Petition for High Definition Music Downloads.

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Which is sad, because it's impossible to undo. I can use a gentle expander to help some stuff, but it's always so hard to get it set right.

This is because of the extreme ways that limiters have been used. Some mastering engineer have used a lot of limiting, and other not so much. Pick your target....that is how things are on the technical music side of things. Movies are a different animal for sure, there are standards to follow in that area.
 
Last edited:
Soundtrackmixer & Pano said:
Limiters allow you to chop off the waveform ... Which is sad, because it's impossible to undo.
I remember seeing software that supposedly finds those "mesas" and interpolates the missing curve. I haven't used it, though. I've avoided the worst cases and manually fixed the minor problems. Has anyone given this software a good workout? I've seen some CD rips that looked and sounded hopeless.
 
I remember seeing software that supposedly finds those "mesas" and interpolates the missing curve. I haven't used it, though. I've avoided the worst cases and manually fixed the minor problems. Has anyone given this software a good workout? I've seen some CD rips that looked and sounded hopeless.

I personally have never seen this software, but I would imagine it would be difficult to do what you state. It would have to know the exact amplitude before the limiter was used before it could restore it back to the way it was. It would also have to lower the level of the entire track, or it would overload the D/A converters trying to restore the pre-limited volume.
 
It attempts to calculate the "missing geometry" and does lower the level of the rest of the track to do so. I had to lower the overall level when I did it manually. I remember now also seeing it being used by Ron Tipton of TDL in his restoration pages, for instance here.
Maybe not the same situation as was being discussed. Apologies for that detour.
 
It works just like I thought. It would have to lower the overall level, or it would be repeating what was done before.

I think he misuses the word restortation here. He is not really restoring anything, he would have to have the original elements to do that.
Repairing would be an excellent word, since he is fixing what was broken in the recording.
 
look at this nightmare , on my system this just sounds like distortion
 

Attachments

  • loudness wars.jpg
    loudness wars.jpg
    50.7 KB · Views: 106
I agree, stop with the compression already. I have a volume knob. Simple as that.

I owned a recording studio and recorded many bands including my own. I didn't use compression unless it was absolutely necessary. On my own band's recording, there was 0 compression. I still have the original master I did and the finished product that I sent out to have another pair of ears on it. He compressed it. My version sounds way better.
Some musicians aren't good enough to control their dynamics for recording and it makes it very difficult to mix the sound. Hence, some people saying engineers are lazy; And most of them are. Also, it is very hard to isolate and define both bass drum and bass guitar in a recording, since they operate in the same frequency range. I spent most of my time dealing with that than anything else with a recording. Most recordings either have the bass drum or the bass guitar drowning out the other or they have no low end at all.

Also I used monitors that were flat to 20hz or so to make sure lowend content was properly mixed (subwoofer). I have listened to this recording and many others I have done on many different systems (car audio, home audio, PA, etc) and it always sounds the way I mixed it.

Other recordings that I have heard, from so called "professionals", sound considerably different on different systems, even with all that compression.

It seems like engineers just set mics up, hit record, and compress it so much that it doesn't matter how bad it sounds. Besides the fact that compression dramatically reduces high frequencies that you have to boost back into the recording. Also I notice alot of phase problems with recordings now. They just sound horrible all the way around. Very tinny as well, with no harmonics. Why do we have better tech but lower sound quality? Lazy, compression and no talent.

Sorry for the rant.

I only read about 7 pages and had to respond.
 
Member
Joined 2011
Paid Member
It sure seems like a good market to me. Offer higher bitrate downloads, but especially offer better mastering with less dynamic compression. I'd pay for that. Even the "hi-res" downloads I've bought seem to be very dynamically compressed. What's the point?

They are very clever. They have made "regular CDs" sound so bad that people want to pay for "hi-res" music.

Insanity!!! A properly mastered, 16-bit CD will sound so much better than a highly DR compressed "HDTracks" 24/192 file.

Ending the loudness war is all that needs to happen. Nobody needs 24/192.
 
They are very clever. They have made "regular CDs" sound so bad that people want to pay for "hi-res" music.

Insanity!!! A properly mastered, 16-bit CD will sound so much better than a highly DR compressed "HDTracks" 24/192 file.

Ending the loudness war is all that needs to happen. Nobody needs 24/192.

On most you write, I do agree. A properly mastered 16bit cd does absolutely sound better than the regular crap the entertainment industry puts out, no matter the resolution.
I do not agree on your last statement. 16bit does cover most of the dynamic spectrum we are able to hear, but 44.1k is very llimited with regard to our ability of perceiving the time-domain. 96k and 192k fit that ability better.

Back to bits: to be able to reproduce the full 120db range [human ear yeilds more, not without damge] , you'll need about 21 bits data. Indeed, the extra 3bits are not needed, but nice to mask other problems.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.