The Distortion of Sound [Full Film]
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2014
- The Distortion of Sound is a documentary about the decline of sound quality and how technology has changed the way we listen to music. It will open your ears and inspire you to reach for richer, more soul-stirring musical experiences. Hear it all at www.DistortionOfSound.com
CAST:
Mike Shinoda • Slash • Quincy Jones • Snoop Dogg • Steve Aoki • Hans Zimmer • Andrew Scheps • Manny Marroquin • Dan the Automator • Lianne La Havas • Kate Nash • A.R. Rahman • Neil Strauss • Chris Ludwig • Greg Timbers • Dr. Sean Olive
I started laughing when they gave the example of the "compressed" song. There's a difference between reducing file size and completely crushing the dynamic range of a recording.
yea glad you mentioned this. I agree
bruhhh literally what I thought lol
They totally misrepresented the interpretation of compression and quite frankly went off topic.
THEN WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? I WANNA KNOW D:
Totally agree, besides, mp3 is not “destroying” anything, it’s a container, there is high quality mp3 too and other digital formats such as flac that don’t take anything out of the audible spectrum, this is just big labels misusing a few clips from big names to give bad rep to streaming media
OMG this is streamed by youtube!! I can hear the streaming compression all over the place, ruining all the musical aspects of this documentary! They should have released this on vinyl only...
Weird. I can't believe a bunch of audio experts don't know the difference between digitial distortion caused by MP3 compression and the distortion caused by cranking a dynamic range compressor on the master bus. Such audacity to mislead the public.
+Crunch2 Was thinking the same thing. I even think that everyone I know would hear the difference between an crappy mp3 file and the real finished mastered product.
I believe they are talking about the two subjects separately and the editors made it seem like one complete message
+Crunch2 I was just thinking that.
When you see "Harman" right at the start you should be expecting a commercial and not a documentary, of course they will mislead confuse and just plain lie as long as it helps them sell their products.
"Audacity" lol
Maybe people should be getting more worried about music quality than audio quality.
gtrdrumsplayerduarte You are exactly on point my friend. Amazingly, you have been up here for two months now, and apparently only two other people agree with you. Amazing.
gtrdrumsplayerduarte Yeah they should stop the loudness war.
gtrdrumsplayerduarte Both.
F Stanz Both. (2)
+gtrdrumsplayerduarte How true. Today's high resolution music, would be the equivalent of high resolution shit. It's still shit.
This is well worth a watch for every music fan. However, I am disappointed they didn't cover one of the major reasons music sounds like shit nowadays - the Loudness War. You can listen to the highest quality files on the best equipment out there but if the song's master waveform has been squashed to mincemeat in a limiting compressor at the mastering stage (as 99% of modern releases are) it'll still sound lifeless and lacking in dynamics, even on the world's best headsets & speakers.
Yep, in my mind they completely missed the real issue. I would take 320kb/s MP3s without dynamic compression over a high definition file that is dyamically limited any day. They even show this in what is in my opinion their most effective comparison shown in the video, the clip of the drummer. They applied dynamic compression and it sounds terrible. That factor is independent of the delivery format and for the most part comes down to who does the final mastering. If the labels give quality to the distributors quality will return. The egregious exploitation of the psychoacoustics of loudness has bit the industry in the ass.
A really good example of this is from one of the year's biggest releases, Beck's new album Morning Phase. There is a whopping six different digital versions of this album that you can purchase. Versions range from MP3 to standard Redbook(CD quality) all the way to high definition files. There seems to be some consensus emerging that the MP3 which was made from the vinyl copy of the album is the best sounding version. Lo and behold it has much better dynamic range than all the other digital versions. (If the vinyl master was compressed as much as the other versions the needle would have a hard time tracking the groove and this therefore provides a technical limit on the amount of compression that can be applied to that format.) In a radio interview with Beck in which he discusses his new album and they play back some tracks from the album to him, he is obviously disappointed in the amount of compression applied. (Though in fairness when questioned about this the mastering engineer claims Beck painstakingly chose his own final masters)
Warren Bartholomew In fairness, the demonstration of compressed vs uncompressed in this video is not a demonstration of that. And it never will be, because this is UA-cam, it's compressed to buggery. To demonstrated it they performed limiters, bandpasses, and distortion, which really skewed the perception of the problem. They could have better demonstrated it by encoding something to a very low bit rate MP3 to highlight the transient phasing and noise floors.
As for the pipes not being there to support FLAC.. You're correct, but even 320KBPS, compressed properly performs better than what we're getting from Apple, Google, Spotify etc (where they compress millions of songs for speed, rather than quality) for their streaming services, and I find sounds very close to FLAC (usually some of the very low end spatial, and high end is lost, but it's a trade off for mobile). 4G is more than capable of delivering streaming at such rates, but of course on a metered connection it's simply not viable - yet.
Agreed. I conducted an experiment on my soundcloud page. The most compressed, least dynamic production on my page is also the most listened to and most liked of my material there. Everything else is done the way I like it, with extreme quiet and extreme loud... and few care. Distortion, convenience, and urgency are the forces of the day. Good for those who can do it!
Nathaniel Lee Dynamics ARE everything in sound.The very way our ears perceive sound is through dynamic movements & vibrations in the air. The wider the range of dynamics, the more clearly & intensely we hear percussive and melodic elements.
miracleofsound Dynamics is a big part, but it's not everything. Harmonic structure is VERY important, that's what gives on the ability to hear the difference between one instrument and another since if the harmonic structure is preserved during the entire process, including your playback system, it give the ability to hear those subtle timbre of each instrument so you can HOPEFULLY tell what instrument is being played. Every grand piano has subtle harmonic differences from one to another and preserving harmonic structure is important. Audio compression and any other processing destroys this harmonic structure. The other is texture of the music. Texture is the layering of various instruments (Playing at the same time) so for classical music, they purposely don't like using audio compression and if it's done, it's barely used which is unlike the majority of popular music. I think if a recording is done original in 16 Bit and they just set the volume levels during the mastering process, that's basically all they really need to do. I've heard/read interviews by various engineers that have recorded and mastered various content dating back to the 60's and many of these mastering engineers are TOLD, by the record label how they want it mastered, sometimes they give the mastering engineer more leeway in the final mastering, but many times they don't. They are told they want it compressed for radio play, etc. even if it goes against what the mastering engineer recommends. Sometimes they are told they want it mastered on cheap speakers that are more applicable to crappy stereos vs mastering them on high end "audiophile" type systems. It's frustrating for the consumers that have nice equipment because we can better hear a bad mix/mastering job. There are some albums I have in CD format and the recording is horrible and basically unlistenable, but i don't know if they are going to remaster it without any compression, etc. Also, a lot of recordings they used to saturate the tape to the point where it distorted too much and it can't be cleaned up.
I've seen it all now. Steve Aoki talking about audio quality.
I'm a home producer, and this is the most serious test we have to date in music. Let's bring back the SOUND!!!!
Russell Sams wtf
When you listen to music you are not just listening to the sounds in one song ; you are appreciating the 15 years of experience the musician has under their belt.
Its really shocking.... fortunately I am buying original cds to hear out the every beat and minute details in every track.. comparatively its 90% better than normal than mp3 compression.... hats off to you guys... love the documentary...
The TV analogy is DEAD ON!
According to this video, "compressed" means "we listened to it through $1 speakers."
My desktop speakers are decent, and I can assure you that compression does NOT have nearly the effect they claim.
And isn't UA-cam's audio compressed? Doesn't that render the little demonstrations around 12:00 as utter bullshit?
I really wish I could actually trust documentaries these days, that may genuinely be trying to make a positive change in the world, but so often they exaggerate an issue and I can no longer trust *anything* they tell me. Like, 90%? Really? Uncompressed audio is just LEAGUES above compressed?
People have done tests where someone with high-end headphones will have a song played to them in MP3 format and uncompressed format, and they usually *can't tell* the difference.
I want to like this film, but I can't. Too dishonest.
I Have Studio Monitors, You listen to an mp3 Version (even @320) of a Music piece and then you listen to the same piece in wav. mode or flac, if you can't hear the difference, take the wax out of your ears.
jean globensky don't be a tightass. everyone hears music differently.
you can really hear a difference between FLAC and MP3 for example but you need the ear for that, the Emotion to dive Deep in the listening and the headphones / Speakers that will push out the Sound like it was recorded. It won't help to hear a FLAC with your PC Speakers. And thats the Point - most People don't have the Money for those Hardware or don't want it.
Niclas G Exactly. There is some difference, but the video made it seem like night and day, not something subtle and hard to hear.
The Arbitration But that's exactly it. It's not about being a subtle difference. It's the story behind that difference. As they said, that emotion. While writing songs, regardless of if you're big or a small time band/artist, the feeling you get is tremendous when you find something nice, And although the compressed versions may not be bad, there was a certain amount of joy the artist wanted to share which has been lost.
"The audio you hear during a UA-cam video will usually be either 126 kbps AAC in an MP4 container or 155-165 kbps Opus in a WebM container, regardless of whether you're playing 360p, 1080p, or any other resolution."
This film totally and utterly confuses data compression and dynamic compression. At 11.30 they're discussion data compression algorithms like MP3, then in the examples they're showing dynamic compression. They're completely different things for Christ's sake! MP3 compression does do a lot of harm, but one thing it doesn't do is roll off the high frequencies, or compress the dynamic range. Besides, there's no way you can possibly demonstrate the effects of data compression on UA-cam, which is already a low bit rate audio signal. Crushed dynamics are caused by studio mix and mastering engineers who are sucked in to the loudness war, whether they're working with MP3, or 192/24 high rez, It really doesn't matter. How could a company like Harman get something so fundamental so completely wrong?
Because they're trying to sell consumers on hifi systems and physical music formats, and they're lying their asses off to do it. This sort of bullshit is bad for the whole industry, to have all these experts and artists put out this misleading info like consumer goodwill isn't important.
xXAjaxXx yeah, after a time it felt like an advertisment for something
Saying "two compression methods" suggests that it's just two ways of doing the same thing. That's completely wrong. Data compression and dynamic compression are completely different things that just happen to share the word "compression" in their name. Perhaps if they were called data compression and dynamic range reduction it would be less confusing.
Watching a movie about compression whose audio is being streamed at 160kbps. The irony does not escape me..
RIP Chester Bennington 😢
They are absolutely right. Compression does weaken music.
However, they're exaggerating substantially.
When MP3 was first introduced, we had poor quality headphones / speakers that only let us hear a limited portion of audio, yes. Although, they were incorrect when the said that we never improved that issue. We have headphones & speakers now that achieve the full spectrum of the human ear. We can still feel emotion, can't we? Maybe music sounds a bit better in a studio with speakers surrounding you which are playing every sound rich and uncompressed, yes, but we're not all listening in studios. Music must be compressed or it would be confusing & overwhelming. Compression in music is to even out volume _while removing as little as possible from the original sound._ I look at it like baking a cake. When you take all of the ingredients and bake, or "compress" them together, you may not be able to decipher each ingredient. However, each ingredient plays it's own roll in making the cake what it is.
Their example of compression was poor. They over compressed their examples to the point of severe distortion. No professional audio sounds like that. Maybe listening to music on a cellphone is not the same as listening in a studio, yes, but that's what technology is for. We have advanced listening devices that bring you as much of the music as you need. _As much as you can possibly hear._
Except that in order for your analogy to work you'd have to leave the majority of the ingredients out of the recipe before you put it into the oven. The digital compression algorithm doesn't squeeze things together, it eliminates things it deems unimportant.
Michael64099 Exactly! ;)
Eric Kauffmann It's not exact at all. His analogy don't even apply because he's confusing digital compression with dynamic compression. The video isn't about dynamic compression. It's about digital compression.
LOL stick to cake baking, leave music to people who understand it.
1. Pay a bunch of famous artists
2. Advocate high end gear
3. Profit???
I was waiting for Neil Young to pop in and the movie to turn into a pono infomercial!
OK, so a problem is addressed by this video, but there is no solution proposed. What should we do if we want uncompressed audio? They should have explained that part of it.
FLAC.. period. And don't download shit that is poorly recorded. Which should be the next installment of this.
On the official website www.distortionofsound.com/ at the bottom.
you took the words right out of my mouth!
I thought sure this was going to be an ad for Neil Young's Pono.
***** I was waiting for it too. Glad it never happened.
Steve Aoki talking about over-compression, anybody else notice the irony here?
I agree. I spent years finding and getting speakers and spent hours on repositioning them millimeters at a time just to get the highest possible quality of sound. I revived my 1972 Technics SL-1200 so I can listen to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" in it's full glory. The magic that flows out of my speaker wall (it's a bit of a hobby now, 38 speakers stacked on top of one another all plugged in and ready to go) when I play Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" from the live concert from 1975 makes me want to cry, because the mix and effort can be truly felt and appreciated.
listening to music back at 80s or 90s was a ritual thing!!!!! sitting back on your couch,closing your eyes and playing your vinyl on your free time...it was a personal need!
now its a trend! people ''listen'' to music on the railway from the speaker of their phone!!!!! WTF?
They are absolutely right, but the compression example was definitely overexaggerated. Probably because they wanted people to notice, but that was definitely far more compression than you'll ever hear out of an official iTunes purchase.
That said, like I said, they're totally right. If I play a song directly from vinyl or a CD player on good speakers or good headphones, it sounds soooo much fuller than an mp3. Mp3's MAJORLY degrade and thin the sound and it's very discouraging. There is a massive difference if you just listen to something directly from a CD player or vinyl player on good speakers. Massive difference.
Sorry, yes there is a difference. It's not as huge as to a lower bitrate file ... but there is a considerable difference.
The documentary does bring some valid points and real problems we're facing nowadays related to sound distortion; however, it clearly suggests with the clips shown that a lot of quality ways to listen to music are 'evil distorters', attacking the wrong targets. Spotify's 320 kbps music stream + a good pair of earbuds, for example, makes a listening experience absurdly far away from the samples of compressed audio shown on this documentary. In fact, the percentage of quality loss on this mentioned listening experience is really fair, compared to listening to an uncompressed file on nice studio monitors, given the portability gained. That compressed sample refers to the slag of audio, not to quality earbuds, Spotify's/iTunes'/Pandora's services, and .mp3 320 kbps files in general. Those are some pretty good ways to listen to music. The real 'evil distorters' are all the other formats downloaded/streamed worse than that, along with crappy speakers/headphones/earphones.
Why do people like you always assume a CBR 320 kbps mp3 is the best?
The LAME encoder was ENGINEERED to encode best with VBR not CBR!
Oh and it should be JOINT STEREO not stereo you morons!
"The real 'evil distorters' are all the other formats downloaded/streamed worse than that, along with crappy speakers/headphones/earphones."
The other formats are generally newer and BETTER unless you're talking real audio or something stupid like that.
Your 320 kbps stereo mp3 probably ripped with iTunes/xing encoder are four times larger than they should be and SOUND WORSE than VBR LAME joint-stereo mp3 or AAC.
You are as clueless as the majority of artists commenting in this video.
LudicFallacies I never assumed that. I affirmed that the compressed sample shown on this documentary doesn't match the quality loss of a 320 kbps mp3, therefore the wrong targets were being attacked. Furthermore, I believe that this format does a pretty good job on delivering fair quality audio on a convenient file size. No one wants to carry GBs of wave files on their cellphones.
JGD Why would you encode an MP3 at 320 kbps CBR in the first place!!! The encoder algorithms were not designed with this in mind less for use in video files.
You encode mp3 in VBR joint stereo with LAME!
I told you your CBR 320 files are four times larger than VBR mp3 and sound inferior!
In addition to my main comment: another form of sound distortion not mentioned on this documentary is the loss of volume dynamics due to heavy mastering applied to commercial songs, in order to achieve greater overall volume. The loudness war, in which a lot of the interviewed people participate, is another enemy to the listening experience.
I'm still listening.
Thank you.
Thank for the video.
Thank you for making this film. My greatest gratitude extends to you.
Ok. Even the title is misleading. Digitising music doesn't "distort" the sound. Plus, This documentary hasn't included the lossless formats and high bit rate MP3 files to compare. The bottom line is that 99% of us prefer more affordable music with minimum lost of its content. Most of people can neither able nor willing to spend thousands of $$$ in pursuit of 1 or 2 Db of sound.
I'm sure this biased documentary represents (thankfully) only a small minority of musicians.
The difference is Much bigger than that!! Compression without Loss of Quality is a MYTH!! It would be like buying a very expensive dinner by a World Class chef that is not only delicious but is visually pleasing and before eating it you decide to take the food from just the middle of the plate and stick it all in a doggy bag then Smush it all together and still saying it's the Exact same dish with NO difference!!!
David Belcher Holy hyperbole. I guess listening to vinyl is like eating off the floor, then?
not if the vinyl is in like new condition and your record player had a new needle and great speakers
Hey hey. Im not really a internet chatty person but I feel as if you guys are misunderstanding a lot of what is being said. The Compression they are talking about is not audio compression used as in recording or mixing. It is data compression. How to get the actual file size smaller, cramming more info into a smaller size means you have to throw away some of it to make it fit.
Digitizing music into mp3 form does actually distort the sound because too much of the extra room for the information to be stored in is lost. Thus the info folds back and back into the audible part of the song, forced in there to interfere with all the other info that you are listening to.
If you have Vinyl produced in the last 10 years it will pretty much be a replication of a CD, digital format. So all your really listening to is a CD on Vinyl format. Vinyl doesn't handle bass as well as Digital formats does, so electronic music on vinyl can sometimes be a little weird. But it beats the hell out of a MP3. because they kept the space needed. and all the info can sit nicely in the places they were assigned. Mp3 takes a bus full of people and try to fit them into a mini van, so obviously some people will have to stay behind.
As for the money issue. Musicians are people providing a service. Not a corporation producing masses of stuff for everyone at a cheap cheap price. If you like music then you should pay for it. If you don't the music will just get shittier. Pop is already forcing so much bad music down everyones throats, if there is something that is special to you, then pay for it. You don't need to buy everything on your playlist just the stuff you respect. Otherwise the 'real' musicians will die out and you'll get boat loads of pop shitty music designed to be consumed by force (Internet) (cellphone) (Radio). If you like something help the person create more somethings for you to like.
The compression comparisons were really bad though. Its clearly just audio over compression to no compression. Its a completely different conversation. Loudness wars and all that. Also a culprit of bad sound.
Anyway download something you really like in Flac and listen to it on a fairly good system, you'll see, trust me.
Cheerio
this is very nicely produced and it is a story I have told myself, many times, over the past couple of decades. But I am not sure I completely agree with the premise, even though I do still take these problems seriously. When I was quite a bit younger, I invested a lot of my life in creating tools and spaces for people to use to make music and to listen to music - both live and recorded music, and for years I carried the nicest mics and recording gear I can carry.
But at this point in my life, I am back to where I was as a kid - listening THROUGH the medium, for the story the artist is trying to tell me. Case in point - Playing for Change on UA-cam - or the brilliant movie that launched that genre - One Giant Leap ... recorded on bare bones prosumer gear - a couple of laptops with a little roland digital mixer. I learned to listen through the AM radio late at night, captivated by far away signals bouncing off the ionosphere. I learned to listen in the car, too, over the noise of the wind and the tires and the gears. And in the early 60's I made some great sounding mono recordings on an AMPEX 601 - 1/4" tape with just one great mic. But I can listen through the compression, too, and I have come to realize that I really am a lot more interested in the content than the sound that it rides on. And then, there is Neil Young and his company PonoMusic ...
Ping Ron Scroggin
Lots of parallels for me with the ideas in this post joe breskin. With experience in sound reinforcement, reproduction, and high fidelity, I'm nonetheless mainly into listening to the meaning, through the medium, the distortion, the noise, and the competing stimuli. And drawing a lesson from performance in public spaces, I've found mono to be more content-resonant than stereo
similarly so much of big label music is so over-produced and there seems to be more emphasis on production than quality of the actual songs. look at the early blues songs that were recorded in back rooms with portable equipment that inspired so many of the greatest musicians. i ran into a guy at SXSW once who had spent his life savings of 10k to record his cd and i couldn't help feeling sorry for him. probably could have setup a home studio and done it for a fraction of the cost. if the songs are there, they're there. bad headphones and laptop speakers, etc. bother me more than good compression. the music in this documentary segment sounded awful to me regardless of the compression in the video. my biggest problem with listening to digital music today is the tendency to listen on shuffle and get away from listening to albums as they were intended to be heard. that's the real thing i appreciate about records, that they are a complete experience with large artwork, often with lyrics or other information, to be listened to as a complete, thoughtful experience.
I get it! I too have found myself leaning toward raw and less "produced" sounds.
keeping a true nature to the music. Perhaps this is because of the years of supposed refinements in studio work? dunno.
Pffft or maybe I am just getting old and the refined stuff sounds TOO STERILIZED!
:P
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!
A world without music... Is a world without emotion... Like a world without color!
Compression is like seeing only in black and white in a color world!
I'm hoping and hopeful for a change!
This is a great film explaining what has happened to many peoples ears over the years of listening to bad audio! Not bad audio recordings, but bad audio playback!
If and when people go to a movie and it didn't sound good or the visual quality was lower than you expected, wouldn't people complain or are they now just that complacent?!
Music is so powerful that even in other mediums such as film you usually hear music before you see or hear anything else! Silent films, were not silent at all! There was always music and always will be in some way shape or form!
This is a must watch! THANK YOU!
The purpose of making a documentary is not where you will end up watching it. So you watched it on youtube. The delivery system should never dictate what you present in a doc or anything. THAT is the problem we have with MP3s now, its designed for fastest distribution possible, even if it changes the content severely. This is why this doc is well made but you don't appreciate it because its on UA-cam. If you seen it in a theatre you'd go wow well done. Here, you say whats the point of putting this on UA-cam.
And its definitely not a waste of time if you really understand what this problem means and how serious it has become. The uncompressed/compressed samples they used is just to show how distorted it becomes. Its not necessarily what you are hearing in MP3s, its the difference that they are trying to show. Like anyone else, doc maker is very aware of UA-cams bad compression. This is why the samples used was not even suppose to be a comparison of studio sound and MP3 sound. It was only meant to show the kind of shocking degradation the sound suffers.
If you can't figure these things out, then yeah, why watch? Its not for you.
This video is frustrating on a few levels. As mentioned in the comments below, they confused data compression with dynamic compression (derp), and on top of that, they were showing the "uncompressed" sound via a UA-cam video (which is compressed sound). Then Kate Nash asking who has the answers. Here's your answer, Kate: All digital audio players/devices need to support FLAC, and then make FLAC the industry standard.
When we had Walkmans and Discmans, we still all didn't have super amazing headphones to go with them, so that hasn't changed a whole lot.
I won't even get into the loudness war issue that's already been mentioned in the comments before mine. You all already know about that.
Frustrating video, for sure.
FLAC files are still fairly large, though obviously smaller than wav.
What we need are bigger hard drives in our music devices coupled with a cultural shift.
Amen!
Exactly! This video is misleading on so many levels!
right on bro! this video is embarrassing!
check it, they romanticize about vinyls and fucking cassettes(godamn cassettes! omg!) as if they ever delivered high quality and clearity. what a load of BS! cassettes sucked major ass!
also, I had a Panasonic discman back in the day and a Sony minidisc (wasn't of the expensive ones) and they had the most pathetic amplification! the sound got distorted not nealry close to the maximum volume.
so WTF are these assholes talking about!!!?
lol clearity
The "Loudness War" also bring us compression from the source, it came direct from the studios. Everything you buy is compressed, including the works of this people on the video. There is a name for that... *Hypocrisy*
Thank you so much! That is exactly what i was thinking while watching this marketing-bullshit...
coisasnatv Correct! The Loudness War kills the music once, then adding file-compression kills the music one more time. Lossless will only get rid of half the problem, the Loudness War -destruction remains.
Its in a way funny that mastering studios proudly puts out demo's of their "professionalism", but when listening (compensate for the volume diff) its obvious, even on low-end equipment, that "Mastering" should be spelled "Failing"... ref. blackdogmastering.com/Mastering_Samples.html
Wrong, there is a huge difference between a compression that was professionally dont in a studio by a professional engineer thats been an engineer for 40 years,
And a compression of a MP3 file that has no quality whatsoever in it.
Big fucking difference between a software compression to compress an audio so people can stuff as many tracks into their devices,
and a $10-k compression unit that "Slightly" compresses a kick drum or other instrument done by a PROFESSIONAL engineer thats been doing it all of his life.
LEIF - you have NO concept of what a mastering engineer goes through when mastering a track.
If a track sounds bad after it was mastered, its mostly because your original track was Bedroom mastered by Mickey Mouse and the engineer cant go to everyone's house
and correct all the bullshit that all these bedroom producers are doing out of their bedroom studios. ALL this shit started in the 90's when people started to get their own studios and not go to a professional studio any longer. So now the snot nose 13 year old who thinks he is a professional engineer mixing down his tracks by grabbing ideas from the internet gets upset because his track sounds like shit after he sends it out to the label and mastering plant.
We NEVER had this fucking problem before the 90's when people was forced to go to a professional studio and professional had their music professionally engineered in a REAL studio
ALL this shit is from bedroom studios, and now everyone is a got damn professional mastering engineer and they think they know more than the mastering engineer thats been doing is craft longer than most of the bedroom wanna be's. - And thats PURE TRUTH RIGHT THERE in Black and White.
MAny times when a mastering engineer hears a bedroom track and the mastering engineer tries to master it and knows it sounds like shit,
BUT the label tells the mastering engineer they dont care because they are on a time limit and the track is going to be on an MP3 anyways, the labels has the "WE DONT GIVE A SHIT" attitude... because in the end, they want to make money as fast as possible.... This day in age, no one gives a shit about quality anymore.
And these bedroom DJ's and Bedroom music producers think they know more than a 40 year vet in the audio engineering business.
And again, mastering engineers cant go to everyones home to correct their bullshit, and when mastering engineers tells / informs the person that they need to work on their mixdowns,
the bedroom producers catches an attitute then tells the veteran mastering engineer that he doesnt know what he is doing.
Meantime, that mastering engineer is sitting in a room with Multi Platinum awards all over his walls because of his years of knowledge and work as a professional mastering engineer.
Then you wonder why those mastering engineers tells everyone to fuck off.
You guys are mixing things up.
When they talk about compression here they are not talking about compression as in dynamic range (the gap between the minimum and maximum perceived levels).
They are talking about data compression, as in WAV -> MP3 and BMP -> JPG
The MP3 algorithm ditches frequencies that we usually won't perceive with full clarity and cuts everything outside of the human hearing range (20Hz - 20KHz). This gets rid of frequencies that you can't hear but you can FEEL. While it's not impossible to experience chills when you listen to something you like in MP3, it's way easier to experience that if you're listening to the very same track in a lossless format.
Just like the JPG ditches pixels from the Bitmap. It's called compression because the end result ends up needing a lot of less storage space than the lossless one.
A 1 minute 320kbps MP3 at 16/44KHz file would take you 2,6Mb. The very same file in WAV would take you 5,29Mb in MONO and a stereo file would be 2*5,29 or 10,58Mb. So it's easy to see why MP3 is the standard file format everywhere nowadays. Distributors seem to like and this is the main reason. Consumers like this too because a 128Gb device, such as a phone can store as much "musical crap" as you can imagine.
Also, the loudness war started waaaaaayy before the 90's like you're saying. If you want to tell the story from the first chapter you need to go back to the "jukebox in the bar" era.
If a record plays louder than most of the others, it would be picked more often because it would "sound better". If you're into music production you'll probably know that when something sounds louder, we tend to interpret it like it is sounding better.
Of course the record labels spotted this (Motown anyone?) and they started sacrificing dynamic range in order to attain greater loudness levels. The rest is history and it lead to where we are today.
I don't know why people call it compression when all you do is "squashing all the transients" against a brick wall limiter these days until you get a -5 or -6 dB gain reduction.
Then again, a limiter can be seen as a compressor with a super fast attack and a ratio greater than 10:1, usually infinite:1 and a defined ceiling value.
That's what's advertised as Mastering these days. People can even now pay to get their mastering jobs done by computer algorithms, like in LANDR. No wonder why 90% of the stuff out there sounds like shit. Add to that crap output systems like beats by Dre and sub par earbuds and all of this together makes a huge difference.
It kind of defeats the purpose of mixing your stuff on a SSL 4000 series mixer if your stuff is going to end up being sold/streamed at platforms like Beatport, iTunes or Spotify as 320kbps MP3 files...
Great documentary, glad to see there was no sponsored or just a long commercial. Amazing work.
As an artist myself I was thinking of this just the other day! it's amazing to finally hear how top dog ,artist express their feelings about the quality of their music!
Compressed audio is bad, we get it. But to hear all the things that uncompressed audio has to offer you need to use a very expensive equipment, and not everybody has money for it. So is it consumer's fault really?
Most intelligent comment here. I refer to that as a "good enough" society. We will never know what good is. Everything is manufactured "good enough" (for profits). Too good and people can't afford it. Too bad and people won't buy it. "Good enough" and the majority of products will just make it through the warranty, providing just enough functionality. The only exception to this rule is Bose. Complete crap that costs peanuts to manufacture and they sell it off as the best thing on earth. Who's fault? Consumers' faults.
All you need is a turntable.
Well to sum it up, people just don`t care. In the video they say like "Everybody loves music" which is only true in a certain degree. Most people like music, not love it. They use it for background purposes in their car or just to kill silence in general. With all the noise in their heads by thinking all day, they cannot handle silence. They cannot even hear the difference between a low bitrate mp3 and lossless file formats.
that's why this 2017, i went back to vinyl music.... it's warm sound is GREAT! and played the LPs using an equally superb audio-technica at-lp120usb vinyl player....
Quality sound in music is important!! We need it! Thank you!
Mp3 doesn't remove "90% of the song", it removes redundant data based on psychoacoustics while retaining the how the piece sounds as closely as possible. You're talking about compression ratios in a misleading way. Ironically enough, vinyl sounds much less like the original recording than say an mp3 file with a higher average bitrate then 192kbps.
At 11:50 sorry you CAN NOT treat a signal with heavy DYNAMIC COMPRESSION to show the bad effects of INFORMATION COMPRESSION !
That's totaly different !!!
Both does a lot of damage.
But that's absolutly different !
This was excellent! I teared up, reminiscing about goosebumps and rehearsals. I'm definitely inspired and committed to making music sound marvelous again.
This is awesome. 4 times as many, so many great quotes, so many good points. BUY VINYL
The most disturbing part of this 22 minutes are Andrew Scheps comments. He is one of the most respected engineers and mixers in the industry and he is spewing propaganda.
I just don't understand why you people get so upset about 24bit audio. Have you ever recorded music, ever mixed music, ever? It's almost all at 24bit, and the reasons to reduce it for public consumption are all gone. But this anger from "fans" stays, why is that?
I believe that they are not fighting against the concept of Hi-fi audio, but against the intellectual dishonesty this film has
Sean Olive says hello too
Digital data compression is not audio compression.
The irony of watching this on a web video and trying to do sound comparisons, lol
How is the audio encoded for web video again?
haha nice. yeah this was a little odd.
I was exactly thinking the same.
Just to show how much we've lost in "audio quality" in music as time has moved forward. Ever since I was a small child, there was this old broken German made Grundig "vacuum tube" radio laying around the house. It was probably made in the mid 1950's It looked similar to the "GRUNDIG MAJESTIC.4030 W-3D KLANG" but it had gold plated internal speakers on all 4 sides. It is critical that you keep in mind that this is a "mono audio" signal - Not Stereo radio. About 10 years passed by and I was at a relative of mines apartment. I was a teenager then an I commented on his real cool looking ONYX component stereo system and how great it sounded. It was in NYC and he had it tuned to WBLS FM with a DJ talking. He turned to me and said "Oh, you actually think that sounds great? wait here here a minute" He disappeared into a bedroom and came back with that same beat up Grundig radio that had been in the house. I wasn't aware my mom had given it to him years earlier. He had paid over a thousand dollars to have it restored - both inside and out. He puts it on a table on the side tunes the dial to the same radio station frequency and then turns the switch on. It doesn't turn on right away - it has to warm up. This particular model had two glowing turquoise blue bands on opposite sides of the dial face - about a half inch high. As it warms up, the blue bands start moving out from the sides of the face plate. Their goal is to make contact in the center of the face plate. They waver back and forth on the face plate - like they're hesitant to come into contact with each other but eventually they did. When that happened, I heard a loud crackling sound just before the real audio burst out of the speakers. Remember that I said this was a "mono" signal. I'm not exaggerating here !!! There was a DJ talking on WBLS on the ONYX ultra modern stereo system. When when that Grundig finally turned on, I actually jumped back from where
I was standing! Why? Because that "mono" radio created a holographic sound image in the room. It felt like the DJ was a few feet away from me - while the radio itself was several feet away from me. That old radio, made the modern stereo system audio sound completely FLAT and DEAD by comparison.
This video spoke to greatly. I am a classically trained musician who has loved the complexity of music since i first played as part of the greater whole in a brass band, you create a living thing in that instance of music.
But the largest part, the biggest thing that has bothered me is that my brother has never been able to hear that complexity and thus enjoy it as he relies on a Cochlear implant to hear.
there is the perfect analogy for the Distortion of sound through compression as his external processors that translate sound for the system that enables him to hear removes the majority of pitch.
As i said i play in large bands, after being in a band where the music surrounds you in a cocoon of overlaying melodies, which find their key in the pitch. well I would be unable to stand a world without it. (much like, Allegory of the cave, a psychology study)
i guess my argument to support your video is that the Distortion of sound is making us all deaf. Not just to sound but true beauty.
learn to cherish the hearing you have and show it the same love you would your eyes
This is really manipulative and misleading. Data compression and dynamic range compression are two separate, very different things, the people who edited this video are insinuating they're the same in a desperate attempt to make people spend more money on higher quality record formats and bigger, more expensive audio systems, which I don't have a problem with (it's really good listening to hi-fi music on hi-fi speakers), but teaching people the wrong thing is just plain stupid, the reality is far more convincing and interesting. They're only desperately trying to belittle services like Spotify, Pandora and even UA-cam because streaming poses a big threat to the jurassic recording companies since streaming is often cheaper (or even free!) than buying records.
+Romulo Ferreira I was going to comment the same. The real problem is dynamic compression (brick wall limiting really) that removes all but 3db of dynamic range (if even that is left now). All of the nuances and details of instruments, musicianship, dynamics etc get lost.
You _can't_ fix this with expensive equipment and good speakers. it's lost during the mastering process. To me it all sounds like shit. If I'm shopping for cds and I see "Remastered" on the case, I run as fast as I can. That means they took a perfectly good classic record and ruined it, by compressing the shit out of it to make it sound "louder" making it yet another casualty of the loudness wars.
This documentary is a red herring. Music sounds like shit because it comes from the record company that way. Nearly lossless data compression has almost no effect on the actual sound quality at 320kbps
Case in point is No Line on the Horizon by U2. To me that mastering job is like nails on a chalkboard.
Record companies and bands: If you want to make something loud, let the listeners turn that knob on the amplifier called "Volume", don't ruin a perfectly good recording.
Agreed.
Neil Davis I agree concerning the dynamic range compression. I disagree concerning compression. Try this : listen to a compressed song on your laptop with good headphones (or i-phone) then take it to a nice hifi system (not a very expensive one; let's say 2500$ with nice speakers). If you don't hear any difference, there's something wrong. You should hear a very "flat" wall of sound with holes and of course with no 3rd dimension. The problem is that people listen music true shitty readers and only with headphones.
E. Dumas I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Am I right to assume that the three of us agree that brickwall limiting sounds like shit despite the size of the speaker system and more dynamic range is healthy, data compression doesn't matter much as long as it's not wild and that this documentary is misleading?
You're right ! I misunderstood your point. Now I get it and you and Neil are absolutely right ! Part of the problem are the studios themselfs. They put a new crappy standard in recording... As said, these data are lost from the beginning. Data compression, for me, is another issue. I don't like Steve Jobs if you see what I mean... I think he killed the industry with his cute products.
seriously misleading. the part at 11:40 goes from talking about data compression to dynamic range compression. if you want people to learn about this issue why are you trying to mislead them?
I just did a MP3 and FLAC comparison they're not wrong.
This documentary help me to revaluate the wonder of music and sound...
Thanks... really... thanks...
hearing Snoop say that Olive Garden is the Italian Denny's really made this film for me. thanks for putting that in there.
Annnnnd at 11:45 - 12:13 I turned it off. So misleading!
They are trying to make (a ;) ) sense for us to diferentiate the compressed and unncompressed audio reproduction of music.. It's a campaign against mp3 files... which mainly depends how you convert your music; how many KB/Sec has the mp3 file you convert from the original file. Things are(still) hidden from us; that's another reality... and that it's sad.
true. they used 32kbps CBR mp3 in this example I suppose... never heard so bad mp3 encoding in real world.
and actually most people won't hear the difference between source WAV and 192kbps (or higher) mp3 encoding.
This short documentary got me excited about music again.
-
You guys can argue about compression, but didn't this doc make you want to listen to your favorite album?
Great video.
+Ben Aaron No, it didn't, I don't even like any these musicians.
+TheKungfulol wow you totally missed Bens point.
"didn't this doc make you want to listen to your favorite album?"
No, it made me want to post angry comments.
Ben Aaron , no it made me want to throw up in my mouth
I don't think anyone likes the artists in this video. Vomit in the mouth is a delicious surprise.
I will never do it again. Because of this documentary I now remember feeling the soul of music. Thank you. ;)
The irony of this is that the music industry (at least the people who appeared in this documentary) is complaining that people don't seem to care about all of the extra technology and equipment they use to make the music. What they don't seem to understand is that the power of music is so great that we can listen to music even on crappy MP3 players through crappy ear buds and still love what we're listening to. It's about the music; it's not about how great or pure it sounds. So save yourself the money on your fancy equipment. A good song with lower quality sound will still be listened to more than a crappy song with flawless sound quality.
This is just marketing bullshit!
1. They use dynamic compression in studios.
2. Oh they were so excited about the quality of cassette tapes and then it all went down-hill... Really?!
3. File compression and dynamic range compression are two completely different things - lossless files like FLAC are still compressed. If it's 1/3 of the original file, it doesn't mean 1/3 of the music is "stripped away"!
4. In 99.9% of the time, a 320kbps MP3 would NOT be a limiting factor in audio quality. It would be the equipment! Are they trying to make people not listen to MP3s or for them to get better equipment?
5. People's perception of sound and deterioration of their hearing organs has much bigger impact on the sound than a 320kbps high quality MP3 compression.
5. This reminds me of Tidal, they're just trying to find ways to make money, not to make things better.
Just use FLAC instead of MP3, boom, problem solved, and shuts those people up.
Luka Štemberger compression is compression, the sounds we can't hear we still can feel
Oh, so we have some sort of sixth sense now? :)
And even if that were true, and meaningful in any music material (20-20 000Hz is a cut-off in almost all delivery methods anyway), with modern compression methods it would be less of an issue than the equipment the music is playing on.
Plus, compression can be lossless, which means with not even the inaudible frequencies cut off - FLAC, APE or aptX Losless for instance, where you can retain even the sounds you can't hear, but can in some other way "feel". But I would bet you wouldn't "feel" the difference between them and a good 320kbps MP3.
Luka Štemberger sir, you speaks the trouth
Michael West Who in their right mind would strip down all of the low end of any song? You would have to use some reeealy low bit-rates to accomplish that.
I listen to my music in FLAC compression, with nothing whatsoever stripped off...
Luka Štemberger Luke you hit the nail on the head. This idea that they are trying to sell the public poorly audio compressed albums in lossless format for 3 times the price is ridiculous.
While the gist of the story is absolutely true (music quality has degraded of the last years) they completely fail to address the most important problem. The difference between compressed formats and uncompressed WAV audio is unmistakable for any audio engineer on a good set of monitors. YES, you can hear the difference between 320kbps and WAV. However, when listening on laptop speakers or cheap earbuds, you will never hear this difference. Delivering higher quality uncompressed music is completely meaningless if you do not listen your music on high quality speakers or headphones (no, Beats by dre do not meet this criterium). So if you want to even attempt to fix the problem, people will have to start spending more money on their audio delivery systems. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon.
Also, the makers of this documentary confuse dynamic compression with digital compression algorithms, two completely different things. I even think they do it in an attempt to wilfully deceive viewers.
***** Good for you, glad you have invested in quality equipment. You are a minority though. I'm not sure how to interpret your reply, do you resent my comment in some way? I done some work as an audio engineer, some I am all for great quality music, i'm just saying that the vast majority of people don't have the equipment or the ears to appreciate the difference.
Right! so in a mixdown to media play it in different applications ie: Car stereo, Home Stereo, PC, Mp3 player etc.etc. then find the "Happy medium" of all sytems to get a final mix to public. its the only thing I think to, at least at the Home recording level. I am by far NOT a professional here/Hear. Haha!
I'll except the beat down!
***** Car is not a very good listening environment because it's resonant, because speakers are on a boundary of a resonant void which is close in shape to a semi-sphere, because of materials used in construction of the vehicle, because of abundance of secondary voids, and because of the ambient noise - outside noise, road noise, wind noise, engine noise... If you have a stock soundsystem, even if it's the most expensive one they sell, it will usually not be very good - it appears flashy names and making it look pretty drives the sales, attempting to make it sound right doesn't.
What i do for a living: i have been part of development teams of infotainment systems for some luxury car makers for the last few years. I don't do sound there though, i couldn't agree that with my conscience.
Headphones... well, puh. I am never seen not wearing headphones and i obvoiusly enjoy headphones a lot, but they aren't without issues. The largest issue is the principal one - they make headphones the same for everyone, but everyone's ear and ear canal shapes differ! While speakers sound "the same" for everyone, headphones sound different for everybody, thus there is no faithful baseline to be had there.
When I mentioned a Vehicle with other Player types or atmospheres was mererly to find a balance for mixdowns that the average listeners would be using. quite frankly, that , in the future, could mean a hand held unit with headphones is their main player use, therefore, eventually we could all be gearing (predominantly) music mixdowns to be heard thru better thru personal listening devices.
Hell! I DONT KNow :-D which may It'll Go!
Calling BS on this, conducted a lot of listening tests on ADAM F7 Studio Monitors, they aren't completely TOTL but they use the same tweeters as their more expensive models, not saying these were cheap though.
I think its good that the quality of mp3 its the way it is .
Live music , the big ass concert, the local bands at your pub will always be there.
wow, that`s an awesome video. Thank you so much.
The myth is that "before digital" everyone listened to super high quality music, and ear buds have somehow ruined that. But the truth was that almost everyone was listening to super compressed FM radio over crappy car speakers, or on mono boom boxes in noisy environments, or of cheap sears stereos, or off of budget cassette tapes poorly recorded from a second or third generation source. Not everyone had super hi fidelity home stereos. Compressed mp3 and ear buds are sadly often superior to a lot of what people used to experience. Don't believe the bullshit people use to make themselves appear to be special.
In some way thats true but most young people use earbuds that hurt your ears and take all the live out of the music because of the sound being generated in the head, that drives me crazy. I'd prefer evem a pocket radio over them. Also the most "cheap" devices like table radios and Boom boxes sounded good and better than any Bluetooth speaker if you go further back in time. The craptastic chinese plastic boom boxes appeared first in the late 80s.
I think a bigger problem than data compression is the way music is produced. Sample replacement, virtually every note edited and pitch corrected to "perfection", not to mention what the loudness war has done to dynamics. What we have is homogenized, boring, robotic mush. I'll take a well produced-mastered MP3 over a 24/96 stream that was "Pro" Tools'ed and limited to death.
Loved this presentation! I am so sharing
As soon as I heard the "compressed" drums, I knew this video was totally full of it.
Hype-Fi , good ads here 👍🏼 , nice video editing.
Wait! I'm watching this on youtube. Is it compressed?
So Great! This is an important film. There's more information in analog recordings and we need that! Agents of Analog Unite!
Great explanation on digital format audio file.
I love listening music from vinyl, the sound of guitar, percussion, bass, vocal is so amazing.
i have friends asking why am i listening to vinyl, its so old school. And some have misconception that digital format are better than vinyl or cdplayer because new technology is alway better.
Totally agree that we need to push the industry to provide music with better quality. But this is a really poor attempt of trying to convince people to buy physical copies again... which is sad... so many creative minds in the industry and not a single one is put to the task of finding a better way of monetising all this... Oh and by the way, don't throw around the word compression like that since most songs get compressed right in the mixing/mastering console even before the very first tape/cd is burnt.
Most stuff you can buy today is miles better than the Hifi's and record players in the vinyl era. The headphones of the Sony walkman were atrocious, heck even Beats sound better today. I can listen offline to Spotify with 320 kbps, which virtually no one can discern from CD or Flac. I miss sometimes the cover sleeves, but i can communicate directly to bands. I get so much Infos about new exciting music and bands from blogs and socialmedia, i would have killed for all those opportunities in the 80ies.
Gelenkbusfahrer , your flat out wrong the audio equipment ( Tube Stuff ) from the 60's and 70 and early 80's is 10 times better. I can show you speakers from the 1930's and 40's that sell for 5 to 10 grand. You don't know what your talking about. I restore Jukeboxes for a living. I will then have musicians over for them to listen to music that they have been listening to all of there lives. Then they here it on a tube amplifier on a restored jukebox in analog format and they are now hearing all the instruments and all back ground vocals and stuff and they turn to me and say. where did that come from. I turn and say. it's been there all the time. you been listening to all the radio and MP3 crap and compressed digitized music. It's easy to say stuff when it's out of site or out or mind. get your head out of the clouds and expand your thinking
I love how they show difference between uncompressed and compressed sound in a compressed youtube video
So many things in this worth repeating. But I love the person who said compression removes the emotion and it truly does. Hopefully as hi-res portable players become more accessible to all we will be on an upward track again.
Haha, what a load of crap! Yes there is a difference, but @ 11:45 you are telling me that I'm hearing uncompressed audio through youtube? Again yes there is a differene but this is just deceiving. Maybe we need a Monster cable as well with that?
Its just to show how shocking the difference is. Not suppose to be a true sample of studio sound and MP3 sound. I don't know why people don't get that. The doc maker is not stupid enough to try to show actual quality differences when the video is mainly going to be watched on the internet.
We want all things fast we do not have time to care about nuance or soul only on the consumption of product. Things today are meant to be consumed and tossed away the music industry is a example its just the way it is. If it becomes profitable the sound quality will improve. If you have no time for that and want sum soul buy a TT, tube amp, horns and some good old LPs. Ebay craigs are good choices if on budget Sit centered and just listen a beverage or smoke of choice maybe consumed but just listen if you do you will thank me.
This is absolutely a great movie! Thanks for that. I think more people should be aware of how much effort is put into the music we make every day and listen to. It's a shame that compression is like common sense nowdays and people don't really care about enjoying music and get those goosebumps - isn't that what music is made for in the first place?
Great documentary! and nice to hear by the way, even through internet. You have taken care of the sound. Long life to High-fidelity!
*needs more dramatic soundtrack*
To Steve Aoki I only listen on vinyl...
I am 18 and I only buy my music on a CD. I used to download but I realised how much more enjoyment I got from going to a shop to buy a physical disk.
I find it much more enjoyable to be Connected to the Community of Musicians and music fans!! Too many people are content to sit at home and isolate themselves from the World....they buy EVERYTHING online and rarely leave the house and this is Normal now..... We are living in a world of Soul-Crushing Isolation while being told we are "more connected than ever"!! Really?? THAT is propaganda.....making you actually believe that spending 90% of your life alone in front of a screen is being "Connected" and "Social" and that flashing lights and 2D images are "just as good" as the *Real Thing*!! I was born just early enough to realize what a LIE this is.....people used to physically be together and now nearly ALL social interactions are buffered by technology!! Our lives are More Isolated and Disconnected and Antisocial than EVER!!!! Being on Facebook is NOT nearly as intimate as hanging out with your Real friends!!! Try getting your 300+ Facebook "friends" to help you move or console you during a tragedy.....you can't get a Hug through Twitter!!!
Great documentary and should say I agree with the viewpoints expressed. Having said that, I have to say some of my greatest listening experiences have been from a hissy bootleg or Robert Johnson recordings...hardly high fidelity. The soul of good music (or at least what speaks to us as individuals) will still shine through.
+Çerastes Point taken and agreed upon, but that doesn't completely negate the point being made.
Lianne La Havas states that she hates bad audio quality, then states that "[She] still love[s] cassette tapes" (7:54).
I thought she might be drunk when she said that. She could have only been meaning that in a nostalgic way. I've been through every format on cheap devices since the 60s, and 8-track and cassettes tapes were the biggest pains in the asses. Not only do they rip, the tape wears down just as an kind of tape or movie film wears down. I still have my cassettes, and a cassette player in my car as well as a CD player, and they're rough.
Ironically the volume is really really low in this video.
Even more ironically, this video's audio is compressed as it's on UA-cam.
Yeah but it has allot of dynamics at least which is a good thing.
Awesome documentary! Thought provoking.
Awesome film thank you
So... what are they selling me?
this reminds me a bit of when they unveiled tidal. a bunch of very rich people missing the point
The age of my ear-drums, and the mumbling of singers, I do not think I am missing much at all.
Its incredible that this is still up on youtube. Fix it now!!!
non of the artists in the video could differ mp3 from loseless audio in a blind test
Can't remember the last time I gave a video a thumbs down.
I can tell where these musicians are coming from when they talk about the magic of buying physical copies and stuff like that. It always did make me appreciate stuff more seeing an album cover, hearing it through a real soundsystem etc.
But man, the way they talk about compression and all that... Just brutal...
"This film makes me want to listen to cassette tapes again because the music I stream on Spotify sounds awful" Said me never. Like the sentiment, hate the inaccuracies in this film.
Remember trying to re-spool cassette tapes with a pencil, and how if you played a tape often enough it would just wear out? (On a related note I really miss the floppy disk and the abacus. ;)
Has there ever been a recording/reproduction system that provided full fidelity?
I gave quite a lengthy response to this when it appeared on facebook yesterday; relating to the furor over the sacrilege of digitizing music when CDs came out. I finished it with the note that the whole movie seemed to be a promo for some new wonder product and expected the "Big Reveal" at the end. I, quite naively as it turns out, said I was glad there was none.
Turns out I was the victim of the latest web marketing gimmick where instead of hitting you over the head with the product, they entice you to ferret it out for yourself. it was difficult to read the credits on the phone but reviewing it now, the details are clear.
Harmon International Industries (Harmon Kardon,) which used to be on the low end of the audiophile spectrum in the 70s until it went down the tubes after being sold off to a US conglomerate and a Japanese consumer company, appears to have gotten the band back together again to save us all with... what?
I don't know. wasn't motivated enough to find the cheese at the end of the maze. So I don't know if it's a new codec or hardware or both. it does seem that "CD quality" is their holy grail-better than we have, I suppose but nothing that's going to crack the Earth.
As someone who had McIntosh amplifiers and Voice of the Theater speakers I can appreciate good audio, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for my wallet,) my bionic ears make such extremes superfluous at this point. Regardless, I'm not sure how far I'd go to get back to "CD quality."
The one really interesting claim they seem to be making is that they can recover the fidelity of an already compressed recording. That is intriguing.
If you wish to go cheese hunting: www.distortionofsound.com and scroll to the bottom; or go to: www.clarifisound.com/ www.infinityspeakers.com/estore/inf/us/index.jsp www.harman.com/EN-US/Pages/Home.aspx
I don't recall the film ever saying that cassettes sounded all that great.
Aryno Wyrth but it insinuated that the present form of listening to music is inferior to the past forms like cassette and cds which isn't the case, they all talk about how we have horrible quality music because of the overly compressed file formats people save their music in now a days.
This is why I spent 400 dollars on my headphones :D
But I feel this video is biased against compression and probably has a commercial motive. Even with my studio reference headphones, I can't hear ANY difference between a 320 kbps VBR MP3 file and an uncompressed audio in an A/B test. And the sound difference between 192 kbps and 320 kbps mp3s are not that noticeable in cheaper headphones.
A superior format to mp3 would be Ogg, but it's not widely used.
While I enjoyed this documentary, I feel like this is only half of the problem. I am an audio engineer as well as an audiophile, I love recording, mixing and mastering music. Let's talk about the compression that happens BEFORE audio is converted to multiple formats for distribution. Music has gotten louder over the past 20 years, and even some before that. Music is now to the point where even if you were to get it in the highest quality possible, it's still compressed. Take for example when you buy a physical copy of a new CD. Rip that CD to you computer in a loss less format, and examine the waveform. 9 times out of 10 the level is maximized all the way throughout, no quiet, no variation, no dynamics. It's a phenomenon called the Loudness Wars and it's been ruining the quality of music for a generation. This isn't the fault of the MP3 or the digital revolution, it's the producers and engineers making the decision to do so. I think we can start talking about bringing the fidelity back to music when the people producing it stop taking part of it away in the first place.
This puts everything into perspective
A great short documentary! One argument I would have liked to have seen added is the fact that artists and producers are forced to mix in a way which complements the mp3 compression that undoubtedly will occur to their music. This means the 'distortion' doesn't just take away from the clarity of the art, it actually changes the art itself.
+Shinobi Stealth : Incorrect. There is no reason whatsoever to mix & master to compliment MP3 format whatsoever. They are just lazy fukers who are not doing their job properly (cutting corners to reduce costs or similar bullshit) or they are just simply bad at their job. And if you mean that they have to mix their music to be "as loud as possible"... no, they don't. Volume knobs (+ amplifiers to some extent) have existed ever since the first music player.
Well there is a reason.. that's why I raise it as an additional problem for people like us who want high quality audio content. I'm not saying its a good thing, i'm saying.. whether or not its a good or a bad thing the ultimate truth is that the job and role of the audio engineer, who is in the business of making 'records', is to mix and master in a way that complements the medium in which the listener is most likely to experience it. A true professional engineer will create multiple masters for all likely mediums depending on the budget he/she has. You can't blame them for being cheap.. its their job, if they only get paid for one master then they will only create one master. They do not work for charity.
One thing I could have made clearer in my initial statement is that I don't mean mp3's are solely the one and only reason for audio engineers to mix in another direction, I mean all low quality mediums such as laptop speakers, earbuds, radio.. everything that was mentioned in this documentary is how the majority of the audience will listen to and judge their music. If the artists wants a chance their mix better cut through.
And no, i'm not talking about the loudness war but since you brought it up.. mp3 compression does reduce dynamic range which is essentially what the loudness war is all about.
Sorry, I don't get your 'volume knob', 'amplifier' thing so I didn't address it.
I didn't want to be that annoying audiophile guy you find ranting on comment feeds... what have you done to me!
Good MP3 is fine on a good sound system or headphones as long as it's not compressed too much, If it's mastered properly the playback device is the weak link IMO, either that or my ears are bad because I have high end amp and above average speakers and I rarely hear a song and think it sounds bad.
Well, is it a fight against compression? The audio compression example they showed there is bit exaggerated I felt. Yea, certainly vinyl had all the warmth... so did the 35mm camera over the DSLRs. But are we going back to either vinyl or film camera? What's the point of the video? The video is well made though, but does little to convey a solution, just tells us the problems!
I would suggest that the video is attempting to promote the use of uncompressed audio file formats, and quality listening equipment that garners its merit through sonic superiority rather than brand-hype and marketing.
As for the compression example in the film.. I feel like it would be reasonable to assume that the video was attempting to illustrate the difference between uncompressed audio files and compressed audio codecs (data compression, not dynamic processing).. in a way that would still translate when streamed from UA-cam (given that UA-cam's conversion would inherently compress the audio).
The example is exaggerated in a sense, but the difference in quality between the video's examples is analogous to the difference they are illustrating.
The number of ear buds in the video pretty much says it all !!!
The universe was created by sound frequency. There's more feeling in analog recorded music. More food for the soul. Thank you for sharing this important, essential message.
Bravo to everyone that completely misunderstood this Lol.
In my opinion, its not the bit compression that is killing the music, it is dynamics compression that is killing the music.
Another thing people may get confused with is, the added compression and limiting youtube puts on their side that can create over compression.
To realize for what's missing, to bring back for what to be realized