Mastering Engineer Explains Types of Compression, Effects On Today's Music 382
Stowie101 writes "Today is Dynamic Range Day, which is an event to educate the public about the 'Loudness Wars' that are compressing and harming the quality of today's music. Ian Shepherd, a mastering engineer and founder of Dynamic Range Day, explains why music lovers should avoid MP3 files. 'The one that springs to mind is to avoid MP3, especially if it's 128 kbps. Apple uses a more advanced technology called AAC, but if someone can get lossless files like FLAC that's a better place to start.' Shepherd says it's actually harder to make a good 'lossy' encode of something that has been heavily musically compressed. Very heavy dynamic compression and limiting makes MP3s sound worse, so the loudness wars indirectly make MP3s sound worse."
huh (Score:1, Insightful)
good luck finding the master tracks to even go to lossless. If you're getting your music from a CD, don't waste your time. Record all the music yourself?
MP3 Bad, FLAC Good! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all this.
Problem is where is the support for the alternatives? Hardly any software really supports FLAC at all. I don't use iTunes, but does it support it? I know that Zune does not. Most standalone players don't support it.
Of course, every other technology I use takes advantage of MP3. Asterisk can't use FLAC. Which would be hilarious if it did because the standard codecs are about the worst way to transmit music anyways. A phone call is terrible for quality. Unless you are inside a closed system using HD codecs, forget about it.
I'll pick up and start using FLAC more often when the software and platforms I use actually support it.
It matters to a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a musician for many years, and I have a nice studio set-up so that I can hear music as clear as possible. Yet I have amassed... umm, through various ways thousands of mp3s as well as flacs and oogs. Do I like the quality of lossless files better, yeah. But does that make me want to get on some flac-only crusade and not listen to mp3s? Not at all. Maybe it's because I'm of that age where I remember scratchy records, or pressing a transistor radio against my ear to hear the latest Jackson-5 or Stevie Wonder cut that was playing on the radio. For me it's the notes, melody, rhythm, lyrics that matter, that's the true musical information. From my music collection I have grown in my musical sensibilities immensely. I don't think it would be possible to have the library I have if everything was lossless just from the standpoint of space and perhaps download time.
So of course, lossless is better than lossy by definition, but mp3s still bring me to where I want to me in terms of getting the music the artist wanted to convey.
Re:Trusted Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quality is subjective (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not that bad quality records exist, but that good quality records do not.
Re:Musicians demand loudness (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the engineer is working with musicians.
Re:Musicians demand loudness (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just the musicians, it's the listeners, especially because of so many listening through earphones. If you listen to music with dynamic variations in an open area, a room, or through speakers, you pay more attention to the softer passages. If you listen through headphones, as often as not, you turn it up to have a constant volume in your ears.
Some people say that it started with the Wall of Sound, where everybody wanted that massive effect on everything, regardless of whether it was right for the album or song or not, others say that it started later, with boomboxes, but in any case, we've lost one of the most powerful ways to create musical tension and drama. Now there's pretty much only abrupt changes in tempo, which doesn't work for music where you need a constant beat, or suspensions, which only work for a while before they get too self-indulgent.
Hey! Get off my lawn!
Re:Compression and compression (Score:5, Insightful)
It is unfortunate that the same term is used for two entirely different things. The article does a pretty good job of conflating the two.
Anyway, the loudness war is over. Digital players, as opposed to CD players, now routinely apply SoundCheck (Apple) or ReplayGain to normalize levels from track to track, so mastering a digital track into saturation no longer makes it "louder" than the next track on the player. Most streaming services do the same. The advantage, if there ever was any, is gone.
It's not surprising that there are still some producers who still indulge in mastering at saturated levels. It's also not surprising that RHCP are still turning out such recordings; they were among the worst offenders at the peak of the loudness war, 13 years ago, and they are probably superstitious enough to believe that it still has some benefit.
Re:I'm sure the nice man means well (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is you're not listening to it, but that doesn't mean the difference isn't there, it means you've closed your eyes. Or ears.
Re:10 dB??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Which is why all the car manufacturers should be beaten upside the head with clue bats until every new car built comes with a proper sound system that compensates for volume changes relative to the vehicle's current noise floor. It isn't particularly hard to do....
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:huh (Score:4, Insightful)
I can hear the difference listening to Dave Brubeck on original vinyl vs. modern CD.
Yes, but we're talking mp3 here, nobody's claiming a 256kbps mp3 is as lossy or distorted as vinyl.
It isn't the hardware -- its the FANS ...! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a hardware issue, this is the issue of music fans thinking a CD is low quality if the volume doesn't red line their music player.
As an artist, if you make a recording and your CD/master is lower in volume than the typical commercial tripe people will assume it is of low quality. So you end up taking your CD/master to places like Music Masters where they apply the $50-60,000 compression units, and noise reducers to enhance its "red-line" potential.
This is the way the industry has been since at least 1993, and the only thing that has changed has been the introduction of lossy codecs. Lossy codecs have some interesting effects on their own where they tend to compress a sound, and ruin dynamics. Stuff that might only be a hidden layer on a CD can be very much front and center on an MP3/OGG.
Re:Musicians demand loudness (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, I have to agree with this. I hate having to listen to something at an unreasonably loud volume (for the time/place) just so I can hear the quietest parts, only to have the loudest parts wake everyone in the house, piss off my neighbors, or cause shit to rattle off the shelves (when its not intended).
Its also one of the reasons I prefer DVD rips to actual DVDs. I usually have a fan on in the house so I have to turn the movie up to be able to actually understand the dialog. And if the source of the media has a lot of range, the explosions, gunshots, or whatever startle the crap out of me. Hell, the first time I watched Braveheart on DVD I jumped off the couch during the scene when he set that wooden keep ablaze, just because it was so much louder than any part of the movie up until that point.
If we all had ideal sound systems and listening environments with no ambient noise, then yeah, good dynamic range is awesome, otherwise, let me be able to hear the spoken words over my box fan/car noise/noisy neighbors/nearby road/rain storm/etc without having to subject everyone in the neighborhood to whatever I happen to be listening to at the time.
Re:10 dB??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guessing the amount of volume compensation based on the vehicle's speed is an epic fail if I ever saw one. At highway speeds, there's at least a 6 dB difference (and probably more like 10–12 dB) between the loudest roads I drive on and the quietest roads. At 0 MPH, there is a 0 dB difference (or nearly so). That huge scaling discrepancy from one road to the next would make any speed-based scheme very nearly (if not completely) useless.
There is exactly one way to accurately determine the ambient noise level for compensation purposes: combine a microphone outside the vehicle with a carefully crafted attenuation profile that describes how well the vehicle blocks noise at various frequencies.
Well, I suppose you could have a microphone inside the car and use a reverb model of the car to cancel out the desired sound from each of the car's speakers, but that requires a fair bit more DSP and provides no real benefit over an external mic with an equalizer.... :-)
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
From your quoted article
...are represented by stylus motions of less than an ultraviolet wavelength (1/100,000,000 of a meter)—a dimension approaching the size of a complex organic molecule.
Yep, just relying on a few assumptions:
Vinyl can be cut 3 times more precisely with record presses than Intel can than silicon (32nm, 3.2/100,000,000 of a meter) with multi billion dollar factories.
This movement, after being transferred through you multiple millimetre long stylus, then into the magnetic coil, then through a meter non-zero impedance analogue cable and into your pre-amp, this signal will be stronger than the radiation caused by a star in another galaxy.
There exists a cleaning method that can remove all dust, germs, water drops, micro-organisms from vinyl without putting a 10nm scratch into it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty much a newbie in the audiophile world so, if I may, I have a question...
Does this mean I should go ahead and buy new power outlets?
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is, I'm sure there's all sorts of gunk in a vinyl groove resulting in tiny stylus motions that are theoretically audible...but which weren't put there intentionally.
Whoops.
I grew up with vinyl and always thought it was a ridiculous audio format. Fragile, noisy, screeching high frequency harmonics, static, had to be cleaned every play, degraded, spindle holes always off center, warped, scratched, hum, rumble, wow & flutter, clipped, pure unadulterated shit. To add insult to injury a decent turntable and cartridge cost at least $300 bucks even in the early '80s (probably $600 in 2012 dollars), just to try and make that crap format sound reasonably acceptable.
By the early '80s and the arrival of Dolby C the lowly cassette sounded better in a decent deck, and that's pathetic when you consider cassette was invented as a dictation medium. Unfortunately most pre-recorded tapes were poorly made, and the only thing you had to record from was either FM radio or (you guessed it), f'in vinyl.
Re:huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Typically, when a single person experiences reality in a way that the majority of people don't, we consider them delusional, yes.
If you want to not be considered delusional, pass a double-blind ABX test where A is a direct feed from an analog signal source and B is the same source being run through an A/D and D/A conversion at 44.1/16bit.