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Topic: Dynamics Compression in Music (Read 2755 times) previous topic - next topic
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Dynamics Compression in Music

Check this out. I expect comments.
 

Dynamics Compression in Music

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Check this out. I expect comments.
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There are several things to comment on so I'll try a few.

Usefulness of visual tools in judging audio quality.
I'm not familiar with sonograms. They look interesting but seem to require some practice to interpret. Pity the graphs don't have axis labels which makes them hard to read and compare with other systems.
The green/red colors in the dynamic plots might mean something, but I can't find any indication of the phase relationship between the stereo channels. A very important part of the audio signal.
Visual tools can be very helpful in determining what is being heard. On the other hand there is a risk that they are used to predict how something will sound, which I think is not the right way. The author writes "the clearer the better" which seems to imply that a flat spectrum is always best. A solo voice e.g. doesn't meet this requirement but can still sound excellent.
Don't let your eyes take over when it's about audio.

next item: overcompression on modern music productions.
I totally agree with the author that most modern (pop)music productions are overcompressed. There is a trend in mixing and mastering to make the music as loud as possible. This introduces distortion, but that seems to be accepted. Quite a few mastering engineers dislike this trend and try to convince their clients that less loud is better. It's a tough battle.

third item: clipping in DA converters.
It is not widely known that DA converters can (and probably will) clip with signals close to 0 dBFS, even when no digital clipping occurs. The (analog) signal after the reconstruction filter can be higher than expected and many (most?) DA converters don't have enough headroom to reproduce it without distortion. Especially over-compressed cd's are at risk. Thomas Lund from tc-electronic has written an interesting article on this, mainly addressed at audio professionals but available to anyone who is interested:
[a href="http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/lund_2004_distortion_tmt20.pdf]http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/lund_200...rtion_tmt20.pdf[/url]
Good DA converters can be more forgiving towards loud cd's than models without sufficient headroom.
IMO it would be better to stop over-compression and let people use the volume knob if it has to be louder.

more comments ?

Kees de Visser