The sick thing is, this is a very mild example. There's MUCH MUCH worse out there. I just so happen to own both of these. Check the follow-up video here • Loudness Wars: Is Viny...
As a mastering engineer, I'm fine losing business in favor of preserving art. I lost a lot of money because I won't push records passed where they want to be. You know what though? That's also gained me a lot of business.
@@wado1942 well, although you're proud of passing the buck of responsibility off to someone else, but the fact is that you and others hanging out a shingle saying "mastering engineer" is what caused the problem in the first place. In the past, "mastering engineer" has meant one thing: the art of making an acetate master disk for the mass production of vinyl records. And because vinyl records are an analog medium with certain limitations, sometimes the original program needs to be edited to make it fit within the limitations of the medium. But when Compact Disc came along, there was no such requirement. And for digital files there's no master article at all! Each soundfile is a perfect clone of the others, with _no_ generational loss. The fact is that the need for mastering is dropping as people use less and less physical media, why are there so many "mastering engineers" all the sudden? I have nothing against innovation, creating a market where none existed before, _if that market serves a legitimate need._ But "mastering" where there's no need and no master is present is another story. That's not free market economics, it's fraud. In the past, some people have tried to sell services called "sweetening" to the industry. And while those people didn't misrepresent their services as "mastering" or themselves as "engineers", what they did offer was no different to what could be done in any recording studio, by the recording artists themselves. And artists were rightly suspicious of sweetening because it was being done behind their backs, and it was not a necessary part of production. Let's face facts here. Part of the reason why calling it "mastering" works is because that word does imply that it's a necessary step in record production. But when it's not, it becomes a con. It's not a victimless con either; the music-buying public pays for those unneeded services. Why are you swindling us?
That's a tough thing to do verbally. I've tried to explain to clients why they might want to take a more conservative approach to mastering levels but the only thing that seems to have an impact is demonstrate a "modest" master vs. "hot" right in front of them, at matched playback SPL. They UNIVERSALLY prefer the sound of the modest master but almost universally have me do a "hot" master any way, because they're afraid other people won't like it.
@@wado1942 Who told them to be afraid that other people won't like it? You should start directing your clients here. They'll see a few outliers who prefer the noisy version, but they'll also see that most of us want to hear the song properly.
@@Selrisitai Maybe I should. I have done A/B comparisons with clients in my studio where I compared level-matched "hot" masters to what I prefer. They always say they like my way better but ultimately choose the "hot" version out of fear.
@@wado1942 There are apparently studies that prove that "louder" albums don't sell better. _That_ should sway them, if nothing else. Avenged Sevenfold's album _the Stage_ and Daft Punk's album _Random Access Memory_ were both mastered at a DR score of 8 or more. They both sold well as far as I'm aware, and I never heard nobody complain about the loudness on them.
@@Selrisitai Yeah, it's all a game. It was started by a series of surveys that showed people flipping through radio stations paused slightly longer (like 2-3 seconds) on louder ones.
My band, American Time Machine, has all our material uncompressed, and available on Spotify and such. Sorry for the ad, but I figured you might appreciate it! We just compressed vocals and bass, and left the master track alone.
This original 1986 CD is a full digital recording (one of the first). I don't know why it would ever need to be remastered anyway. On all the remastered CD's it no longer said Full digital recording 1996, 2000 and 2006. So, dose this mean the remaster CD's are second generation analog masters? Which one you think is going to sound the best? One last thing. The remastered versions are compressed for maximum volume. So, I'am with you, remastered doesn't always mean better.
The remasters all had the same basic workflow as the original; mastered from digital mix tapes, through largely analogue equipment to digital. The biggest difference is that the remasters had limiting applied in the digital domain to "make it loud". They could easily have just taken the original masters and clone them to DDP format without losing any quality.
mikimike yes, and the sad part is that most people don't realize how their being deceived about these vinyl records today. The vinyl records today come from digital. The CD's come from digital. Vinyls used to be recorded in analog. CD's used to be a transfer from analog to digital. Both sounded better than they do now.
"Not all vinyl is created equal or clean!" I'm glad you said this because a lot of people seem to automatically think that vinyl is good. Most of it is junk, especially the stuff from the mid/late 80s. The stuff was super thin, often not the best quality plastic and usually cut from a digital source or the lathe was run from a digital delay line. Today, most vinyl is cut from the same over-baked master as the CD to boot. I do admit, though, when you get GOOD vinyl, there's nothing like it!
Some remastered CDs sound much better than the original CD/record, others are worse, and in general CDs from the 80s are worse than the records from the same era. Those CDs were shrill, thin and cold. The Metallica "Death Magnetic" clip that's here on UA-cam is one of the worst brickwallings I've heard, whereas the digital remaster of the Doors' first album from 1999 is one of the best. Listen to "Break on through", especially the verse. It's a work of art.
classical remastered cd sounds better because the music literally needs dynamics to sound good, there was no such thing as compression in the 19th century hahaha
what a disaster... even on 2 quid laptop speakers difference is heartbreaking... I also don;t buy remastered stuff, it's just louder, worse version of originals, what is the point, except the $$$ ??
Great example. The rhythm section drives you along on the early version and the later compressed version it is drowned out with the wall of sound. This isn't about the format or sampling rate of digital. It is about the mastering (marketing) process. Thanks for this great video. (I'll go put on this album now and enjoy!)
There's been plenty of petitions from engineers, producers, musicians and audiophiles all over the world to create a standard for masters like there are for motion picture film and DVD. The record companies pretty well ignore them. The most recent idea I've heard was to put a sticker the crest ratio (peak to RMS level) on the CD. Record companies seem to almost WANT to fail because they continuously refuse to listen to public demands both in production, medium and style.
@krokigrygg Surveys conducted back in the 60s said that louder radio stations held on to their listeners something like 2-3 seconds longer than quiet ones. Of course, radio processors make the loudness of the albums completely irrelevant so it comes down to shuffle mode on iPods. Bands don't want their own song to be less loud than the competition. I don't understand that either because the user's already bought the song by the time it's on their iPod.
Great video. Even you already adjusted the audio level to make them equally as loud but I think the 1986 sounds better than the remastered. The remastered have a very slight clipping. Not much but I can hear it. I noticed that before with several remastered that I bought and I don't like it. There are exceptions though, some remastered are better than the original.
I did some research on the concept of UA-cam doing dynamic compression. It looks like that was something that was introduced and discontinued in 2008. Complaints led UA-cam to re-encode the videos from the original uploaded files to allow the full dynamic range.
@Frungi Agreed, that's why most replay systems have some kind of compressor built into them. You can chose dynamic range if you want good sound or you can choose squashed if you want constant level. I'll maintain, though, that extreme transient limiting does not help in either case. Parallel compression or low threshold, low ratio compression is much more effective for that purpose.
Try listening at a lower volume. Some systems tend to compress the audio as a side effect of not having enough headroom. Lower volume levels don't stress the amp's power supply as much so that may be more revealing.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Thanks for the kind words. I started noticing the shortcomings of CD early, but they could definitely sound better than they do. I'm a fan of SACD and it's a shame the very few albums available in the format are often just converted from PCM sources. I could never get DVD-A disks to play in my DVD-A player. There's so many variations of the format, it's hard to maintain compatibility. Thing is, the consumers wanted to have 4,000 songs in their pocket more than quality.
@whatchannelisthisnow That's a bit of an odd statement because "Money for Nothin'" was recorded to digital, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. The production was designed from the beginning for CD. The funny thing is, music on the old Edison cylinders typically had about a 12-18dB dynamic range. With Vinyl, it was basically the same, but less noise on the medium. Then CD came and albums of the early 80s like this had about a 24dB range. Now on modern CDs (and MP3s), it's about 4dB!
@waterinawell Limiting/clipping harms the quality of the audio regardless of the medium. MP3s are actually much worse and the lower the bit rate, the more harm said treatment does. SACDs are somewhat exempt from the loudness war and in fact, limiting & clipping can't be done in a DSD domain. If they want to digitally slam the levels for SACD, it would first have to be converted to PCM, which degrades the sound, process it and convert back. It does happen though, just not often.
@TheDaedalEVE That's very true. In the 90s, virtually every portable music player & a lot of car stereos had compressors to keep the levels even. The technology has evolved to a point where that can be done very cheaply and much more transparently than back then. It would be my preference that such a feature be built into devices like that so the consumer had a choice. The other thing would be to provide two masters, which is something a lot of my clients are requesting now.
Filters do nothing to restore clipped/compressed audio. It merely causes phase rotation so you can't SEE the effects of it. To date, the closest I've found to being able to fix clipped audio is Izotope RX2. I haven't found any way to fix overly limited audio yet. Believe me, I've tried A LOT of methods & software, including some inventions of my own. Once that life has been lost, it can't be gained back... yet any way.
@foketesz just to chime in to your post... the subjective ear/brain usually hears louder as "better". This is the perception upon initial listening. Compressed music always seems to sound more satisfying at first. (because it's louder)Fatique also sets in very soon, within 5 to 10 minutes! Reality is that compressed music is overall far less satisfying, but "tricks" the listener into thinking it's better. Music is mostly dynamic, so if we want to hear & feel more punch, just turn up the volume
Thanks for explaining. I've heard a couple of my music connoisseurs say their vinyl was better quality than the cd. Here, I can hear the difference via my cell phone alone. I hear the likened absence of a stairwell echo when switched to the remastered, ..kinda like the difference between AM & FM Stereo radio, but not quite as notable here.
Some people do separate mastering jobs for vinyl, but you're right. Almost all modern vinyl releases are every bit as clipped & limited as the CDs. Except there's additional tone shaping & level adjustments required for vinyl making it sound even more distorted. That's why I always try to do some research before choosing to buy anything.
@zerogravity121 No joke, not only are they both CD, the whole album was recorded digitally, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. They remastered it so they could put "Digitally remastered" on the cover and hope people would somehow think it's better.
It depends on how it was done. It can be good or bad. The problem I see is that most vinyl is taken from the same crushed master as the CD. In vinyl, though, limiting/clipping actually force the level to be lower instead of higher like on CD, so you don't even have the "mine's louder than yours" factor.
@LightningCat315 Yeah, a friend loaned it to me and I found it unlistenable, not because the music was bad but because the production is bad. I hope you're remastering it from an unsquashed mix. I'd really like to hear it.
Thanks, this is a really good example of how it effects the quality. Now I have a video I can link to the younger guys out there when I explain to them that their music sounds like crap compared to what it used to be. Without them thinking I'm attacking their music :P
@DIGITALSCREAMS The sad thing about that is that CDs and the current digital formats are actually a better medium, but they are squashed to death in the studio. Digital songs are expected to be listened to on earbuds or in cars. Vinyl records are expected to be listened to in a quiet home by audiophiles. What is sad about that is that the people who care most about sound quality are forced to settle for the limits of 70s technology.
the sad truth is the buyers don't usually have the ear for understanding the huge difference, and are simply drawn in by the words "remastered" on their favorite album. Suckered in by this crappy money hungry music industry that adds no value to the creativity by real artists.
@perqqq People don't want loud, they want consistent. I don't know of anybody who likes the sound of crushed music. What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume and that's caused by the loudness war directly because in the early days of digital recording, -20dBfs was the reference point against 0VU on an analogue meter.
I honestly don't have a good explaination for that. There's usually more bass energy so that's what's causing most of the action in the compressor. Now a few ideas are #1, transients are softened by compression which can be percieved as loss of highs. #2, since the compressor is reacting mostly to the LF levels, like bass drum & so forth, the HF stuff which is already at a lower level becomes obscured. Effects of dynamic distortion is not well-documented yet so there's learning to do still.
@wado1942 I know what you mean. That "headache" you are getting is likely do to your ears becoming fatigued from listening to music that has been overly compressed/limited/brickwalled... so that dynamic range is lost and everything is just LOUD!
Totally agree, i've been in the audiophile community and they have said stay clear of remastered CD's. Its a shame, why do it. Its the insane programming of the industry to say its got to sound loud in your face. Saw your from a comment on mastering. I'm in the mastering process of one of my albums at the moment. Any tips would be great ;). Nathan
Even if the master was made on tape, a VERY small percentage of cutting houses can keep the signal analogue all the way through the process. It requires very rare & expensive tape machines that are made specifically for making vinyl masters because a preview of the audio signal has to feed the lathe computer to cut the groove before the actual signal gets cut into said groove. The standard since the early 80s (starting in the late 70s) has been to use a digital delay to feed the cutter head.
@dubified89 In light of that, two things: 1). Depending on the total compilation on types sound sources & composition design (Synth-dance vs.acoustic-folk) one total method of recording is preferable over another. 2). The type of equipment used for playback is a big deal (DUH!) so one wonders how these Super-Audio CDs do at reproducing. I've heard good so-far, but that just reminds me of what Billy Joel said: There's a new band in-town, but you can't get the sound From a story in a magazine
@slask25 Actually, there was a study conducted a few years ago where different masters of the same song were sent through a common radio processor for a listening test. The input levels between masters varied as much as 10dB but the output was the same on all of them. The only difference was the pre-crushed mixes sounded even more distorted because of the phase rotation + clipping/limiting of the radio processor.
Why do people keep saying they buy vinyl when available to avoid dynamic compression? When it comes to dynamic range it is the master and not the format that makes the difference. Do they routinely use a different master for the vinyl issue and the digital one for recently recorded music? I wouldn't think so. Seriously, I don't know because I don't have any recent music on both formats to compare.
What they do is beef it up with compression for the modern market! They can also use dynamic exciters and a whole load of things that didn't exist back in 1985! There can be problems with digital too, nothing is perfect! Most of the time with albums you hear one persons point of view and that is the man that mixes it! It obviously sounds better in the studio through expensive gear running from the master. LP, CD and whatever are just sound carriers and your own ears decide what's best for you!
Hey, wado1942, I'm a newbie to this way of listening to music, and I've really enjoyed your videos thus far. Theoretically, I understand how the compressor works completely. But I do not understand why overcompression always seems to result in a muddy "underwater" kind of sound. Are the high frequencies always the ones to go first? I mean, apart from dynamic range being sacrificed, it seems like the bass and mid-lows come to the foreground and the sharp highs go down. Is that right?
@wado1942 "People don't want loud... What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume" This. Consistently loud, even at the expense of range, might be preferable in less-than-ideal listening environments (or else you turn up a quiet part to hear it over the background noise, and then your eardrums get blasted a second later), but if you're able to give your full aural attention to the music, range is great.
For the MOST part, remasters done in the late 90's until now have reduced dynamic range. The best thing to do is go to the DR Database (google it). Type in the artist and you will get a comparison of releases for any particular album. You can see which releases have maintained dynamic range. I won't buy an album now without checking it out on the list. Also, you can download the software on that site that allows you to test the dynamic range of audio files you already have.
I didn't notice too much difference in this example except the keyboards/vocals were louder compared to the drums. Did you play them at equal volume (comparing a normalised version 1 to version 2)?
@movieking88 I really want to listen to large Klipsch tower speakers. I think that after listening to those kind of speakers one will no longer consider headphones as the first audiophile choice.
@anupchowdary Simulators are what they say they are. They SIMULATE, not replace. Analogue equipment does have something to do with it. However, most of the difference you hear is from the bands. They PERFORMED their songs, not built them on a computer from scraps. They used less compression and less processing in general as well in those days. They had producers, engineers and musicians that were brought to professional maturity by being taken under a mentor's wing. All that is lost.
@TimpBizkit Old 45 RPM singles are notoriously distorted, but that's the pressing, not the master tape. You're right though, lack of dynamics is nothing new and neither is clipping. Only now is it the rule rather than t he exception though.
Yes there is a difference but is not a big deal. This remaster is not over-processed like many others. It retains most of its dynamics. Also consider the low youtube resolution (360p) and the expectancy bias (when listening with the eyes open)
@dubified89 I dig ya... The other day a lady-friend & I were flippin' through the channels, and we stumbled on the Lady Gaga Fame Monster concert. Now, my friend didn't care for the way Lady Gaga sounded in studio recordings or over the radio... But when she heard Gaga live & "unfiltered"on HBO, she fell in-love with her music. Mind you, this woman has ears that are so sensitive, I've relied on her to say when while setting-up & tuning speakers for her. If that don't say all....
@wado1942 Just think of all those engineers developing things like Dolby B, C and HX Pro for consumer tape decks so we could get a nice dynamic range above the background hiss. Might as well have not bothered! Imagine if back then someone had said 'hey, let's not bother with all this noise reduction crap, let's just cram the entire track into the top few dBs then people can just turn the volume down to get rid of the hiss'. They'd have been laughed out of the room, and quite rightly too!
@kick52 First of all, make sure you listen to this on good speakers or headphones, most PC speakers add tons off issues of their own, as they are cheaply designed. Then listen specifically to the snare drum. Try drumming along with it actually. You'll notice it sounds punchy with the original, and then all of a sudden it sounds like it's somewhere far away. Once you know what to listen for, you'll start to notice all sorts of subtleties missing.
@forgottencitizen Normalization pretty well started and ended in the early 90s. Since then, hard limiting pushes levels to just below the clipping point. However, the loudness war has gotten so ridiculous, limiting alone doesn't do it anymore and major clipping is used on top of hard limiting. New releases are on average of about 7dB hotter than this remaster. Normalization alone does not destroy the waveform like I've shown here. Early-mid 80s, the didn't care about level.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Mastering is defined as assembling and optimizing an album for its destination format. So if they're doing it "the right way" then yes, they'll have two different masters. In reality though, I find it's not very common. Really, even MP3 downloads should come from yet a different master. It's really stupid because the kind of treatment CD masters routinely get really work against the potential quality of even CD, forget about any other format.
@wado1942 Thanks, that idea had been going around my mind for a long time. Yes, isolation booths are a good example of a musical society we have completely forgotten. Can you imagine, way back at the beginning, maybe 400 years ago: the only music you would probably experience, was in church... after a life of no music, imagine the awe-inspiring harmony, rhythm and melody of choirs and booming, resonant church-organs as tall as a cathedral! Music was an event. Now, we have ipods, and wallpaper.
Luckily there are groups like Opeth who have released remasters that sound substantially better. It's nice and refreshing to hear some death metal that isn't compressed to shit cutting out all of the low end
And this is why I haven't bought any music since the mid 90s. Unfortunately the masses think their ipod with crappy little speakers sounds really great. Is this really progress? The peak of fidelity to me was late 80s/early 90s when CD was mainstream and hi fi separates ruled. In those days engineers exploited the dynamic range of CDs to give great sound. now, we may as well be back on cassette tape - it would sound the same!
@thombone You'd be correct there, unfortunately, most vinyl masters these days are copied off of the same masters as CD so they're every bit as distorted. There's exceptions to that though. Some people still know how to master for vinyl.
this one is audible, but it's funny that this is a particularly mild example, whereas the real problem is the brickwall filters being used. If this was the extent of the loudness war (ie, a difference between RMS and peak of about 16-18 dB), I'd be fine with it. But Death Magnetic has a difference between RMS and peak of like 4 dB... That literally is getting close to static (which would have a difference of 0 dB)
People, subject is about compressing modern music and remastered old music. Not about just making it louder. In case you don't get, and it seems some people don't. If you don't know what compression means google it.
That's a rather draconian outlook. What does vinyl bring to the table that a FLAC 24/96 file doesn't? Could it be that it's mastering for a perceived audience that destroys the quality of the music recording, not the delivery format itself?(Outside, of course, an extreme example like a 96kbs stereo mp3, which would of course sound like crap.)
Well that's the thing isn't it? A lot of people are offering 24/96 FLAC, but it gets the same treatment as everything else. What's it worth then? I'd honestly take a well mastered (in my opinion) MP3 over a crushed anything else.
You can remaster anything you want. It just means it's been mastered again, ideally off the mix tapes but that's not always true. You're right though. The thing industries want you to think is "it's new so it must be better". Digital technology has gotten A LOT better since the mid 80s but 90% of the damage was already done in the first conversion to digital so there's this brittle edge to everything and can't remove it no matter what processing you apply.
@DIGITALSCREAMS Don't believe it. Since the mid-70s, most vinyl pressings have used digital delays to feed the actual cutter head while the direct signal feeds the computer to set the groove pitch (the printed signal must be behind the actual groove cutting). Vinyl is great if it's done as an all-analogue (and expensive) process, but even the best pressings are only optimal the first few times you play them. I prefer SACD because it lasts, but even then, most of the sources are PCM digital.
From the beggining, when I was learning about audioelectronics and sound, I was aware about CLIPPING DISTORTION that happens when the signal amplitude in each half cycle goes beyond the knee of characteristics curve of amplifiers or recording media. Those people that remasters today, seems to be deliverately clipping signal peaks, obeing like lambs to fulfill a sort of non-written protocol in use among music producers & record labels to create an unified stylus of commercial (and hateful) music.
@PSUkbit analog doesn't have limitations like digital, it has more range, even cassette tapes that have digital masters have waay more range than the same album on CD
It's sad that you have such expensive speakers but didn't notice that all of the samples were pretty much the same due to UA-cam's auto leveling. I heard it right off the bat. You my friend are the epitome of one who thinks what they want to and looks right past the evidence, then insults and berates those who disagree based on fact.
I see, I missunderstood your statement as stating clipped/crappy mastering would somehow translate better on crappy reproduction systems. But going into more detail, psychoacoustic coding schemes like MP3 are based on reproducing natural sound for natural environments. When you introduce heavy limiting or clipping, the signal no longer fits within natural laws and the CODEC exagerrates those issues because it wasn't designed to handle it.
whats the point in showing the differences between recordings both relesed in cd quality using the youtube quality to play them?:D they are compressed and bitrate reduced a lot:) i suggest listening to those recordings at home in lossess quality, then u realy feel the difference. cheers
they killed it it's good that you matched levels. When compressing, I always compare at unity gain. It's very educational. The jump in level when you push the comp makes you think it's better, and that's not always the case. In fact, good compression settings are hard to achieve (more so than limiters'), so matching levels is a must. Then, when you know you've nailed it, level up as wished.
@krokigrygg The science moves forward. It's the "art" that's backwards. We have the capability of far greater dynamic range than ever, but we're slamming everything into a range narrower than has ever existed. Listen to even 50s music, especially jazz & classical. Great dynamic ranges on all that stuff and no compressors or limiting most of the time.
@trlkly You bring up an interesting point, but the "solution" is not valid. Transients have gone away, which give a sense of clarity and impact, but studies show that macrodynamics haven't changed much. Stuff still gets lost in background noise. If all songs were mastered to a standard level like movies were until a few years ago, everybody could just set the volume and leave it. With this stupid war, the levels are all over the place and there's no clarity so the problem is worse.
@sinborn41214 The real tragedy is when they squash older records (like the Dire Straits) to make them sounds more modern, or whatever. I don't see why marketing people think that it'll sell more if it's louder. It just doesn't add up.
Yeah, they had quite the ordeal tracking down the session tapes. I guess some of them were lost or damaged, so they had to resort to safeties sometimes. On the bright site, the original mixes had a lot of submixing on them from earlier generation tapes. The 5.1 remix used the non-submixed sources as much as possible. Layers of the "old digital" veil is gone from the remix. Another great 5.1 remix is The Who's "Tommy". The bass should be louder, but Pete Townshend & crew did a good job.
@wado1942 "Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era" that is generally true. I meant, and should have said, a music-free life compared to today. I suppose they did play music at times, but they were events. And yes, your 2 points are very correct. I still imagine that listening to church music would have been inspirational, it is no wonder people were so spiritual. I hate this generic, wallpaper music that depends on image instead of sound.
I listen to music. Not a big wiz on the technical aspects. I thought I had permanently damaged my hearing when I got the Hypnotize and Mesmerize albums by System of a Down. Didn't get any better with the latest Metallica release. But this loudness thing, that's it, and I now that that - for good or worse - I can hear that clipping. Even in my mid-thirties.
@dfbhcf The mono remasters really are good. They did minimal processing and that's only in light of the fact that speakers have much wider frequency response than were available in the 1960s. Remember, the mono versions are THE versions. The stereo mixes were just a gimmick. Man, Helter Skelter has all the punch it always wanted.
I've noticed that the studio that does a lot, if not all, of the mastering for HDTracks is Puget Sound and they recently got the DAD AD/DA converters which are now considered by many to be the best sounding high res DACs. a LOT of top studios are using that DAC now. Abbey Roach, a BUNCH of Orchestras, EMI, etc. etc. They have a LOT more dynamic range, better input and output stages, etc.
Hypercompressed music does not allow me to take advantage of my power audio system. My volume knob stays at 9 o'clock. All that dynamic range, lost! The remaster of this album and hundreds of others is shameful.
It really depends on who's doing the remastering and why.I don't know why something already recorded on digital would need it,but in this case it was to add that all so popular way overemphasized Bass sound all the rappers want. Most people in the music marketing business have no taste and no knowledge of music as it is,making something sound worse to make it louder is dumb. I guess it pays to check your sources for cd's.
This war is like Healthy food over fast food :D I Love the non-mastered, it's more soul-full and pleasing. the dynamics in non-master makes the music sound more life. thanks for the video.
+Hope Hurteau Except most vinyl is taken from the same crushed masters as the CDs/MP3s. Vinyl suffers even more from the distortion caused by such treatment.
+Hope Hurteau I'd like to see some of your comparisons. A lot of the vinyl copies people have claimed to be more dynamic was only superficial because of stylus inertia and phase shift from the RIAA filters. Yes, some of them ARE done right and of course, pre-1993ish vinyl will have more dynamic range, but modern, separate masters made directly from the source mixes is not normal in my experience.
Not all remasters are bad, but this example sure is.
If the remaster is done only with the purpose to make it sound louder, it will suck.
@@philosophiaentis5612 facts
You're right.
@@philosophiaentis5612 Making something louder doesn't mean it will suck, clipping and compressing the audio is what causes problems.
Beatles remastered also dosent sound as good, atleast to me. I want to hold your hand is much better live than remastered
As a mastering engineer, I'm fine losing business in favor of preserving art. I lost a lot of money because I won't push records passed where they want to be. You know what though? That's also gained me a lot of business.
What do you think about remasters like carcass heart work full dynamic range edition?
@@hectortorres8188 I'm afraid I haven't heard them.
But that's the problem, people like you taking money for unnecessary and detrimental sweetening.
@@StringerNews1 How so? I said I turned down business where clients wanted me to do detrimental "sweetening".
@@wado1942 well, although you're proud of passing the buck of responsibility off to someone else, but the fact is that you and others hanging out a shingle saying "mastering engineer" is what caused the problem in the first place.
In the past, "mastering engineer" has meant one thing: the art of making an acetate master disk for the mass production of vinyl records. And because vinyl records are an analog medium with certain limitations, sometimes the original program needs to be edited to make it fit within the limitations of the medium. But when Compact Disc came along, there was no such requirement. And for digital files there's no master article at all! Each soundfile is a perfect clone of the others, with _no_ generational loss.
The fact is that the need for mastering is dropping as people use less and less physical media, why are there so many "mastering engineers" all the sudden? I have nothing against innovation, creating a market where none existed before, _if that market serves a legitimate need._ But "mastering" where there's no need and no master is present is another story. That's not free market economics, it's fraud.
In the past, some people have tried to sell services called "sweetening" to the industry. And while those people didn't misrepresent their services as "mastering" or themselves as "engineers", what they did offer was no different to what could be done in any recording studio, by the recording artists themselves. And artists were rightly suspicious of sweetening because it was being done behind their backs, and it was not a necessary part of production.
Let's face facts here. Part of the reason why calling it "mastering" works is because that word does imply that it's a necessary step in record production. But when it's not, it becomes a con. It's not a victimless con either; the music-buying public pays for those unneeded services. Why are you swindling us?
Thanks for this. I was trying to explain to someone how loudness can affect overall tonal quality.
That's a tough thing to do verbally. I've tried to explain to clients why they might want to take a more conservative approach to mastering levels but the only thing that seems to have an impact is demonstrate a "modest" master vs. "hot" right in front of them, at matched playback SPL. They UNIVERSALLY prefer the sound of the modest master but almost universally have me do a "hot" master any way, because they're afraid other people won't like it.
@@wado1942 Who told them to be afraid that other people won't like it? You should start directing your clients here. They'll see a few outliers who prefer the noisy version, but they'll also see that most of us want to hear the song properly.
@@Selrisitai Maybe I should. I have done A/B comparisons with clients in my studio where I compared level-matched "hot" masters to what I prefer. They always say they like my way better but ultimately choose the "hot" version out of fear.
@@wado1942 There are apparently studies that prove that "louder" albums don't sell better. _That_ should sway them, if nothing else.
Avenged Sevenfold's album _the Stage_ and Daft Punk's album _Random Access Memory_ were both mastered at a DR score of 8 or more. They both sold well as far as I'm aware, and I never heard nobody complain about the loudness on them.
@@Selrisitai Yeah, it's all a game. It was started by a series of surveys that showed people flipping through radio stations paused slightly longer (like 2-3 seconds) on louder ones.
If I want it louder I have a volume knob. Stop the #LoudnessWar and give us back our #DynamicRange !
René Wiskow
I hate Loudness on CDs, too!
I shared it on Facebook for my swedish friends. Thanks Martin!
I know but every volume knob has a limit. When your on full blast, your not going to get it as loud as you couldve gotten it.
GuyVelella When you are on full blast and your neighbours have not called the police then your amplifier is to weak.
My band, American Time Machine, has all our material uncompressed, and available on Spotify and such. Sorry for the ad, but I figured you might appreciate it! We just compressed vocals and bass, and left the master track alone.
This original 1986 CD is a full digital recording (one of the first). I don't know why it would ever need to be remastered anyway. On all the remastered CD's it no longer said Full digital recording 1996, 2000 and 2006. So, dose this mean the remaster CD's are second generation analog masters? Which one you think is going to sound the best? One last thing. The remastered versions are compressed for maximum volume. So, I'am with you, remastered doesn't always mean better.
The remasters all had the same basic workflow as the original; mastered from digital mix tapes, through largely analogue equipment to digital. The biggest difference is that the remasters had limiting applied in the digital domain to "make it loud". They could easily have just taken the original masters and clone them to DDP format without losing any quality.
mikimike yes, and the sad part is that most people don't realize how their being deceived about these vinyl records today. The vinyl records today come from digital. The CD's come from digital. Vinyls used to be recorded in analog. CD's used to be a transfer from analog to digital. Both sounded better than they do now.
I have this remastered CD in my collection and it doesn't sound like that. Guess not all remastering is done equally.
@@Smartguy561 Some current albums ARE recorded analog though.
Mr.Sojek, UA-cam sound quality is not up to par with CD quality, actually any song of any genre would sound much better on CD than any UA-cam format
"Not all vinyl is created equal or clean!"
I'm glad you said this because a lot of people seem to automatically think that vinyl is good. Most of it is junk, especially the stuff from the mid/late 80s. The stuff was super thin, often not the best quality plastic and usually cut from a digital source or the lathe was run from a digital delay line. Today, most vinyl is cut from the same over-baked master as the CD to boot. I do admit, though, when you get GOOD vinyl, there's nothing like it!
Exactly, I always find the original versions better because of the greater dynamic range, way more pleasing to listen to :)
Some remastered CDs sound much better than the original CD/record, others are worse, and in general CDs from the 80s are worse than the records from the same era. Those CDs were shrill, thin and cold. The Metallica "Death Magnetic" clip that's here on UA-cam is one of the worst brickwallings I've heard, whereas the digital remaster of the Doors' first album from 1999 is one of the best. Listen to "Break on through", especially the verse. It's a work of art.
classical remastered cd sounds better because the music literally needs dynamics to sound good, there was no such thing as compression in the 19th century hahaha
what a disaster... even on 2 quid laptop speakers difference is heartbreaking...
I also don;t buy remastered stuff, it's just louder, worse version of originals, what is the point, except the $$$ ??
Yeah this is one of the best example I have seen, you put more work into making this than I often do.
Great example. The rhythm section drives you along on the early version and the later compressed version it is drowned out with the wall of sound. This isn't about the format or sampling rate of digital. It is about the mastering (marketing) process. Thanks for this great video. (I'll go put on this album now and enjoy!)
There's been plenty of petitions from engineers, producers, musicians and audiophiles all over the world to create a standard for masters like there are for motion picture film and DVD. The record companies pretty well ignore them. The most recent idea I've heard was to put a sticker the crest ratio (peak to RMS level) on the CD. Record companies seem to almost WANT to fail because they continuously refuse to listen to public demands both in production, medium and style.
@krokigrygg
Surveys conducted back in the 60s said that louder radio stations held on to their listeners something like 2-3 seconds longer than quiet ones. Of course, radio processors make the loudness of the albums completely irrelevant so it comes down to shuffle mode on iPods. Bands don't want their own song to be less loud than the competition. I don't understand that either because the user's already bought the song by the time it's on their iPod.
Great video. Even you already adjusted the audio level to make them equally as loud but I think the 1986 sounds better than the remastered. The remastered have a very slight clipping. Not much but I can hear it. I noticed that before with several remastered that I bought and I don't like it. There are exceptions though, some remastered are better than the original.
I did some research on the concept of UA-cam doing dynamic compression. It looks like that was something that was introduced and discontinued in 2008. Complaints led UA-cam to re-encode the videos from the original uploaded files to allow the full dynamic range.
@Frungi Agreed, that's why most replay systems have some kind of compressor built into them. You can chose dynamic range if you want good sound or you can choose squashed if you want constant level. I'll maintain, though, that extreme transient limiting does not help in either case. Parallel compression or low threshold, low ratio compression is much more effective for that purpose.
Try listening at a lower volume. Some systems tend to compress the audio as a side effect of not having enough headroom. Lower volume levels don't stress the amp's power supply as much so that may be more revealing.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Thanks for the kind words. I started noticing the shortcomings of CD early, but they could definitely sound better than they do. I'm a fan of SACD and it's a shame the very few albums available in the format are often just converted from PCM sources. I could never get DVD-A disks to play in my DVD-A player. There's so many variations of the format, it's hard to maintain compatibility. Thing is, the consumers wanted to have 4,000 songs in their pocket more than quality.
@whatchannelisthisnow That's a bit of an odd statement because "Money for Nothin'" was recorded to digital, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. The production was designed from the beginning for CD.
The funny thing is, music on the old Edison cylinders typically had about a 12-18dB dynamic range. With Vinyl, it was basically the same, but less noise on the medium. Then CD came and albums of the early 80s like this had about a 24dB range. Now on modern CDs (and MP3s), it's about 4dB!
@waterinawell Limiting/clipping harms the quality of the audio regardless of the medium. MP3s are actually much worse and the lower the bit rate, the more harm said treatment does. SACDs are somewhat exempt from the loudness war and in fact, limiting & clipping can't be done in a DSD domain. If they want to digitally slam the levels for SACD, it would first have to be converted to PCM, which degrades the sound, process it and convert back. It does happen though, just not often.
@TheDaedalEVE That's very true. In the 90s, virtually every portable music player & a lot of car stereos had compressors to keep the levels even. The technology has evolved to a point where that can be done very cheaply and much more transparently than back then. It would be my preference that such a feature be built into devices like that so the consumer had a choice. The other thing would be to provide two masters, which is something a lot of my clients are requesting now.
Filters do nothing to restore clipped/compressed audio. It merely causes phase rotation so you can't SEE the effects of it. To date, the closest I've found to being able to fix clipped audio is Izotope RX2. I haven't found any way to fix overly limited audio yet. Believe me, I've tried A LOT of methods & software, including some inventions of my own. Once that life has been lost, it can't be gained back... yet any way.
@foketesz just to chime in to your post... the subjective ear/brain usually hears louder as "better". This is the perception upon initial listening. Compressed music always seems to sound more satisfying at first. (because it's louder)Fatique also sets in very soon, within 5 to 10 minutes! Reality is that compressed music is overall far less satisfying, but "tricks" the listener into thinking it's better. Music is mostly dynamic, so if we want to hear & feel more punch, just turn up the volume
Wow I didn't notice at first but after listening for a few seconds it is a big difference.
Yeah, I actually liked the remaster until I went back to the original. Tom Petty's "Damn the Torpedoes" remaster is REALLY bad.
This video has the audio out of sync because then the pictures change, they sound the same and then a few seconds later, the audio changes.
Thanks for explaining. I've heard a couple of my music connoisseurs say their vinyl was better quality than the cd. Here, I can hear the difference via my cell phone alone. I hear the likened absence of a stairwell echo when switched to the remastered, ..kinda like the difference between AM & FM Stereo radio, but not quite as notable here.
Some people do separate mastering jobs for vinyl, but you're right. Almost all modern vinyl releases are every bit as clipped & limited as the CDs. Except there's additional tone shaping & level adjustments required for vinyl making it sound even more distorted. That's why I always try to do some research before choosing to buy anything.
@zerogravity121
No joke, not only are they both CD, the whole album was recorded digitally, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. They remastered it so they could put "Digitally remastered" on the cover and hope people would somehow think it's better.
It depends on how it was done. It can be good or bad. The problem I see is that most vinyl is taken from the same crushed master as the CD. In vinyl, though, limiting/clipping actually force the level to be lower instead of higher like on CD, so you don't even have the "mine's louder than yours" factor.
@LightningCat315 Yeah, a friend loaned it to me and I found it unlistenable, not because the music was bad but because the production is bad. I hope you're remastering it from an unsquashed mix. I'd really like to hear it.
Thanks, this is a really good example of how it effects the quality. Now I have a video I can link to the younger guys out there when I explain to them that their music sounds like crap compared to what it used to be. Without them thinking I'm attacking their music :P
@DIGITALSCREAMS The sad thing about that is that CDs and the current digital formats are actually a better medium, but they are squashed to death in the studio. Digital songs are expected to be listened to on earbuds or in cars. Vinyl records are expected to be listened to in a quiet home by audiophiles. What is sad about that is that the people who care most about sound quality are forced to settle for the limits of 70s technology.
the sad truth is the buyers don't usually have the ear for understanding the huge difference, and are simply drawn in by the words "remastered" on their favorite album. Suckered in by this crappy money hungry music industry that adds no value to the creativity by real artists.
The thing is there is actually no huge difference to say the least. :)
I think there is another louder mastering of this the CD layer of the SACD, it used to be iTunes but its gone now.
@perqqq People don't want loud, they want consistent. I don't know of anybody who likes the sound of crushed music. What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume and that's caused by the loudness war directly because in the early days of digital recording, -20dBfs was the reference point against 0VU on an analogue meter.
@gusiskirby
Hard limiters are not common in live sound but overcompression and overdriving the amps is common which has a similar effect.
@SlimeTron5000
I did bring up the level a little beforehand to help with level matching.
I honestly don't have a good explaination for that. There's usually more bass energy so that's what's causing most of the action in the compressor.
Now a few ideas are
#1, transients are softened by compression which can be percieved as loss of highs. #2, since the compressor is reacting mostly to the LF levels, like bass drum & so forth, the HF stuff which is already at a lower level becomes obscured. Effects of dynamic distortion is not well-documented yet so there's learning to do still.
@wado1942 I know what you mean. That "headache" you are getting is likely do to your ears becoming fatigued from listening to music that has been overly compressed/limited/brickwalled... so that dynamic range is lost and everything is just LOUD!
Totally agree, i've been in the audiophile community and they have said stay clear of remastered CD's. Its a shame, why do it. Its the insane programming of the industry to say its got to sound loud in your face. Saw your from a comment on mastering. I'm in the mastering process of one of my albums at the moment. Any tips would be great ;).
Nathan
Even if the master was made on tape, a VERY small percentage of cutting houses can keep the signal analogue all the way through the process. It requires very rare & expensive tape machines that are made specifically for making vinyl masters because a preview of the audio signal has to feed the lathe computer to cut the groove before the actual signal gets cut into said groove. The standard since the early 80s (starting in the late 70s) has been to use a digital delay to feed the cutter head.
@dubified89 In light of that, two things:
1). Depending on the total compilation on types sound sources & composition design (Synth-dance vs.acoustic-folk) one total method of recording is preferable over another.
2). The type of equipment used for playback is a big deal (DUH!) so one wonders how these Super-Audio CDs do at reproducing. I've heard good so-far, but that just reminds me of what Billy Joel said:
There's a new band in-town,
but you can't get the sound
From a story in a magazine
Good point. I'm not a big Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder fan, but both of them have made entire albums without compression.
@slask25 Actually, there was a study conducted a few years ago where different masters of the same song were sent through a common radio processor for a listening test. The input levels between masters varied as much as 10dB but the output was the same on all of them. The only difference was the pre-crushed mixes sounded even more distorted because of the phase rotation + clipping/limiting of the radio processor.
@forgottencitizen whats' wrong about exceeding it to about 1-2 dB? almost any soundcard can handle that without distorting it...
Why do people keep saying they buy vinyl when available to avoid dynamic compression? When it comes to dynamic range it is the master and not the format that makes the difference. Do they routinely use a different master for the vinyl issue and the digital one for recently recorded music? I wouldn't think so. Seriously, I don't know because I don't have any recent music on both formats to compare.
What they do is beef it up with compression for the modern market! They can also use dynamic exciters and a whole load of things that didn't exist back in 1985! There can be problems with digital too, nothing is perfect! Most of the time with albums you hear one persons point of view and that is the man that mixes it! It obviously sounds better in the studio through expensive gear running from the master. LP, CD and whatever are just sound carriers and your own ears decide what's best for you!
Hey, wado1942, I'm a newbie to this way of listening to music, and I've really enjoyed your videos thus far. Theoretically, I understand how the compressor works completely. But I do not understand why overcompression always seems to result in a muddy "underwater" kind of sound. Are the high frequencies always the ones to go first? I mean, apart from dynamic range being sacrificed, it seems like the bass and mid-lows come to the foreground and the sharp highs go down. Is that right?
@wado1942 "People don't want loud... What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume"
This. Consistently loud, even at the expense of range, might be preferable in less-than-ideal listening environments (or else you turn up a quiet part to hear it over the background noise, and then your eardrums get blasted a second later), but if you're able to give your full aural attention to the music, range is great.
For the MOST part, remasters done in the late 90's until now have reduced dynamic range.
The best thing to do is go to the DR Database (google it). Type in the artist and you will get a comparison of releases for any particular album. You can see which releases have maintained dynamic range.
I won't buy an album now without checking it out on the list. Also, you can download the software on that site that allows you to test the dynamic range of audio files you already have.
I didn't notice too much difference in this example except the keyboards/vocals were louder compared to the drums. Did you play them at equal volume (comparing a normalised version 1 to version 2)?
@TheHarlingenLegend
I think remixing it would better solve those issues. It's not a bad recording, but the balance is a bit wonky.
@movieking88 I really want to listen to large Klipsch tower speakers. I think that after listening to those kind of speakers one will no longer consider headphones as the first audiophile choice.
@forgottencitizen if it has audio output, it has a soundcard... and afaik the bit conversion to cd allows +3dB?
Great comparison, the first thing I noticed from the later remastered version is that it sound muffed and weak.
@anupchowdary
Simulators are what they say they are. They SIMULATE, not replace.
Analogue equipment does have something to do with it. However, most of the difference you hear is from the bands. They PERFORMED their songs, not built them on a computer from scraps. They used less compression and less processing in general as well in those days. They had producers, engineers and musicians that were brought to professional maturity by being taken under a mentor's wing. All that is lost.
@TimpBizkit Old 45 RPM singles are notoriously distorted, but that's the pressing, not the master tape. You're right though, lack of dynamics is nothing new and neither is clipping. Only now is it the rule rather than t he exception though.
is this true for all mp3 files too?? Am i correct in saying that even the higher bit rate mp3's wont correct this flaw...what about SACD's?
Yes there is a difference but is not a big deal. This remaster is not over-processed like many others. It retains most of its dynamics.
Also consider the low youtube resolution (360p) and the expectancy bias (when listening with the eyes open)
@dubified89 I dig ya... The other day a lady-friend & I were flippin' through the channels, and we stumbled on the Lady Gaga Fame Monster concert. Now, my friend didn't care for the way Lady Gaga sounded in studio recordings or over the radio... But when she heard Gaga live & "unfiltered"on HBO, she fell in-love with her music. Mind you, this woman has ears that are so sensitive, I've relied on her to say when while setting-up & tuning speakers for her. If that don't say all....
@wado1942 Just think of all those engineers developing things like Dolby B, C and HX Pro for consumer tape decks so we could get a nice dynamic range above the background hiss. Might as well have not bothered! Imagine if back then someone had said 'hey, let's not bother with all this noise reduction crap, let's just cram the entire track into the top few dBs then people can just turn the volume down to get rid of the hiss'. They'd have been laughed out of the room, and quite rightly too!
@kick52 First of all, make sure you listen to this on good speakers or headphones, most PC speakers add tons off issues of their own, as they are cheaply designed. Then listen specifically to the snare drum. Try drumming along with it actually. You'll notice it sounds punchy with the original, and then all of a sudden it sounds like it's somewhere far away. Once you know what to listen for, you'll start to notice all sorts of subtleties missing.
@forgottencitizen
Normalization pretty well started and ended in the early 90s. Since then, hard limiting pushes levels to just below the clipping point. However, the loudness war has gotten so ridiculous, limiting alone doesn't do it anymore and major clipping is used on top of hard limiting. New releases are on average of about 7dB hotter than this remaster. Normalization alone does not destroy the waveform like I've shown here. Early-mid 80s, the didn't care about level.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Mastering is defined as assembling and optimizing an album for its destination format. So if they're doing it "the right way" then yes, they'll have two different masters. In reality though, I find it's not very common. Really, even MP3 downloads should come from yet a different master. It's really stupid because the kind of treatment CD masters routinely get really work against the potential quality of even CD, forget about any other format.
That does nothing to bring back the dynamics, it just skews the frequency response, which is relatively unaffected by compression.
@wado1942
Thanks, that idea had been going around my mind for a long time. Yes, isolation booths are a good example of a musical society we have completely forgotten. Can you imagine, way back at the beginning, maybe 400 years ago: the only music you would probably experience, was in church... after a life of no music, imagine the awe-inspiring harmony, rhythm and melody of choirs and booming, resonant church-organs as tall as a cathedral! Music was an event.
Now, we have ipods, and wallpaper.
Luckily there are groups like Opeth who have released remasters that sound substantially better. It's nice and refreshing to hear some death metal that isn't compressed to shit cutting out all of the low end
And this is why I haven't bought any music since the mid 90s. Unfortunately the masses think their ipod with crappy little speakers sounds really great. Is this really progress? The peak of fidelity to me was late 80s/early 90s when CD was mainstream and hi fi separates ruled. In those days engineers exploited the dynamic range of CDs to give great sound. now, we may as well be back on cassette tape - it would sound the same!
@thombone
You'd be correct there, unfortunately, most vinyl masters these days are copied off of the same masters as CD so they're every bit as distorted. There's exceptions to that though. Some people still know how to master for vinyl.
this one is audible, but it's funny that this is a particularly mild example, whereas the real problem is the brickwall filters being used.
If this was the extent of the loudness war (ie, a difference between RMS and peak of about 16-18 dB), I'd be fine with it. But Death Magnetic has a difference between RMS and peak of like 4 dB... That literally is getting close to static (which would have a difference of 0 dB)
People, subject is about compressing modern music and remastered old music. Not about just making it louder. In case you don't get, and it seems some people don't. If you don't know what compression means google it.
Usual story. Squashed dynamics and transients are flat instead of crisp. The compromise of dynamics for loudness.
That's a rather draconian outlook. What does vinyl bring to the table that a FLAC 24/96 file doesn't? Could it be that it's mastering for a perceived audience that destroys the quality of the music recording, not the delivery format itself?(Outside, of course, an extreme example like a 96kbs stereo mp3, which would of course sound like crap.)
Well that's the thing isn't it? A lot of people are offering 24/96 FLAC, but it gets the same treatment as everything else. What's it worth then? I'd honestly take a well mastered (in my opinion) MP3 over a crushed anything else.
You can remaster anything you want. It just means it's been mastered again, ideally off the mix tapes but that's not always true.
You're right though. The thing industries want you to think is "it's new so it must be better". Digital technology has gotten A LOT better since the mid 80s but 90% of the damage was already done in the first conversion to digital so there's this brittle edge to everything and can't remove it no matter what processing you apply.
@DIGITALSCREAMS Don't believe it. Since the mid-70s, most vinyl pressings have used digital delays to feed the actual cutter head while the direct signal feeds the computer to set the groove pitch (the printed signal must be behind the actual groove cutting). Vinyl is great if it's done as an all-analogue (and expensive) process, but even the best pressings are only optimal the first few times you play them. I prefer SACD because it lasts, but even then, most of the sources are PCM digital.
From the beggining, when I was learning about audioelectronics and sound, I was aware about CLIPPING DISTORTION that happens when the signal amplitude in each half cycle goes beyond the knee of characteristics curve of amplifiers or recording media.
Those people that remasters today, seems to be deliverately clipping signal peaks, obeing like lambs to fulfill a sort of non-written protocol in use among music producers & record labels to create an unified stylus of commercial (and hateful) music.
@PSUkbit analog doesn't have limitations like digital, it has more range, even cassette tapes that have digital masters have waay more range than the same album on CD
It's sad that you have such expensive speakers but didn't notice that all of the samples were pretty much the same due to UA-cam's auto leveling. I heard it right off the bat. You my friend are the epitome of one who thinks what they want to and looks right past the evidence, then insults and berates those who disagree based on fact.
I see, I missunderstood your statement as stating clipped/crappy mastering would somehow translate better on crappy reproduction systems.
But going into more detail, psychoacoustic coding schemes like MP3 are based on reproducing natural sound for natural environments. When you introduce heavy limiting or clipping, the signal no longer fits within natural laws and the CODEC exagerrates those issues because it wasn't designed to handle it.
whats the point in showing the differences between recordings both relesed in cd quality using the youtube quality to play them?:D they are compressed and bitrate reduced a lot:) i suggest listening to those recordings at home in lossess quality, then u realy feel the difference. cheers
I have a 30th anniversary edition cd of request by Mariya Takeuchi, it’s too loud and I think it’s compressed
they killed it
it's good that you matched levels. When compressing, I always compare at unity gain. It's very educational. The jump in level when you push the comp makes you think it's better, and that's not always the case. In fact, good compression settings are hard to achieve (more so than limiters'), so matching levels is a must. Then, when you know you've nailed it, level up as wished.
I'm glad my ears can't pick up the difference, I can pick stuff up on any format and be happy.
Customers on my studio always want LOUDER!
@krokigrygg
The science moves forward. It's the "art" that's backwards. We have the capability of far greater dynamic range than ever, but we're slamming everything into a range narrower than has ever existed. Listen to even 50s music, especially jazz & classical. Great dynamic ranges on all that stuff and no compressors or limiting most of the time.
@trlkly You bring up an interesting point, but the "solution" is not valid. Transients have gone away, which give a sense of clarity and impact, but studies show that macrodynamics haven't changed much. Stuff still gets lost in background noise. If all songs were mastered to a standard level like movies were until a few years ago, everybody could just set the volume and leave it. With this stupid war, the levels are all over the place and there's no clarity so the problem is worse.
@sinborn41214 The real tragedy is when they squash older records (like the Dire Straits) to make them sounds more modern, or whatever. I don't see why marketing people think that it'll sell more if it's louder. It just doesn't add up.
Yeah, they had quite the ordeal tracking down the session tapes. I guess some of them were lost or damaged, so they had to resort to safeties sometimes. On the bright site, the original mixes had a lot of submixing on them from earlier generation tapes. The 5.1 remix used the non-submixed sources as much as possible. Layers of the "old digital" veil is gone from the remix.
Another great 5.1 remix is The Who's "Tommy". The bass should be louder, but Pete Townshend & crew did a good job.
@wado1942
"Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era" that is generally true. I meant, and should have said, a music-free life compared to today. I suppose they did play music at times, but they were events. And yes, your 2 points are very correct. I still imagine that listening to church music would have been inspirational, it is no wonder people were so spiritual. I hate this generic, wallpaper music that depends on image instead of sound.
@monty78pig
P.S. the other reason to use 48KHz is many DVD players down-convert 96K/192K to 48K and you better believe they do a poor job of it too.
I listen to music. Not a big wiz on the technical aspects. I thought I had permanently damaged my hearing when I got the Hypnotize and Mesmerize albums by System of a Down. Didn't get any better with the latest Metallica release. But this loudness thing, that's it, and I now that that - for good or worse - I can hear that clipping. Even in my mid-thirties.
@dfbhcf
The mono remasters really are good. They did minimal processing and that's only in light of the fact that speakers have much wider frequency response than were available in the 1960s. Remember, the mono versions are THE versions. The stereo mixes were just a gimmick. Man, Helter Skelter has all the punch it always wanted.
I've noticed that the studio that does a lot, if not all, of the mastering for HDTracks is Puget Sound and they recently got the DAD AD/DA converters which are now considered by many to be the best sounding high res DACs. a LOT of top studios are using that DAC now. Abbey Roach, a BUNCH of Orchestras, EMI, etc. etc. They have a LOT more dynamic range, better input and output stages, etc.
Hypercompressed music does not allow me to take advantage of my power audio system. My volume knob stays at 9 o'clock. All that dynamic range, lost!
The remaster of this album and hundreds of others is shameful.
as long as theres no clipping and the equlizer is balanced
Not sure what relevance drum machines have for this video but I agree with you.
I've been telling ppl that for years, remastering is awful ,especially now with compuer work stations. It's starting to sound like AM radio.🤮
It really depends on who's doing the remastering and why.I don't know why something already recorded on digital would need it,but in this case it was to add that all so popular way overemphasized Bass sound all the rappers want. Most people in the music marketing business have no taste and no knowledge of music as it is,making something sound worse to make it louder is dumb.
I guess it pays to check your sources for cd's.
This war is like Healthy food over fast food :D I Love the non-mastered, it's more soul-full and pleasing. the dynamics in non-master makes the music sound more life. thanks for the video.
Hope Hurteau good information!!
+Hope Hurteau Except most vinyl is taken from the same crushed masters as the CDs/MP3s. Vinyl suffers even more from the distortion caused by such treatment.
+Hope Hurteau I'd like to see some of your comparisons. A lot of the vinyl copies people have claimed to be more dynamic was only superficial because of stylus inertia and phase shift from the RIAA filters. Yes, some of them ARE done right and of course, pre-1993ish vinyl will have more dynamic range, but modern, separate masters made directly from the source mixes is not normal in my experience.