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Topic: An all-time low for mastering quality? (Read 89550 times) previous topic - next topic
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An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #150 –
I think That is true. 80s recordings sound superb - on high quality hardware.
My father was really glad he that he bought an expensive hi-fi record player with a diamond needle, because he knew well that sapphire needles would slowly grind the records to dust and provide much poorer fidelity.
Even so, most of his music was still cassette copies from other people.
A better day.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #151 –
It seems that the loudness war is either real or a reactionary crude attempt at normalization . The present system has no backwards or forwards compatibility (current is louder than older cd and softer than future cd) !!
Also there is no static reference level other than what is perceived to be correct at a present point in time. The system only 'works' for a given point in time. Tons of remastered albums prove it - the system worked once but to make it work in a different point in time you remaster in order to provide normalization but *only for current era*  - things will break again at some point. Now mid-late 90's albums belonging to stage 1 of the war are remastered to match the current stage 2 levels.

The other thing is a -10gb RG doesn't guarantee a quite passage will be clearly audible in portable listening. A -5db album without those passages will do better. The loudness war fails here. Also raising the level in noisy outdoors will cause eventual deafness. Again fail.
You need some dynamics compressor built into the hardware or abolish quite passages (dynamics)
wavpack -b3.63hhcs.5

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #152 –
Hey 2Bdecided, if you're not feeling too lazy (), I'd enjoy a link to the mastering engineer who got upset at someone saying his cranking of the volume made the music sound worse!

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #153 –
Quote from: _if on
Hey 2Bdecided, if you're not feeling too lazy (), I'd enjoy a link to the mastering engineer who got upset at someone saying his cranking of the volume made the music sound worse!
Sorry, I didn't even bookmark the forum, never mind the post. I have no idea where it was. You're as likely to find it as me if you go looking for it. You'll soon know if you're in the right kind of "pro" audio forum

Cheers,
David.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #154 –
Quote from: phanhan on
I think That is true. 80s recordings sound superb - on high quality hardware.


well..that's very recording-dependent, in my experience.


can depend, for example, on what was, um, 'going on' in the studio.

as well as the monitoring equipment

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #155 –
I recently acquired Sia's 1000 Forms .... on CD. Unlistenable in-room. Album is DR 4, Chandelier and Dressed in Black (1st and last tracks) have a trackgain of -12.7 and -12.3 dB. Bear in mind that most of it is played by a real band of very accomplished musicians.

So I paid through the nose for the LP version (£16.99  - bastards), and recorded it off my Dual 505 and cheap phono into my Essence STX (at 24/88.2 - haha!!).

Although the disc is noisy enough that I considered returning it (visible grey coating of mould-release on it, and 3 loud clicks which peak a several dB louder than any music signal), at least it's centered and flat, so I persevered.

Drew out the 3 loud clicks before normalising (in Goldwave). My phono's line-out is quite low,  albums typically peak at -12/13 dB on my rig, but I've measured the noise floor of the STX at -116 dB RMS (and it's completely benign pink-noise when amplified to audibility), so no problem.

De-clicked in Clickrepair at 10 (auto at 30) and voila - I can really enjoy this album. The drums have (some) slam, there are bass-lines I can follow, and I can hear the subtle rythmic inflections the various musicans use - even the  rythmic intent with the "machine gun" 'vocoded' vocals on Free the Animal is so much clearer.

The resulting recording is DR 10 (would almost certainly be higher with a less noisy pressing and TT)

If I really want a recently released album (i.e. most in the last 15 years), I acquire the LP if I can (which unfortunately is not as often as I would like, at affordable prices) and needle-drop them, as in the example here. The bottom line is that it's now practically the only way of getting acceptably realistic and enjoyable versions.

The moral of all this is that I pretty much stopped buying new 'main-stream' CD (and download) releases about 7 or 8  years ago because of the loudness war. And I mean STOPPED - the "industry" must have lost £100's worth of sales to me alone.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #156 –
Quote from: Skweek on
the "industry" must have lost £100's worth of sales to me alone.
If you're buying LPs which sell for more instead, I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #157 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
If you're buying LPs which sell for more instead, I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank

Thought that myself. Exactly this is how it goes. People already learned now that vinyl indeed sounds better. Many won't even know why but the word spreads and the market envolves.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #158 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: Skweek on
the "industry" must have lost £100's worth of sales to me alone.
If you're buying LPs which sell for more instead, I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank


You need to re-read the second from last paragraph.

And the LP's are, more often than not, used (in the example I gave I had no choice, it was only released a couple of months ago).

£100's? Maybe even £1000's.

ETA >> what I'm saying is that I buy far less music NEW than I did 10 or more years ago - FAR less. And this is entirely due to the "loudness war".

ETA 2 >> I'd love to get hold of all the QUOTSA albums, from Songs for the Deaf onward (the CD's of the previous ones aren't completely meller'd), on vinyl, and I keep a weather eye out, but the chances of finding excellent or mint copies at 'affordable' prices are ....... slim

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #159 –
BTW, the reason I was pissed-off at the price of the Sia album is that it's a single LP (the album is only 43 minutes long) and fairly poor pressing (although well cut). 

When I pay 17 quid or more I would usually expect a double LP (of a much longer album) or very good quality heavy pressing - this is neither.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #160 –
BTW, I processed the needle-drop of the Sia album (having done the actual recording in the PM) quite late night, rather tired and after a couple of beers, and once I'd finished began some comparisons with the CD.

The main 'experiment' was converting the 24/88 to 16/44 and matching the RMS values, which meant de-amplifying the CD tracks by no less than 6dB (halving perceived volume).

I was VERY disappointed to find what I thought was almost no difference in apparent quality when listening (via HD580's driven by my Essence STX), threw in the towel and went to bed rather depressed.

BUT ... the next day I fired them up again and it quickly became obvious that the needle drop was better, and by no small margin (described in the earlier post).

What this vividly demonstrated to me (or rather, reminded me) is how fatigue and alcohol (amongst other factors) can profoundly effect aural acuity and perception (in fact any kind of perception, I guess).

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #161 –
Quote from: Skweek on
BUT ... the next day I fired them up again and it quickly became obvious that the needle drop was better, and by no small margin (described in the earlier post).


So you did a proper ABX test each time right? You didn't just get up and decide "well I feel much better, oh wow, this album sounds so much better now I'm not drunk and tired" did you?

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #162 –
Quote from: Skweek on
BTW, the reason I was pissed-off at the price of the Sia album is that it's a single LP (the album is only 43 minutes long) and fairly poor pressing (although well cut). 

When I pay 17 quid or more I would usually expect a double LP (of a much longer album) or very good quality heavy pressing - this is neither.

The new Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album is also 40-something minutes long, or a single album in the LP era. The question is, if you'd got a CD's worth (70+ minutes), would it all be first-choice quality or would you be happy with about 30 minutes of filler material?

When compact disc came along, people felt they had to fill the capacity, regardless of quality. This required artists to come up with effectively a double album every time.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #163 –
Quote from: probedb on
So you did a proper ABX test each time right? You didn't just get up and decide "well I feel much better, oh wow, this album sounds so much better now I'm not drunk and tired" did you?


ABX'ing a noisy LP recorded on a noisy deck with CD tracks which need peaks reduced by 6dB to match RMS? That's just silly.

I'm well aware of the issues surrounding DR measurements, and even believed (late that night) that a full 6dB difference (slightly more, actually) might not be significant. In hindsight, it was absurd to have even considered it.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #164 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
Quote from: Skweek on
BTW, the reason I was pissed-off at the price of the Sia album is that it's a single LP (the album is only 43 minutes long) and fairly poor pressing (although well cut). 

When I pay 17 quid or more I would usually expect a double LP (of a much longer album) or very good quality heavy pressing - this is neither.

The new Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album is also 40-something minutes long, or a single album in the LP era. The question is, if you'd got a CD's worth (70+ minutes), would it all be first-choice quality or would you be happy with about 30 minutes of filler material?

When compact disc came along, people felt they had to fill the capacity, regardless of quality. This required artists to come up with effectively a double album every time.


For what I paid, I would just want a very good pressing.

A fair price for what they're actually selling, a hurried pressing with mould-release all over it, hence very noisy (not just snap and crackle, but a lot of 'roar' as well -I might get around to cleaning it) would be £12-14.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #165 –
Quote from: Skweek on
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
Quote from: Skweek on
BTW, the reason I was pissed-off at the price of the Sia album is that it's a single LP (the album is only 43 minutes long) and fairly poor pressing (although well cut). 

When I pay 17 quid or more I would usually expect a double LP (of a much longer album) or very good quality heavy pressing - this is neither.

The new Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album is also 40-something minutes long, or a single album in the LP era. The question is, if you'd got a CD's worth (70+ minutes), would it all be first-choice quality or would you be happy with about 30 minutes of filler material?

When compact disc came along, people felt they had to fill the capacity, regardless of quality. This required artists to come up with effectively a double album every time.


For what I paid, I would just want a very good pressing.

A fair price for what they're actually selling, a hurried pressing with mould-release all over it, hence very noisy (not just snap and crackle, but a lot of 'roar' as well -I might get around to cleaning it) would be £12-14.

I think you're being generous with £12-14 for a product as flawed as that.

I haven't bought much brand new vinyl in recent years, but when I read customer comments, I must have been lucky because they've all been absolutely fine, even the ones that came through the post. Second-hand, you expect a bit of muck and/or damage, so when you get a really well-looked-after disc, it is a plus. I got a Keely Smith LP a few months ago that required so little digital repair, I was overjoyed. Someone must have loved that record.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #166 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
I think you're being generous with £12-14 for a product as flawed as that.

I haven't bought much brand new vinyl in recent years, but when I read customer comments, I must have been lucky because they've all been absolutely fine, even the ones that came through the post. Second-hand, you expect a bit of muck and/or damage, so when you get a really well-looked-after disc, it is a plus. I got a Keely Smith LP a few months ago that required so little digital repair, I was overjoyed. Someone must have loved that record.


I was that close to returning the disc, but as I said - at least it's flat/centred, and it might respond to cleaning.

I don't think I've ever seeing such obvious mould-release on a disc (pale grey patina which obscures the iridescent sheen that a new disc should have), and I assume a particular method/ cleaning-solution would be needed.

In the mean time I've got a version to listen to which isn't un-bearably noisy (for the type of music, and in room - not so great through cans), but is much more dynamic than the CD, which translates to more dramatic to listen to.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #167 –
Quote from: Skweek on
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
I think you're being generous with £12-14 for a product as flawed as that.

I haven't bought much brand new vinyl in recent years, but when I read customer comments, I must have been lucky because they've all been absolutely fine, even the ones that came through the post. Second-hand, you expect a bit of muck and/or damage, so when you get a really well-looked-after disc, it is a plus. I got a Keely Smith LP a few months ago that required so little digital repair, I was overjoyed. Someone must have loved that record.


I was that close to returning the disc, but as I said - at least it's flat/centred, and it might respond to cleaning.

I don't think I've ever seeing such obvious mould-release on a disc (pale grey patina which obscures the iridescent sheen that a new disc should have), and I assume a particular method/ cleaning-solution would be needed.

In the mean time I've got a version to listen to which isn't unbearably noisy (for the type of music, and in room - not so great through cans), but is much more dynamic than the CD, which translates to more dramatic to listen to.

I have never bought an LP that had visible mould-release residue, although it is present to some extent on new discs. Do you have any disc cleaning equipment?

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #168 –
Quote from: Skweek on
ABX'ing a noisy LP recorded on a noisy deck with CD tracks which need peaks reduced by 6dB to match RMS? That's just silly.


No, you said you heard a difference between listening when being slightly drunk/tired and getting up in the morning. I don't believe I made any mention of the source but you said:

Quote
What this vividly demonstrated to me (or rather, reminded me) is how fatigue and alcohol (amongst other factors) can profoundly effect aural acuity and perception (in fact any kind of perception, I guess).

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #169 –
Quote from: probedb on
Quote from: Skweek on
ABX'ing a noisy LP recorded on a noisy deck with CD tracks which need peaks reduced by 6dB to match RMS? That's just silly.


No, you said you heard a difference between listening when being slightly drunk/tired and getting up in the morning. I don't believe I made any mention of the source but you said:

Quote
What this vividly demonstrated to me (or rather, reminded me) is how fatigue and alcohol (amongst other factors) can profoundly effect aural acuity and perception (in fact any kind of perception, I guess).



You misunderstand.

The CD has no dynamics to speak of, but is more "detailed" and "clear" than the LP (when the latter is played on my modest but well-fettled Dual 505.1  >  cheap phono > Asus Xonar Essence STX.

BUT .... in the clear light of day, the noise and lack of resolution of the LP/Dual combo is rendered completely moot by the lack of the "finalisation compression" used on the CD, and it allows the  real drama of many of the tracks to be heard/felt.

Real bass-lines, kick-drums, tom-toms, and rhythmic inflections which are buried on the hyper-compressed CD.

ETA >> The late-night session, on my HD580's, comparing the CD and the needle-drop of the LP left me with the impression that there was no improvement in the music on the needle drop.

Listening the next day I found the needle-drop was FAR more dynamic, dramatic and involving. I've since listened all the way thru it (the 24/88 recordings) twice more and thoroughly enjoyed it.

(I've also made a few CDRs for friends, and they also like it very much).

If the master the LP was cut from had been used for the CD release, I'd never have bought the vinyl.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #170 –
Here's a sample of the LP (Free the Animal MP3 320);

MODERATION: LINK REMOVED

(Click on the pale-blue "Click here to start download from sendspace" button, not all the others trying to lure you  into download adware.

This is how it should sound.

[Mods; THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE TRACK]

MODERATION: The track was over four minutes.
(EDIT: Apparently this specific track was just under four minutes. Even still, it doesn't comply with TOS #9.)

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #171 –
Or if you prefer 88.2KHz lossless;

MODERATION: LINK REMOVED

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #172 –
Congrats, this caused me to come out from under my rock.

[attachment=8023:Sia_-_10...e_Animal.jpg]

If this is supposed to be good, then I'd hate to hear the CD version, assuming it's from an even more compressed and clipped master (which I seriously doubt!).

EDIT: The above screenshot was of the 88.2k lossless version.

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #173 –
Quote from: greynol on
Congrats, this caused me to come out from under my rock.

[attachment=8023:Sia_-_10...e_Animal.jpg]

If this is supposed to be good, then I'd hate to hear the CD version, assuming it's from an even more compressed and clipped master (which I seriously doubt!).



Yeh - I amped the 16/44 [ETA >> while still in 24/88.2] by a couple of dB, hard-limited to -0.3 dB. I usually do this for CD versions of needle-drops.

Now - try your lightning-fast anal-ysis on the 88.2 sample.
 

An all-time low for mastering quality?

Reply #174 –
Here is a comparison of the CD version that was provided against the most recent vinyl digitization that was provided:
[attachment=8033:cd_vs_vinyl1.JPG]

They are from the very same master; clearly the same clipped areas, clearly the exact same abhorrent "finalisation compression"!

Here are shortened clips that are compliant with TOS #9 (the posts from which the originals were downloaded can be found in the recycle bin, though the links were removed):

[attachment=8025:Free_The...al_Vinyl.flac]
[attachment=8026:Free_The...nimal_CD.flac]
The vinyl version was resampled to 44.1/16 for direct comparison in AA's multitrack view.

Quote from: Skweek on
Yeh - I amped the 16/44 [ETA >> while still in 24/88.2] by a couple of dB, hard-limited to -0.3 dB. I usually do this for CD versions of needle-drops.

The clipping I identified on the 88.2k vinyl version could not have resulted from this process.

There are plenty of posts about how phase shifts introduced by the cutting and playback processes give vinyl sourced by a clipped master the illusion of increased dynamic range.  This is a good example to illustrate that phenomenon.

This is also a good example of the harm that can be caused by expectation bias.  I fully agree that the CD version is less noisy though one is hard-pressed to prove it is audibly less dynamic. Why would I choose the vinyl version again?  The artwork, I guess. Oh yes and those green DR numbers and pretty zoomed-out waveforms.