Faces of The Loudness War

You're right! What the heck kind of weird compression job did they do on the remaster that would leave the peaks high and low like that? I thought it was more or less even because of the track I selected, "All Right Now", which has a choppy kind of flow.

 

Me three.

 

Me Four

Boy that Jon Anderson looks bad. Glad I haven't bought it.

 

Oh, this could be fun. How do I do it? I have Audacity. Do print screen and save the image, and post it?

 

I win!

I stole this from a similar thread on hydrogenaudio.. the artist is Hypocrisy, the song "Warpath." -13.41 dB replaygain value I love how there are single pixel lines of "dynamics." I bet about 20% of the samples on the thing are clipped!

 

Hi Cyaneyes,

Outside of those moments that must have slipped by at ~1:36 and 1:37 (and the fade), it looks to me like about 100% of the samples are clipped.

I wonder how they missed those two moments I mentioned. ;-}
And look at that fade! Surely that could have been louder.

Sheesh!
Was this project funded by some aspirin maker?

Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Hi Cyaneyes,

Outside of those moments that must have slipped by at ~1:36 and 1:37 (and the fade), it looks to me like about 100% of the samples are clipped.

I wonder how they missed those two moments I mentioned. ;-}
And look at that fade! Surely that could have been louder.

Sheesh!
Was this project funded by some pharmaceutical manufacturer?
No wonder the big labels' sales are down . Folks need to by aspirin with that money!

Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

LOL, I remember that Hypocrisy "wave" from Hydrogen.

 

Wouldn't a CD with 100% clipped samples be a 22.5 khz sine wave? But yeah, I know what you mean..

PS... You can listen to this audiophile masterpiece on youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7oX4mKcco

 

Is this related to brick-wall filtering? It certainly looks like a brick to me.

 

Hey, there seems to be an error at about 1:37 on that file you show. Somehow there is a slight presence of dynamics for a split second there.

Oops! Barry beat me to it.

 

Actually a CD with 100% clipping would be:
1. a series of square waves
2. a current major label release
3. something a big name mastering engineer says he was "forced" to do

;-}

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Hi soundQman,

Brick wall limiting is what it is.
(I can think of other descriptive terms but this is a family show. ;-} )

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Barry, you've been cracking me up all day. You're on a roll my friend!

 

He surely is.

Barry:

 

Not sure of what settings are recommended for the waveforms. Perhaps we could have a sticky with recommended setting for these screen capture waveforms. Anyone?

Herewith three waveforms.

First - Goo Goo Dolls - Let Love In. A great CD (IMHO) that is absolutely butchered in the mastering process. Clipping evident throughout all the songs.

Second - Shakira Feat. Wyclef Jean (from Voices FIFA World Cup). This is just pathetic. Just about impossible to find any dynamic range

Third waveform. Just to show you what a good recording is supposed to look like. - Jennifer Warnes - First We Take Manhattan (Famous Blue Raincoat), arguably one of the finest recordings period in the digital age. Right now someone is selling an audiophile LP of this recording for $299.99US on ebay...

In 2007, with all the advances in technology that we have witnessed in the last 25 years of digital CD type technology, this is what we have to show for it... :-(

We should have a permanent sticky for this "phenomenon" entitled:

"Unlistenable at any volume"

Cheers.

 

I use Sound Forge to view the waveform and use Print Scrn to capture it. Then I use Photoshop to resize and crop and, finally, I save it as a 16-colour gif.

Here's a song, "Evermore", from Neil Diamond's Rick-Rubin-produced 12 Songs. What the heck kind of dumb-a**ed mastering job is that?! The quiet parts sound great, but that loud part is all distorted. And they had lots of room left! Why would Rick Rubin put up with it?

 

I don't have very many late model recordings, but here is the worst offender in my collection, and who would have thought that the Pousette-Dart Band would ever be treated this way - "Never Enough" from a EMI France release.

 

The exact same thing happened on Hurt on the The Legend Of Johnny Cash disc - unless I have a bad copy from the original - I haven't listened to the original disc in a while.

 

I have said this before, but the absolutely HORRID mastering on the Johnny Cash's American IV and Neil Diamond's 12 Songs are the only mastering jobs that make me not listen to some great albums. I love a lot of new hip hop and pop acts, and their loud mastering works to some extent. However, brickwalling "back-to-basics" Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash recordings are much, MUCH worse, in my opinion. That music depends on air and good room sound.

 

My theory: he can't and won't do otherwise for good reason. Rick has to "pick his battles" and chose what to spend his highly tapped time, attention and energy on. He chooses to spend it on getting the music created in the first place. As an unfortunate consequence, he doesn't give much thought to mastering to realize what might be wrong. He's paying big money for "state of the art" and people are buying it in droves. I'm not entirely certain he realizes that "state of the art" happens to be crap and the people who buy it do so because they don't have anything to compare it to and wouldn't have any practical choice anyway. If he did realize it's bad, he'd be looking at trying to fight ignorance that's widely and deeply entrenched in the industry and has been a market wide practice for going on a decade now. So, agree or no, he's going to keep putting all his energy into getting the music made and not do much if anything about crappy mastering.

 

Hi apileocole,

Much like carefully preparing a gourmet meal,
then dumping it on the curb for diners to "enjoy".

When will the record industry wake up and realize what they're doing to the music?

In my view, someone like Rick, whose records are going to sell regardless (as we see even with horrid mastering) could in fact easily buck the trend and the bean-counters in the offices wouldn't complain.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Tried the vinyl?

 

Excellent point - There's 100% no need for it. This makes me think that Mr. Rubin have might actually wanted it mastered that way..

 

Hi Doonie,

I think the same thing.
In fact, I find it hard to think otherwise of any record where loudness is clearly an important consideration. The artist, the engineer, the producer and the label all wanted it that way.

This is an issue very close to my heart and I find it hard to believe those in the business who claim to not like what this does to records but still allow their name to be used on such. Lip service will not end the loudness wars, action will.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com