Petition against Loudness War

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Bas Horneman

Bas Horneman

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Joined 2002
basaudio.wordpress.com/
Thankfully so much music has been made up to now that was decent. A lot of music these days is so compressed it is un-listen-able. And just as much music is not listenable even if it was not compressed. Get me out of here by Esme Denters is a supreme example. I'm sure that song has been compressed to death but aaaaargggghhhh is that ever terrible music.
 
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Roy Low

Member
Joined 2010
Compression !!!!

I am a retired radio broadcast studio manager - all this unacceptable compression is done to make the recordings sound loud on cheap equipment. The transmitter boys are happy too - no tripping on sudden peaks.
Try listening to Ravel's Bolero - the climax is flattened out, which makes a total farce of the work.

Roy Low
 
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ampmade

Member
Joined 2006
There are different problems with excessive compression that tends to appear.
First, you lose the different volume stage of a mix, everything is on the same level. Spatialization is greatly reduced and panning can't do all the job to create a decent and real listening space.
Two, you can lose the real tone of an instrument because of excessive track compression.

Other aspects can be described.

But compression is good in a way to go to a better SNR (when gently used).
Some kind of equilibrium must be found.

Fabrice.
 
M

metalsculptor

Member
Joined 2010
ampmade said:
But compression is good in a way to go to a better SNR (when gently used).
Some kind of equilibrium must be found.

Fabrice.
Click to expand...

Modern formats have little problem with SNR and compression can be applied in the end users signal chain if desired. The problem is that compression is lossy even a well defined compression algorithm like Dolby B has loss when applied to a digital format you get missing codes upon decompression, the only way around that is to increase the resolution of the ADC which gives the system more dynamic range rendering any perceived need to compress at the production stage moot.

I can find classical pieces recorded as MP3's where you have to be near the speaker to hear the quiet passages which shake the house during the load passages, if a lowly 128 kbit MP3 can handle this without SNR problems then it is not going to be a problem with 16 bit PCM (CD format)

Wide dynamic range music is much more fun to listen to and it can be easily compressed by the end user for use in noisy environments.

An example of the fun to be had with dynamic range, Yuan Sha playing Jiao chuang Ye yu with a drum backing plays the whole song as reversed exponential decay both in volume and tempo. If you get tempted to turn up the volume at the start the end gets very interesting
 
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ampmade

Member
Joined 2006
metalsculptor said:
Modern formats have little problem with SNR and compression can be applied in the end users signal chain if desired. The problem is that compression is lossy even a well defined compression algorithm like Dolby B has loss when applied to a digital format you get missing codes upon decompression, the only way around that is to increase the resolution of the ADC which gives the system more dynamic range rendering any perceived need to compress at the production stage moot.

I can find classical pieces recorded as MP3's where you have to be near the speaker to hear the quiet passages which shake the house during the load passages, if a lowly 128 kbit MP3 can handle this without SNR problems then it is not going to be a problem with 16 bit PCM (CD format)

Wide dynamic range music is much more fun to listen to and it can be easily compressed by the end user for use in noisy environments.

An example of the fun to be had with dynamic range, Yuan Sha playing Jiao chuang Ye yu with a drum backing plays the whole song as reversed exponential decay both in volume and tempo. If you get tempted to turn up the volume at the start the end gets very interesting
Click to expand...

Ok metalsculptor, i'm agree with the bad result mp3 can have.
But we must not confused about dynamic level compression and data size compression.
MP3 is data size compression (it also use dynamic level compression but to be able of removing some Least significant bits in data word, some kind of way to compress data but there are others), and the final goal is decrease size of the initial audio file.
As you described it MP3 greatly modify the dynamic range of some music production. The song that contain great level changes will be the more altered by the MP3 compression.
The other that contains minor level changes will be more preserved.
Dolby algorythm is a noise reduction system that combines multiple treatment (noise gating, equalizing(to remove white noise),...).
Finally, dynamic level compression is used in studio to decrease the level between the largest peak in a signal and the little one. After that, the gain of a track or of a mix can be increased and the signal to noise ratio will be improved.
When the dynamic level compressor is used with more gain reduction ratio (the level ratio between the input and the output signal) and lower level threshold detection the effect is more marked. Finally you could transform the tone characteristics of an instrument.

That's why I've said compression must be used to increase the quality of recording but not to transform completely the real sound of an instrument (but in some cases it also sound amazing).

Fabrice.
 
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metalsculptor

Member
Joined 2010
I was only referring to level compression, just that MP3 uses dynamic level compression as one technique to reduce bitrate.

Can you give some examples where there is a S/N ratio problem with modern recording technology? I would have thought 90dB would be enough. My chief objection to using compression at the recording stage is that like any other global signal transform it can easily be implemented by the listener if they desire that sound. I have never heard any live music where I thought that compression would improve it, often with rock bands I would have liked some decompression it gets tiring after a few hours of listening to highly compressed music.

You may be referring to dynamic level compression where the master level is shifted depending in the average music volume at that time, that has problems with response time. I don't see how it can improve the S/N ratio with a digital format provided the signal chain before the D/A and after the A/D converter have noise floors below the LSB level of the digital format.

Transforms on the individual mixing streams are another matter they are traditionally the domain of the recording engineer, unless listeners desire mixing their own music there is no alternative to this.

Mark
 
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