Poor sound quality in lots of modern recordings.

[legzr1]

Loudness 'wars', dynamic compression and clipping of the source file.

I understand why it happens (well, apart from clipping from the mastering studio - no real excuse for that is there?) and what sounds 'good' using Bluetooth speakers might not sound so good when played back through a half-decent audio system but is there a solution for removing these nasties during playback? I.e post mastering?

Or is it more audio snake oil?

[legzr1]

varsas said:

Listen to it on Vinyl? Vinyl does seem mastered differently to CD/MP3 (well, of course it is, it has to be) with the result being that the vinyl often sounds better than the CD. Even with what I considered a good CD (Ben Howard 'Every Kingdom') the vinyl is clearer and cleaner. The Lonodon Grammar album and OK Computer sound about the same on both, the only album I have which actually sounds better on CD is 'Writing of Blues and Yellows' by Bille Marten.

I've been fortunate enough to have heard vinyl played back on some really good systems (and an LP12....;)) and it can sound excellent.

But, it's definitely a mastering issue as I'm also 'fortunate' enough to have a few albums from the early 80s onwards and some of it sounds as compressed and limited in bandwidth as the worst of MP3.

I try not to confuse sound quality with music quality - I've some Linn and Naim CDs and hi-res downloads where sound quality is top notch, 'music' quality not so much but that's definitely down to taste.
On the flip side I've a couple of RHCP albums on CD - good music (well, some of it) but absolutely terrible sound quality - acceptable in the car, painful under critical listening back at home.

Now, what prompted this thread - a certain, rather vocal 'member' on here recently had a link in his profile (now deleted when he took the huff ) to software which claimed to removed all the nasties whilst increasing dynamic headroom.

I've asked him a few times to explain how it does this but the question was always avoided until it was suggested starting a new thread.

Well, here it is and here's his chance.

I have no interest in compressed music files so the software didn't really interest me until I spotted the claim that it would work with FLAC files too - now imagine that!
GBs of music files ripped as FLACs onto my NAS played through a variety of DACS including NOS and 192 upsampling all capable of being 'cleansed' by this software.

Great news.

Looking forward to the explanations.

[legzr1]

TonyRPH said:

It's clear that most modern music is mastered to sound optimal on portables and other devices with limited dynamic range.

I have a Logitech Squeezebox radio next to my bed, and wake up to music from my own library every morning, and the heavily compressed stuff sounds the clearest (in that you can hear 'everything') which is what I would expect.

Play those same songs on my HiFi and it's a different story.

When the radio is playing the really good quality stuff, you only hear the loud parts - hence more dynamic range = less information conveyed on a low quality device.

There are various apps available to view the dynamic range of your songs, there is a plugin available for Foobar2000 and a favourite of mine is the Orban Loudness Meter

Here's a pretty poor example as demonstrated by Orban (this is 'Lazy' from 'Re-Machined - A Tribute To Deep Purple s Machine Head')

The opening segment features a solo organ hence the lower volume, but as the song progresses, you can see it's compressed to the max.

Needless to say, this sounds pretty poor on my HiFi...

By way of contrast, the lower image is 'My Way' by Frank Sinatra. You can see th ehuge difference in dynamic range.

EDIT: By compressed I mean the dynamic range is compressed (limited) and not mp3 compression.

Edited by TonyRPH on Wednesday 29th March 19:04

Good post, cheers and an excellent way to visualise what we hear as crap.

This miracle software I'm itching to read about seemed to offer a post-mastering answer to compression and clipped (over 0db) signals.

I'm hoping it's not simply a crap plug-in for yet another basic media player which actually does very little.

[legzr1]

TonyRPH said:

I believe it's the reduction in amplitude that brings about the improvement.

Yes, it seems the 'trick' is to lower the input level encouraging the user to up the volume levels on amp/ pre amp giving an 'increase' in perceived dynamic range.

However, it all looks a little fake to me.

Imagine a program that could leave the signal intact where repair wasn't necessary but reconstruct the clipped, over-driven parts of the signal....



Tomorrow I think I'll dust down my AR eb101 and stick Now 7 on

[legzr1]

TonyRPH said:

After all, once the bits have been removed, the are gone forever...

LordLoveLength said:

The chance of inaudiably removing the effects of the mastering process when it's been by something akin to a Finaliser is pretty much zero.

That seems to be the obvious conclusion

Interesting comments about 'cutting' vinyl.
After years on hifi fora you get to read lots of this sort of stuff from those with hands on experience - some of the most interesting comments came from ex-producers who spends weeks and months creating and mixing a 'perfect' sound just for an (unnamed) artist to insist on 'I want it LOUDER'.

I was aware of the requirement for a deeper cut for decent bass response - I'm wondering if that's the reason that 12" singles make up around 95% of the best sounding records in my (limited) collection.

Strange that, when direct to digital recording has been available for years, sound 'quality' seems to have taken a hammering and those options in Tony's quote don't surprise me one bit.


Still waiting on expert comment from the 'engineer'....

[legzr1]

Globs said:

Stuff

Please, where is the link I asked for?
The link that was in your prolile but you decided to remove.

The link I've asked you for in two separate threads.

Provide that, allow me to read it again and then we can get onto your first post in this thread (which contains some good and interesting stuff as well as a little butt hurt but Im sure we can get over that).

Come on, link please.


For the record, in the 'other' thread you were asked to drop the sweeping statements and condensension based on this little nugget:

Globs said:

Sorry you can't handle that many concepts or statements, there was a lot of info compressed into that post.
I should have dumbed it down. Just go slowly.

Pick out one item you disagree with and I'll explain it for you in terms you should be able to understand.

A few members called you out on the sweeping statements.

Your response?

Globs said:

Some generalisation of brands is required for casual 'what speakers' sorry if I was too sweeping there

So, progress of sorts.



Link please.



Oh, what's this hiding in the text?

http://www.cutestudio.net


Be back later

[legzr1]

TonyRPH said:

The sad simple truth is that if you want quality, then you have to search far and wide, and inevitably pay some handsome price for a Japanese* import.

Sure, SACDs can be good - but then you need DSD capable hardware and, well, it's just a hassle if you want portability.

Likewise with DVD / BluRay - there are some good quality music discs out there - but again my primary interest is stereo.

I have a couple of Eric Clapton's Crossroads DVDs and the audio quality on those is very good, therefore when I bought CDs mastered from the same performances I expected the same quality.

How disappointed I was.

• The Japanese music buying public seem to value good quality music, and evidently the record companies over there seem to realise this.

I jumped aboard in the early days and paid the 'early adopter' price of flaky first-gen players and extremely limited choice in media.

In the end I got fed up with having multiple thousands of pounds worth of SACD and DVD-A players and around 6 discs that I actually listened to. I kept a few DVD-A discs (still playable through DVD players giving DD or DTS soundtracks - decent but not 'high-res'.), sold the SACD player (Shangling 200C with valve output that didn't sound as good as the fixed SS output but it looked nice and glowed in the dark...) and all the SACD discs.
The discs themselves went on eBay amd a couple of hifi fora and I was amazed at the money they fetched - Elton John went to NZ for £80 and a MJ Thriller went for just as much.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though - now we have DACS capable of DSD and DVD-A conversion and software solutions to rip to NAS but I think streaming and downloading of high quality, high resolution and well mastered music is the answer.
Compared to an MP3 from one of the many suppliers they're still relatively expensive but storage and playback of the files costs a fraction of something like the Shanling I mentioned earlier.

I have the Muse album mentioned in an earlier post - it's a 96/24 file and the sound quality is spot on and cost around £6 on offer at HDTracks.
I have a few random files at 176 and 192 but they have to be played through and processed by my AV amp - my 'hifi' DAC won't play them

[legzr1]

Globs said:

telecat said:

DVD-Audio

I've noticed in general that the sound quality is higher on DVDs than CDs, less compression and more ambience.
My theory is that for DVDs they forget to apply 'Loudness War' processing and accidentally give you a decent soundtrack.

I have a few DVDs of live performances and the quality is pretty good on them.

Are you confusing the high-res audio discs (DVD-A) with vanilla DVD?