Sound Quality Vs. Measurements

[tsiros]

i just noticed... he is not advocating it. He merely states the reasons it exists today, as given by others.

original link: here

The so-called lowest common denominator approach to mixing and mastering music boosts all of the softer/quieter passages to be loud all the time. That process obliterates all of the original details, subtleties, and nuances of the instruments and vocalists. Once the mix has been compressed, it can never be uncompressed by the end user.

see? he is not advocating it.

[fas42]

Originally Posted by Wavebourn

Nice to meet you Frank. My name is Anatoliy.

I am not advocating neither dynamic range compression, nor lossy file compression. I just posted a link on a blog of a guy that advocates dynamic range compression. He is a typical audio engineer of the modern era.

Howdy, Anatoliy ...

Following what others have just said, I tried a bit of fancy fiddling just recently, experimenting with trying to uncompress the accelerator flat to the floor material. Mixed results, a lot of the problem is that all sorts of other "clever" processing has been done in the studio, unraveling it all is a major nightmare - is it worth it?

Frank

[bcarso]

Originally Posted by tsiros

[snip]

8: Most music is listened to in the background to accompany some other activity like working, reading exercising, driving, or cooking. When you’re doing something else, uncompressed music’s constantly shifting volume level would be an annoyance.

That's not music, that's barely one step above muzak. Have you ever held a deep, thoughtful, meaningful conversation with a friend while doing the dishes? I thought not. How can you be involved in a meaningful way to the music you hear while you are involved in something else? Frankly i don't give a **** if you want to cater to these people, but don't you dare lump us with them. [snip]

Amen.

When I was still consulting for Harman Multimedia, at one point there was a shared lab space with individual benches. There was a radio and CD player and modest amp and speaklers.

Most of the techs and engineers liked to have music going in the background. I could tolerate it, barely, as it was a significant distraction. But when I was bringing up a prototype I had to insist that it be turned off, which made me decidedly unpopular. I could see them looking at me and thinking "Doesn't he like music??"

Yes. I like music very much, and a wide spectrum of genres at that. When I listen to music, that's the activity.

Now, if there is a truly mindless task (and most tasks that seem such could be the better done being mindful) I can manage, possibly even enjoy something as an accompaniment. But that's a rare event.

I'm reminded of people who believe that they are possessed of the rare ability to multitask. There was the person who told another of this, and said "You know, many times when I talk to you on the telephone, I'm also doing something else". The other: "Yes. I know those times".

[Pano]

Originally Posted by tsiros

see? he is not advocating it.

No, he's not. He's just stating the very real reasons why it is done in commercial music. Most recordings benefit from judicious use of a little compression. And when you have to sell to the vast public - and compete with everyone else who is selling, compression is a tool for being heard.

Purist like us are a tiny minority.

The pendulum is swinging back the other way. A lot of people now realize how bad the compression war has been and want something better. It will take time for the general public to catch up, but it will happen.

Many recordings I hear that audiophiles rave about being so well recorded are heavily produced and use compression in clever and artful ways. I doubt they would get the raves and the sales without it.

[tsiros]

yay! a moderator commented on my post!

i feel important

[Wavebourn]

Originally Posted by fas42

Following what others have just said, I tried a bit of fancy fiddling just recently, experimenting with trying to uncompress the accelerator flat to the floor material. Mixed results, a lot of the problem is that all sorts of other "clever" processing has been done in the studio, unraveling it all is a major nightmare - is it worth it?

Automatic? No. Too many factors to guess during processing. But if recordings contained some pilot channel with information about processing it would definitely help.

[benb]

Originally Posted by SY

Second Law is optional in hobby audio.

In that case, maybe I (and some others) am taking this hobby too seriously!

Originally Posted by dvv

Frankly Wave, his list is full of it. He may be a veteran, but he's doing audio no favores. Let's hope he retires soon.

You'd be hard pressed (LP pun intended) to find commercial recordings that don't go through this, though some (admittedly few thesedays) to a lesser extent than others. Probably 95+ percent of commercial recordings (basically all rock/pop music, accounting for 99-odd percent of sales) goes through some amount of dynamic range compression between the microphone and the recording you buy. Even traditional jazz and classical recordings may have some compression.

Nowadays if you want a recording guaranteed to be free of compression, limiting, EQ, and any other "secrets" of modern music production, you pretty much have to record it yourself.

Originally Posted by dvv

A misunedrstaning - I meant hearing the difference between standard Red Book CD and MP3.

You were quoting a post discussing the difference between FLAC and MP3. FLAC is lossless data compression, and is equivalent to Redbook CD (unless the FLAC file is made from a source other than 16bit/44.1kHz sample rate)

[dvv]

Originally Posted by tsiros

you can? 320kbps? without joint stereo?

I don't know what "joint stereo" is.

And yes, I can, and I believe many others could as well. If you play a bouzuki and/or a guitar, 1 will get you 10 that you could as well, easily.

That said, I must point out that I am speaking about the set of tools as provided by the Nero program, version 8.0; I have no idea how it rates overall, could be one of the worst, or one of the best.

Until now, WMA and such like were of exactly zero interest to me, it's only now that the new car forces me to get into it (well, not literally, I could always fall back on classic CDs) that I have taken any interest at all. And frankly, I am not very concerned about absolute quality, I don't think cars are ideal environments for critical listening of music.

My home system is a different story altogether.

[dvv]

Originally Posted by abraxalito

That is not my meaning for optimal. I agree with Wave, there are a set of criteria and optimal best fulfills that chosen set in totality.

Oh, for the love of God ...

Exactly how is that different from what I said?

How can a product be successful if it has not been optimally made overall? The problem is that both you and Wave take the term "optimally" far too rigidly. In theory, you are right, but in real life, "optimal" by default includes certain compromises, much like chess, you sacrifice the pawn to get the queen.

Ultimately, do check out Leontief's input-output matrices and you will soon see how flexible "optimal" can be in real world terms. It's never perfect as you and Wave seem to think of it.

Any set of any criteria for any product ever made must include its sales results. The only questions is how much of the technical side are you willing to compromise on to improve your sales. To a manufacturer, "optimal" by default means well selling; if it doesn't sell well, no matter how perfect technically it may be, it is suboptimal. He's not in it to make technically perfect product no-one will buy, he's in it to sell as many as he can.

The only time I can go for technically optimal is when I'm doping something for myself, in which case I don't give a hoot how much it will cost.

It seems to me that your business understanding ie somewhat lacking. The purpose of business is not 'to produce profits' but rather, as Drucker says 'to create a customer'. To me, engineering ncompasses 'building the right product' just as much as 'building the product right', but you might consider the former as 'marketing'.

It seems so. The fact that I have a degree in economics, majoring in foreign trade, is obviously of no consequence.

The fact that I have been profesionally engaged in starting up small companies for over 15 years is also obviously irrelevant.

Lastly, also irrelevant is the fact that I have stablished my own company and have been working it since 2000, exporting to 28 countries in the world.

Because here comes an engineer who knows it all better.

As I said before, in my meaning 'optimal' is not a matter of opinion so it does seem we've been talking at crossed purposes. I propose to halt the discussion here

Yes, there seems to be no further point to this discussion.

[dvv]

@benb

Having seen the process of making an LP and a CD several times over, Ben, I realize that it will be compressed to an extent - by how much, and exactly how is what separates what we call a good and a poor recording.

However, I still disagree that compression as such is good, I see it more as a must to a certain degree, but going over that produces a poor sounding recording in my view. Not many music types which are happy with a 3 or 6 dB dynamic "range".

Re: FLAC. I agree, and that's why I was quick to point out that my comment was NOT related to FLAC as compared with Red Book CD, but to MP3 compared to Red Book CD. I have heard FLAC only a few times, and feel I need more personal experience before I can comment on it.

Actually, I'm not even sure it's MP3 I am commenting, I assume the Windows WMA format is a version of MP3. It's the only compressed format I have any hands-on experience with, all of it very recent, as I said, I had no interest in these formats before, and hence no experience with them. May seem odd, but the standarded Red Book CD format was quite enough for me until recently.