When is the excessive digital compression applied?

Radio always had compression, and pop records too. What we have been concerned about is over-compression on CDs and other digital formats. A few months ago, I would have though the loudness wars had reached a peak, but I just bought the new Katy Perry, and it is loud! Apparently still dynamic-sounding, but loud!

Once again, we must be careful not to muddy the distinction between recording/mixing compression and mastering compression.

 

Sure. I'm with you on the latter point and I'm sure most are but there's a FURTHER point in this which is that the plug-in technologies made mastering technologies readily and cheaply available to all and that they were presented as just more 'effects units' and therefore there has been a LITERAL muddying of recording/mixing/mastering compressions because due processes (stringently 'white coat' bureaucraticised at the BBC and EMI but long since smashed into pieces by anarchists such as The Beatles) have been increasingly optional in production lines.

I believe that this has meant that the responsibility for the loudness travesties can be located anywhere in the supply chain so that sometimes a mastering (cutting) engineer will be working with material that has already been maxed out at either recording/mixing or mastering stages and has to respond flexibly and with as little judgement as possible for his/her own sanity!

I'm also trying to say that because of this (among other possibilities) in the supply chain, the loudness wars are due to anarchy rather than policy

 

I'm bracing myself for the s**tstorm that will erupt on the new Arcade Fire thread as soon as somebody loads up a track screenshot from their tatty Audacity and howls the C-word!

It's only a matter of time.

 

You should be careful about how you use the term "digital compression" because there are two types. One is the type of compression used for higher level program languages, which is to say compression that allows music to take up less digital information space on media.
The other is digital audio compression, which is the type of compression used to limit the amplitude range of music.

Compression is great on individual instruments and vocals to keep notes from jumping out, such as a clanger on an acoustic guitar or a singer that gets louder during high notes. It is also nice for smoothing out bass or to use on bass that is triggered by a kick drum in order to get the kick and bass nice and fat without overdriving speakers.

But when it is used in place of good production to simply slam the entire mix against the ceiling, it ruins the mix.

I personally use compression very conservitavely, and try to get by without it when I can.
A touch of it in a final mix is sometimes useful. But not a lot. And certainly not cranked balls to the ceiling .

 

Indeed. This is also the reason they would often record drums and bass at the highest level possible, and slammed it to the tape, because doing so gave it a warm sound.
Tape has a natural self compression, it tends to compress when getting close to saturation.

Which is one of the same reasons tube guitar amps sound so good, when you push tubes hard they naturally compress as they start to saturate.
Compression often helped them do that, because it kept the transient peaks to a minimum.

 

A bit of track compression can make an instrument and/or vocals sound "fuller".

 

It can, by making the presence of the track more consistent, but only if you use it very sparingly. Too much compression has the reverse effect of wrecking the tone range and tonal charactaristics of the track and makes it sound thin and lifeless.
I try to avoid using compression to end mixes , but then again, I like rock era music which tended to have very transparent compression that was only used when needed.
A mix that has individual tracks that were recorded correctly and has been mixed well shouldn't need much, if any, compression.

 

Radio compression was always quite transparent, and did not effect the music enough to notice. I suspect most radio compression was far more necessary on DJs than on the music, chances are the compression was not very active while music was playing, but was quite active when DJs were in the studio, at varying distances from the microphone. And of course on commercials.


Also, if radio engineers had used the amount of compression that modern studio engineers and producers do, and ruined the music that badly, they would have been fired on the spot for ineptness. And if they were not fired the station would have went out of business for lack of an audience.
Radio compression was done for the overall programming, but it actually often made music sound better, it seems to have helped the bass sound beefy in rock era music.
Modern slamming compression does the opposite, it makes bass sound weak and flabby.

 

The radio compression was always very obvious to me. To me, the comparison is to a 160 kbps mp3.

 

Nice to read the many interesting points of view put forward in the topic. However, I don't think there can be a conclusive answer to to to the OPs question at this stage because things have changed a bit since the five years or so since this conversation began. Nowadays it seems like often the mix engineer is also the mastering engineer and straightaway that is a cause for concern.

 

I don't see how it could have been, given the typical FM noise and distortions.
I never noticed the compression, FM compression didn't breathe and it didn't destroy frequency response the way modern compression does. And it didn't distort like compression does.
What distortion was present had its own unique sound.
Of course on most of todays music it is impossible to tell because most of it is so horribly compressed already any added by the stations would be negligible.
Also, do you remember a rider frequency that was slightly audible on Fm years ago? I remember that amps during the seventies had a button that would detente that sound a little, seems to me it was measured in microseconds. It was a type of distortion that I think was caused by the carrier wave.

Also, I don't think audio compression is increased by MP3 format. The kind of compression on MP3 is digital compression.
What I hear on MP3s is a weakening of some frequencies or something of that nature, which sounds like an odd type of upper mid distortion.
Although MP3s seem to have come a long way.

 

The WORST example of compression I discovered on a recording is Every Mother's Son on this CD... and I only heard this two days ago.



It's awful from the get-go, but when the bass drum first hits around 0:38, it's like being slapped about the head! PAINFUL, in other words. Had the misfortune to hear this on my Ipod the other day- which would have made the experience 10 times worse. Not to mention them leaving Freebird off! If I'd payed any more than the 50p I did, second hand for this, then It'd be straight back to the shop with it!!

It's a shame I couldn't find this version on Youtube though (some here will have this- and nobody can fail to hear what I'm taking about), the others that people have uploaded sound the way they were intended to be. How these things come to be released, well, there's 1,001 'reasons' I guess. But I just felt like someone had taken the*ahem*... by adding the compression to it in such a way, when the rest of the CD is nothing at all like that.