDs even though it is an inferior format for fidelity. The reason is that vinyl cannot handle the hypercompression that is done with modern digital music as it would cause mistracking, if it didn't burn out the cutting head when making the record in the first place. A well mastered CD easily sounds better than vinyl, but they are hard to come by.
Question! Is the _Shout At The Devil_ CD audio from a 80's released cd? Also curious about your copy of _Holy Diver_ by Dio, as I own a CD reissue from 1987. I have a _Pork Soda_ by Primus from 2005 that bears excellent dynamic range and no unnecessary distortion.
Edit: I have a _Master of Puppets_ (from 2013) that's so damn loud, I get a small headache before "Battery" ends!
Ya know I've noticed this a lot recently. It's like everything I listen to is always brick walled.
I think the first time I like consciously recognized it, I was playing music in my car, and switched from a newer song to some good ole Led Zeppelin. I noticed the song was like soooo much quieter, but then when I turned up the radio, it sounded so much clearer I didn't mind at all
Awe yes! Someone else who is fully aware of the shift in the cd becoming totally bastardized into this whole other medium...no dynamics...no timbre in the instruments and showcasing a shrill and dull sound. Yup. We are in a bad time. 80's was the best. I only buy music CDs made originally or pressed in the 80's up to the early 90's.
I know and feel your pain! 😯
198 bitrate? 92 bitrate? Why aren't either of those numbers divisible by 8? Why aren't they even actual bitrates?
96, not 92
You dont have to use cbr - use abr and fix that to 92 or 198 - other option for headroom to get rid of compression-tint is use vbr 32 low to 128 (96 prefered) ( not really but a lot of bass is gone )- and now it will start cutting into the music getting rid of compression - anyway used this method around 2005-2009 with mp3.
This is the first time someone's explained a reason for choosing vinyl over digital that I can understand and agree with. Thank you.
Oops, I always do this "normalize maximum amplitude to 1" when working with audio files in Audacity. I do that because it makes the loudness of all my songs kinda be on a similar level. But I should not lose any information by doing that, right?
iTunes does not use 92 kbps, it uses 256 kbps with variable bit rate up to 320
then they stepped it up from years ago
Additionally, it is using 256 kbps AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, made by the same group that invented mp3). AAC is more efficient at storing information than mp3's and a 256 kbps AAC translates to comparable or superior compression than a 320 mp3. Especially if the mp3 is compressed using LAME as the encoder; which adds a shelf at 16 kHz and a hard ceiling at 20 kHz. This can be seen using spectral analysis programs such as Spek.
lol
Additionally, iTunes more and more offers "Mastered for iTunes" versions of songs which are usually quieter than the CD masters to avoid distortion caused by the data loss of the AAC compression.
iTunes uses a constant bitrate of 256kbps, not variable.
The ironic thing about the loudness wars is the inability to be able to listen to the affected music loudly. Optimally compressed music can have it's volume cranked up with comfort and ease to a louder degree than ridiculously over-compressed music, which can only be listened to comfortably at low volumes.... that's if its listenable at all.
+Jaydee OldBoy
I don't feel like the volume is ever comfortable. I find myself constantly switching the volume because some parts sound to loud and some to soft.
Jaydee OldBoy its*
Jaydee OldBoy it's*
PauLtus B throw your music in a limiter and crank the gain and lower the peak so it all sounds same.
Thanks for your contribution! ... The sad thing is that many people do not even hear this!
Greetings from Vienna / Austria,
Hans
Great video, I use Foobar 2000 V1.3.17 how have you managed to customise your layout and how did you get the audio wave window?
Listen Pink Floyd all my life and I say: 2011 Remaster of Pink Floyd albums - sounds way better, than originals. J.M. Jarre create new master recording of his Oxygene album and it's sounds amazingly great than original record. Carpenter Brut creates his tracks with that big level of loudness. Is Carpenter Brut doesen't understend how to create music?)) Just change scale with ctrl and you will see the peaks of the signal in that kind of loud records. I don't want heard a background noises of the original old record from the 1970, I just want to heard this music as it was planned.
Sorry for my bad english))
80's? the loudness wars started in the 50's, record companies made 'hotter cuts' because they wanted their records to sound better than the other records in a jukebox.
This explains a lot. I just installed a very high end sound system into my truck and it is tuned for modern music. When I play rips from old CDs, I always have to turn up the system because it doesn't sound as loud as the modern music. I had to make a special presets for the various types and years of music I own. Is there a way to remaster the new music down to earlier music? Say GNR Appetite album standards?
Good Explanation. I knew about this, but it's hard to explain to people who don't understand music
The crazy train didn't change anything at all, I suspect it was actually the same file (check 8:37).
Eduardo haha yes
Eduardo Yup.
I saw it too.
seems like the same but i think it's his fault. I listened to both the normal version and the remastered one and i could hear a difference
I am glad I wasn't the only one who saw it - I was gonna be kickin myself because I didnt awnna be the guy who said nothing changed...
It's called "Brickwalling" a perfect example of this was the very 1st version of The Beatles "1" CD and Vinyl editions. The guy who remastered the songs for that 1st version just compressed the shit out of those Beatles songs. It's the worst to listen to of The Beatles albums.
Yep, when vinyl was on the way out and CD's were brand new in the late 80's and early 90's this is where all of those wonderful sounding LP were tossed or sold for peanuts and the CD's became the place to take all of those recordings and transfer them by making them LOUD using compression by the many record companies. The average listener and buyer had no idea at first for the longest time that the music they were buying was brickwalled to the max like your Pink Floyd CD shows. The companies also would than slap on a label to sell yet another CD of a Classic vinyl LP buy calling it "Remastered" at the time too. This went on for years and music still does get put out this way no matter what format be it digital or some sort of newly remastered stuff calling it digital to analog or some other nonsense. The best thing to do is get your favorite old LP's and get a good turntable and rig and just needledrop the LP's and then transfer the WAV file to a blank CD. Oh, and don't forget to denoise or hand declick any pops or noise from the vinyl transfer before you make your CD's. It's the best way other than to own all the original vinyl. : -)
now I see what with all of those hipsters saying vinyls are superior and sound better. It's simply a flaw in the modern recoding industry
Appius - nope, modern vinyls are way worse than the old vinalys, and even the old ones can not compare to a CD.
And add to that that they nearly always come from the same mastering, so the vinyl has all the same problems and then on top of that the shortcomings of analog. It is just morons throwing money out the window.
ABaumstumpf just because you don't understand or appreciate something that does not mean you can call morons people who do. How can you say vinyls can't compare to cds? Digital is way more practical, but come on Cds are lower quality by definition as at the moment you turn audio from analog to digital you cannot keep the full waveform of the sound, but just an approximation of it. Of course vinyls lose part of their meaning if the audio is recorded and edited digitally and only afterwards turned back to analog, but if the whole process happens analogically as it did with older records, it will have better quality. So yeah modern ones are not the same cause most of the ediding happens digitally,but still they can physically store more data than a cd, and they have a warmer sound which some people like.
Appius Tuditanus new records can also suffer from the loudness war.
Subscribed. Great video.
May I add - I collect vinyl records and most modern stuff I've bought is still peaky and too loud. Usually not "as" bad as FLAC, but noticeable when you have an awesome pair of reference headphones.
Buying on vinyl is really making the best of a crappy situation. It's not perfect, but better.
Just passing by, great video my friend, i have a tons of music in my drive but in the end i invested in a good records player and some good LPs!!!
While you're about ten years late on this topic, I do thank you for teaching and explaining this for others.
I think there are far worse examples than what you showed. One example is The Rolling Stone's album Sticky Fingers. The original and most recent albums are almost two entirely different albums in terms of how they are produced.
The record industry is killing itself. I too have stopped buying albums because there is no quality control in terms of audio quality.
Hi Eric. I make music and I have to learn about mastering too. What you are saying in your video is misleading. First I can't agree music recorded now is worst quality than in the 80s...it's the other way round. Now music is a lot better quality. Second, you are using the term 'compression' in two different meanings. One is to compress bitrate and the other is compressing in mastering process. This are two different things. Compressing in mastering brings quieter parts up and louder down and is affecting the dynamism not the quality of the record. Compressing audio files (bitrate) is removing range of frequencies that human ear is less sensitive too and that indeed is lowering the quality of the record. So in other words, record with a more green range (you claim is better) can be a shit quality and the one with all green from the top to bottom (you claim is shit) can be a good quality. Compression in both meanings are affecting 'natural' sound...but there is nothing like 'natural' in recording anyway as records are going through sets of amps, mixers, mics and effects... if you wish to hear a natural music you need go to classical music concert where there is no single microphone used.
Sinneth: Please don't touch any music you kid, you know nothing. CD from 1990 has absolutely better sound than todays CDs. If sou don't hear it, it's your problem. We have much much better equipment today but loudness war. :-/ Try to listen some classic music, there is no loudness war, that is real sound. I hope one day other styles will sound same like classic music. I looking for old CDs, best sound is from 1988 - 1992, after 1992 it's shit, before 1988 it's shit too because bad quality recording. 1991 is the best. I don't lisen music in my home because loudness war, it's very boring music without dynamic. If you are recording music, you shoud thinkink about it because I want spend my money for music but I can't because people like you destroying it.
telling him to not touch any music. If he isn't ''touching'' any music how is he going to learn to make better quality stuff. btw no one uses CDs anymore old man, We got all the music we need on spotify, Soundcloud and other platforms.
That is all I have to say now good day.
Sorry, dynamic compression is useful, if music is played on radio but it is terrible if you want to hear music at home or on headphones. I’m not in Metal. I like jazz, classical music and progressive rock and I think it is cruel what is done with the dynamic compression since the late nineties.
I remember the first digital recordings coming in the 80s - all audiofiles was on them and told this is shit on vinyl , same with studiomicrophones - new highend microphones from Japan took over the market - audiophiles this is shit - I remember ABBA soundengineer said something about them going back to old 50's microphones - apperently the voices came out better.
Sinneth Soul 80’s stuff was better. And you said “worst” when you meant to say “worse”.
I love the way you explain stuff
Does this apply to sample based music? Or live recording only.
You did it. You win. Congrats, you've cut yourself off from hearing a ton of new music. First off you clearly don't know the difference between data compression, and audio compression.
Also you're saying that having more dynamics is objectively better for all music, which is most definitely subjective, and I'd argue not the case.
Also, any clipping you are seeing or hearing is coming from equipment on your end; major record labels fund a mastering process that more than ensures their product doesn't clip. You prove my point when you say you'll listen to the LP if they put one out; that LP would have the EXACT same dynamics as the digital version. They put modern EDM on vinyl, which has even less dynamics. What pushes the needle out of a groove is loud low frequencies especially panned to either side of a stereo track, not a lack of dynamics or sheer amplitude.
The loudness war doesn't have to do with sample rates at all.
Also the only way to have songs sound even remotely listenable when they are mastered to be that loud (I agree, sometimes, too loud) is to pay intense attention to preserving real sounding dynamics while mixing.
You saying artists have no say in how a mastered song comes out is only about half correct, and in which cases the artist usually doesn't have the ear (or time/technical skill) that is necessary for making the ultra fine adjustments to dynamics and timbre that shape a track to sound real and musical while (hopefully) appropriately maximizing loudness.
Always rock on, always listen to whatever you want, but nothing is going to get better by spreading an ill-advised negative opinion about such a vast body of work.
Finally someone who makes sense here
I use yamaha hs7s on isolator pads. I also am graduating from college with an audio production degree, and have been constantly training my ears since 2013.
Listen by ear as opposed to listening by...? I love the huge in your face sound of a lot of heavily compressed recent music. I also love more dynamic music like tunes before the late 80s. The Doors wouldn't be The Doors if they were mixed and mastered like EDM, and vice versa. The dynamics should fit the musical context of the song. That doesn't always happen, but it doesn't mean less compression is better.
Thank you! I have nothing more to say.
"Also, any clipping you are seeing or hearing is coming from equipment on your end; major record labels fund a mastering process that more than ensures their product doesn't clip. " That is the biggest crosh of complete bullshit I have read about "the loudness war" in quite some time. Lmfao. You are absolutely clueless. Tons, and tons, and TONS of albums have very severe clipping.
80k views for a bunch of misinformation, wow
Audiophools. Oh well. Money.
alecman95 you mean information you don’t agree with? Isn’t that the same as fake news? Have you heard of the first amendment? Obviously you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be here posting your opinion.
I agree with mostly everything.. but '192kbps is pretty much lossless...' - I'm seriously no audiophile, I think 192kbps is just fine for anything, but 192kbps *MP3* is not what I'd call lossless.
c0ldc0ne but would you be able to tell by blind test which one is brick walled. Your ears are not as reliable as your eyes sir.
Lol you won't hear any difference between 192kkbps and 320kps.
Love this video man! I’ve been aware of the loudness wars and it concerns me because I am soon to embark on an audio system upgrade but what’s the point if all the music I will buy will sound like shit?
Question for you, when it comes to vinyl, is it “defeating the purpose” to buy a record cut from a digital master vs an analog master?
I am neither in to metal nor am I interested in wave form analytics nor am I from the US. However, this video hit me hard just by coincidence and I found it very interesting and enlightening to see! I am really surprised that music industry destroys music with their loudness tweaks. Thanks for the video.
FLAC is not a "carbon copy" of a CD, that would be a .wav file. FLAC is a compressed file that uses a lossless compression.
Apple never lowered the bit rate to save server space, you're making this up.
Remastered music that was originally recorded on analog tape often goes through a process of "normalization" in which the wave file is peaked to max, but the dynamic range is NOT altered.
You also seem to be confusing _audio compression_ with _file compression_ which are two very different things.
Audio compression used to pack as much sound as possible on a track, to make that track seem louder didn't really happen until after 2000. Almost all industry recorded music seems to have been affected, even causing Metallica fans to complain, and demand Metallica release a better version.
You're a hack that doesn't seem to know any more then the average Best buy employee.
good stuff mate! I always preferred a fixed192-320 bit rate over a variable bit rate, I have a pretty healthy Pioneer home stereo and can hear the lower end of variable bit rates, it's a shame what is being done to well recorded music these days. good video!
Personally get everything I can on FLAC, I personally find anything below 256 or so on MP3 already starts to taper off in quality so I don't bother with compressing them at all any more, the overall sizes are around 3x larger but it's basically irrelevant with how cheap hard drives are these days.
192 constant bitrate is absolutely terrible. V0 is the perfect format for everyday-listening. FLAC for archiving.
Ranndy, then you should go see a doctor and get your ears checked.
For a given bitrate variable encoding sounds better.
Why? cause not all parts of the song are equal. some contain more information then others and can not be compressed that much. With fixed bitrate that is the first thing to get distorted. With variable the whole song get an equal amount of degradation - in total less than with fixed and no extreme mushy parts either.
I have Pioneer as well, IK its fucked up less then 192k xD
ABaumstumpf It's a lot about how good the encoder does the job, same bitrates can sound shitty or good. At least back when I was actually having music on my PC it drove me nuts before I figured it out because somebody gave me the tip
I figured this out years ago with television. Like the commercials were way louder than the actual program, so loud that you had to turn it down. Then the TV programs started to turn themselves up louder too.
Great video. Very informative. Rock on, dude.
Its sausage-fatner confirmed
literally the best plugin
music without dynamics is just noise :-)
But dynamics also cannot be heard with earphones, so I guess that's why they went with this.
Well.. I've enjoy listening noise if so
not if the mastering has crushed it because the dynamics are not there anymore.
Courthorse ??????
Noise is great. Don't be so provincial.
Could you make a video on how you organize your music library. It looks so clean in this video.
Can you tell me where to buy that shirt you have on in this video? It's pretty awesome!!
Can't compress my cat videos
mr nippy nelson You have a cute cat
IMO all the bands on rock radio sound the same . There is no clarity in their instruments . The whole illegal download gave way to people accepting shitty sounding mixes . Thanks for making this video and hopefully it motivates music lovers to invest in their music . Vinyl record collecting is not just a fucking hipster thing . It's about the fucking sound !! Great video , EC !!!!
J-man Rokit lol you've been listening to the wrong bands then
+J-Man Rokit
You need to know that radio stations compress themselves anyway.
J-man Rokit all radio bands sound the same period. Stop listening to the radio
Interesting. I like hifi music too. I have some questions:
1. What is the required memory, on the average, for flac coding an LP?
2. What is the required memory after your VBR compression to a given LP song vs. that of the same itunes song?
3. Why do you keep coding LP's which have a limited age instead of coding CD's?
Thanks!
How do you get those waveforms to show in foobar?
As an audio engineer I never try to master anything over -6 lufs as its the best mix on quality and loudness. Different genres need different mastering requirements, Rock and Jazz and more acoustic stuff needs a softer master, but Dubstep and Electro are supposed to be redlined to hell, if that makes since.
And in the pop genre nowdays a lot of the songs are a mix bewteen electronic and regular poppy stuff and so its mixed so hot. A lot of the "poppy" modern rock is like this too and i cant stand it..
What kind of electro are you talking about?
I dunno... That might be because some "friends" don't know much about music or are used to hearing loud music.
I haven't done anything with music in a long time, but I remember this being my chief complaint when reviewing tracks. It's too loud. Try to get more SOUND out of the mix, not more noise.
My arguement against this rant: Claiming that something hitting the "red" is "peaking" and "clipping" when it is under the 0db ceiling is just plain, not accurate. Listening to modern music in a good car audio system should not sound distorted, at all. The entire point of intelligent use of compression is to reduce the harshness of the peaks and increase the volume of the actual desired sound. Is there a such thing as OVER-compression? Absolutely! ...but judging music solely on waveform is like trying to judge a photo's artistic integrity or clarity on a histogram. Both have their use, but this rant seems a little over the top and you aren't even playing the audio back for comparison to make your point. Compressed, modern remastered albums sound better at lower amp volume and should, if done correctly, sound tighter. I wouldn't disagree that dynamics and depth are lowered by compressing the sound but you are just trading said depth for tightness and clarity at lower amp volumes. Plenty of sound engineers are aware of the trade off and the digital technology lets them measure this very precisely. Most remasters are done by master engineers who bring up the root volume, lower the peaks and make sure the dynamics closely resemble the original recording. Most of these loudness-war rants are just pretty over-exaggerated and fairly inaccurate, imho.
good argument, but i don't think it is over-exaggerated. its preference and i think people like him just prefer music with its originally intended dynamic range. not compromised to sound 'better' on the radio or $20 boombox.
Hard limiting is sometimes referred to as also being clipping, depending on who you ask, because the effect on the sound can be nearly identical. This depends on the hardware you play it back on. Some equipment will overdrive from a clipped signal and start clicking, buzzing or popping, while others will avoid it by clamping the signal to its maximum value, which would produce the same effect as a hard limit to -0dB.
Additionally there are other factors that make the practice of limiting with minimal headroom pretty bad. Some hardware is not precise enough to handle a near constant super-high amplitude signal, there can be minor fluctuations that cause actual clipping because there is so little headroom. Lossy audio formats are also known to not perfectly preserve the amplitude, so it can be a hassle if you want to quickly transcode a .flac or .wav into .aac or .mp3, if those source files lack a tiny bit of headroom. In fact this is even a problem with some files you get directly from stores, where the lossless formats are typically fine but the lossy formats absolutely do peak to -0dB.
That was my only nitpick. I absolutely agree that it's not the look of the waveform that matters, it's how it sounds, and the added minimum amplitude can help a great deal when listening on something like cheap headphones driven by a phone. Also, a highly compressed dynamic range can be an artistic tool in itself, it can sound good when used properly, though that is very rarely the case when the goal is just to drive up volume.
Yeah but arguably a master sound engineer... like one hired to remaster an extremely popular studio album isn't going to be Joe Schmoe in his basement studio trying to measure this out. Arguing that sound clips on different hardware means you're playing music on crappy hardware. That isn't a real thing. Hard limiting is not ever referred to as "clipping" by anyone using correct nomenclature. Clipping is when you surpass the signal level. A hard limited track is a destroyed track but that doesn't mean it is clipping. Modern albums are not just compressed to sound good on a $20 boombox either. The sound is more full on studio monitors. It is about adding power to the final mix... this whole argument is to me acting like mixing and mastering aren't two different things. I agree this is subjective and a matter of taste but saying all this stuff about modern mixing removes dynamics and makes the sound distorted and worse is just pretty misguided imho.
I'm with you on most everything but playing the actual audio would be pointless since we are all listening to it through CZcams.
They still have to kill transients in order to have room to raise the overall volume up. That makes a) dymamics to be lost forever b) this kind of compression in mixing or even worse in mastering makes music muddier especially in higher volumes. So when you have to use a limiter this means your ll be missing half of some instrument frequencies just because you were greedy in mixing. In other words, mud
Clever and clear ! Thanks !! On French TV new movies are processed the same for audio, and then we understand less and less what is said, this seems to come from what you show :-(
Now I know why in the napster era I could never make a playlist with one volume, apparently some files were remasters and some were mixed for LP's.
At the beginning of your video, you go on and on about FLAC (LOSSLESS) and how great it is and how it is a carbon copy of the CD, but yet you load MP3 (lossy) for your examples. What gives?
I am not deny that the recording industry has lost their ways with dynamic range, because I agree with you on that. To them, louder = better. To us, dynamic range = better. Could you imagine Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody if it were mastered today? Ugh!
Very good video. I'm glad someone else has proof of how stupid the loudness wars are.
Good video. I really enjoyed it. Tool is recording their new album completely old school. From their instruments to a old school sound board to reel to reel tape and they are not going to allow it on digital download. I'm pumped!
Good job showing some facts and explaining some details in a way people with some sense should relate to,
Good job judging music by how it looks on a spectrometer. Not every album is Death Magnetic, you know? There are tons of great sounding productions that are compressed like hell and still sound great.
Nobodys hearing were harmed by a metal album called Death Magnetic.
I compressed all my songs the other year down to 64bpm .i also found all equalizers always sounds clearer when all are set to zero. + or - both lowers sound quality
This is so weird, first I've ever heard of this issue. Great work
I'ts gotten worse bro
Ngl but this seems like an extremely trivial thing to get this angry about
nope
Yeah, that would be the general consensus for people who don't appreciate music. Seriously, you must not be paying attention to how bad a lot of music sounds nowadays. Within saying that though, EDM music sounds fine with less dynamics. So if you're a pop/EDM listener mainly then you're not going to hear what we're hearing.
Okay, you know that episode of south park where all the kids are listening to the music and think it's really good, but parents listen to it and it sounds like literal shit?
That's a great example of how music without dynamics sounds like to people who know better.
On a good audio system or even decent headphones you can hear how badly most music is produced now'days, like almost any other item, you wouldnt spend your money on something that has issues, no use to you, or was just made lazily/unprofessionally.
Exactly HOAGIE, you're not going to hear the problem as much on phone speakers/ cheap bluetooth speakers.
that feeling when you look at the 2010 "remaster" of even in the quietest moments by supertramp and half the song is PEAKING
Does this mainly apply to heavy metal? Or to other forms?
one word.... WAV files
dont matter
du Bb ?
No reason to use .wav when .flac gives you the exact same thing while not taking up insane amounts of space.
That is actually 2 words.
I have another word for you: >600MB per album.
That's two words
Disliked because the intro was WAY too long
KanadonMuhedad find something worth while to complain about
Nigga you can skip it you don’t need to dislike
So lame
Short attention span much? Your kind is ruining CZcams
LMAO!
Totally agree... Speaking out as a musician, there's nothing much you can change about that other than releasing vinyl... Too bad I spend way too much on guitars to buy either a turntable or music on vinyl...
I found this video just now. I'm not a big heavy metal fan, but I've noticed this on other types of music, especially if the music originally had a lot of dynamic range.