Well, That's an interesting discussion. Let me explain...
1) You are indirectly referring to AMPLIFIED bands and bass players (please correct me if I err on this point). If you go to a symphonic orchestra concert, your experience should be ear-opening when the bass players (at least 7...but more like 10 individuals in the orchestra) start playing in unison on a notable bass part that plays strongly on the lowest frequency string (30.8 Hz open "B").
2) Very large or high output direct-radiating portable bass loudspeaker boxes didn't really appear until the mid to late 70s - of a configuration that could play 40-80 Hz strongly enough keep up with the more treble/midrange boxes on stage. The big horn-loaded boxes that could play even lower appeared even later - in the 90s. I remember vividly the advent of Cerwin-Vega "earth shakers" appearing in theaters when the earthquake disaster movie hit the theaters. It seemingly took a number of years for these high-output/sub-50 Hz boxes to penetrate the touring rock music marketplace.
3) Many "concert mixers" that sit in the audience and mix the concerts in real time--at least of that period--didn't really understand the phenomenon known as "seat dip" and didn't arrange the bass bins to be elevated off the stage at a higher location to avoid the seat dip. Until bass boxes appeared with more than enough output that could be suspended, the mixers knew that they could blow their bass boxes very easily so they just turned them down to keep that from happening.
4) Many venues - like arenas and indoor stadiums, have terrible bass acoustics that are not easily mixed/EQed to suit a wide area of the audience watching. Advances in acoustic simulation software nowadays helps these guys place their boxes in better places in order to provide better and smoother coverage.
Chris
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One thing that I haven't said here or early on in the other thread on the "Missing Octave"-- some of the worst type of music for attenuating bass - is actually symphonic and solo instrument (e.g., piano) playing classical music. Most of this recorded music has been attenuated starting at 400-600 Hz and is 6-12 dB down by 100 Hz from those turnover frequencies.
It makes me sick to hear and see why so much of the music that I thought would certainly sound better and have the characteristic linearly decreasing amplitude on log-frequency response plots (i.e., classical music) actually sound very unlike the real on-stage experience. If you remaster any of these recordings, you will hear what I found, and it doesn't make you feel very good when you see it on the screen.
However, listening to the un-mastered recordings with restored bass and extreme treble (often rolled off by the mastering engineers above 10 kHz) EQed back to a live music curve--it's like listening to new recordings, and the music much more engaging, IMHO.
Chris
It makes me sick to hear and see why so much of the music that I thought would certainly sound better and have the characteristic linearly decreasing amplitude on log-frequency response plots (i.e., classical music) actually sound very unlike the real on-stage experience. If you remaster any of these recordings, you will hear what I found, and it doesn't make you feel very good when you see it on the screen.
However, listening to the un-mastered recordings with restored bass and extreme treble (often rolled off by the mastering engineers above 10 kHz) EQed back to a live music curve--it's like listening to new recordings, and the music much more engaging, IMHO.
Chris
Doesn't stop the engineer from being "used" to cutting the bass. Also classical music is dominated by the star violinists, who has heard of classical double bass players, so orchestra politics might be involved
It has to be some sort of twisted reasoning, I'm sure.
Cutting bass on classical discs seems to be epidemic and must be holdover organizational culture from phonograph record days.
The problem is...it's 2015 - a full 32 years after the introduction of digital discs that don't require that "feature" in order to get the music onto the disc.
Cutting bass on classical discs seems to be epidemic and must be holdover organizational culture from phonograph record days.
The problem is...it's 2015 - a full 32 years after the introduction of digital discs that don't require that "feature" in order to get the music onto the disc.
Sourceforge is no longer to be trusted. A couple of days ago, they hijacked the Windows version of the GIMP. The GIMP has left SF a long time ago and the developer was refused access.
SF started distributing the Windows version of the GIMP, wrapped in a crapware installer. After a lot of protests and a lot of publicity, they gave out a statement that it was all a misunderstanding. They also stopped the crapware distribution. They should know better, because they tried the same trick in 2013.
And you should checkout the newest Audacity (2.1.0) because it has a fantastic spectral viewer mode. Makes selecting parts of the audio band real easy.
There certainly are VST plugins out there that will allow similar, but these are (usually) expensive and this fool doesn't always understand them as easily as the one in Audacity.
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The Spectrogram log(f) view at max resolution in 2.1.0 is very useful to see high resolution noise/rumble below 70 Hz and ticks/pops which show up as vertical lines.
If you go to Edit
references:Spectrogram, and put "21" in the frequency gain (dB/dec) input field, it will approximate a 5.5 dB/octave normal decrease in music loudness in the spectrogram colors plot, thus de-emphasizing the lower frequencies to approximate equal loudness for higher frequencies: the lowest frequencies show up much cleaner in the plot. Try it...
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Thanks
I have just tried it now... I'll let you know if I've interpreted the results correctly a little later
(The plot thickens......)
Posts 106 and 108
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/ever...-you-prefer-cd-vinyl-version.html#post4351087
and,
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/ever...-you-prefer-cd-vinyl-version.html#post4351100
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