I totally agree I am extremely impressed with The amount of thought he puts into his answers and explanations and I am so glad that somebody is willing to tell the truth about this stuff I always had kind of the same feeling is what he's saying it's amazing wonderful wonderful teacher
On your point at 13:45 - you're right. I worked for a few years at a mastering house in London with three other mastering engineers. The bloke who had the most (and most well-known) clients was the guy who didn't care about the audio quality at all. He simply smashed the hell out of the dynamics. The next most popular wasn't so cavalier, but he had considerably fewer clients. The other two (including me) spent a lot of time doing their best to persuade their clients that louder isn't better, and we had the fewest clients. Nobody wanted their release to sound less loud than everyone else's, and that was that.
Audio Masterclass: The Truth Will Always Offend Lathe Of Heaven: You Are So Right! We have had the same experiences as mastering Engineers. Musical tastes are always going to be musical tastes, nothing will change that The loudness wars Sucked, now we have much music that's cold and clinical and almost lost that perception of warm real engineers knew as distortion. it happened when anologue went to Compact Discs and again with Compressed Mp3s people have got so familiar with this sound they can no longer tell the difference. there are a few exceptions to the rule.
Back in the 70s, there were direct disk recordings,where the musicians played live directly into an analogue mixer and outputted onto the cutting lathe . No tape recording ! If the musicians made a mistake, they had to start over! The result was the most incredible sounds I ever heard. Google Sheffield Labs
@@ammej768 Or Studio 55, also engineer would fire up the small AM transmitter until FM took over and wyed output and had producer tune in a car with the 1 speaker as another safety😀
When good recordings sounded audibly flawless on my speakers, is when I realized there was no need to upgrade any further. No missing spatial effects, imagined, or otherwise. Truth be told, I had been hooked on whatever I could get out of it for decades. Currently, my speakers are better than my hearing can ever be again. The only downside being, it leaves me nothing further to talk about other than the actual music itself. Past weekend, I ended up putting on my original Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" album that I had not heard for quite a few years, just picked randomly out of my collection. It was a stark reminder of how and why I got hooked on this hobby in the first place, before digital anything, and to stop overthinking/second-guessing my system just because the ad/marketing mechanism tells me to.
Excellent LP choice to pull out of your archives. Darn near cried when Christine McVeigh passed. I was very upset. Fleetwood Mac was a huge part of my life here in the USA. My most favorite album they ever did still ,,,,was Bare Trees.
Indeed AMEN to that. Even my children reject almost everything that is thrown at them recorded after the mid 90ties. As I make and record classical music I do not have to participate in the loudness war but if I ask the mixed to be mastered I mostly get it back too loud with little dynamics. The sweet voices and violins are gone, why? Obviously things needed to be louder. Not in my book, so I fully agree with your statement that the audio is already bad once you buy or stream it. I use a more than average quality pair of speakers placed to my liking in my livingroom and enjoy music not the technology (in your livingroom the music is largely (80%) influenced by the room size and acoustics anyway). Same goes for the DAW and monitor speakers I use, listen carefully and try to recreate the venue and scale it down to livingroom size. I do like the down to earth way you present your topics on this channel. Keep up the good work and spread the word.
AMEN to everything you said. It's truly mindboggling that this still continues despite popular services like Spotify having loudness normalization turned on by default, meaning it _doesn't_ sound louder, just worse. By the way, some modern vinyl releases were obviously made from a digital -4 LKFS damaged master. Good thing there is so much great pre-1995 music to discover!
I find many pre -95 mixes very shallow and lacking in bass. There are very few recordings I like from that period and they're all live acoustic recordings, preferably pure stereo miced.
@@dingdong2103 Vinyl was limited in the level of bass which could be recorded on it. Too high a bass level could cause the grooves to be deep enough that the stylus could skip and wide enough that the running time of the record would be reduced, or adjacent groove sections would be distorted. However, bass was once considered to be something which was not overtly audible in the mix, but rather underneath the other instruments as reinforcement or a foundation, something which would be noticed more by it's absence rather than it's actual presence.
@@dingdong2103 once upon a time stereo systems had a graphic equalizer built in. Also if you have a subwoofer there should be a separate volume control so that if you want more bass you can dial in more bass yourself.
@@allanmoorhead9492 That was an issue that was rectified by the RIAA correction and affected only a couple of records such as the infamous Chaikowsky 1812 overture with the cannon shots.
@@dingdong2103 The purpose of RIAA equalisation was to compensate for the "constant velocity" characteristic of disc cutters, which caused signal amplitude to be increased at the bass end and reduced at the treble end. Equalisation reduced the bass and increased the treble before cutting, and the pre-amplifier reverses this on playback. This allowed more space for the groove (extended playing time) and also reduced noise (which is mostly at the treble and and competes with the treble signal content).
The reason I subscribe, is that you are obviously knowledgable, experienced and best of all: thoughtful and pragmatic. I reject snobbery and audio voodoo. You have the rare ability to delineate nonsense from sense.
A lot of people involved in production, especially before Smash Out All Dynamics and Smash Pitch and Time To The Grid became predominant, aren't snobbish or interesting in voodoo. They just want the nicest cleanest full range for the artist's original intentions that can be obtained for the budget.
I am 75. I, too, experienced all of this audio evolution and de-evolution. I relate to everything you say. My Junior High graduation present was a Grundig PORTABLE RADIO, and it was the greatest tech thing that I knew existed at the time - 1962, When I was 20 - 1967 - I was fortunate enough to work for an 8-track cassette recording company locally. We bought new albums directly from a local record store, carefully placed the vinyl record on a professional grade turntable and stylus, and recorded a master tape of the pristine original on a professional grade reel-to-reel tape deck. After that, we were able to repeatedly create high quality recordings piggy-backing to multiple recorders, cranking out a high volume for the 8-track market, which was voracious at that time. Albums in your car! OMG! Anyway, I got to keep those pristine albums, played only once (well, some played more than once). I was not thinking of investment value at the time. Likely I was high, too). I have 500-600 vinyl records, most of which are in good shape, and some of which are in excellent shape. I am either going to buy a good record player and listen to them all again, but that seems tedious, as I can listen to any sone I desired digitally, usually by asking Siri. If that doesn't work, Alexa usually can. So, I ned to create a log of them for sale. If any of you are interested in inquiring about a specific album or albums, I have most rock albums dating from 1964 theu the mid-70's, and qutre a few others.
@@robertbrinton7754 I live in Santa Barbara, CA. I've lived here continuously since 1962, though it has been my hometown since 1953, when my family lived abroad for a while. Santa Barbara had the only venue large enough to attract the big name bands, and we often got to see all the big groups, mostly before they were famous, as they would stop in Santa Barbara on the way to or from a gig in SF or LA. The company who produced the shows also bought 8-Track tapes to selll at a huge "Music Emporium". I got free backstage passes to all the shows. Jimi Hendrix (he burned his guitar less than 10 feet away from me, offstage), the Doors, the Airplane, Big Brother, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, Santana, The Mothers of Invention, Sweetwater, the Who (my roommate, a drummer, caught a drumstick thrown into the crowd by Keith Moon while the rest of them distroyed their guitars and amps), Love, Cream, and more. I also got to see the Yardbirds and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental band play live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1968. Those were good times. Best.Music.Ever. Last note - in 1967-68, tickets to these events ranged from $2.50 - $3.50, never more. As I said before, we had backstage passes, so we didn't have to pay those exorbitant prices! lol I never figured out how they made money, since the venue was relarively small. Maybe they did it for the gas money, as they were all in vans and busses back then.
The last two albums by Talk Talk and Mark Hollis' unique solo album are testament to how audio should be mixed and mastered. They are my antidotes to the brickwall sound of the loudness wars. I really believe that in the realms of pop and rock, the space and dynamics to be found in those albums will never be heard again.
It will be found again. But we need some intelligent people to come back to music. If everyone is disillusioned then of course it will always be crap. Break the cycle.
One or several engineered by Phil Brown whom I met in London in the 90s.... and just read his book where he talks alot about those sessions.. awesome book!
Talk talk we’re the first big gig I saw. It was the colour of spring tour. They were just incredible and set me firmly on my musical journey. What a band.
As a fellow sound professional, I too completely agree. I’ve often been bored to death by amateur “audiophiles” telling me they’ve spent more money on their domestic (unbalanced) all-analogue garbage than I’ve spent on some professional set ups, but telling me that I’m getting it all wrong. Notwithstanding the gross inaccuracies inherent in 20th century electro-mechanical sound reproduction technology, Psychoacoustics, the tympanic reflex, and a phenomenon known as the Head Related Transfer function all play a massive role in what each of us perceives. These effects on our response to sound are now far greater in magnitude than the achievable minimum distortion levels of modern recording, mixing and mastering tools. It’s great to see that what I’ve been patiently - and impatiently! - explaining to people since 1986 is now becoming common currency beyond pro audio circles. There are only two parts of the signal chain where we need “expensive” analogue equipment - the input and output transducers. Downstream of the input DAC and upstream of the output DAC and final amplification stage everything can stay in the practically flawless digital realm.
Great video, I think it just helps re-frame the issue that while we are worrying about 0.001 vs 0.0001% distortion they are adding back single digit levels to the source material. It also explains why despite the technical limitations, I do often enjoy vinyl versions better even though I have a nice digital setup as well. It also explains why I often like my original CDs from the time of release over the remastered versions. Thank you for the enlightening discussion!
Although, it's not as simple as that, unfortunately. I spent nearly 20 years as a vinyl-cutting engineer (I also did CDs etc) between 1990 and 2010. It was quite often the case that the audio I was sent was 'mastered' already. Often this would be a CD master, that had been compressed and limited to death already, or it would be a stereo mix... which had been compressed and limited to death already. My task was to try and find a way to transfer that to vinyl such that it would play back OK on a turntable. If you bought any of those records, they would be as compressed as the CD masters. No way to undo the damage. I was on a constant quest with clients to get them to provide uncompressed audio files from which to make two masters. The vinyl master I made would be a lot less compressed/limited than the CD master. But at all times, I had the artists, producers and record labels emploring me to 'cut it louder than anything I've ever done before'.
*Insurrection Industries* It's a pleasure and a coincidence to find your comment here on a non-videogame related video, but audio. And sorry for being pretty off topic again but... would you release Gamecube component with audio? I hope so. Never imagined being audiophiles apart from gaming haha.
@@JnL_SSBM unfortunately we care too much about audio and would only add audio if we could do an excellent DAC that exceeded the built in DAC. We have started looking into it, and even got an audio precision analyzer to begin that investigation. It will actually be rather expensive to do it to the level we could accept.
? arise when output specs claim 0.00000 whatever distortion and if no speaker Xmax given. Output anything close to 'expected' wattage max with 0.4% THD shows likely human checking/verification of spec in around 90db/w/m sens and is range where generally accepted human ears notice is distorted.
Grateful to you for creating such a video. The topic is almost a taboo among audiophiles, a lot of them seem to believe that it's not an issue at all, or that the loudness war is over. Needless to say, the majority of people is not even aware that this is an issue, so it's good to talk about it.
13:45 Dan Worrall already won that competition with his "I won the Loudness War" +2.3 LUFS track. His channel is an excellent almost borderline ASMR resource for DAW. I couldn't understand why I couldn't listen to all of Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity (released in 1995) without feeling fatigued, even with the volume lowered. Until you and others on UA-cam and other articles explained the Loudness War.
Oh yes! Dan's the man. Great in-depth technical knowledge, and wonderful, bitter, no-prisoners British humour/sarcasm. The listener's volume knob has been replaced by the engineer's limiter fader... what could go wrong?;)
You sir have described exactly what I experience with new music. The best way I can describe it is that I feel like the space is missing between the instruments. The space between lead and backing vocals is not there any more. The roomy sound has gone. 😢 This is also evident when playing older music through a good quality led bar graph. Older music has gaps, waves, peaks and troughs in the music that are evident by the dancing lights. Todays music is almost a flat line of ON all the time and only pushes further into the red with every beat of the kick drum. The result is something a little flat and lifeless where older music seems to breathe more and change directions. Its sad that the labels are pushing a product and really stifling the artwork
That’s because most stuff today is so heavily over compressed that you totally smashes the dynamic of an “honest” recording. IMO using a compressor as a sound design tool is beeing way overdone today, and a compressor is harder to master than you think. You have to have a good ear and be able to judge when it’s too much and when it’s just fab.
I love The The and had all their CDs since the 80s. Recently I had to repurchase the "Infected" album (don't lend your beloved CDs) and all that was available was a 2002 remaster. After listening to the whole thing my skin was crawling, such was the crime the mastering had perpetrated on this musical masterpiece. I gave the 2002 remaster away and luckily found an original 1986 edition on Discogs which I will thoroughly enjoy till the day I die.
@@monkmusic5994 Matt Johnson is one of the great British songwritwers of all time. His lyrics are still relevant and the instrumental arrangements are superb.
@@nunofernandes4501 I saw the the live (dusk tour) with chubby Johnny Marr a couple of metres from me in a club in Hannover/Germany. Matt was a bit disappointed, because there were only 50 people. They performed great!
I worked for years as a Radio/TV Engineer, and did both maintenance & operations. The rule was, never let the VU meter enter the RED, except for occasional (and unavoidable) peaks. Then there were the DJs, who had to be reined in, because they felt emasculated whenever the needle dropped below "0."
@@Pootycat8359 for those folks recommend a good 70s marantz, Sansui and the like with QS and drive some good Vegas or do like me n Rick Rubin used to do lay down in the back seat in a Impala with the rounded glass back window with a nice system, turn the (enhanced low end at lower volume which tapers as vol knob turns up) "Loudness" feature 'On' throw in a safety copy then have a listen. I will say the 90's-00s 'nice' home receivers you had to crank lot louder to achieve similar low end output. After transferring some rnb LPs to digital I left the same settings and when transferring some Whitesnake VUs did not show clipping but after multiple attempts realized I was 'stuck' with piercing high end which I will need to dump to some DAW and see if I can limit high end and widen low to mid so I can enjoy like others including tracks like Prince's Controversy....
Lucky you! I had once to dial in some compressors for a small station. Job description: "make it as loud as you can." And I did that. I recorded oldschool two of the loudest stations around as example, got me CDs of those recorded tracks and went to work. A fellow older tech just said: "I don't envy you, you will be finished, when everything looks like a square wave!" And the dude was right. Luckily streaming brought back a lot of fidelity. But FM radio? That is loudness hell!
I would expect better of FM stations, but then, hard rock is hard rock! (Teeth chattering, ears oozing blood....). I was Chief Engineer of a small "Easy Listening" FM station, and an engineer for a classical FM station, that was fanatical about high-fidelity, so I was never subjected to such torture.
It's like the old computer maxim of "Garbage in, garbage out". Considering that a lot of my favourite music is only available in badly remastered versions on streaming, I'll be holding onto my old CDs for a long while yet.
so very well presented, I understand that now with streaming services and Atmos , the standardization of LUFS has helped reigned this in a bit. To elaborate on this topic a little more..., what also came along with digital mixing is the time alignment and pitch correction that is now a standard among so many engineers and creating musicians. So very impressive to make good from bad performances, It has potentially damaged the recording in the sense that it has de-natured Music like Factory Food. Its easy, convenient, consistent, etc... But those pre 95 recordings had so many subtle timing and pitch movements that makeup a musicians 'Feel', if its so 'corrected' it may as well have been entirely programmed within the computer for the most part. big love to all who love their Art!
@audiomasterclass After close to 40 years as a recording, mixing and digital mastering engineer, I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said. I think it’s all about the genres and methods of consumption. My kids play their music off their phones using ear buds or Bluetooth (in car). They certainly don’t invest in hifi equipment …. I’ve even noticed that they’ll rarely play a song from beginning to end! For others fidelity matters. I guess that’s why spécial recordings and pressing were produced mainly in the classical domain. So the question is: “When does good audio matter”? Future video topic? Thx for your videos.
I heard an artist showing the production steps she did, and when she added the compressors it just killed all life in the song. And now I can't listen to her without feeling sad about how good it could have sounded. 😢
That's the thing that kills me is we live in a digital age where most music is consumed by digital files. So why the heck can't musicians release a dynamic album and a compressed album so their listeners have a choice?
Thankfully, I started buying CDs in 1986, and averaged (including birthday and xmas gifts) a CD a week. So I've still got roughly 500 CDs from a period prior to 1995. I listen to them, or lossless rips of them, as often as possible. Once I started hating the loudness war in the late 90s, I made a point of going back and getting used CDs with original masters of things before they were gone. So almost half of my CD collection is that stuff. It's like ear bleach. So much easier on the ears over time.
Great video. It's sad that even remasters of older music are being ruined by this. I don't think it's the only reason current music sounds awful, but I certainly notice this problem with it. Lot's of clipping distortion and muddy sound.
Some pirate sites solve this in a big way - having a catalogue of all possible Album releases, like original vinyl, remasters, casettes, CDs, web sources, you name it. Having access to that means that you can decide which mastering you want to hear and hey, there’s nothing stopping you from purchasing any version of the same album and actually paying for it to support the artists. What you get is sort of a democratic choice of what exactly you enjoy hearing.
Regarding albums that have been victim to loudness war, I am using the ReLife VST-Plugin by Terry West on usually 8 out of 10 new albums. It works to a certain degree and can often make an album listenable again. When a befriended musician had his album mastered he had the same problems. They killed most of the dynamics and he wasn't happy with the result at all. He ended up having the whole mix lowered by 6 dB and the issue was gone. No brickwalled waveform entirely.
The funny thing is that one of the great selling points of CD was it's much greater dynamic range.. Only to get it squished back to the absolutely minimum. However there's also another issue these days: Heavy compression / limiting is now considered an acceptable "effect/texture" and there are artists that actively seek it on their recordings!
yep.. it's sad because CD is a great way to listen to Vinyl transfers in the car. ... shows off that dynamic range in an incredible way when not compressed.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 Huh? Does your car have no road or engine noise? How do you hear any dynamic range beyond 15db in a moving car? Can your ears withstand 120db, while you're driving in 70db of car noise, and only getting 50db of dynamic range? I used to take my records and record them onto cassette with maximum compression so I could hear them while driving. Of course, once you stop and park, you can fully enjoy great dynamic range if you didn't compress it. I don't want to sound too critical; you do what you enjoy doing. I'm just questioning how this is even possible for you.
@@MLWJ1993 Either that, or he doesn't understand what "dynamic range" actually is. No judgment from me; I just want to know what he's enjoying, and how.
Spot on as per usual David. It is the dynamic range reduction that the loudness wars results in, that I find most annoying. I have never been a fan of vinyl (even when that was all there was) but I have vinyl records from The 70s & 80s with greater dynamic range than the CD re-issues, taking all the life out of the performance. Particularly galling as vinyl could only achieve 45 or 50dB dynamic range where CD was capable of 96dB (in theory). Radio play was one of the driving factors that started off the loudness wars. I was technical manager of a major pop studio in the 80s & 90s, when the Record Labels wanted their single to be loudest when the DJ played it, thus grabbing the attention of the listener.
Radio was the original problem. Stations wanted to be the loudest on the dial. On FM stations there was a strict limit on the frequency deviation of the carrier signal. FM-100 in Memphis compressed the music where every frequency used the entire allowed range. This started in the early 1970s. Back then I only encountered this on vinyl when I would purchase a compilation album that would have as much as 20 tracks on a single platter. (10 per side). The only way to do this is by compressing the sound. The difference was obvious. It is insane that the industry would apply this to source material on a CD and lose much of the character the CD allow in music reproduction.
Fantastic video! I never understood how an audiophile could ever prefer vinyl as a source over digital. It's the mastering that the medium either does or doesn't allow. Very Marshall McLuhan--the medium IS the message!
This discussion is as old as digital, and I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. Regarding vinyl, I think a lot of the things people like most about it is the experience. They like pulling the record from its sleeve, cleaning it, placing it on the turntable, etc. I think a lot of people also like that vinyl imparts a warm sound to the recording, although they might not actually admit that. It has been interesting to watch this discussion over the last 40+ years, because people used to complain about the sound of ALL CDs, not just those mastered after 1995 (or any arbitrary date). In the 90s I used to think I needed vinyl to be a true audiophile, and that my CDs (no matter how old or what master) were inadequate. Now I'm old enough to not care so much about this stuff (still very much into audio, but I don't care to spend a fortune on music I can only listen to at home). It's just funny to hear that now people are seeking out the very same CDs that everyone used to hate 40 years ago. At this point I won't be surprised to hear about people preferring the sound of 128kbps MP3s over hi-rez WAV files at some point in the future. There's some kind of psychoacoustic nostalgia going on.
I completely agree that the big issue is "make it sound like that" compounding over time. Then the tools started being developed to help engineers push the levels more and more. But not all music made after 1995 suffers from the loudness wars. I self-produce my music to make the best-sounding records I can. I specifically tell the mastering engineers I work with that I don't want to even be in the ballpark of the loudness wars. Indie artists can create music however they want. That includes making albums with dynamic range! Hopefully the loudness wars start going the way of the dodo thanks to the volume adjustment algorithms that streaming services are putting in. My last album, "Etheric Wings" featuring a string orchestra, can sit on a playlist including "loudness wars" style masters without having crazy jumps in volume. But all that extra distortion they add is painfully apparent, so hopefully, labels will start learning to start letting music sound good again.
Good point. We've spent more than a generation saying "Lossy is good enough" and never following it up with " ... for what?" It sounds cynical but it often does--for the convertable, the boat, the restaurant, the party atmosphere, etc. And since that's whats in millions of walkmans, usb sticks and players, it has become the public norm. Yes, 320k mp3 sounds pretty good but it's still the gateway drug to Lossy hell.
100000% agree with you. I only hope that with the loudness standards of music streaming platforms will help to resolve this issue, because loud music will be automatically turned down while the music with good dynamic range will be preserved at its original volume and actually to even sound louder because of the preserved transients. This of course won't fix already-overcompressed music but at least there is going to be some sort of punishment for those who keep pushing the limiting and compression to their absurd limits
I have to say that the vinyl version of Natalie Merchant's new album sounds fantastic. Also I would point to Steven Wilson's recent albums for outstanding mastering. Even his Dolby Atmos mixes sound awesome.
I was a 24-track tracking studio owner/engineer in the late 1980s and this problem was already growing then. The cluprit was the SSL 4000 console beloved of mix studios and producers. Dynamics on every channel and full automation ensured the lovingly recorded source tracks we gave them had the life squashed out of them in the mix. Time and again our monitor mixes sounded better than their final production mixes.
It's a funny old world. When the CD was introduced in 1982 it rapidly became the source of choice at hi-fi shows. I recall attending a couple of shows in 1983 / 84 and just about every exhibitor had a copy of the Dire Straits Love Over Gold album on CD and vinyl. I still have my original copies (vinyl from 1982 and CD from 1983 which I bought after my first player - a Philips CD 104 - in 1984). To my ears the CD sounds more natural than the LP and of course lacks all the surface noise. Naturally for the time, the dynamic range is huge. However did they manage a number 2 hit with Private Investigations given how quiet it is for the most part? Another example of great recording / mastering is Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World from 1989. The hit single Wicked Game is a masterclass in less is more. Sadly the track succumbed to the loudness war and had the life compressed out of it on the "Best Of" compilation from 2011.
Bless you for mentioning Dire Straits' Love Over Gold on CD! I also have the original CD release, and "Telegraph Road" stands out as a quintessential example of how to use CD technology properly. As a presentation audio format, CD is technically perfect. It has the dynamic range to represent a bare whisper to almost a rifle shot; clearly beyond the vast majority of what speakers and amplifiers are capable of reconstructing without adding a ton of their own distortion. The fact some prefer old LPs is down to smart mastering to respect the limitations inherent in vinyl. But CD audio doesn't have them, so it represented the potential to do even better than the best vinyl, in that you could hear more, noise free and repeatably, play after play after play. A vinyl album or tape have finite replay lives, subtly and (hopefully) imperceptibly changing over each play, wearing down, losing signal strength, distorting as grooves are worn, or developing faint echos as the magnetic domains experience crosstalk when the tape spools and successive layers of tape rest on top on each other. CD being digital, experiences none of this. And while a CD can rot and be scratched, you won't hear those errors on account of error correction built into the format, until they finally pass a threshold. They go from being not present--period, one moment, to painfully obvious the next. Before this happens, you can copy a CD, 100%, bit-for-bit. With a little stewardship, it is the ultimate in preservation potential. Vinyl can only be preserved by never playing it. Analog tape cannot ever be preserved; it's like sand at the top of an hour-glass. Playing tape only speeds up the sand-fall rate. "Telegraph Road" demonstrated for me that, with CD, it's possible to have all of your audiophile vinyl cake, and eat it noise-free forever. The trouble is: few ever used the technology this way, the way its signal-processing engineers designed it for us, to be that perfect playback format for human hearing that no analog system, because of physics, could match. Not for the first time, technically perfect tools in the hands of the forces of disarray gave us something less perfect than what existed before. The potential in them remains, however, unchanged. It's a question of better education to unlock. And maybe a bit of taste.
Yes, all greatest hits albums are ruined with compression now. Do you have a copy of the Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World CD from before the compression wars or are you stuck with the Greatest hits version and it annoys you every time you try to listen to it?
You are spot on. Best mastering ever was from the 70's. I heard a story from a guy in the biz that in the 90's music was mastered for listening in a car and not a room so they compressed the heck out of it so the music volume didn't change while driving. Dynamic range limited to 3dB.
I agree totally. And luckily, when I publish on my own label, I am free to make it as loud as I want. And I want it not that loud! And things pay off; often, I get messages from audiophile listeners that compliment the audio quality. But there is a fight against a tradition of fairy tales about recording as loud as it can be from any media or magazines... Young lads want to replicate the "magic" of the old recordings on tape, using digital media just like tape. It's miseducation... When I started using digital records, two things were immediately clear to me: the first was that I could finally hear a piano recording without the tape wobbling, and I loved it. The second one was that I wouldn't look high-end during the production due to tape wear, so there was no need anymore to make things overly bright to prevent losing them. And in case it was still too much at mixing time, it made it darker and lost another bit of noise in the process. But I was happy to get rid of tape, the hours of cleaning and calibration, heads wear and so on. So, thank you for your wise words. Spread the fact!
My first CD player was big and expensive; the first three CD's included one by Kitaro and I was absolutely amazed at its dynamic range, delicate high notes and near silence at times broken only by distant bird calls; gradually ramping up in intensity.
I totally agree with you, and this Phenomenon is now the scourge of live sound and concerts as well. Technology has come to the point that all those plugins can be used in a live environment. and producers telling the sound guy to "make it sound like the CD". It used to be you could only mix what the band played, and it music was dynamic and exciting. This is what made the live concert experience worth going to. Now you might as well get a good set of headphones and listen to the CD on your couch.
I've gone back to beautiful dynamics, less limiting, absolutely no clipping per track, etc. It takes the emotion away from the music. And I make electronic music, what might be the worst culprit in the loudness war casualties from 1994-Present Day. But I refuse to sound 'like that" as you put it. Brilliant take. By the way. I get frustrated when people say vinyl 'sounds better than CDs' because as you said, this is largely due to the fact that one cannot push vinyl to be as loud as a CD. But dear God... If you leave the dynamics in a CD alone, and you pretend you are mastering a piece of vinyl instead? You can play that CD and turn up the volume on your stereo and blow windows out gloriously with the thump of a kick drum. Loudness should occur with the volume knob, not already as a square wave making one's ears bleed.
Great explanation, and big "amens" to your comments on what is technically distortion ("warmth", etc). It seems the "make it sound like that" movement has progressed beyond the walls of the recording studios. I do livestream audio mixing for our local church, which has a rather large congregation for a small town (on ProTools DAW, with signal coming from Yamaha CL5 on a Dante network); and we have received pressure to mix our worship band's music so that our live broadcast "sounds like that" -- meaning like a mega church's worship band YT videos that have been post-mixed, EQ'd, etc. The "like that" is often not requested for better musicality, but just to imitate -- mostly cranking the drums, especially the snares; and back those vocals off so they're not so forward in the mix. It can be tough to balance what my ears hear as musical, with the "make it sound like that".
I like your videos. They speak the truth. This senseless degradation of music is one reason why I can no longer listen to music randomly (radio) but only listen to what I have chosen. Meanwhile, a big nuisance are the "remastered" pieces of music. I understand why famous albums and songs have to be re-released remastered. This is to ensure profit through royalties. But it moves me to listen to my old CDs instead of the new versions on the streaming platforms. From personal experience, I know the process in the studio. It starts with the fact that musicians have very specific ideas about the sound of their instruments, which often only exists in their ego and cannot be captured with any microphone in the world. In addition, there are these fashions like "Bootsie Bass" or "Prince Snare Drum" or just the lack of insight when it comes to overlapping frequencies in the low frequencies or in the 2000 to 4000 hertz range. On stage, the force of the volume compensates for the weaknesses. In the studio, only a well-trained sound engineer can help - if you let him. And once the recording is on the tape, the producer comes in and makes something out of it that was not so audible before. Ideally masterly, but under monetary pressure then moderately optimised for smartphone speakers. I don't need expensive headphones or hi-fi speakers for that, my iPods can play that too. It's just that my ear can't hear it any more. It makes me feel bad.
The problem is not the remastering, which is misleading, the problem are the mainstream remastered versions that are pure crap: from brickwalling compression, peak limiting and clipping(both on ADC and with plug-in), boosted treble and mono compatibility to the extreme making classic jazz albums with all instruments in the center! Also usually these recordings have that mid-bass enhanced around 60hz for sounding better on phone and poor bluetooth speakers, cars and crappy headphones. A proper remastering done by some of the best engineers are amazing, if the client do not ask for stupid loudness. Kevin Gray are making great job. I cannot stand mainstream music. For this reason I refuse to listen any music mastered like this, by whatever are from CDs or streaming/digital download. So I built my own music server. I’ve high-end headphones and a class A headphone amplifier with a good dac, on portable I use a dac/amp with professional in ear monitors. Also for this reason I want the best as possible music, as should deserve to be listen.
Thank you. Younger people often do not understand this. I was told by my female friend recently (once again) how my audio levels are "uneven". I tried to pry more details out of her (her vocabulary when it comes to synths and sound recording is somewhat mediocre) and I eventually realised what she was referring to. I don't really master my own tracks, at least not in the ways most people do it, and when you look at my waveforms, they look like those from the 1980-s. There are distinct peaks and throughs, it's not all driven to maximum height, and clipped with little discernible difference between peaks and throughs, the way all commercial recordings past the year 2000 look. The thing is, however, I think that younger people are so used to music sounding this way they don't appreciate this nuance. Older adults in my age group, however do, even though they don't always understand why. They tell me that "your EDM sounds way mellower, less "mechanistic" or "less computer-like" or "more like analog instrument" or "your ambient is way more atmospheric" or "there's something unique about it", there is some kind of "special magic", etc. and I just smile and thank them. This is no magic, of course, I distinctly recall the era when the music "went bad" and figured out why pretty quickly. It sucks, of course, but hey, at least you can fix things when it comes to the music you write. And if not, then at least you can have your way when performing live.
I totally agree with you! 🤘🏼 I just try and up the overall volume so my songs won’t sound too amateurish compared with other music, but I keep leaning towards the mid 80s in terms of loudness and mixing.
Thanks for this. It explains a lot. Over the last six months I have poured about $10k into building a Hi-Fi rig that even audiophile snobs would consider respectable. Pair that with a sub to a lossless streaming service and I guessed that something like you explained here must be going on. It isn't because I'm so terribly smart, it is self-evident by the number of choices one has for remasters of many classic recordings and the simple fact that no matter what you play them on, many of these remasters are nothing but a dumpster fire of distortion. It is obvious that there must be a lot of unwashed fingers in the pie for there to be 2004, 2011 and 2017 digital remasters of the same 1982 recording. Some of the distortion is so bad I worry that my behemoth 300 watt power amp blew the tweeters on my speakers. Fortunately, since I use a PC as a source, I can switch to my cheap desktop sound system with two mouse clicks. Different DAC, amplifier and speakers, and in every case the distortion is still there, although it is usually significantly less prominent on the cheap system. I have even made a playlist of the worst offenders as a reminder if I should ever forget that it is in fact the recording that is bad. It is getting to be a looooong list.
@@dirtroadie5747 you are a trooper to push 300w through a tweeter, if that is your aim look into ribbon style or studio monitors. My converted 12v setup my 500w PDX Alpine Block Amp can only hold 1 ohm stability for about 20 minutes. Good thing it's a 5 channel so will need for now to give up on bridging and run coils separate.
You are right, right and...right. I'm 65 and worked more than thirty years in the "high end" business. People brought their personal CDs to evaluate gear, and it very often sounded horrible, even with the very best of equipment. Therefore selling was becomimg harder and harder. Of course for the customers at first it was the fault of the gear and NOT of their CDs. Most of the time some vinyl "saved the day" and...reputation. But...there are still some labels out there, which still produce very good quality - for instance "ECM". That said, sadly they are only few...
Brilliant! Agree absolutely! I regularly review albums and am always harping on about poor, compressed, distorted, sound quality. A relief when the occasional nicely mastered one comes along. If you want to hear an example of excellently recorded AND mastered sound, try David Hughes album ‘This other Eden’. Start with the track ‘Jelly babe’ - stunning (even though it’s from 1999!). Interesting comment also re vinyl sound - I have a nice hifi system and comprehensive LP collection played on a Linn LP12 record deck, and many vinyls do sound better than their cd equivalents. David D
Great video. It's mastering engineers that think they can saturate the digital signal that is at the root of the problem. Also, I think ear fatigue and the older age mastering engineers are issues also. Since they've lost higher ranges in their hearing, they tend to push the high end, creating much more harsh sounding recordings. Another issue is the monitors that they're using to master the files. I've found that whenever they're probably using more vocal-present monitors, causing their mixes have a much more congested sound to them. I'm a TV editor and recording musician. I listen on Genelec stufio monitors that are very true. I find that older recordings sound much better on them than more recent recordings. Good luck with your channel :)
I’m not a professional but as music lover I agree, older music(original versions not edited) sounds better than all mainstream music produced today. I really hate the typical harsh sound of music today, I feel ear fatigue especially when raising the volume. For this reason I don’t listen any modern average CDs or music on streaming. Of course there’re amazing modern recordings properly done and mastered, from some labels that actually care about quality. Some engineers and musicians do not have a great hearing either, many of them suffer from tinnitus which could be caused by this loud music. I think they tend to push high end to recover some transients, going to make it even worse making the artifacts more audible. Even possible some speakers with a too much bass/mid centric sound could alter decisions, thinking this sound correct. Maybe also some speakers with a wrong setup on too high treble setting because of hearing impairing. I noticed noise floor can be boosted with high treble, even if this noise maybe is not really that much audible in normal conditions, so you're going to clean more than what is necessary.
Thanks for that really interesting video. It seems to partly explain the CD vs Vinyl argument that just goes on and on. I’ve always found this hard to understand before your video. My own interest as an oldie is in classical and 1960s and 70s rock for the most part. So I may literally have never experienced the problem though I suppose your video may help to explain why more recent re-issues never seem as good as the original versions! I just put it down to my memory and preferring the ‘old sound’. Perhaps the ‘old sound’ really was better? I wonder if this loudness / Distortion / clipping problem affects current classical recordings? I have a few recent classical CDs and I’m not aware of any particular recording problems. Far from it, in fact I reckon modern CDs of classical music sound really great for the most part. Modern recording techniques are much better than they were in the 1960s and early 70s.
This was very informative. There are a few occasions when these tools are justified: a) if somebody actually likes the distorted sound b) if the speaker / amplifier is not loud enough in a certain frequency range. For example, I'd like to use compressor on the piano because I can make it louder while using smaller speakers. Especially soft piano play sounds better with compression. I also like to use compression on sound when watching movies, often the speech is not loud enough while the music is too loud. Finally, I really like distorted sounds (guitar or singing). At the same time as with everything - using too much distortion or compression degrades the sounds - so I agree, it is important to talk about it.
I would respectfully push the date of the "loudness war" back to the mid 70's. I've worked in both studios and broadcast as an engineer. The loudness war started at least in the US, in the mid '70's Program directors were pushing for louder levels on air as the belief was that louder would get more listeners. I was personally involved with some of the early triband on-air processing systems and later the Orban on-air systems. All had the goal of reducing the dynamic range so they could maximum modulate their transmitters. Many systems I saw had VU meters that would just twitch at around Zero VU on decoded audio. When I worked as a mix engineer, many producers would want the master louder would tell me, "Now, make it sound like radio." Having worked in radio, I knew exactly what they wanted. My "day job" was in radio but I was never very far from the studio. In the late 70's, I was reading articles about highly compressed audio causing listener fatigue, so I who was chief engineer of a major market AOR station at the time, turned down the processing on our Orban processor. I got an angry call a day or so later from my Program Director who wanted to know why we weren't as loud as our competition. I explained about listener fatigue and he agreed to a compromise, if he didn't have to touch his volume control in his car the processing would be acceptably loud at least for one rating period. Our next rating period was the best ever and in fact the best an AOR had ever done in our market. I can't say that was all because of the lower loudness but I can say that our listener duration was way above our competition. The loudness war started with radio stations and the technology has allowed even the home studio to "sound like radio" so they do.
One of the most lifeless and clinical CDs I own is 1987 "Nothing like the sun" from Sting. A full DDD recording. The follow-up CDs sounded better, the best arguably the 1997 "Brand New Day", which also got a good review from Bob Katz. But I also own newer CDs that also sound good. It all depends on the artists and how they influence the way it should sound. My favourite example is the 2009 CD "Touch Yello" from Yello. It sounds powerful, crisp and clean. I bet that Boris Blank, the sound mastermind of Yello, dictated the mastering.
I've noticed newer music forced me to turn the volume down instantly and crank it up on older tunes. My listening source changed naturally towards instrumentals that are internationally produced and older music. Doing so I've experienced better imaging and quality that is natural to me. Thank you for the breakdown that makes total sense.
I’m pretty happy with most of my collection of SACD and DVD-audio 5+1 discs, played through a Pioneer digital system and good loudspeakers. Not all have been mastered to fully benefit from the multi-channel possibilities, but some are completely magical. But I listen less to music as I now play in a band on another system, 2+1 with an emphasis on bass.
I'm just an amateur producer but after many years of careful listening, failing, going back and forth DAW and analogue as well as different monitoring sources and environments, I completely agree! Sometimes I make a track and get carried away by jamming, forgetting that my ears have become dull. The next day, I wonder how the mix could end up so crowded, dense, rough, and dirty when the night before I felt like I had just come up with the next polished club hit. Then I go back to getting the gain staging and track levelling right, reducing harmonic fx settings and voilà: clarity and "air" to breathe sound much better, especially at higher volumes.
How true, how true. There is another tendency in modern recordings that is increasingly disturbing: breathing noises of the singers. One wonders by now whether one is a lung doctor at work or a music listener....
Not only that but even the sounds of the singers saliva splashing around as they move their mouths. That's high definition gone too far in my books. There is this song, 'Liberty' by Anette Askvik which high res audiophiles seem to love when it's time for a wank session with their newly acquired gear. It sounds like she is kissing your ear and occasionally tickling your ear drums with her tongue. Not for me, if i need ASMR there are channels dedicated to that stuff.
@@AudioMasterclass It's scary to think there's some studio assistant sitting at a Pro Tools screen all day, flying in samples from a Best Busy Breaths library CD
I was very apprehensive because of the title. But every thing you said was 100% true! I have only started to understand the more technical parts of audio in the last 5 years.
Very good explanation! I wonder if it's also apply to classical and jazz cd music as the sound quality demands are different than other geners ? Do they Master differently as such?
I think if a label thought that the processes I talked about would sell more classical and jazz then they would be doing it. I might investigate this separately but what I hear casually is usually clean. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Performances on solo instruments, or possibly duets, are the best way to check this. Piano, harpsichord, harp, flute, and violin all seem to be very good example standards that we know well exactly how they sound in real life. Good recordings are so good that even on modest equipment the result is almost shockingly realistic as if the performer is physically present in the room.
To your very last question, I would tend to say "Yes", but mostly from smart and informed amateurs &/or private small labels that care about sound quality in audio art, not just the $$$. FYI: My kind of recording use no compression but rather smart placement of the microphones assembly (2 complementary "capsules" at most!) to properly capture live sound. I could give examples, but it would be long to describe here... lets just say that for proper audio reproduction, you need proper and respectful sound capture, and this is achievable with utmost respect of, if well done and smartly adapted to the recording situation, the less is more approach. I know; this sounds (pun fully intended) as very purist, but my recordings deliver the goods. :) As usual, I really like your video for the honesty and cutting the BS. Kudos! M :)
I understand what you’re saying. When I stream a playlist on Tidal, most of the older CD quality recordings are played at the volume I initially set which is comfortable listening. Then, a HiRes or a MQA mix comes in blasting. It sounds like I’ve increased the gain to ear bleeding levels. I have to reach quickly to reduce the volume. Terrible!
You had me worried for a while that my Dark Side Of The Moon CD was mastered after 1995. Having checked, it's from 1992 and it sounds great btw. I've never bothered with any of the recent re-issues vinyl or otherwise.
@@AudioMasterclass The original vinyl records of DSotM were terrible quality: I remember many people at the time taking their copy back to the shop, sometimes several times. On CD releases, there is a slight background hiss in the quiet parts. This is instantly recognizable as noise from operational amplifiers in the original recording and mixing equipment, most likely the ubiquitous uA741 or LM741 or one of its near equivalents. Engineers in that era did indeed put all the love they could into making the most faithful, highest fidelity audio reproduction possible.
Thanks! My two best take home-points from this: The point on cutter head heating with constant high level HF follows naturally from what I already "know" about the vinyl manufacturing process. Though the thought has never occurred to me. A friend of mine has a Studer A80 at home, modified with a stereo head. Most of what he plays on that sounds absolutely jaw droppingly good. My nagging suspicion all along has been that it's the recordings, not the medium or the player. He buys ridiculously expensive copies of safety copies, all pre masters, never having gone through the final stages of adaption to any commercial release. Dynamics and low distortion? Oh, yes! I may even buy myself a good ADC to try copying some of his tapes to CD some day. I suspect little will be lost.
You're dead-right: it's all the recording. An Mp3 from a well recorded source on an iPod sounds better than a $100k turntable playing an 180g vinyl of an inferior recording.
This is my second comment to this video so I clearly have too much time on my hands. I thought I'd do a little experiment. I've followed Texas from the start of their career and have copies of all the original (not remastered) CD releases. Analysing each album for dynamic range is quite enlightening. Same band, but a whole lot louder after 1999. 1989 Southside DR 13 (12 - 14) 1991 Mothers Heaven DR 12 (11 - 15) 1993 Ricks Road DR 10 (9 - 12) 1997 White On Blonde DR 9 (8 - 11) 1999 The Hush DR 9 (9 - 10) 2003 Careful What You Wish For DR 6 (5 - 7) 2005 Red Book DR 5 (4 - 6) 2013 The Conversation DR 7 (6 - 9) 2017 Jump On Board DR 6 (5 - 7) 2021 Hi DR 5 (4 - 6) The values in brackets show the worst and best dynamic range among the individual tracks. A few other gems from my collection of original 80s CD releases by (mostly) popular artists of the day. 1983 Dire Straits, Love Over Gold DR 14 (12 - 17) 1983 Thomas Dolby, The Golden Age Of Wireless DR 13 (12 - 14) 1983 Blondie, Parallel Lines DR 12 (10 - 13) 1983 U2, War DR 11 (10 - 12) 1984 Stevie Ray Vaughan, Couldn't Stand the Weather DR 15 (13 - 18) 1985 Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms DR 16 (13 - 20) 1985 Kate Bush, Hounds of Love DR 12 (11 - 13) 1986 Madonna, True Blue DR 12 (12 - 13) And now some unlistenable post-1995 examples. Truly awful. 1995 Oasis, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? DR 5 (3 - 10) 2004 Keane, Hopes and Fears DR 5 (4 - 6) 2014 Paloma Faith, A Perfect Contradiction DR 5 (4 - 6) 2018 Muse, Simulation Theory DR 5 (3 - 7) Even artists who should know better are at it. 2019 Elbow, Giants of All Sizes DR 6 (4 - 9) I was struggling to find a contemporary album by any mainstream artist with an average DR across all tracks in double digits. Damon Albarn just about manages it with Dr Dee (DR 10), but it's hardly what you'd call popular music. Even well known jazz artists often disappoint on the DR front. Then I remembered a CD I picked up from a busker by the name of Woodsmoke (aka Tom McNair) I met in Bath in 2017. Recorded and mixed by the man himself without the commercial pressure to make it "sound like that", lo and behold: 2017 Woodsmoke, Love Like Fire DR 12 (9 - 13)
Well, nice pitch 😀 and reading the comments, well received. However, in my opinion it's not only the loudness war that's to blame here. But also consumers like me, who in masses complained in the 80ties and early 90ties about the harsh, shrill, cold, lifeless, clinical etc etc sound of our favorite recording artists, when they released new material on CD. Because of this "warmth" (yes yes distortion) was added. Because we were the group with money back then, the record companies listened (for once). If the loudness war took this to the extreme? I can't say, but I'll take your word for it.
Warm distortion without clipping was part of rock & roll since before it was rock & roll. I found guitar amp fuzz goes back farther than I ever suspected when I found some Sister Rosetta Tharpe songs on UA-cam. What he's talking about here is not a variety of warm tones of added harmonics from overdriving a vacuum tube or transistor, but brickwall smashing digital noise into the entire mix, nonstop on every song on every album.
Not really... A lot of soundtracks are affected by huge compression, for example all Studio Ghibli soundtracks, the oldest (like Nausicaa from 1986) are perfect. Even Telarc had admit they apply soft clipping, compression and peak limiting to their CDs to be competitive, the DSD is not edited and have the full original dynamics. The same for all new Deutsche Grammophon recordings. While usually classical recordings do not have the same loudness of other genres, not mean they are not compromised in some way.
I agree with this message! Over my years of listening to CD I found myself gravitating to audiophile CDs, recorded by passionate enthusiasts who care more about the quality than the profit. This meant moving away from the music of my youth, prog rock, and towards jazz and classical. Don’t get me wrong, I love most genres and I have loved listening to new music. However, a year ago, I bought a turntable. The same model I bought in 1990, the first time around, as it were. I have extensively upgraded it beyond anything my 30 year old self could have dreamed of. Result, I am now listening to all my old music as well as the music I have been listening to on my CD system. My tastes haven’t changed after all, I am drinking from the fountain of youth. Genesis, Camel, Rush, Pink Floyd all sound as good today, to me, as they did back in the day. What’s more, jazz has never sounded better with many specialist labels producing stunning versions of classic albums. By the way, if you want to know what Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, should sound like, seek out the 45rpm version mastered by Kevin Grey, from Pallas, you will be astonished. If the labels want to kill off vinyl once and for all, they can, however, they’re too stuck in their own groove, so they won’t. 😄
Fortunately for me, my favorite music is mostly from the 60s & early 70s, as well as more recent folk music, which is usually too simple to be seriously tampered with. Also, I like the "KISS" principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid"): Two mikes at a 105 degree angle, and a good 2-track recorder!
Ironic! As the recording and mastering equipment has improved to almost perfection ,the standard of the music recorded has plummeted. As an audiophile I despair at the quality of most ,but not all,new music. And now they're going back and remastering old stuff and bloody ruining that too. Some of it sounds like it's been recorded in my metal shed or in my bathroom. It's impossible to listen to and It's even starting to sound crap on our alexa. Please someone ,see sense.
Here we go! Finally a truthful explanation of what goes on and has gone on since 1995. Remasters, not if I can get an excellent example that was made prior. Remastered is a hated word in the audiophile community because they know as you have explained quite clearly, audio has failed at the label and the artists are not to blame nor the original mixer. It is the master ing engineer who must bare the brunt for this failure. How can you end around a label and their cursed influence of audio ruination? As you frequently said, you can’t. Overuse of compressors and limiters is the abomination of our audio times. Shame on most labels for allowing it!
This is a decades-old subject. The "loudness wars", are pretty much over. It occurs to me that you might not be listening to the right records. There are hundreds of records made every year that are not limited to death and sound astonishingly great. When people started figuring out that very loud, over-limited recordings actually sound smaller and less loud after they hit the F.M. Broadcast chain, they started mastering more quietly. There will always be over-limited records out there. I just don't bother listening to them. In general, audio has never sounded as great as it does now. Full Stop.
FM commercial radio has to be the worst of all narrowest dynamic range but then their primary objective is deliver adverts at maximum volume possible and then fill in time between them at the same setting
Yeah, I agree that the blanket statement "Anything recorded after 1995 sounds like crap," is incorrect. Sure, that's true for many recordings. However, absolutely false for just as many; if not more. Listen to Steve Hackett's Under a Mediterranean Sky. It's a gorgeous sounding album and it was released in 2021. I'd say Saga's Symmetry album sounds equally as brilliant. For another album that's simply an outstanding recording, there's Black Light Syndrome by Bozzio Levin Stevens. It was released in 1997. I also dare say that many classical music albums recorded in the early 2000s also sound great.
Really? Now that they've destroyed all the good music, the loudness wars are over? Really? Then why is ALL of the Giles Martin remixes on the LATEST Beatles releases (2022) COMPRESSED and LOUDED? Why? The 'loudness wars' are NOT over, by any measure, "Ivan".
@@cjay2 - Not all remasters are created equal. For instance, Shout Factory did a great job with ELP's debut and Tarkus, but crappy for Brain Salad Surgery. Sony's remaster of that is much better. Also, the earlier remaster for Saga's Heads Or Tales isn't great, but the latest remaster is much better. I'm not disagreeing about loudness wars. I'm just saying to pay attention to reviews and such so you know whether or not a remaster is worth getting. Also, when there's a Japanese pressing and the album is a real favorite, get it. Japanese pressings are generally superior, but they're expensive.
This is certainly not true, still a lot of albums get released today with poor quality, and I am not talking about mainstream music. Aside from that, there's still so many great albums from the past (rock, jazz, blues, fusion) that are only available as horribly compressed masters. The loudness war is far from over. You could say that the loudness war is over, when you'll have a chance to buy any album from the past at a satisfactory sound quality. Until then, saying that the loudness war is just misleading.
Massive respect!!! You have nailed it in this video. Dynamic range compression is the enemy of life-like sound. And the fact that the music recording industry, at least for Pop and Rock & Roll is firmly entrenched in this war to reduce dynamic range at all cost, how will we ever get back to some sense of sanity in application of compressors and limiters in the mastering process? And what do the rest of us do who want to experience 'live' dynamics on their recorded music at home? Are there record labels that do an 'honest' mastering job now days? If so, thats where I want to spend my money if I am buying recorded media. I am unclear about stepping back into the Vinyl vs CD battle due to my view that the tradeoffs to live with Vinyl are based on my acute dislike for the 'fiddle factor' of dealing with Vinyl. Clean the record before you play it, go nowhere near the turntable while its playing and for God's sake walk carefully while its playing and then when you're done playing it, clean it again before putting it back in its plastic sleeve and then back in the cardboard cover. Sorry, way too much fiddle factor for me. I much prefer the convenience and durability of CDs to say nothing of the fact there is no background noise on a well recorded disc. That way if the engineers and record label execs did an honest job we have the possibility of a really good recording. I would love to see a video where you recognize the honest labels and call out the ones to avoid...ok skip calling out the bad ones. Just sharing some insiders knowledge about which labels have their focus on the quality of the recording over maintaining the status quo would be a useful contribution to the preservation of good music in your viewing audiences homes. I am in a rather unique position of replacing a boatload of media lost in a house fire and due to the size of the collection I had will be spending a considerable sum to replace some of what was lost...the question is, Vinyl or CD or both. I wont be replacing cassettes and VHS tapes, I consider them as a total write off.
When I was dabbling about with creating my own audio manipulation software in DOS programming because it was what I knew, the program was buggy. So for the time being until I fixed the code, I just had single positive and negative values just to see it work. It was essentially one bit audio, and it's what early computers did to fit sound bites onto cartridges. Simply put, it sounded like the apocalypse, but the audio was definitely there. This is the ultimate in the loudness wars, and we might actually reach it before everyone demands the loudness wars to just go away. Imagine 24 bits of what is essentially one bit audio. A huge waste in storage space for sure, but it will make the loudest explosions and the quietest whispers all the same volume. Where we're going, we don't need audio dynamics. So, grab your crash helmet and your ear plugs. Your parents might have thought your music was noise, but your kid's music will be just noise.
I think with people and music, some listen to and others just hear it. The former want great audio and masterfully written, composed, orchestrated, performed and recorded music, the latter just want a ton of bass, beats and noise / muzak.
I have plenty of CDs before 95 and plenty after as well (including the "one that started it all"). Loudness war created really unlistenable CDs. The dynamics are compressed as close to the limit as possible, there are no more quiet and loud passages, the whole track is screaming. And yes, today's remasters suffer from these. Good thing I've kept my pre-95 CDs...
Perhaps that is why many people are returning to vinyl. Vinyl used compression on many compilation releases to crowd more tracks on the record. It was quite noticeable though
Brilliant video and finally a voice of truth in the wilderness, classical and jazz are great examples of this, I remember being told as a young engineer the magic is in the spaces.... cue steely dan, nowadays? oh well...........
I agree completely. I hate when they smash/destroy the dynamics. That isn't the way music sounds in real life. When I mix and master my bands music, I try to keep at least 10 db of dynamic range. Some parts might get to 12-15 db. It sounds more live and more alive. It has movement and emotion. We play death metal, so it is VERY unusual for that genre to have dynamic range and I don't use triggers or samples. Sound more real to me.
Thank you for your comment, which I appreciate. There are two issues going on here and I only covered one in the video, which is distortion. The other, as you say, is dynamic range and I will have more to say on that in a future video. DM
Love your perspectives on audio and have been watching your videos recently since they popped up on my feed! Great stuff. With the loudness wars, it’s tough getting the loudness of productions to modern levels with just in-the-box mixing tools. Things can sound really sterile in the clean digital world. However, with things like the Presonus Console plugins, Waves NLS buss, and the multitude of available tape emulation plugins, I’ve been able to get a heck of a lot closer than ever before. It’s all probably too loud honestly, but if you’re trying to get “competitive” masters in the box, there are ways to get there cleanly in the box (-8 or -7 LUFS). Just checking some of my favorite recent rock records, the masters are hitting sometimes -5 LUFS! I love throwing an api-2500 before the final limiter on the master and pushing it with the analog setting on, to about 8 or 9 db’s. At least in the waves version, you can get it pretty dang loud with the soft clipping that’s emulated from the api-2500 with analog on and it’s pretty cool how clean it remains as long as you don’t push the needle completely balls to the wall. Waves Vinyl is pretty good for mastering too, adds a different dimension to things. Not to forget using plugins like Saturn from fab filter, with saturation on busses processed in M/S for non-linear saturation like what happens in the analog world. That, with all of the plugins I mentioned earlier, have been tremendous at reproducing not just a loud signal, but a loud and truly warm one at that. The biggest gain in my understanding mixing and mastering was understanding the whole process. That each step is treated separately and with great reverence for the honest expression of the recordings at hand, and most importantly, listening with my ears more so than visual cues on the DAW. But along with watching your videos, I’ve still got a lifetime of learning left, it never stops!
The loudness war hasn't started in 1995. It always existed. Bob Ludwig talks about it in an interview of how important it was for him to learn how to cut loud masters to vinyl in the early 70ies in order to be competitive. (it's more accurate to say it started in 1995 for the CD medium because it's true that in the early days of the CD transfers wer unnecessarely quiet, and then went to super loud, never lingering in the "optimal" region :)). and to be fair the pre '95 CD don't sound that grat either, they sound thin and very low, not utilizing the whole dynamic range of the CD, mainly because they wer transfered directly from an already vinyl "optimized" master, with weak low end and such.
You are correct of course, and there's also AM radio. I think though that 1995, as I said, is a useful reference point in this, when things got suddenly worse IMHO. DM
@@AudioMasterclass I agree. that's when things got really "crunchy" :)) ... or better yet :(( the sad thing is everybody hates the CD nowadays ... interestingly not so much digital, but the CD, when, obviously, it's not the medium's fault. You can get absolutely beautiful masters on CD if everything is done right, and it's so much more evolved (I purposely didn't say better) than vinyl. but the industry and the powers to be always screw up everything for the almighty $. And don't get me started on the vinyl revival ... a little common sense will tell you that 8 out of 10 (and I'm being nice here) transfers are done from digital so basically you listen to a digital master ... from vinyl ... (duh!). Fred Flintone technology :).
You can also "blame" starting in 1980 speakers featuring paper cone woofers that contain 5 mid-range and 'space age' tweeters and setups with 'quick' ic and chips in lieu of heavy sometimes finicky fet stereos with 'tower' robust capacitors with equally heavy speaker cabinets. I noticed while listening to an 1988 AT40 the industry apparently set 'Rock' artist songs and assigned an apparent eq curve where bass/low end dropped out and was 'given' to Soul/R&B/Black (was still an official genre) tracks. It is noticeable on releases I have of an 88 Whitesnake 12" single and of course Twisted Sister. For all of those brothers and sisters who took to the streets (installed systems in their cars as to avoid parents and police) back in the day myself included, who was reminded music was too loud even when it wasn't (played on a fet or old similar receiver like a Sansui or Sherwood in my case) I salute you.
Excellent points, and my eyes were opened to the tricks available in the audio chain when DAWs started bundling "make it warmer" plugins as standard. I thought the low point (or, perhaps, high point in terms of clips/sec) was 1999, but I agree that pre-1995 CDs sound more polite, restrained and less in-yer-face than any CD post-1999. There are exceptions of course. Some DIY musicians, who have more control over their output, still cater for those of us whose ears wince at a brickwalled 21st century master😢
This is something that has always bothered me, even though I don't have a lot of experience with audio, when listening to some albums or tracks I do find them weird. For example, Adele's 21 Album is, for me, a prime example of this, always on 0db in the meters and rarely moves down. it just sounds busy and as if nothing has room to breathe in the mix. This has also became a problem when I try to record some albums on cassette, it just seems that having a mix always on 0db stresses out the tape and maybe saturates it a lot more. On the other hand, things seem to be getting better. I have recently experimented with Dolby Atmos music, and I know that sometimes Dolby Atmos music mixes don't sound that good, but in some cases it does partially resolve the problem of the "no room to breathe" as it seems to have more channels than just stereo. I haven't actually measured the improvements but it does sound roomier by ear, even when just listening in stereo systems with a Dolby Atmos stereo downmix going on. As I said, I do not have a lot of experience with audio so this could be partially wrong.
Maybe one day the spectrum will lower it's grip on you, and you will listen with your ears, and not your eyes. The album sound nothing like you describe, it only looks like it.
The problem with Dolby Atmos is that the mix-down goes via a algorithm and each individual sound is basically a object that is placed or panned by the available count of loudspeakers that the customer have.
@@jimsteinmanfan80 With Dolby Atmos we are missing the whole part of analog summing in the mixdown. Here a bit of explanation: ua-cam.com/video/bZuQfrofjMs/v-deo.html
Do not even get me started on the same multiple years of a said popular artist/said same popular CD. Play an original Micheal Jackson CD then listen to the 3rd or 4th generation remasters of the same CD. It is so compressed and squashed it is a cardinal sin. I have been complaining about the digital degradation of music forever. Not a fan at all of 1's and 0's digital music in the first place. This is exactly why I will take my record collection to the grave. Finally someone speaking the PURE truth on this topic! God bless you for telling it like it is on this subject! Now I am super huge fan of this channel.
It'd be interesting to hear the artists point on this, because in the end the added distortions are part of the art, as it is presented to their ausdience. i.e. others than the original band add their artistic touch (sometimes heavy handedly) to their original art. Are they involved in that process, do they generally agree with the decisions? The thing is, that mixing and mastering are necessary, and there needs to be some artistic freedom. But maybe, similar to transmissions soccer games where audiences can now choose which camera to watch, there will be some music where one does get the original recordings and the mix and master as one or several filter settings left for the audience to listen to as given or edit to their hearts content. Likely most such edits will be subjectively better to at most one person, but there could be e.g. fan sites choosing the best versions and publishing the settings.
I think what David's talking about here is management /executive decisions to throw away the creative variations chosen by the artists. As for multiple views, sometimes artists will choose to release raw tracks of a song or, for video, multiple camera angles of a concert, to see what fan edits people make. Usually with some way to vote.
I totally agree. I mix music with regard to making it sonically the best possible. As far as I am concerned, the loudness wars are over. I hate modern music because of the high levels of compression and limiting.
I own "What's the story morining glory", and it's exactly the reason why no record company earned a penny from me since (no, I don't even do downloading). I abhorr the loudness war and I realised there is more recorded music out there from before that time than I will have time to spend for the rest of my life listening to without running out of sources. Having said that, I think the loudness war actually started way earlier, think Motown recordings, and ELO sounds very compressed too...
I would like to see and hear an LP that has one side mastered for fidelity, labelled "Good Side", and the other side containing exactly the same recording but mastered to the current but now really old fashion with the life limited and compressed out of it, and perhaps some autotune thrown in for bad measure, labelled "Shit Side".
You cannot cut a record that is extremely compressed and clipped, even at lower levels, because the groove will tend to flatten out, making the record difficult to play. Just saying.
@@cjay2 I'm sure there are plenty of hyper-compressed recordings released on "vinyl". The sides of the groove must always be at 45 degrees to the surface, 90 degrees to each other. Compression doesn't mean greater amplitude, just more consistent amplitude. If you do have greater amplitude, this means the groove becomes equally wider and deeper. What you say is false, unless the lathe is so crude it can only cut mono.
This is so true. I would like to add that more expensive audio setups tend to reproduce the distortions to higher fidelity, making the badly mastered recordings even less bearable. I've told my friends that the more money you spend on audio, the less stuff there is to listen to.
I'll save anybody who reads this 15 minutes of their life. After 7 minutes of rambling, the question of "why" audio is bad is finally answered, and the answer is "clipping." So you can completely throw out the golden rule in audio production, which is that "if it sounds good, it is good." Yep, that doesn't matter. All that matters is if it's clipping, even if that's done on purpose for the purpose of making it sounds better to you. You can forget objective measures like "how many people actually like this." That doesn't matter. All that matters here is clipping. Pack it up and go home.
A topic close to my heart. I have spent too much time trying to source early copies of cd album releases for exactly the reasons you mention but it is worth it. Music needs to have quiet as well as loud. Pre 1990 cd’s of the AAD type provide the best compromise for me if you are shopping in that era.
This has to be the best commentary on audio I've ever heard.
I totally agree I am extremely impressed with The amount of thought he puts into his answers and explanations and I am so glad that somebody is willing to tell the truth about this stuff I always had kind of the same feeling is what he's saying it's amazing wonderful wonderful teacher
But classical music is safe from this (in general)?
YES!
Here here.
On your point at 13:45 - you're right. I worked for a few years at a mastering house in London with three other mastering engineers. The bloke who had the most (and most well-known) clients was the guy who didn't care about the audio quality at all. He simply smashed the hell out of the dynamics. The next most popular wasn't so cavalier, but he had considerably fewer clients. The other two (including me) spent a lot of time doing their best to persuade their clients that louder isn't better, and we had the fewest clients. Nobody wanted their release to sound less loud than everyone else's, and that was that.
Audio Masterclass: The Truth Will Always Offend
Lathe Of Heaven: You Are So Right!
We have had the same experiences as mastering Engineers.
Musical tastes are always going to be musical tastes, nothing will change that
The loudness wars Sucked, now we have much music that's cold and clinical and almost lost that perception of warm real engineers knew as distortion.
it happened when anologue went to Compact Discs and again with Compressed Mp3s
people have got so familiar with this sound they can no longer tell the difference.
there are a few exceptions to the rule.
Back in the 70s, there were direct disk recordings,where the musicians played live directly into an analogue mixer and outputted onto the cutting lathe . No tape recording ! If the musicians made a mistake, they had to start over! The result was the most incredible sounds I ever heard. Google Sheffield Labs
Well, a small token thank you for not selling out your soul for money.
@@ammej768 Or Studio 55, also engineer would fire up the small AM transmitter until FM took over and wyed output and had producer tune in a car with the 1 speaker as another safety😀
@@ammej768I bought a bunch of those when they first came out. To this day, I don’t think I’ve heard anything better.
When good recordings sounded audibly flawless on my speakers, is when I realized there was no need to upgrade any further. No missing spatial effects, imagined, or otherwise. Truth be told, I had been hooked on whatever I could get out of it for decades. Currently, my speakers are better than my hearing can ever be again. The only downside being, it leaves me nothing further to talk about other than the actual music itself.
Past weekend, I ended up putting on my original Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" album that I had not heard for quite a few years, just picked randomly out of my collection. It was a stark reminder of how and why I got hooked on this hobby in the first place, before digital anything, and to stop overthinking/second-guessing my system just because the ad/marketing mechanism tells me to.
Excellent LP choice to pull out of your archives. Darn near cried when Christine McVeigh passed. I was very upset. Fleetwood Mac was a huge part of my life here in the USA. My most favorite album they ever did still ,,,,was Bare Trees.
Indeed AMEN to that. Even my children reject almost everything that is thrown at them recorded after the mid 90ties. As I make and record classical music I do not have to participate in the loudness war but if I ask the mixed to be mastered I mostly get it back too loud with little dynamics. The sweet voices and violins are gone, why? Obviously things needed to be louder. Not in my book, so I fully agree with your statement that the audio is already bad once you buy or stream it. I use a more than average quality pair of speakers placed to my liking in my livingroom and enjoy music not the technology (in your livingroom the music is largely (80%) influenced by the room size and acoustics anyway). Same goes for the DAW and monitor speakers I use, listen carefully and try to recreate the venue and scale it down to livingroom size. I do like the down to earth way you present your topics on this channel. Keep up the good work and spread the word.
AMEN to everything you said. It's truly mindboggling that this still continues despite popular services like Spotify having loudness normalization turned on by default, meaning it _doesn't_ sound louder, just worse. By the way, some modern vinyl releases were obviously made from a digital -4 LKFS damaged master. Good thing there is so much great pre-1995 music to discover!
I find many pre -95 mixes very shallow and lacking in bass. There are very few recordings I like from that period and they're all live acoustic recordings, preferably pure stereo miced.
@@dingdong2103 Vinyl was limited in the level of bass which could be recorded on it. Too high a bass level could cause the grooves to be deep enough that the stylus could skip and wide enough that the running time of the record would be reduced, or adjacent groove sections would be distorted. However, bass was once considered to be something which was not overtly audible in the mix, but rather underneath the other instruments as reinforcement or a foundation, something which would be noticed more by it's absence rather than it's actual presence.
@@dingdong2103 once upon a time stereo systems had a graphic equalizer built in. Also if you have a subwoofer there should be a separate volume control so that if you want more bass you can dial in more bass yourself.
@@allanmoorhead9492 That was an issue that was rectified by the RIAA correction and affected only a couple of records such as the infamous Chaikowsky 1812 overture with the cannon shots.
@@dingdong2103 The purpose of RIAA equalisation was to compensate for the "constant velocity" characteristic of disc cutters, which caused signal amplitude to be increased at the bass end and reduced at the treble end. Equalisation reduced the bass and increased the treble before cutting, and the pre-amplifier reverses this on playback. This allowed more space for the groove (extended playing time) and also reduced noise (which is mostly at the treble and and competes with the treble signal content).
The reason I subscribe, is that you are obviously knowledgable, experienced and best of all: thoughtful and pragmatic. I reject snobbery and audio voodoo. You have the rare ability to delineate nonsense from sense.
A lot of people involved in production, especially before Smash Out All Dynamics and Smash Pitch and Time To The Grid became predominant, aren't snobbish or interesting in voodoo. They just want the nicest cleanest full range for the artist's original intentions that can be obtained for the budget.
I am 75. I, too, experienced all of this audio evolution and de-evolution. I relate to everything you say. My Junior High graduation present was a Grundig PORTABLE RADIO, and it was the greatest tech thing that I knew existed at the time - 1962, When I was 20 - 1967 - I was fortunate enough to work for an 8-track cassette recording company locally. We bought new albums directly from a local record store, carefully placed the vinyl record on a professional grade turntable and stylus, and recorded a master tape of the pristine original on a professional grade reel-to-reel tape deck. After that, we were able to repeatedly create high quality recordings piggy-backing to multiple recorders, cranking out a high volume for the 8-track market, which was voracious at that time. Albums in your car! OMG! Anyway, I got to keep those pristine albums, played only once (well, some played more than once). I was not thinking of investment value at the time. Likely I was high, too). I have 500-600 vinyl records, most of which are in good shape, and some of which are in excellent shape. I am either going to buy a good record player and listen to them all again, but that seems tedious, as I can listen to any sone I desired digitally, usually by asking Siri. If that doesn't work, Alexa usually can. So, I ned to create a log of them for sale. If any of you are interested in inquiring about a specific album or albums, I have most rock albums dating from 1964 theu the mid-70's, and qutre a few others.
Where are you located?
@@robertbrinton7754 I live in Santa Barbara, CA. I've lived here continuously since 1962, though it has been my hometown since 1953, when my family lived abroad for a while. Santa Barbara had the only venue large enough to attract the big name bands, and we often got to see all the big groups, mostly before they were famous, as they would stop in Santa Barbara on the way to or from a gig in SF or LA. The company who produced the shows also bought 8-Track tapes to selll at a huge "Music Emporium". I got free backstage passes to all the shows. Jimi Hendrix (he burned his guitar less than 10 feet away from me, offstage), the Doors, the Airplane, Big Brother, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, Santana, The Mothers of Invention, Sweetwater, the Who (my roommate, a drummer, caught a drumstick thrown into the crowd by Keith Moon while the rest of them distroyed their guitars and amps), Love, Cream, and more. I also got to see the Yardbirds and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental band play live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1968. Those were good times. Best.Music.Ever. Last note - in 1967-68, tickets to these events ranged from $2.50 - $3.50, never more. As I said before, we had backstage passes, so we didn't have to pay those exorbitant prices! lol I never figured out how they made money, since the venue was relarively small. Maybe they did it for the gas money, as they were all in vans and busses back then.
They sourced 8 tracks from commercial vinyl? Im confused.
@@JustinEdwords I'm confused too -- maybe they were pirating the music?
Nice...but now I can no longer afford vinyl. Stange Days.
The last two albums by Talk Talk and Mark Hollis' unique solo album are testament to how audio should be mixed and mastered. They are my antidotes to the brickwall sound of the loudness wars. I really believe that in the realms of pop and rock, the space and dynamics to be found in those albums will never be heard again.
Oh yes, I have those three albums on CD and each time I listen they leave me in awe. Both the music and the sound are superlative.
It will be found again. But we need some intelligent people to come back to music. If everyone is disillusioned then of course it will always be crap. Break the cycle.
One or several engineered by Phil Brown whom I met in London in the 90s.... and just read his book where he talks alot about those sessions.. awesome book!
Talk talk we’re the first big gig I saw. It was the colour of spring tour. They were just incredible and set me firmly on my musical journey. What a band.
are we talking Spirit of Eden? it's an absolute masterpiece....
Clarity on sounds. Love your confidence and direct no-nonsense delivery. Thank you
As a fellow sound professional, I too completely agree. I’ve often been bored to death by amateur “audiophiles” telling me they’ve spent more money on their domestic (unbalanced) all-analogue garbage than I’ve spent on some professional set ups, but telling me that I’m getting it all wrong.
Notwithstanding the gross inaccuracies inherent in 20th century electro-mechanical sound reproduction technology, Psychoacoustics, the tympanic reflex, and a phenomenon known as the Head Related Transfer function all play a massive role in what each of us perceives. These effects on our response to sound are now far greater in magnitude than the achievable minimum distortion levels of modern recording, mixing and mastering tools.
It’s great to see that what I’ve been patiently - and impatiently! - explaining to people since 1986 is now becoming common currency beyond pro audio circles.
There are only two parts of the signal chain where we need “expensive” analogue equipment - the input and output transducers. Downstream of the input DAC and upstream of the output DAC and final amplification stage everything can stay in the practically flawless digital realm.
Great video, I think it just helps re-frame the issue that while we are worrying about 0.001 vs 0.0001% distortion they are adding back single digit levels to the source material. It also explains why despite the technical limitations, I do often enjoy vinyl versions better even though I have a nice digital setup as well. It also explains why I often like my original CDs from the time of release over the remastered versions. Thank you for the enlightening discussion!
Although, it's not as simple as that, unfortunately. I spent nearly 20 years as a vinyl-cutting engineer (I also did CDs etc) between 1990 and 2010. It was quite often the case that the audio I was sent was 'mastered' already. Often this would be a CD master, that had been compressed and limited to death already, or it would be a stereo mix... which had been compressed and limited to death already.
My task was to try and find a way to transfer that to vinyl such that it would play back OK on a turntable. If you bought any of those records, they would be as compressed as the CD masters. No way to undo the damage. I was on a constant quest with clients to get them to provide uncompressed audio files from which to make two masters. The vinyl master I made would be a lot less compressed/limited than the CD master. But at all times, I had the artists, producers and record labels emploring me to 'cut it louder than anything I've ever done before'.
*Insurrection Industries* It's a pleasure and a coincidence to find your comment here on a non-videogame related video, but audio. And sorry for being pretty off topic again but... would you release Gamecube component with audio? I hope so.
Never imagined being audiophiles apart from gaming haha.
@@JnL_SSBM unfortunately we care too much about audio and would only add audio if we could do an excellent DAC that exceeded the built in DAC. We have started looking into it, and even got an audio precision analyzer to begin that investigation. It will actually be rather expensive to do it to the level we could accept.
@@insurrectionindustries1706 We MUST care about audio quality, and I hope we use ESS Sabre 9218P DACs or similar...
? arise when output specs claim 0.00000 whatever distortion and if no speaker Xmax given. Output anything close to 'expected' wattage max with 0.4% THD shows likely human checking/verification of spec in around 90db/w/m sens and is range where generally accepted human ears notice is distorted.
Grateful to you for creating such a video. The topic is almost a taboo among audiophiles, a lot of them seem to believe that it's not an issue at all, or that the loudness war is over. Needless to say, the majority of people is not even aware that this is an issue, so it's good to talk about it.
13:45 Dan Worrall already won that competition with his "I won the Loudness War" +2.3 LUFS track. His channel is an excellent almost borderline ASMR resource for DAW. I couldn't understand why I couldn't listen to all of Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity (released in 1995) without feeling fatigued, even with the volume lowered. Until you and others on UA-cam and other articles explained the Loudness War.
Oh yes! Dan's the man. Great in-depth technical knowledge, and wonderful, bitter, no-prisoners British humour/sarcasm. The listener's volume knob has been replaced by the engineer's limiter fader... what could go wrong?;)
So grateful to Dan for finally winning the Loudness War
Correct.
You sir have described exactly what I experience with new music.
The best way I can describe it is that I feel like the space is missing between the instruments. The space between lead and backing vocals is not there any more. The roomy sound has gone. 😢 This is also evident when playing older music through a good quality led bar graph. Older music has gaps, waves, peaks and troughs in the music that are evident by the dancing lights. Todays music is almost a flat line of ON all the time and only pushes further into the red with every beat of the kick drum.
The result is something a little flat and lifeless where older music seems to breathe more and change directions. Its sad that the labels are pushing a product and really stifling the artwork
That’s because most stuff today is so heavily over compressed that you totally smashes the dynamic of an “honest” recording. IMO using a compressor as a sound design tool is beeing way overdone today, and a compressor is harder to master than you think. You have to have a good ear and be able to judge when it’s too much and when it’s just fab.
Loved your views on this. Yes, Dynamics is everything in music & when you kill that, you kill the soul of the track itself.
True❤
I love The The and had all their CDs since the 80s. Recently I had to repurchase the "Infected" album (don't lend your beloved CDs) and all that was available was a 2002 remaster. After listening to the whole thing my skin was crawling, such was the crime the mastering had perpetrated on this musical masterpiece. I gave the 2002 remaster away and luckily found an original 1986 edition on Discogs which I will thoroughly enjoy till the day I die.
Great example, still love the old Matt Johnson work.
@@monkmusic5994 Matt Johnson is one of the great British songwritwers of all time. His lyrics are still relevant and the instrumental arrangements are superb.
What a stupid name
@@nunofernandes4501 I saw the the live (dusk tour) with chubby Johnny Marr a couple of metres from me in a club in Hannover/Germany. Matt was a bit disappointed, because there were only 50 people. They performed great!
@@monkmusic5994 I wish I were there.
I made my living in the technology of pro audio for 40 years. You’re spot on. Subscribed.
I worked for years as a Radio/TV Engineer, and did both maintenance & operations. The rule was, never let the VU meter enter the RED, except for occasional (and unavoidable) peaks. Then there were the DJs, who had to be reined in, because they felt emasculated whenever the needle dropped below "0."
Eww good point and keep an eye on that dang 500hz band (likes to creep) and in my case is when I notice something's clippin..
I honestly think that many musicians & producers, these days, WANT to drive the mike amps into clipping, because it makes the music sound "louder."
@@Pootycat8359 for those folks recommend a good 70s marantz, Sansui and the like with QS and drive some good Vegas or do like me n Rick Rubin used to do lay down in the back seat in a Impala with the rounded glass back window with a nice system, turn the (enhanced low end at lower volume which tapers as vol knob turns up) "Loudness" feature 'On' throw in a safety copy then have a listen. I will say the 90's-00s 'nice' home receivers you had to crank lot louder to achieve similar low end output. After transferring some rnb LPs to digital I left the same settings and when transferring some Whitesnake VUs did not show clipping but after multiple attempts realized I was 'stuck' with piercing high end which I will need to dump to some DAW and see if I can limit high end and widen low to mid so I can enjoy like others including tracks like Prince's Controversy....
Lucky you! I had once to dial in some compressors for a small station. Job description: "make it as loud as you can." And I did that. I recorded oldschool two of the loudest stations around as example, got me CDs of those recorded tracks and went to work. A fellow older tech just said: "I don't envy you, you will be finished, when everything looks like a square wave!" And the dude was right. Luckily streaming brought back a lot of fidelity. But FM radio? That is loudness hell!
I would expect better of FM stations, but then, hard rock is hard rock! (Teeth chattering, ears oozing blood....). I was Chief Engineer of a small "Easy Listening" FM station, and an engineer for a classical FM station, that was fanatical about high-fidelity, so I was never subjected to such torture.
It's like the old computer maxim of "Garbage in, garbage out". Considering that a lot of my favourite music is only available in badly remastered versions on streaming, I'll be holding onto my old CDs for a long while yet.
so very well presented, I understand that now with streaming services and Atmos , the standardization of LUFS has helped reigned this in a bit. To elaborate on this topic a little more..., what also came along with digital mixing is the time alignment and pitch correction that is now a standard among so many engineers and creating musicians. So very impressive to make good from bad performances, It has potentially damaged the recording in the sense that it has de-natured Music like Factory Food. Its easy, convenient, consistent, etc... But those pre 95 recordings had so many subtle timing and pitch movements that makeup a musicians 'Feel', if its so 'corrected' it may as well have been entirely programmed within the computer for the most part. big love to all who love their Art!
@audiomasterclass
After close to 40 years as a recording, mixing and digital mastering engineer, I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said.
I think it’s all about the genres and methods of consumption. My kids play their music off their phones using ear buds or Bluetooth (in car). They certainly don’t invest in hifi equipment ….
I’ve even noticed that they’ll rarely play a song from beginning to end!
For others fidelity matters. I guess that’s why spécial recordings and pressing were produced mainly in the classical domain.
So the question is:
“When does good audio matter”?
Future video topic?
Thx for your videos.
I heard an artist showing the production steps she did, and when she added the compressors it just killed all life in the song. And now I can't listen to her without feeling sad about how good it could have sounded. 😢
That's the thing that kills me is we live in a digital age where most music is consumed by digital files. So why the heck can't musicians release a dynamic album and a compressed album so their listeners have a choice?
Thankfully, I started buying CDs in 1986, and averaged (including birthday and xmas gifts) a CD a week. So I've still got roughly 500 CDs from a period prior to 1995. I listen to them, or lossless rips of them, as often as possible. Once I started hating the loudness war in the late 90s, I made a point of going back and getting used CDs with original masters of things before they were gone. So almost half of my CD collection is that stuff. It's like ear bleach. So much easier on the ears over time.
Exactly.
Great video. It's sad that even remasters of older music are being ruined by this. I don't think it's the only reason current music sounds awful, but I certainly notice this problem with it. Lot's of clipping distortion and muddy sound.
Some pirate sites solve this in a big way - having a catalogue of all possible Album releases, like original vinyl, remasters, casettes, CDs, web sources, you name it. Having access to that means that you can decide which mastering you want to hear and hey, there’s nothing stopping you from purchasing any version of the same album and actually paying for it to support the artists. What you get is sort of a democratic choice of what exactly you enjoy hearing.
name one of these sites please so I can check it out. Thx
Yeah buddy tell us
@Swen-bk3kz Fiesty comment, but with current times and events, I can concur.
Regarding albums that have been victim to loudness war, I am using the ReLife VST-Plugin by Terry West on usually 8 out of 10 new albums. It works to a certain degree and can often make an album listenable again.
When a befriended musician had his album mastered he had the same problems. They killed most of the dynamics and he wasn't happy with the result at all. He ended up having the whole mix lowered by 6 dB and the issue was gone. No brickwalled waveform entirely.
The funny thing is that one of the great selling points of CD was it's much greater dynamic range..
Only to get it squished back to the absolutely minimum.
However there's also another issue these days: Heavy compression / limiting is now considered an acceptable "effect/texture" and there are artists that actively seek it on their recordings!
yep.. it's sad because CD is a great way to listen to Vinyl transfers in the car. ... shows off that dynamic range in an incredible way when not compressed.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 Huh? Does your car have no road or engine noise? How do you hear any dynamic range beyond 15db in a moving car? Can your ears withstand 120db, while you're driving in 70db of car noise, and only getting 50db of dynamic range? I used to take my records and record them onto cassette with maximum compression so I could hear them while driving. Of course, once you stop and park, you can fully enjoy great dynamic range if you didn't compress it. I don't want to sound too critical; you do what you enjoy doing. I'm just questioning how this is even possible for you.
@@theclearsounds3911probably drives an electric car in some utopia that only has electric cars & the worlds quietest asphalt ever made 🤔
@@MLWJ1993 Either that, or he doesn't understand what "dynamic range" actually is. No judgment from me; I just want to know what he's enjoying, and how.
this calls into question whether these 'artists' are all that artistic or just insensitive tasteless Luddites does it not?
Spot on as per usual David.
It is the dynamic range reduction that the loudness wars results in, that I find most annoying. I have never been a fan of vinyl (even when that was all there was) but I have vinyl records from The 70s & 80s with greater dynamic range than the CD re-issues, taking all the life out of the performance. Particularly galling as vinyl could only achieve 45 or 50dB dynamic range where CD was capable of 96dB (in theory).
Radio play was one of the driving factors that started off the loudness wars. I was technical manager of a major pop studio in the 80s & 90s, when the Record Labels wanted their single to be loudest when the DJ played it, thus grabbing the attention of the listener.
Radio was the original problem. Stations wanted to be the loudest on the dial. On FM stations there was a strict limit on the frequency deviation of the carrier signal. FM-100 in Memphis compressed the music where every frequency used the entire allowed range. This started in the early 1970s. Back then I only encountered this on vinyl when I would purchase a compilation album that would have as much as 20 tracks on a single platter. (10 per side). The only way to do this is by compressing the sound. The difference was obvious. It is insane that the industry would apply this to source material on a CD and lose much of the character the CD allow in music reproduction.
Fantastic video! I never understood how an audiophile could ever prefer vinyl as a source over digital. It's the mastering that the medium either does or doesn't allow. Very Marshall McLuhan--the medium IS the message!
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. Never understood, okey dokey.
@@67Pepper Huh?
This discussion is as old as digital, and I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. Regarding vinyl, I think a lot of the things people like most about it is the experience. They like pulling the record from its sleeve, cleaning it, placing it on the turntable, etc. I think a lot of people also like that vinyl imparts a warm sound to the recording, although they might not actually admit that. It has been interesting to watch this discussion over the last 40+ years, because people used to complain about the sound of ALL CDs, not just those mastered after 1995 (or any arbitrary date). In the 90s I used to think I needed vinyl to be a true audiophile, and that my CDs (no matter how old or what master) were inadequate. Now I'm old enough to not care so much about this stuff (still very much into audio, but I don't care to spend a fortune on music I can only listen to at home). It's just funny to hear that now people are seeking out the very same CDs that everyone used to hate 40 years ago. At this point I won't be surprised to hear about people preferring the sound of 128kbps MP3s over hi-rez WAV files at some point in the future. There's some kind of psychoacoustic nostalgia going on.
This is the exact reason why my CD's prior to 1995 are priceless to me. Music and the sound of it pretty much went down the toilet in the mid 90's.
I completely agree that the big issue is "make it sound like that" compounding over time. Then the tools started being developed to help engineers push the levels more and more. But not all music made after 1995 suffers from the loudness wars.
I self-produce my music to make the best-sounding records I can. I specifically tell the mastering engineers I work with that I don't want to even be in the ballpark of the loudness wars.
Indie artists can create music however they want. That includes making albums with dynamic range! Hopefully the loudness wars start going the way of the dodo thanks to the volume adjustment algorithms that streaming services are putting in.
My last album, "Etheric Wings" featuring a string orchestra, can sit on a playlist including "loudness wars" style masters without having crazy jumps in volume. But all that extra distortion they add is painfully apparent, so hopefully, labels will start learning to start letting music sound good again.
So true and yet so sad.
I think it's very much related to mp3s and people saying they can't hear any difference with uncompressed audio.
Good point. We've spent more than a generation saying "Lossy is good enough" and never following it up with " ... for what?" It sounds cynical but it often does--for the convertable, the boat, the restaurant, the party atmosphere, etc. And since that's whats in millions of walkmans, usb sticks and players, it has become the public norm. Yes, 320k mp3 sounds pretty good but it's still the gateway drug to Lossy hell.
100000% agree with you. I only hope that with the loudness standards of music streaming platforms will help to resolve this issue, because loud music will be automatically turned down while the music with good dynamic range will be preserved at its original volume and actually to even sound louder because of the preserved transients.
This of course won't fix already-overcompressed music but at least there is going to be some sort of punishment for those who keep pushing the limiting and compression to their absurd limits
I have to say that the vinyl version of Natalie Merchant's new album sounds fantastic. Also I would point to Steven Wilson's recent albums for outstanding mastering. Even his Dolby Atmos mixes sound awesome.
I was a 24-track tracking studio owner/engineer in the late 1980s and this problem was already growing then. The cluprit was the SSL 4000 console beloved of mix studios and producers. Dynamics on every channel and full automation ensured the lovingly recorded source tracks we gave them had the life squashed out of them in the mix. Time and again our monitor mixes sounded better than their final production mixes.
This is a good point. Where there are dynamics on every channel, people are going to use them. DM
Thank you!
It's a funny old world. When the CD was introduced in 1982 it rapidly became the source of choice at hi-fi shows. I recall attending a couple of shows in 1983 / 84 and just about every exhibitor had a copy of the Dire Straits Love Over Gold album on CD and vinyl. I still have my original copies (vinyl from 1982 and CD from 1983 which I bought after my first player - a Philips CD 104 - in 1984). To my ears the CD sounds more natural than the LP and of course lacks all the surface noise. Naturally for the time, the dynamic range is huge. However did they manage a number 2 hit with Private Investigations given how quiet it is for the most part? Another example of great recording / mastering is Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World from 1989. The hit single Wicked Game is a masterclass in less is more. Sadly the track succumbed to the loudness war and had the life compressed out of it on the "Best Of" compilation from 2011.
Wicked game is a great recording even better on the original vinyl
I have the Original 45's pf those, And they sound Brilliant.
Bless you for mentioning Dire Straits' Love Over Gold on CD! I also have the original CD release, and "Telegraph Road" stands out as a quintessential example of how to use CD technology properly. As a presentation audio format, CD is technically perfect. It has the dynamic range to represent a bare whisper to almost a rifle shot; clearly beyond the vast majority of what speakers and amplifiers are capable of reconstructing without adding a ton of their own distortion. The fact some prefer old LPs is down to smart mastering to respect the limitations inherent in vinyl. But CD audio doesn't have them, so it represented the potential to do even better than the best vinyl, in that you could hear more, noise free and repeatably, play after play after play. A vinyl album or tape have finite replay lives, subtly and (hopefully) imperceptibly changing over each play, wearing down, losing signal strength, distorting as grooves are worn, or developing faint echos as the magnetic domains experience crosstalk when the tape spools and successive layers of tape rest on top on each other. CD being digital, experiences none of this. And while a CD can rot and be scratched, you won't hear those errors on account of error correction built into the format, until they finally pass a threshold. They go from being not present--period, one moment, to painfully obvious the next. Before this happens, you can copy a CD, 100%, bit-for-bit. With a little stewardship, it is the ultimate in preservation potential. Vinyl can only be preserved by never playing it. Analog tape cannot ever be preserved; it's like sand at the top of an hour-glass. Playing tape only speeds up the sand-fall rate. "Telegraph Road" demonstrated for me that, with CD, it's possible to have all of your audiophile vinyl cake, and eat it noise-free forever. The trouble is: few ever used the technology this way, the way its signal-processing engineers designed it for us, to be that perfect playback format for human hearing that no analog system, because of physics, could match. Not for the first time, technically perfect tools in the hands of the forces of disarray gave us something less perfect than what existed before. The potential in them remains, however, unchanged. It's a question of better education to unlock. And maybe a bit of taste.
Spot on, no mastering house today would be allowed to release that mix (or Brothers in Arms for that matter) with their original dynamic range.
Yes, all greatest hits albums are ruined with compression now.
Do you have a copy of the Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World CD from before the compression wars or are you stuck with the Greatest hits version and it annoys you every time you try to listen to it?
You are spot on. Best mastering ever was from the 70's. I heard a story from a guy in the biz that in the 90's music was mastered for listening in a car and not a room so they compressed the heck out of it so the music volume didn't change while driving. Dynamic range limited to 3dB.
Finally, a wise voice in this crazy industry, including homerecording. Let us create art!
I agree totally. And luckily, when I publish on my own label, I am free to make it as loud as I want. And I want it not that loud! And things pay off; often, I get messages from audiophile listeners that compliment the audio quality. But there is a fight against a tradition of fairy tales about recording as loud as it can be from any media or magazines... Young lads want to replicate the "magic" of the old recordings on tape, using digital media just like tape. It's miseducation... When I started using digital records, two things were immediately clear to me: the first was that I could finally hear a piano recording without the tape wobbling, and I loved it. The second one was that I wouldn't look high-end during the production due to tape wear, so there was no need anymore to make things overly bright to prevent losing them. And in case it was still too much at mixing time, it made it darker and lost another bit of noise in the process. But I was happy to get rid of tape, the hours of cleaning and calibration, heads wear and so on. So, thank you for your wise words. Spread the fact!
My first CD player was big and expensive; the first three CD's included one by Kitaro and I was absolutely amazed at its dynamic range, delicate high notes and near silence at times broken only by distant bird calls; gradually ramping up in intensity.
My first cd was Kitaro as well! I bought it while new york having never been in a CD store before and the flight cracked the case but the cd was good.
I totally agree with you, and this Phenomenon is now the scourge of live sound and concerts as well. Technology has come to the point that all those plugins can be used in a live environment. and producers telling the sound guy to "make it sound like the CD". It used to be you could only mix what the band played, and it music was dynamic and exciting. This is what made the live concert experience worth going to. Now you might as well get a good set of headphones and listen to the CD on your couch.
It's a shame! We could have such beautiful recordings! A few companies do just that, but not enough, and their musical offerings are often mundane.
I've gone back to beautiful dynamics, less limiting, absolutely no clipping per track, etc. It takes the emotion away from the music. And I make electronic music, what might be the worst culprit in the loudness war casualties from 1994-Present Day. But I refuse to sound 'like that" as you put it. Brilliant take.
By the way. I get frustrated when people say vinyl 'sounds better than CDs' because as you said, this is largely due to the fact that one cannot push vinyl to be as loud as a CD. But dear God... If you leave the dynamics in a CD alone, and you pretend you are mastering a piece of vinyl instead? You can play that CD and turn up the volume on your stereo and blow windows out gloriously with the thump of a kick drum. Loudness should occur with the volume knob, not already as a square wave making one's ears bleed.
Great explanation, and big "amens" to your comments on what is technically distortion ("warmth", etc). It seems the "make it sound like that" movement has progressed beyond the walls of the recording studios. I do livestream audio mixing for our local church, which has a rather large congregation for a small town (on ProTools DAW, with signal coming from Yamaha CL5 on a Dante network); and we have received pressure to mix our worship band's music so that our live broadcast "sounds like that" -- meaning like a mega church's worship band YT videos that have been post-mixed, EQ'd, etc. The "like that" is often not requested for better musicality, but just to imitate -- mostly cranking the drums, especially the snares; and back those vocals off so they're not so forward in the mix. It can be tough to balance what my ears hear as musical, with the "make it sound like that".
I like your videos. They speak the truth. This senseless degradation of music is one reason why I can no longer listen to music randomly (radio) but only listen to what I have chosen. Meanwhile, a big nuisance are the "remastered" pieces of music. I understand why famous albums and songs have to be re-released remastered. This is to ensure profit through royalties. But it moves me to listen to my old CDs instead of the new versions on the streaming platforms. From personal experience, I know the process in the studio. It starts with the fact that musicians have very specific ideas about the sound of their instruments, which often only exists in their ego and cannot be captured with any microphone in the world. In addition, there are these fashions like "Bootsie Bass" or "Prince Snare Drum" or just the lack of insight when it comes to overlapping frequencies in the low frequencies or in the 2000 to 4000 hertz range. On stage, the force of the volume compensates for the weaknesses. In the studio, only a well-trained sound engineer can help - if you let him. And once the recording is on the tape, the producer comes in and makes something out of it that was not so audible before. Ideally masterly, but under monetary pressure then moderately optimised for smartphone speakers. I don't need expensive headphones or hi-fi speakers for that, my iPods can play that too. It's just that my ear can't hear it any more. It makes me feel bad.
The problem is not the remastering, which is misleading, the problem are the mainstream remastered versions that are pure crap: from brickwalling compression, peak limiting and clipping(both on ADC and with plug-in), boosted treble and mono compatibility to the extreme making classic jazz albums with all instruments in the center! Also usually these recordings have that mid-bass enhanced around 60hz for sounding better on phone and poor bluetooth speakers, cars and crappy headphones.
A proper remastering done by some of the best engineers are amazing, if the client do not ask for stupid loudness. Kevin Gray are making great job.
I cannot stand mainstream music. For this reason I refuse to listen any music mastered like this, by whatever are from CDs or streaming/digital download. So I built my own music server.
I’ve high-end headphones and a class A headphone amplifier with a good dac, on portable I use a dac/amp with professional in ear monitors. Also for this reason I want the best as possible music, as should deserve to be listen.
Thank you. Younger people often do not understand this. I was told by my female friend recently (once again) how my audio levels are "uneven". I tried to pry more details out of her (her vocabulary when it comes to synths and sound recording is somewhat mediocre) and I eventually realised what she was referring to. I don't really master my own tracks, at least not in the ways most people do it, and when you look at my waveforms, they look like those from the 1980-s. There are distinct peaks and throughs, it's not all driven to maximum height, and clipped with little discernible difference between peaks and throughs, the way all commercial recordings past the year 2000 look. The thing is, however, I think that younger people are so used to music sounding this way they don't appreciate this nuance. Older adults in my age group, however do, even though they don't always understand why. They tell me that "your EDM sounds way mellower, less "mechanistic" or "less computer-like" or "more like analog instrument" or "your ambient is way more atmospheric" or "there's something unique about it", there is some kind of "special magic", etc. and I just smile and thank them. This is no magic, of course, I distinctly recall the era when the music "went bad" and figured out why pretty quickly. It sucks, of course, but hey, at least you can fix things when it comes to the music you write. And if not, then at least you can have your way when performing live.
Good stuff! I just purchased one of your tracks on Bandcamp, will get some more soon.
Or just don’t hang w ppl who are conditioned by pop / pop tart commercial music but. Sounds great. How can I hear your stuff?
I totally agree with you! 🤘🏼 I just try and up the overall volume so my songs won’t sound too amateurish compared with other music, but I keep leaning towards the mid 80s in terms of loudness and mixing.
I’ve also been present at mastering sessions over the last 3 decades (including abbey rd) and can witness everything you’ve said.
Thank you for explaining several things i didn't understand about modern recording. Good video.
Thanks for this. It explains a lot. Over the last six months I have poured about $10k into building a Hi-Fi rig that even audiophile snobs would consider respectable. Pair that with a sub to a lossless streaming service and I guessed that something like you explained here must be going on. It isn't because I'm so terribly smart, it is self-evident by the number of choices one has for remasters of many classic recordings and the simple fact that no matter what you play them on, many of these remasters are nothing but a dumpster fire of distortion. It is obvious that there must be a lot of unwashed fingers in the pie for there to be 2004, 2011 and 2017 digital remasters of the same 1982 recording.
Some of the distortion is so bad I worry that my behemoth 300 watt power amp blew the tweeters on my speakers. Fortunately, since I use a PC as a source, I can switch to my cheap desktop sound system with two mouse clicks. Different DAC, amplifier and speakers, and in every case the distortion is still there, although it is usually significantly less prominent on the cheap system. I have even made a playlist of the worst offenders as a reminder if I should ever forget that it is in fact the recording that is bad. It is getting to be a looooong list.
@Douglas Blake Thanks, this was an eye-opener and it should prove useful to help find some less offensive digital remasters.
@@dirtroadie5747 you are a trooper to push 300w through a tweeter, if that is your aim look into ribbon style or studio monitors. My converted 12v setup my 500w PDX Alpine Block Amp can only hold 1 ohm stability for about 20 minutes. Good thing it's a 5 channel so will need for now to give up on bridging and run coils separate.
You are right, right and...right. I'm 65 and worked more than thirty years in the "high end" business. People brought their personal CDs to evaluate gear, and it very often sounded horrible, even with the very best of equipment. Therefore selling was becomimg harder and harder. Of course for the customers at first it was the fault of the gear and NOT of their CDs. Most of the time some vinyl "saved the day" and...reputation. But...there are still some labels out there, which still produce very good quality - for instance "ECM". That said, sadly they are only few...
Brilliant! Agree absolutely! I regularly review albums and am always harping on about poor, compressed, distorted, sound quality. A relief when the occasional nicely mastered one comes along. If you want to hear an example of excellently recorded AND mastered sound, try David Hughes album ‘This other Eden’. Start with the track ‘Jelly babe’ - stunning (even though it’s from 1999!). Interesting comment also re vinyl sound - I have a nice hifi system and comprehensive LP collection played on a Linn LP12 record deck, and many vinyls do sound better than their cd equivalents. David D
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, but I couldn't prove it until now. Thank you for this explanation!
Great video. It's mastering engineers that think they can saturate the digital signal that is at the root of the problem. Also, I think ear fatigue and the older age mastering engineers are issues also. Since they've lost higher ranges in their hearing, they tend to push the high end, creating much more harsh sounding recordings. Another issue is the monitors that they're using to master the files. I've found that whenever they're probably using more vocal-present monitors, causing their mixes have a much more congested sound to them. I'm a TV editor and recording musician. I listen on Genelec stufio monitors that are very true. I find that older recordings sound much better on them than more recent recordings. Good luck with your channel :)
I’m not a professional but as music lover I agree, older music(original versions not edited) sounds better than all mainstream music produced today. I really hate the typical harsh sound of music today, I feel ear fatigue especially when raising the volume. For this reason I don’t listen any modern average CDs or music on streaming. Of course there’re amazing modern recordings properly done and mastered, from some labels that actually care about quality.
Some engineers and musicians do not have a great hearing either, many of them suffer from tinnitus which could be caused by this loud music. I think they tend to push high end to recover some transients, going to make it even worse making the artifacts more audible. Even possible some speakers with a too much bass/mid centric sound could alter decisions, thinking this sound correct. Maybe also some speakers with a wrong setup on too high treble setting because of hearing impairing. I noticed noise floor can be boosted with high treble, even if this noise maybe is not really that much audible in normal conditions, so you're going to clean more than what is necessary.
The algorithm recommended your videos/channel and I'm enjoying it! Great content, great discussion points. Really engaging too. :)
Thanks for that really interesting video. It seems to partly explain the CD vs Vinyl argument that just goes on and on. I’ve always found this hard to understand before your video. My own interest as an oldie is in classical and 1960s and 70s rock for the most part. So I may literally have never experienced the problem though I suppose your video may help to explain why more recent re-issues never seem as good as the original versions! I just put it down to my memory and preferring the ‘old sound’. Perhaps the ‘old sound’ really was better?
I wonder if this loudness / Distortion / clipping problem affects current classical recordings? I have a few recent classical CDs and I’m not aware of any particular recording problems. Far from it, in fact I reckon modern CDs of classical music sound really great for the most part. Modern recording techniques are much better than they were in the 1960s and early 70s.
This was very informative. There are a few occasions when these tools are justified: a) if somebody actually likes the distorted sound b) if the speaker / amplifier is not loud enough in a certain frequency range. For example, I'd like to use compressor on the piano because I can make it louder while using smaller speakers. Especially soft piano play sounds better with compression. I also like to use compression on sound when watching movies, often the speech is not loud enough while the music is too loud. Finally, I really like distorted sounds (guitar or singing). At the same time as with everything - using too much distortion or compression degrades the sounds - so I agree, it is important to talk about it.
I would respectfully push the date of the "loudness war" back to the mid 70's. I've worked in both studios and broadcast as an engineer. The loudness war started at least in the US, in the mid '70's Program directors were pushing for louder levels on air as the belief was that louder would get more listeners. I was personally involved with some of the early triband on-air processing systems and later the Orban on-air systems. All had the goal of reducing the dynamic range so they could maximum modulate their transmitters. Many systems I saw had VU meters that would just twitch at around Zero VU on decoded audio. When I worked as a mix engineer, many producers would want the master louder would tell me, "Now, make it sound like radio." Having worked in radio, I knew exactly what they wanted.
My "day job" was in radio but I was never very far from the studio. In the late 70's, I was reading articles about highly compressed audio causing listener fatigue, so I who was chief engineer of a major market AOR station at the time, turned down the processing on our Orban processor. I got an angry call a day or so later from my Program Director who wanted to know why we weren't as loud as our competition. I explained about listener fatigue and he agreed to a compromise, if he didn't have to touch his volume control in his car the processing would be acceptably loud at least for one rating period. Our next rating period was the best ever and in fact the best an AOR had ever done in our market. I can't say that was all because of the lower loudness but I can say that our listener duration was way above our competition.
The loudness war started with radio stations and the technology has allowed even the home studio to "sound like radio" so they do.
👏👏whenever i hear people speak of 'warmth', especially if the words analogue, tubes or vinyl appears in the same sentence, i run screaming..😱
One of the most lifeless and clinical CDs I own is 1987 "Nothing like the sun" from Sting. A full DDD recording. The follow-up CDs sounded better, the best arguably the 1997 "Brand New Day", which also got a good review from Bob Katz. But I also own newer CDs that also sound good. It all depends on the artists and how they influence the way it should sound. My favourite example is the 2009 CD "Touch Yello" from Yello. It sounds powerful, crisp and clean. I bet that Boris Blank, the sound mastermind of Yello, dictated the mastering.
I've noticed newer music forced me to turn the volume down instantly and crank it up on older tunes. My listening source changed naturally towards instrumentals that are internationally produced and older music. Doing so I've experienced better imaging and quality that is natural to me. Thank you for the breakdown that makes total sense.
I’m pretty happy with most of my collection of SACD and DVD-audio 5+1 discs, played through a Pioneer digital system and good loudspeakers. Not all have been mastered to fully benefit from the multi-channel possibilities, but some are completely magical. But I listen less to music as I now play in a band on another system, 2+1 with an emphasis on bass.
I'm just an amateur producer but after many years of careful listening, failing, going back and forth DAW and analogue as well as different monitoring sources and environments, I completely agree! Sometimes I make a track and get carried away by jamming, forgetting that my ears have become dull. The next day, I wonder how the mix could end up so crowded, dense, rough, and dirty when the night before I felt like I had just come up with the next polished club hit. Then I go back to getting the gain staging and track levelling right, reducing harmonic fx settings and voilà: clarity and "air" to breathe sound much better, especially at higher volumes.
How true, how true. There is another tendency in modern recordings that is increasingly disturbing: breathing noises of the singers. One wonders by now whether one is a lung doctor at work or a music listener....
It wouldn't surprise me if the breath noises are overdubbed in. DM
Not only that but even the sounds of the singers saliva splashing around as they move their mouths. That's high definition gone too far in my books.
There is this song, 'Liberty' by Anette Askvik which high res audiophiles seem to love when it's time for a wank session with their newly acquired gear. It sounds like she is kissing your ear and occasionally tickling your ear drums with her tongue. Not for me, if i need ASMR there are channels dedicated to that stuff.
@@AudioMasterclass It's scary to think there's some studio assistant sitting at a Pro Tools screen all day, flying in samples from a Best Busy Breaths library CD
@@KingKong-mp6gj if you dont like such tracks, go cover it up with distortion and noise thru your hardware or listen to some other muddy tracks.
I was very apprehensive because of the title. But every thing you said was 100% true! I have only started to understand the more technical parts of audio in the last 5 years.
Very good explanation!
I wonder if it's also apply to classical and jazz cd music as the sound quality demands are different than other geners ?
Do they Master differently as such?
I think if a label thought that the processes I talked about would sell more classical and jazz then they would be doing it. I might investigate this separately but what I hear casually is usually clean. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Performances on solo instruments, or possibly duets, are the best way to check this. Piano, harpsichord, harp, flute, and violin all seem to be very good example standards that we know well exactly how they sound in real life. Good recordings are so good that even on modest equipment the result is almost shockingly realistic as if the performer is physically present in the room.
To your very last question, I would tend to say "Yes", but mostly from smart and informed amateurs &/or private small labels that care about sound quality in audio art, not just the $$$.
FYI: My kind of recording use no compression but rather smart placement of the microphones assembly (2 complementary "capsules" at most!) to properly capture live sound.
I could give examples, but it would be long to describe here... lets just say that for proper audio reproduction, you need proper and respectful sound capture, and this is achievable with utmost respect of, if well done and smartly adapted to the recording situation, the less is more approach.
I know; this sounds (pun fully intended) as very purist, but my recordings deliver the goods. :)
As usual, I really like your video for the honesty and cutting the BS.
Kudos!
M :)
+300 on recording technique.
I understand what you’re saying. When I stream a playlist on Tidal, most of the older CD quality recordings are played at the volume I initially set which is comfortable listening. Then, a HiRes or a MQA mix comes in blasting. It sounds like I’ve increased the gain to ear bleeding levels. I have to reach quickly to reduce the volume. Terrible!
Why am I thinking of Paul Mc Cartney watching you?😁 Fascinating stuff and great insight!
You had me worried for a while that my Dark Side Of The Moon CD was mastered after 1995. Having checked, it's from 1992 and it sounds great btw. I've never bothered with any of the recent re-issues vinyl or otherwise.
Pink Floyd probably gets extra care and attention. DM
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
@@AudioMasterclass The original vinyl records of DSotM were terrible quality: I remember many people at the time taking their copy back to the shop, sometimes several times. On CD releases, there is a slight background hiss in the quiet parts. This is instantly recognizable as noise from operational amplifiers in the original recording and mixing equipment, most likely the ubiquitous uA741 or LM741 or one of its near equivalents. Engineers in that era did indeed put all the love they could into making the most faithful, highest fidelity audio reproduction possible.
I would favor any Pink Floyd mastering that James Guthrie is involved with.
Thanks! My two best take home-points from this:
The point on cutter head heating with constant high level HF follows naturally from what I already "know" about the vinyl manufacturing process. Though the thought has never occurred to me.
A friend of mine has a Studer A80 at home, modified with a stereo head. Most of what he plays on that sounds absolutely jaw droppingly good. My nagging suspicion all along has been that it's the recordings, not the medium or the player. He buys ridiculously expensive copies of safety copies, all pre masters, never having gone through the final stages of adaption to any commercial release. Dynamics and low distortion? Oh, yes!
I may even buy myself a good ADC to try copying some of his tapes to CD some day. I suspect little will be lost.
You're dead-right: it's all the recording. An Mp3 from a well recorded source on an iPod sounds better than a $100k turntable playing an 180g vinyl of an inferior recording.
Even better, copy it to cassette for more fun! (See previous video)
This is my second comment to this video so I clearly have too much time on my hands. I thought I'd do a little experiment. I've followed Texas from the start of their career and have copies of all the original (not remastered) CD releases. Analysing each album for dynamic range is quite enlightening. Same band, but a whole lot louder after 1999.
1989 Southside DR 13 (12 - 14)
1991 Mothers Heaven DR 12 (11 - 15)
1993 Ricks Road DR 10 (9 - 12)
1997 White On Blonde DR 9 (8 - 11)
1999 The Hush DR 9 (9 - 10)
2003 Careful What You Wish For DR 6 (5 - 7)
2005 Red Book DR 5 (4 - 6)
2013 The Conversation DR 7 (6 - 9)
2017 Jump On Board DR 6 (5 - 7)
2021 Hi DR 5 (4 - 6)
The values in brackets show the worst and best dynamic range among the individual tracks.
A few other gems from my collection of original 80s CD releases by (mostly) popular artists of the day.
1983 Dire Straits, Love Over Gold DR 14 (12 - 17)
1983 Thomas Dolby, The Golden Age Of Wireless DR 13 (12 - 14)
1983 Blondie, Parallel Lines DR 12 (10 - 13)
1983 U2, War DR 11 (10 - 12)
1984 Stevie Ray Vaughan, Couldn't Stand the Weather DR 15 (13 - 18)
1985 Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms DR 16 (13 - 20)
1985 Kate Bush, Hounds of Love DR 12 (11 - 13)
1986 Madonna, True Blue DR 12 (12 - 13)
And now some unlistenable post-1995 examples. Truly awful.
1995 Oasis, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? DR 5 (3 - 10)
2004 Keane, Hopes and Fears DR 5 (4 - 6)
2014 Paloma Faith, A Perfect Contradiction DR 5 (4 - 6)
2018 Muse, Simulation Theory DR 5 (3 - 7)
Even artists who should know better are at it.
2019 Elbow, Giants of All Sizes DR 6 (4 - 9)
I was struggling to find a contemporary album by any mainstream artist with an average DR across all tracks in double digits. Damon Albarn just about manages it with Dr Dee (DR 10), but it's hardly what you'd call popular music. Even well known jazz artists often disappoint on the DR front. Then I remembered a CD I picked up from a busker by the name of Woodsmoke (aka Tom McNair) I met in Bath in 2017. Recorded and mixed by the man himself without the commercial pressure to make it "sound like that", lo and behold:
2017 Woodsmoke, Love Like Fire DR 12 (9 - 13)
How did you measure this, and what do the numbers actually stand for?
@@nomis4913 Thanks.
Glad I finally found people with ears on UA-cam ! So you’re all there, it’s good to be home :)
Well, nice pitch 😀 and reading the comments, well received.
However, in my opinion it's not only the loudness war that's to blame here.
But also consumers like me, who in masses complained in the 80ties and early 90ties about the harsh, shrill, cold, lifeless, clinical etc etc sound of our favorite recording artists, when they released new material on CD.
Because of this "warmth" (yes yes distortion) was added.
Because we were the group with money back then, the record companies listened (for once).
If the loudness war took this to the extreme? I can't say, but I'll take your word for it.
Warm distortion without clipping was part of rock & roll since before it was rock & roll. I found guitar amp fuzz goes back farther than I ever suspected when I found some Sister Rosetta Tharpe songs on UA-cam. What he's talking about here is not a variety of warm tones of added harmonics from overdriving a vacuum tube or transistor, but brickwall smashing digital noise into the entire mix, nonstop on every song on every album.
Thanks for this. You are absolutely right. Thankfully, classical recordings have been far less susceptible to the loudness battle.
Not really... A lot of soundtracks are affected by huge compression, for example all Studio Ghibli soundtracks, the oldest (like Nausicaa from 1986) are perfect. Even Telarc had admit they apply soft clipping, compression and peak limiting to their CDs to be competitive, the DSD is not edited and have the full original dynamics. The same for all new Deutsche Grammophon recordings. While usually classical recordings do not have the same loudness of other genres, not mean they are not compromised in some way.
I agree with this message! Over my years of listening to CD I found myself gravitating to audiophile CDs, recorded by passionate enthusiasts who care more about the quality than the profit. This meant moving away from the music of my youth, prog rock, and towards jazz and classical.
Don’t get me wrong, I love most genres and I have loved listening to new music. However, a year ago, I bought a turntable. The same model I bought in 1990, the first time around, as it were. I have extensively upgraded it beyond anything my 30 year old self could have dreamed of.
Result, I am now listening to all my old music as well as the music I have been listening to on my CD system. My tastes haven’t changed after all, I am drinking from the fountain of youth. Genesis, Camel, Rush, Pink Floyd all sound as good today, to me, as they did back in the day. What’s more, jazz has never sounded better with many specialist labels producing stunning versions of classic albums. By the way, if you want to know what Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, should sound like, seek out the 45rpm version mastered by Kevin Grey, from Pallas, you will be astonished.
If the labels want to kill off vinyl once and for all, they can, however, they’re too stuck in their own groove, so they won’t. 😄
I have that Rumours 45rpm recording. Damn it's good! And when I ripped and viewed it on my audio editor, it was awesome, full dynamic range.
Fortunately for me, my favorite music is mostly from the 60s & early 70s, as well as more recent folk music, which is usually too simple to be seriously tampered with. Also, I like the "KISS" principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid"): Two mikes at a 105 degree angle, and a good 2-track recorder!
Ironic! As the recording and mastering equipment has improved to almost perfection ,the standard of the music recorded has plummeted. As an audiophile I despair at the quality of most ,but not all,new music. And now they're going back and remastering old stuff and bloody ruining that too. Some of it sounds like it's been recorded in my metal shed or in my bathroom. It's impossible to listen to and It's even starting to sound crap on our alexa. Please someone ,see sense.
Here we go! Finally a truthful explanation of what goes on and has gone on since 1995. Remasters, not if I can get an excellent example that was made prior. Remastered is a hated word in the audiophile community because they know as you have explained quite clearly, audio has failed at the label and the artists are not to blame nor the original mixer. It is the master ing engineer who must bare the brunt for this failure. How can you end around a label and their cursed influence of audio ruination? As you frequently said, you can’t. Overuse of compressors and limiters is the abomination of our audio times. Shame on most labels for allowing it!
This is a decades-old subject. The "loudness wars", are pretty much over. It occurs to me that you might not be listening to the right records. There are hundreds of records made every year that are not limited to death and sound astonishingly great. When people started figuring out that very loud, over-limited recordings actually sound smaller and less loud after they hit the F.M. Broadcast chain, they started mastering more quietly. There will always be over-limited records out there. I just don't bother listening to them. In general, audio has never sounded as great as it does now. Full Stop.
FM commercial radio has to be the worst of all narrowest dynamic range but then their primary objective is deliver adverts at maximum volume possible and then fill in time between them at the same setting
Yeah, I agree that the blanket statement "Anything recorded after 1995 sounds like crap," is incorrect. Sure, that's true for many recordings. However, absolutely false for just as many; if not more. Listen to Steve Hackett's Under a Mediterranean Sky. It's a gorgeous sounding album and it was released in 2021. I'd say Saga's Symmetry album sounds equally as brilliant. For another album that's simply an outstanding recording, there's Black Light Syndrome by Bozzio Levin Stevens. It was released in 1997. I also dare say that many classical music albums recorded in the early 2000s also sound great.
Really? Now that they've destroyed all the good music, the loudness wars are over? Really? Then why is ALL of the Giles Martin remixes on the LATEST Beatles releases (2022) COMPRESSED and LOUDED? Why? The 'loudness wars' are NOT over, by any measure, "Ivan".
@@cjay2 - Not all remasters are created equal. For instance, Shout Factory did a great job with ELP's debut and Tarkus, but crappy for Brain Salad Surgery. Sony's remaster of that is much better. Also, the earlier remaster for Saga's Heads Or Tales isn't great, but the latest remaster is much better. I'm not disagreeing about loudness wars. I'm just saying to pay attention to reviews and such so you know whether or not a remaster is worth getting. Also, when there's a Japanese pressing and the album is a real favorite, get it. Japanese pressings are generally superior, but they're expensive.
This is certainly not true, still a lot of albums get released today with poor quality, and I am not talking about mainstream music. Aside from that, there's still so many great albums from the past (rock, jazz, blues, fusion) that are only available as horribly compressed masters. The loudness war is far from over. You could say that the loudness war is over, when you'll have a chance to buy any album from the past at a satisfactory sound quality. Until then, saying that the loudness war is just misleading.
Massive respect!!! You have nailed it in this video. Dynamic range compression is the enemy of life-like sound. And the fact that the music recording industry, at least for Pop and Rock & Roll is firmly entrenched in this war to reduce dynamic range at all cost, how will we ever get back to some sense of sanity in application of compressors and limiters in the mastering process? And what do the rest of us do who want to experience 'live' dynamics on their recorded music at home? Are there record labels that do an 'honest' mastering job now days? If so, thats where I want to spend my money if I am buying recorded media. I am unclear about stepping back into the Vinyl vs CD battle due to my view that the tradeoffs to live with Vinyl are based on my acute dislike for the 'fiddle factor' of dealing with Vinyl. Clean the record before you play it, go nowhere near the turntable while its playing and for God's sake walk carefully while its playing and then when you're done playing it, clean it again before putting it back in its plastic sleeve and then back in the cardboard cover. Sorry, way too much fiddle factor for me. I much prefer the convenience and durability of CDs to say nothing of the fact there is no background noise on a well recorded disc. That way if the engineers and record label execs did an honest job we have the possibility of a really good recording. I would love to see a video where you recognize the honest labels and call out the ones to avoid...ok skip calling out the bad ones. Just sharing some insiders knowledge about which labels have their focus on the quality of the recording over maintaining the status quo would be a useful contribution to the preservation of good music in your viewing audiences homes. I am in a rather unique position of replacing a boatload of media lost in a house fire and due to the size of the collection I had will be spending a considerable sum to replace some of what was lost...the question is, Vinyl or CD or both. I wont be replacing cassettes and VHS tapes, I consider them as a total write off.
When I was dabbling about with creating my own audio manipulation software in DOS programming because it was what I knew, the program was buggy. So for the time being until I fixed the code, I just had single positive and negative values just to see it work. It was essentially one bit audio, and it's what early computers did to fit sound bites onto cartridges. Simply put, it sounded like the apocalypse, but the audio was definitely there. This is the ultimate in the loudness wars, and we might actually reach it before everyone demands the loudness wars to just go away. Imagine 24 bits of what is essentially one bit audio. A huge waste in storage space for sure, but it will make the loudest explosions and the quietest whispers all the same volume. Where we're going, we don't need audio dynamics. So, grab your crash helmet and your ear plugs. Your parents might have thought your music was noise, but your kid's music will be just noise.
You've got a bit of a point there.
I think with people and music, some listen to and others just hear it. The former want great audio and masterfully written, composed, orchestrated, performed and recorded music, the latter just want a ton of bass, beats and noise / muzak.
I have plenty of CDs before 95 and plenty after as well (including the "one that started it all"). Loudness war created really unlistenable CDs. The dynamics are compressed as close to the limit as possible, there are no more quiet and loud passages, the whole track is screaming. And yes, today's remasters suffer from these. Good thing I've kept my pre-95 CDs...
Perhaps that is why many people are returning to vinyl. Vinyl used compression on many compilation releases to crowd more tracks on the record. It was quite noticeable though
Brilliant video and finally a voice of truth in the wilderness, classical and jazz are great examples of this, I remember being told as a young engineer the magic is in the spaces.... cue steely dan, nowadays? oh well...........
Updated version: "Mp3, no dynamics at all!"
I agree completely. I hate when they smash/destroy the dynamics. That isn't the way music sounds in real life. When I mix and master my bands music, I try to keep at least 10 db of dynamic range. Some parts might get to 12-15 db. It sounds more live and more alive. It has movement and emotion. We play death metal, so it is VERY unusual for that genre to have dynamic range and I don't use triggers or samples. Sound more real to me.
Thank you for your comment, which I appreciate. There are two issues going on here and I only covered one in the video, which is distortion. The other, as you say, is dynamic range and I will have more to say on that in a future video. DM
@@AudioMasterclass for the record, I don't use distortion. Maybe a bit on the bass guitar to get it to cut through the mix. Saturation.
Love your perspectives on audio and have been watching your videos recently since they popped up on my feed! Great stuff.
With the loudness wars, it’s tough getting the loudness of productions to modern levels with just in-the-box mixing tools. Things can sound really sterile in the clean digital world. However, with things like the Presonus Console plugins, Waves NLS buss, and the multitude of available tape emulation plugins, I’ve been able to get a heck of a lot closer than ever before. It’s all probably too loud honestly, but if you’re trying to get “competitive” masters in the box, there are ways to get there cleanly in the box (-8 or -7 LUFS). Just checking some of my favorite recent rock records, the masters are hitting sometimes -5 LUFS!
I love throwing an api-2500 before the final limiter on the master and pushing it with the analog setting on, to about 8 or 9 db’s. At least in the waves version, you can get it pretty dang loud with the soft clipping that’s emulated from the api-2500 with analog on and it’s pretty cool how clean it remains as long as you don’t push the needle completely balls to the wall. Waves Vinyl is pretty good for mastering too, adds a different dimension to things.
Not to forget using plugins like Saturn from fab filter, with saturation on busses processed in M/S for non-linear saturation like what happens in the analog world. That, with all of the plugins I mentioned earlier, have been tremendous at reproducing not just a loud signal, but a loud and truly warm one at that.
The biggest gain in my understanding mixing and mastering was understanding the whole process. That each step is treated separately and with great reverence for the honest expression of the recordings at hand, and most importantly, listening with my ears more so than visual cues on the DAW.
But along with watching your videos, I’ve still got a lifetime of learning left, it never stops!
The loudness war hasn't started in 1995. It always existed. Bob Ludwig talks about it in an interview of how important it was for him to learn how to cut loud masters to vinyl in the early 70ies in order to be competitive. (it's more accurate to say it started in 1995 for the CD medium because it's true that in the early days of the CD transfers wer unnecessarely quiet, and then went to super loud, never lingering in the "optimal" region :)). and to be fair the pre '95 CD don't sound that grat either, they sound thin and very low, not utilizing the whole dynamic range of the CD, mainly because they wer transfered directly from an already vinyl "optimized" master, with weak low end and such.
You are correct of course, and there's also AM radio. I think though that 1995, as I said, is a useful reference point in this, when things got suddenly worse IMHO. DM
@@AudioMasterclass I agree. that's when things got really "crunchy" :)) ... or better yet :((
the sad thing is everybody hates the CD nowadays ... interestingly not so much digital, but the CD, when, obviously, it's not the medium's fault. You can get absolutely beautiful masters on CD if everything is done right, and it's so much more evolved (I purposely didn't say better) than vinyl. but the industry and the powers to be always screw up everything for the almighty $. And don't get me started on the vinyl revival ... a little common sense will tell you that 8 out of 10 (and I'm being nice here) transfers are done from digital so basically you listen to a digital master ... from vinyl ... (duh!). Fred Flintone technology :).
You can also "blame" starting in 1980 speakers featuring paper cone woofers that contain 5 mid-range and 'space age' tweeters and setups with 'quick' ic and chips in lieu of heavy sometimes finicky fet stereos with 'tower' robust capacitors with equally heavy speaker cabinets. I noticed while listening to an 1988 AT40 the industry apparently set 'Rock' artist songs and assigned an apparent eq curve where bass/low end dropped out and was 'given' to Soul/R&B/Black (was still an official genre) tracks. It is noticeable on releases I have of an 88 Whitesnake 12" single and of course Twisted Sister. For all of those brothers and sisters who took to the streets (installed systems in their cars as to avoid parents and police) back in the day myself included, who was reminded music was too loud even when it wasn't (played on a fet or old similar receiver like a Sansui or Sherwood in my case) I salute you.
Excellent points, and my eyes were opened to the tricks available in the audio chain when DAWs started bundling "make it warmer" plugins as standard. I thought the low point (or, perhaps, high point in terms of clips/sec) was 1999, but I agree that pre-1995 CDs sound more polite, restrained and less in-yer-face than any CD post-1999.
There are exceptions of course. Some DIY musicians, who have more control over their output, still cater for those of us whose ears wince at a brickwalled 21st century master😢
This is something that has always bothered me, even though I don't have a lot of experience with audio, when listening to some albums or tracks I do find them weird. For example, Adele's 21 Album is, for me, a prime example of this, always on 0db in the meters and rarely moves down. it just sounds busy and as if nothing has room to breathe in the mix. This has also became a problem when I try to record some albums on cassette, it just seems that having a mix always on 0db stresses out the tape and maybe saturates it a lot more. On the other hand, things seem to be getting better. I have recently experimented with Dolby Atmos music, and I know that sometimes Dolby Atmos music mixes don't sound that good, but in some cases it does partially resolve the problem of the "no room to breathe" as it seems to have more channels than just stereo. I haven't actually measured the improvements but it does sound roomier by ear, even when just listening in stereo systems with a Dolby Atmos stereo downmix going on. As I said, I do not have a lot of experience with audio so this could be partially wrong.
Maybe one day the spectrum will lower it's grip on you, and you will listen with your ears, and not your eyes. The album sound nothing like you describe, it only looks like it.
The problem with Dolby Atmos is that the mix-down goes via a algorithm and each individual sound is basically a object that is placed or panned by the available count of loudspeakers that the customer have.
How is that a problem @@DrNoize ? If the listener only have two speakers for example we couldn't really expect Dolby Atmos to do anything about that?
@@jimsteinmanfan80 With Dolby Atmos we are missing the whole part of analog summing in the mixdown. Here a bit of explanation:
ua-cam.com/video/bZuQfrofjMs/v-deo.html
Do not even get me started on the same multiple years of a said popular artist/said same popular CD. Play an original Micheal Jackson CD then listen to the 3rd or 4th generation remasters of the same CD. It is so compressed and squashed it is a cardinal sin. I have been complaining about the digital degradation of music forever. Not a fan at all of 1's and 0's digital music in the first place. This is exactly why I will take my record collection to the grave. Finally someone speaking the PURE truth on this topic! God bless you for telling it like it is on this subject! Now I am super huge fan of this channel.
It'd be interesting to hear the artists point on this, because in the end the added distortions are part of the art, as it is presented to their ausdience. i.e. others than the original band add their artistic touch (sometimes heavy handedly) to their original art. Are they involved in that process, do they generally agree with the decisions?
The thing is, that mixing and mastering are necessary, and there needs to be some artistic freedom.
But maybe, similar to transmissions soccer games where audiences can now choose which camera to watch, there will be some music where one does get the original recordings and the mix and master as one or several filter settings left for the audience to listen to as given or edit to their hearts content. Likely most such edits will be subjectively better to at most one person, but there could be e.g. fan sites choosing the best versions and publishing the settings.
I think what David's talking about here is management /executive decisions to throw away the creative variations chosen by the artists.
As for multiple views, sometimes artists will choose to release raw tracks of a song or, for video, multiple camera angles of a concert, to see what fan edits people make. Usually with some way to vote.
I totally agree. I mix music with regard to making it sonically the best possible. As far as I am concerned, the loudness wars are over. I hate modern music because of the high levels of compression and limiting.
I have an extremely expensive stereo system. You should hear it, the distortion is crystal clear 😆
I own "What's the story morining glory", and it's exactly the reason why no record company earned a penny from me since (no, I don't even do downloading). I abhorr the loudness war and I realised there is more recorded music out there from before that time than I will have time to spend for the rest of my life listening to without running out of sources. Having said that, I think the loudness war actually started way earlier, think Motown recordings, and ELO sounds very compressed too...
I would like to see and hear an LP that has one side mastered for fidelity, labelled "Good Side", and the other side containing exactly the same recording but mastered to the current but now really old fashion with the life limited and compressed out of it, and perhaps some autotune thrown in for bad measure, labelled "Shit Side".
You cannot cut a record that is extremely compressed and clipped, even at lower levels, because the groove will tend to flatten out, making the record difficult to play. Just saying.
@@cjay2 I'm sure there are plenty of hyper-compressed recordings released on "vinyl". The sides of the groove must always be at 45 degrees to the surface, 90 degrees to each other. Compression doesn't mean greater amplitude, just more consistent amplitude. If you do have greater amplitude, this means the groove becomes equally wider and deeper. What you say is false, unless the lathe is so crude it can only cut mono.
Thank you, that is all I can come up with...... so much insight, truth and facts it cuts away all of the beliefs and ideas around Audio. Lovely!
Brickwalled tracks make me want to hit my head against a brick wall.
This is so true. I would like to add that more expensive audio setups tend to reproduce the distortions to higher fidelity, making the badly mastered recordings even less bearable. I've told my friends that the more money you spend on audio, the less stuff there is to listen to.
There used to be a saying that the wider the window, the more the dirt and it's often very appropriate for audio.
I'll save anybody who reads this 15 minutes of their life. After 7 minutes of rambling, the question of "why" audio is bad is finally answered, and the answer is "clipping." So you can completely throw out the golden rule in audio production, which is that "if it sounds good, it is good." Yep, that doesn't matter. All that matters is if it's clipping, even if that's done on purpose for the purpose of making it sounds better to you. You can forget objective measures like "how many people actually like this." That doesn't matter. All that matters here is clipping. Pack it up and go home.
Hahaha, thanks for saving my time and brightening my day :)
lol at someone defending the loudness war
It should have been played correctly when it was recorded, no? So keep it as close to that as possible.
A topic close to my heart. I have spent too much time trying to source early copies of cd album releases for exactly the reasons you mention but it is worth it. Music needs to have quiet as well as loud. Pre 1990 cd’s of the AAD type provide the best compromise for me if you are shopping in that era.