CD compression killing music

Here's a link to a really interesting article I found via AudioCircle.com.

[SNIP]

What happened to dynamic range? That's a question that should be asked of record labels, producers, artists, and last
but not least, recording and mastering engineers. The question needs to be asked because we're the ones responsible for
what's happened to our music. The music we listen to today is nothing more than distortion with a beat (see the sine wave reference in the chart below). It's not because it isn't good music. It's because it lacks dynamic range. When music lacks dynamic range, it lacks punch, emotion, and clarity. The record labels blame Napster, MP3s, CD burners, and a host of others for the lack of CD sales. While there is some truth to their constant whining, they only have themselves to blame for the steady decline in CD sales. The record labels need to reevaluate what they consider to be good music.

[SNIP]

It's a pretty good read. Check it out.

 

Not exactly an unheard topic around here. All signs point towards label execs who can't seem to be educated - even by first-hand example, it seems - that artists don't want it, producers don't want it, and engineers don't want it. They just want their record to be the loudest it can be; the excuse used to be so the song would be "loud" on the radio. Now with the explosion of ear-damaging listening devices, they should be made accomplices to a conspiracy to ruin the hearing of consumers.

 

Why can't the CDs for sale be mastered for a good musical result, and the radio copies compressed to a fare-thee-well?

Cheers
Bruce

 

I didn't realize how compressed most music was until I started burning my own compilations where I could see the waveforms... and the squashed dynamics. It is true and, sadly, it's true of some of my favorite labels as well, not just the so-called majors. About the only place in my collection where it's less common is classical. It's gotten to the point that I'm more likely to choose an earlier mastering than a later one, discounting things like bit-rate advances etc.

Is there any way to reexpand a signal and undo their damage?

 

"Radio copies" are one of the things the article was debunking. Radio does the compression already, it doesn't need to be "pre-compressed."

It's a shame the recording and mastering community can't come up with some sort of across-the-board "standard" as a means of pushing back against the maximizing trend being advanced by those with tin ears in the music industry. Most of the engineers whose comments I've read on this topic have said they do what they're told in mastering because that's how they get the paycheck, but would prefer not to overcompress if they had their way.

Jason

 

I bet it's like my business where video post houses learn to boost colors (they don't care enough about audio to compress it) and do other brazen things to attempt to excite the content... in order to please the client, who's already insecure about their project at this point.

A friend of mine who's an audio engineer tells me the bands all demand compression.

 

The Loudness Switch needs to be back on to hardware and "taken out" of the sniveling software.

 

No, once the damage is done on the digital production master it's done.

 

Right. You can re-widen the dynamic range using software, but the peaks that were clipped off during the mastering are gone forever.

 

I think a lot of young bands these days are not very well educated musically and they think compression makes their music sound more bad-***. They are wrong, it makes them sound like all the other clueless bands out there.

 

Right! I should be pretty easy to include a "Make It Suck" button on every piece of consumer and broadcast gear.

 

Unfortunately, you're right. I know an indie mastering engineer in the UK, and he says all these unknown bands and artists come to his studio, and before they've even removed their coats they're already asking, "Can you make my CD louder?"

 

Perhaps I haven't done a thorough enough comparison to make this claim, but I swear that it's difficult to get a really good sounding MP3 when the source is already horribly compressed. Perhaps "the powers that be" decided that one way to combat illegal file sharing was to make sure the files wouldn't sound so good if they were compressed lossily. I am basing this speculation merely on how my MP3s sound on my player -- songs ripped from older cds invariably sound very good using a variable bit rate setting; songs ripped from most newer cds sound somewhat distorted in the bass, particularly those that already sound distorted on cd.

 

Well, this all goes back to musicians today not having any SERIOUS musical backgrounds or theory. Any ******* that can do a power chord and jump around is a musician...in a lot of pop music at least. We used to have something called talent in pop music. Now you have to search it out under rocks and stuff.

 

Jeff, crap in = crap out.

Speculation at best and we'll honestly never know for certain the why's.

This surprises you?

 

Do theory and musicianship really have anything to do with compression?

 

Hi Dave,

It does me in a way. After all, I've read since CD came out all kinds of industry spin about how they were working on improving mastering. Audiophiles, too, and recording engineer stuff in Mix and other places. It would seem counter to the industry's own sense of self.

How do you view it?

 

Yeah sort of. They dont respect or appreciate their instruments or music itself...so how can they be expected to give a damn about the quality of their recordings? Compress away! These "musicians" have all gotten careless and lazy.

 

The industry, minus a few radicals like Steve and smaller independent audiophile labels, has been going backwards since 1983 regarding CD masterings. In the beginning days they mastered near perfectly as evidenced by a few choice masterings on original Japan pressed CD's. ie: DSOTM, Kim Carnes Mistaken Identity etc even though not master tape sourced. Then came the thinking... "We must remove that horrible sounding tape hiss and record to digital to preserve the original tapes". So, instead of going back to the 2-track master tapes to properly correct the problem they instead brought in NR (noise reduction programs) to eliminate that nasty tape hiss and found they could successfully, or so they thought. Then comes the louder/clearer wars which escalated until present day. Add computer compressive formats like MP3 etc. and you get what we now have. Also, even though they now use the 2-track master tapes they still insist on recording to a digital mastering suite with all of the life-removing tools at their disposal and do use them I'm afraid.

SACD also did something similar, but I don't know the details... yet.

 

I'm not surprised by garbage in=garbage out -- and I certainly knew that the lossy compression involved in making an MP3 wasn't going to cause any improvements -- just a little dismayed to discover that recent releases with hyped up bass and little dynamic range sound terrible after I rip them for my MP3 player. Given that the lossy compression doesn't totally destroy a good sounding source, I'm a bit surprised by how much it accentuates what's already wrong with some sources.

 

Actually Dave, I'll give them a little bit of credit and say they were still putting out decent mastering as late as '88-'89.

 

Blame the artists themselves. I see very few of them complaining, so perhaps they deserve to have their music ruinied. I've heard some terribly overcompressed albums from major artists who should have the power to say NO, but it keeps happening.

The good news is that most of this crappy music will be useless in the future so good riddance anyway. And myself and many others are enjoying our classic rock, jazz, folk, classical etc... on vinyl just fine. But I feel bad for the youngters who do want their music to sound decent.

 

I work in TV, and I avoid making generalizations, but I have met only a handful of people who really know anything more than the average consumer about audio, if even that. I also work with a show where the TD demands that the chroma level be pushed way, way beyond any kind of measurement on a vectorscope. It looks awful. There are people in this industry working on successful shows that I wouldn't hire to post a wedding video. Seriously.


Dan

 

Pretty damned ironic. I remember the hype back in the 80's about how much better CD's would be vs. vinyl due to, not just lack of pops and clicks, but because CD's would blow away vinyl due to their INCREASED DYNAMIC RANGE.

Right! Never before have we had more cruddy, compressed recordings. I'm very disappointed in many CD's I bring home because of compression. And a major disappointment to me is how many music reviewers don't even comment about sound quality anymore. So I may agree with the reviewer about the music (i.e. good songwriting, well-performed, etc.) but have a hard time enjoying the disc because of the "relentless" sound of the compression.

 

I believe you said in a previous thread that Bruce Springsteen's albums cannot be remastered properly because of this