The death of high fidelity

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this "news" just keeps coming back over and over again ... i would rather slit my wrists than read about it again

i think i saw this loudness war come up on digg.com twice in just the last month or two ... and its been coming up for years

if you can understand why the speed limit is 55mph even though your car can do 150 then you should be able to understand why they leave maybe 30 decibels of dynamic range on recordings even though your system can do 120.

people who are too cheap to fix the brakes on their car, replace worn tires, broken shocks or pay for gas also drive on the same road as you do ... at 30mph. people who are too cheap to replace the 99 cent earbuds on their ipod also listen to the same music that you do.

AND THEY MUST ALL BE PLEASED.

by the way if you think a person cannot be too cheap to fix the brakes on his car you would be surprised ... i know some personally whose solution to broken brakes is to drive slower ...
 
To me the saddest part of the article was the following Quote:

"You can make anyone sound professional," says Mitchell Froom, a producer who's worked with Elvis Costello and Los Lobos, among others. "But the problem is that you have something that's professional, but it's not distinctive. I was talking to a session drummer, and I said, 'When's the last time you could tell who the drummer is?' You can tell Keith Moon or John Bonham, but now they all sound the same."
 
Hifi is long dead, except for the extreme core group of 'philes, whether DIY or buy-the-gadget types. My housemate, who's an accomplished guitarist got an ipod for Xmas and has been madly ripping thousands of songs onto it. Yesterday he told me with total conviction that mp3's sound better than CD's.
 
Here is an idea:

Why not include in The CD release both versions of album: mastered properly and compressed (for ipod listening).
A lot of albums now come with suplemental material (like DVD, etc). So, hi-fi version can be recoded on the DVD at least. Would not take too much space. Production cost would not be much higher I think.
 
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Joined 2008
Irakli said:
Here is an idea:

Why not include in The CD release both versions of album: mastered properly and compressed (for ipod listening).
A lot of albums now come with suplemental material (like DVD, etc). So, hi-fi version can be recoded on the DVD at least. Would not take too much space. Production cost would not be much higher I think.

if you had to master it twice means the added cost could be substantial. plus its only a handful of people who would use that proper version so to include it with every CD would be kinda silly.

maybe they should instead offer 24bit/96khz FLAC properly mastered downloads on the labels site for like $50 per album ...
 
if you had to master it twice means the added cost could be substantial. plus its only a handful of people who would use that proper version so to include it with every CD would be kinda silly.

I thought compression was done as a final step of mastering (first you make a decent master and then you compress it).
But I guess life is more complicated.

Besides, a lot of people will use both versions. I prefer compressed ones everywhere except home listening (car, office, club, etc).
 
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Joined 2008
Irakli said:


I thought compression was done as a final step of mastering (first you make a decent master and then you compress it).
But I guess life is more complicated.

my understanding is that compression is used at various stages in production. so you can compress an individual instrument before mixing them and then compress the entire mix too. then when playing the track on radio you compress the whole thing again before broadcasting etc.

:eek:

actually compression is widely used even as a creative effect so to speak, not only to pack the track onto a medium such as CD or FM radio.

if compression was only a single final step you could easily undo it with a dynamic expander during playback ... but i think compression is just used left and right throughout the entire process
 
vasyachkin said:

my understanding is that compression is used at various stages in production. so you can compress an individual instrument before mixing them and then compress the entire mix too. then when playing the track on radio you compress the whole thing again before broadcasting etc.


One of my daughters bands did a recording of a song she had written, that was intended for use on a TV programme - they had filmed them playing it live, but wanted a studio recording as well.

They did the studio recording, and mastered down to two seperate tracks on the CD - one was normal CD dynamic range, and the other they mastered compressed for TV/radio broadcasting.

In the event the TV program over ran, and they cut their parts two days before transmission! :bawling:

Still, it was an interesting experience being filmed by a professional team.
 
Compression has existed since the analog days, but it was followed by expanding the music at the listening side. The technique was employed to increase the overall dynamic range. True, it was far from perfect, there were pumping and breathing effects, but if done cautiously, one could gain a few dBs of range.
Some Dolby-ized tapes actually sounded pretty good.

Digital compression, IMHO, has been used mostly to increase the overall loudness.
 
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