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 Now online (1)belb ...and 419 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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For the past 10 or so years, artists have been increasing the overall loudness of pop and rock albums, using ever increasing degrees of compression during mastering, altering the properties of the music being recorded. Quiet sounds and loud sounds are now squashed together, decreasing the recording's dynamic range, raising the average loudness as much as possible. We're looking at the wave forms generated by a number of modern albums. Sound waves should look like what they're called: waves, with sharp peaks and valleys. But the music we're looking at is all peak. It's like looking at a butte or a brick. "These square waves are a very unnatural occurrence," Wofford says. "It sounds wrong to the ear. You can't hear detail." |
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Square waves rule they sound a bit like a flute. |
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Thank you, Waves L1/L2/L3, for this wonderful world of MAXIMUM VOLUME YOU HAVE GIVEN US WHAAAAAAT WHAAAT WAAAS THAAAAAAT I CAAAAANT HEEEEAAAAARRRRRR YYYYOOOOOOUUUUUUUU |
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chris clark likes to compress |
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And tri waves sound like a violin. |
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I think it has to be loud to grab the attention of most people, especially when competing with other loud music on the radio. |
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Read the article - stuff goes through a compressor / limiter as it gets broadcast anyways, so stuff that's already had the shit compressed out of it can sound even worse. You know, I was listening to some of that new Dixie Chicks album and I liked the songs but hell yes it was fatiguing to listen to, it was so fucking loud. I would have bought it otherwise. |
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so this kinda explains why vinyl sounds better than digital recordings... ...there were literal physical limitations to this process when vinyl was the primary recording medium — the music's dynamic range was naturally restricted by the medium itself. During mastering, you could only compress so far; if the sounds were too extreme, the needle would pop out of the groove. |
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Yeaqh but vinyl has all kinds of limitations. The sound has to be passed through an eq called an . Vinyl could sound just as nice or better except its potential for abuse has been, er, abused. |
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I found this today in a "music" track and it's a mystery |
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That's why you have to tape it off the radio. |
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wasn't there some other article about a guy who had compared the latest album of.. depeche mode? or something..? anyway, he compared the vinyl and cd versions of the album in waveform or something and you could tell just from that there were large differences; the cd looked like a solid block while the vinyl looked like a proper song with more quiet parts and drums sticking out of the other stuff at times, etc... |
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...I think I remember that atrticle... |
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what are you getting at there? |
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"Read the article - stuff goes through a compressor / limiter as it gets broadcast anyways, so stuff that's already had the shit compressed out of it can sound even worse. " True, but compressors are not all the same When you can compress in the studio you have much better control on how it is compressed and you don't rely as much on radio station's compressors since their compressors have a much bigger effect on relatively uncompressed material because there's more difference with radio station's compressor-thresholds. |
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what's your point? |
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"what's your point?" point: listeners = impressed by loud tunes - radio stations --> compress tunes to death-->general compressors not tuned for specific tune by audio expert - studios -->compress for radio using specialised and tuned compressors so radio station's compressor has less effect = best of 2 evils |
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did you read the article? 1: it says that in many cases, a loud album will just turn the listener off it after only ~three songs. This is something that I, while I haven't actively thought about it when listening to cds, believe is true, due to the fact that I find many of my friends cds close to unlistenable (they themselves have also gotten more into mp3s where they just switch relentlessly around never listening to an entire album) 2: it doesn't say that mastering compression is bad, it just says that people have had a tendency, lately, to overcompress their stuff, going against the sound engineers better judgement. 3: the article also says that it isn't necessary to overcompress your album for loudness if you want it to be played a lot on the radio because the radio will apply compression anyway. you also couldn't just say "yeah, we'll take the mastering compression instead and then you radio people can stop compressing" because the reason the radio people do it is that if they play a song with a low volume and then one with a higher volume, they don't have to have a guy sitting at the volume knob turning itup and down for each song so that listeneres won't blow their stereo when the loud song comes on. |
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funny 'cause it's trrue |
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I find many of my friends cds close to unlistenable yeah rright, wherre have i hearrd that one beforre. |
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yes I've read the article 1: you and your friends aren't like most people, most people like music to be very loud otherwise studios wouldn't compress the music so much, they are not stupid. 2: that's just their opinion and apparently not the opinion of most people 3: radio stations don't use the slow volume gain veriety you are describing, they use the pumping compressor variety that destroys dynamics within the song (at least the radio stations here do that) |
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I don't know. where? |
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well, my friends seem to be pretty close to most people what with ipods selling so well and people using itunes and ripping their albums (or buying them through music store) so that they can listen through their entire playlist at "random" and STILL skip most of the tunes it comes up with. I can't stand that adhd music thing, and I mostly buy vinyl and listen to entire albums. record companies also seem to be going more and more towards lots and lots of singles instead of albums these days; that elephunk album by the black eyed peas was almost entirely released as singles and most of them were pretty high up on the charts... I don't know the figures, and I doubt single sales are more profitable than albums as of now, but when you have an album with 12 songs and you sell it for 149 kroner (I can't be bothered to convert it into $, but the figures will show the main point anyway.. 149 is close to normal price for a new album), but then you relese all tracks as singles costing 20 kroner each, you can theoretically have someone pay 12x20 = 240 kroner for what you get in the album. this very very loud mastering may be indicative of a turn towards more and more.. compilations instead of albums where the "albums" are just all the singles collected.. this is also something that can be linked to the mp3 adhd culture. over here.. well, I stopped listening to radio because theres so much crap music all the time, but I know that I can leave my volume knob where it is if I have set it once for a radio channel (except for if you count commercials); it won't suddenly blast you, and you won't have to pump the volume up for the low songs.. they're all equally loud. |
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