HydrogenAudio

Hydrogenaudio Forum => General Audio => Topic started by: Axon on 2009-01-26 23:23:21

Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-01-26 23:23:21
http://www.dynamicrange.de/ (http://www.dynamicrange.de/)

This looks pretty good. They have lots of industry contacts, Algorithmix is involved with a professional-looking dynamic range meter (it appears to be a variant of Chromatix's technique, actually), which is already released. They aren't focusing on visual waveform plots (yay) and are instead focusing on industry interaction.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: vitos on 2009-01-27 17:11:04
It's relieving to find another group aiming to fight with loudness war issue. The first one I know of was Turn Me Up! (http://www.turnmeup.org/), but this Pleasurize Music Foundation has declared concrete solutions, actions and interesting timetable... I wonder if they both have something in common, or if they are completely independent movements. I wish them well...

And they have linked to one conversation on this forum already (in links section).
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-01-27 18:47:10
Their dynamic range meter (http://www.dynamicrange.de/de/de/download) seems interesting enough. My German's a little rusty (ahem), but it seems it's going to be released as a plug-in some time in February.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: ExUser on 2009-01-27 20:34:01
The neologism "Pleasurize" sounds distinctly not credible to me. Sounds hokey. The "Turn Me Up" initiative seems to be far more consumer-friendly, and with support of high-profile artists like Tom Petty's Mudcrutch, I would tend to think that of the two, the latter will be the more successful.

That being said, any movement towards more dynamic range is something I appreciate.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: smiler on 2009-01-27 22:11:48
The neologism "Pleasurize" sounds distinctly not credible to me. Sounds hokey.

Just supposition, but perhaps it's a poor translation, given that the group obviously originates in Germany.

They seem very organised from looking at the site. I only hope they can make some headway!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: kjoonlee on 2009-01-27 23:17:08
The neologism "Pleasurize" sounds distinctly not credible to me. Sounds hokey.

Just supposition, but perhaps it's a poor translation, given that the group obviously originates in Germany.

They seem very organised from looking at the site. I only hope they can make some headway!

Headway for headroom?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: ExUser on 2009-01-27 23:50:34
Headway for headroom?
Sounds like a wonderful battle cry for the Loudness War. HEADWAY FOR HEADROOM!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-20 21:52:00
From the web site:
Quote
20 February 2009: Release version 1.1 of the TT Dynamic Range Meter and the TT DR Offline Meter is ready for release. German manual is already finished. Who can make a professional English translation (3300 words) very quickly? This should be done before making the software available. Please contact us via contact form. German manual will be uploaded now.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: gnypp45 on 2009-02-21 02:37:24
From the web site:
Quote
20 February 2009: Release version 1.1 of the TT Dynamic Range Meter and the TT DR Offline Meter is ready for release. German manual is already finished. Who can make a professional English translation (3300 words) very quickly? This should be done before making the software available. Please contact us via contact form. German manual will be uploaded now.


I agree that the dynamic range meter looks very interesting. The idea of putting labels like "DRX" on the music, where "X" stands for effective dynamic range (http://www.dynamicrange.de/en/our-aim) in decibels, is also very nice and I think it has a chance of catching on. I would love to see these labels on commercial CDs.

From the download page:
"Der Download wird online gestellt, sobald die Gebrauchsanweisung ins englische übersetzt ist." i.e. "The dynamic range meter will be available for download as soon as the manual is translated into English."
German speaking readers, what are you waiting for!?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Trippynet on 2009-02-21 15:19:34
Good to see some progress. I take it people here have added their names to the list on the site to show their support for it? I have anyway! Anything to try and stop the abomination which is modern CD mastering.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-22 21:20:14
Download of the TT Dynamic Range Meter is now available. The offline meter works fine under wine.

Few values:
DR15 - Biosphere - Substrata
DR10 - Autechre - Chiastic Slide
DR10 - Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
DR7 - Daft Punk - Homework
DR7 - Gas - Pop
DR0 - Venetian Snares + Speedranch - Making Orange Things


I have some questions: I'm trying to implement their algorithm (in Java, nothing fancy). I've got something working, but the values differ a bit... How do I calculate the RMS of a wave file? I'm using the standard RMS formula from wikipedia on a window of 3 seconds (132300 samples). Now, by how many samples do I shift the window? And is there a special way to average the RMS values I get?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-22 22:51:11
RMS measurements are typically done with a 50ms window, no overlap. The mathematically correct way to average RMS measurements is to square each sample, sum the squares in 50ms chunks, sum the chunks, take the mean, and take the square root of the whole deal.

Their german documentation (http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/default/files/file/Gebrauchsanweisung-V01-DEUTSCH.pdf) leaves much to be desired as to exactly how the dynamic range measurement works. It's clearly a quasi-peak-to-RMS measurement with dropout removal, but there are no specifics at all on what's going on under the hood. DR numbers seem consistently 66-76% of the magnitude of the listed peak-vs-RMS numbers. No mention of equal-loudness weighting or percentiles. Their peak measurements are pretty clearly BS.1770 standard (4x oversampling etc).

Some quick jots:
That I can't punch any DR higher than 20, even for music for which even a studio might have insufficient dynamic range, is a little surprising. I smell a rat with the merzbow reading - if their raw DR measurements are actually reading negative with that track, humorous as though that is, it's probably a bug. IIRC, pfpf reads around 0.2db of dynamic range at all timescales with that track.

Also, the exe appears to be a front end for a VST plugin.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-22 23:08:12
Thanks for your response.
I guess the "RMS" value in the frontend is just each sample squared and then root of everything. The 3 second window has to do with how they measure the top 20% RMS value.
Negative values probably show because they regard a full scale sine wave as 0 dB, not -3.01 dB.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-22 23:19:23
Where did you see the info referencing "3 seconds"? I couldn't find that sort of thing on their site.

Depending on how they're computing their RMS numbers, and especially depending on equal loudness weighting and/or BS.1770 filtering, a full scale sine could very easily go way above 0db. pfpf does the same thing. It doesn't mean the meter should go negative; that doesn't make any sense.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-02-22 23:29:23
This may be a dumb question, but is the dynamic range of a quieter but otherwise identical piece different from the original?

I just ran a few pieces through their TT Dynamic Range Meter:

Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde - Der Abschied [original]  -- DR = 11
Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde - Der Abschied [-3.5 dB from original]  -- DR = 11

The Fall - The Classical [original]  -- DR = 8
The Fall - The Classical [-9.75 dB from original]  -- DR = 9

Is that what one would expect?

C.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-22 23:43:01
Where did you see the info referencing "3 seconds"? I couldn't find that sort of thing on their site.

Depending on how they're computing their RMS numbers, and especially depending on equal loudness weighting and/or BS.1770 filtering, a full scale sine could very easily go way above 0db. pfpf does the same thing. It doesn't mean the meter should go negative; that doesn't make any sense.

It's in the manual of the release version:
http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/default/f...1_1-Deutsch.pdf (http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/default/files/DR-Gebrauchsanweisung-V1_1-Deutsch.pdf)
I'm referring to this paragraph:
Quote
Zur Ermittlung des offiziellen DR?Wertes wird der Titel bzw.
  das Image des Tonträgers (Wave, 16bit, 44,1 kHz) gescannt
  und im Hintergrund ein Histogramm (Lautheitsverteilungs?
  Diagramm) mit einer Auflösung in 0,01 dB?Schritten erzeugt.
  Die nach etablierten Standards für die RMS?Berechnung in
  einem Zeitfenster von 3 Sekunden ermittelten
  Lautheitswerte (dB/RMS) werden quasi in 10.000
  unterschiedliche Schubladen aufgeteilt (der 0,01dB?
  Auflösung entsprechend). Von dem Ergebnis werden nun die
  lautesten 20% als Berechnungsgrundlage für die
  durchschnittliche Lautheit der lauten Passagen errechnet.
  Gleichzeitig wird der höchste Peakwert ermittelt.
  Der DR?Wert ist die Differenz zwischen Peak und Top?20 des
  durchschnittlichen RMS.

So they calculate lots of RMS values over 3s windows, doing a histogram with a resolution of 0.01 dB, and finally they take the loudest 20% of those.
However I don't understand what exactly they mean by 20% as I get slightly different values when I program it.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-22 23:46:02
What's the peak info on The Classical? And the left/right DR breakdown?

If the dropout threshold is set at a fixed db value, the DR numbers should change with amplitude changes - this happens in pfpf - but the numbers should usually go down as a result. If they're using an adaptive equal loudness filter (unlikely) then something like this could happen. If they're clamping peaks for measurement at 0dbFS, this could happen.

What happens to the numbers at -20db/-30db/etc?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-02-22 23:48:43
Funny you just write that Axon, that's just what I was doing:

The Fall - The Classical [original] -- DR = 8
The Fall - The Classical [-9.75 dB from original] -- DR = 9
The Fall - The Classical [-30.00 dB from original] -- DR = 8

EDIT:

Original Piece:

[EDIT2: According to fb2k Track Peak = 1.00]

Peak, according to the TT Meter DR Meter: Just says "over" [Left and Right]
DR Left = 8.2
DR Right = 8.7
RMS Left = -9.6
RMS Right = -10.1


-30 db Version:

Peak, according to the TT Meter DR Meter: Left & Right = -29.94
DR Left = 8.2
DR Right = 8.7
RMS Left = -39.6
RMS Right = -40.1

C.

[EDIT1: Added TT Meter breakdown]
[EDIT2: Added fb2k track peak info]
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-23 00:07:11
It's in the manual of the release version:http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/default/f...1_1-Deutsch.pdf (http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/default/files/DR-Gebrauchsanweisung-V1_1-Deutsch.pdf)
Ah, great, awesome, didn't see that. Thanks. Looking at it through Google Translate now.

Quote
So they calculate lots of RMS values over 3s windows, doing a histogram with a resolution of 0.01 dB, and finally they take the loudest 20% of those. However I don't understand what exactly they mean by 20% as I get slightly different values when I program it.
Yeah, that's kind of weird. 3s non-overlapped windowing would be absolutely broken. There's nothing "standard" about a 3 second RMS window - usually it's 50ms, as I said. So either they are doing point-by-point windowing - as Chromatix suggested a while ago for the Sparklemeter, where a full 3-second sum of squares window is calculated, and then samples are individually added/subtracted from the beginning/end and the 3-second window RMS figure calculated for each sample - or the windows are in multiples of 50ms. I just looked at the program through ProcessMeter to monitor its file I/O and it's reading the wavs in 529920 byte chunks, which comes out to be 3.00408 seconds - if it were reading in 50ms chunks I would strongly suspect reads of 529200 bytes instead. So they're either doing single-sample window overlaps or they aren't overlapping at all. Try both.

As far as the 20% thing goes, I can interpret that either as the ratio of the 80th percentile to the 50th percentile of the histogram, or the 100th perentile (or 99th) to the 80th, or the 80th to the separately computed RMS number... could go a lot of ways without further clarification. Try all of those too.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-23 00:12:44
Funny you just write that Axon, that's just what I was doing:

The Fall - The Classical [original] -- DR = 8
The Fall - The Classical [-9.75 dB from original] -- DR = 9
The Fall - The Classical [-30.00 dB from original] -- DR = 8


bugz? That's really odd.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-02-23 00:44:40
From the web site:
Quote
20 February 2009: Release version 1.1 of the TT Dynamic Range Meter and the TT DR Offline Meter is ready for release. German manual is already finished. Who can make a professional English translation (3300 words) very quickly? This should be done before making the software available. Please contact us via contact form. German manual will be uploaded now.



I took a different approach - testing the dynamic range of test tones with various segments at various levels.

I can't make any sense out of how they interpret my test files - they seem to get the peak level right, but after that ?????

BTW, the file I downloaded from http://www.dynamicrange.de/en/download (http://www.dynamicrange.de/en/download)

was a .html file that did run as a setup program when the extension was chagned to .exe

Strange
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-02-23 00:51:34
I think I've figured out what the issue was:

The Fall - The Classical is a lossy file.

I initially converted the same source file to 2 WAVs:

(1) without RG processing (DR = 8)
(2) with RG processing (DR = 9)

Having got that odd result I took (1) and reduced its amplitude in Cool Edit to -30 db.

I just did the same thing again but this time reducing file (1) by the Replay Gain amount in Cool Edit (i.e. reducing a lossless file) rather than converting lossy to WAV with RG processing, and clearly it produced a different file. So the different DR result was caused by lossy conversion (clipping).

If I'd been sensible and had outputted one WAV and then reduced by 10 db each time (as I've just done) the DR result would have been consistent at DR = 8.

So no bug.

Sorry for the false alarm.

C.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-23 01:19:07
OK, I think I understood how the algorithm works:
For every 3 seconds a RMS value is generated (so a 1h CD would have 1200 RMS values). Then the loudest 20% of those are averaged. The difference between this value and the peak is the DR value.

I wonder why in the manual they talk about a histogram... because their algorithm doesn't need one?!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Chromatix on 2009-02-23 02:19:47
OK, I think I understood how the algorithm works:
For every 3 seconds a RMS value is generated (so a 1h CD would have 1200 RMS values). Then the loudest 20% of those are averaged. The difference between this value and the peak is the DR value.

I wonder why in the manual they talk about a histogram... because their algorithm doesn't need one?!


A histogram is a valid optimisation when you need to pick out the top N values of something, but the precision is not critical.  It changes the complexity of this selection to O(N) instead of O(N log N), which is the best case for maintaining a sorted list of values - and when N is 132300 (for 3 seconds of 44.1kHz audio samples), that is significant.  I used this in my own Sparklemeter.

But they only have 1200 values to sort for an hour-long CD, if they did not use overlapping windows.  (I hope they did overlap windows, actually.)  1200 doesn't take very long to deal with for a sorting algorithm.

I suspect that they are using overlapping windows, if only because the animation of their VST plugin shows an averaging meter moving smoothly with about the right time constant.  If they have a 3-second window every 10ms, for example, that would be 360000 windows for an hour-long CD, which is worth using the histogram method for.

If that is true, then that's a very interesting way of measuring this.  I would personally avoid doing it because it would be sensitive to clicks and pops (which would make it incompatible with vinyl), but it's a fairly good way of detecting over-loud CDs.  I will read the English manual on Tuesday, when it's supposed to become available, to see whether you're right.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-23 04:58:13
If that is true, then that's a very interesting way of measuring this.  I would personally avoid doing it because it would be sensitive to clicks and pops (which would make it incompatible with vinyl), but it's a fairly good way of detecting over-loud CDs.  I will read the English manual on Tuesday, when it's supposed to become available, to see whether you're right.
The pop/tick thing becomes less of an issue when measuring quasi-peaks instead of peaks - instead of the 100th percentile, the 99th or 95th percentile, or the 2nd standard deviation or whatever. Major pops and ticks are a vanishingly small percentage of the total samples in recorded vinyl. The TT meter technical docs allude to something like this (resiliance against pops and ticks) without saying exactly what it's doing.

It would be far more dangerous to vinyl measurements if the RMS windows were not overlapped, because then the results are offset- and phase- sensitive. Based on my pfpf investigations, even when playing back the same track twice on vinyl, a figure of merit difference of 0.1db is not unheard of, even with overlapping windows. It's quite possible that DR numbers could shift depending on the recording start/end points and the speed stability of the turntable, thus giving different results for different people.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-24 23:13:41
The English manual is up now.
It seems to me that they got the translation of the critical part badly wrong:
Quote
In order to determine the official DR value, a song or entire
  album (16 bit, 44.1 kHz wave format) is scanned. A
  histogram (loudness distribution diagram) is created with a
  resolution of 0.01 dB. The RMS – an established loudness
  measurement standard – is determined by gathering
  approximately 10,000 pieces of loudness information within
  a time span of 3 seconds (dB/RMS). From this result, only
  the loudest 20% is used for determining the average
  loudness of the loud passages.

But according to their German manual, the histogram has 10000 "drawers" (so 0.01 dB * 10000 = 100 dB ~ Dynamic range of 16 bits).
Actually, if my tests are right, there are only ~1000 RMS values calculated, one each 3 seconds...
Also they seem to have some kind of pop/tick protection, although in the manual they are talking about cases where you should take the DR values on a song-by-song basis and average them.

I'd like to have a look at the complete specifications that they promised to release.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Chromatix on 2009-02-24 23:47:41
I'm not sure I completely trust either manual.  Their English is bad enough that the meanings of words are sometimes inverted (see one of the download links, which says "until March 2009", but is clearly meant to go live *from* that month), and my German is not good enough to easily read the German manual.  (I probably could if I really tried.)

However, using some educated guesses, I think I can see what they're doing:

- Oversample the entire file and look for the absolute peak sample in the result.
- Take a large number (this is probably where the 10000 comes from) of overlapped 3-second BS.1770 power readings, sort them, and average the top 20% of these.
- Subtract the latter from the former, and round to nearest whole decibel.

There are a lot of important details missing from that summary, the most critical being whether the averaging is done in voltage space, power space or decibel space.  Assuming they know what they're doing - which seems to be the case - I would confidently guess decibel space.

I think the "10000" number comes from taking a reading every half-second on an 80-minute disc.  That is slightly below 10000 readings in total, and is a perfectly plausible way of doing it.  On a shorter disc or a single track, there would be correspondingly fewer readings taken, still half a second apart.  Alternatively, it could be one reading every second per channel.

They say that the reading should normally be taken on a single file covering the entire disc.  However, if the tracks have wildly differing characteristics (legitimately on a compilation disc), they offer an alternative way to calculate an album score from the individual track readings.  This would give a substantial bonus to compilations which have one clippressed track and many sane ones, for example; it would not benefit an album which merely has some stray clicks in it.

If I've guessed it right, I'm actually quite impressed with the simplicity and effectiveness of their system.  I could probably code up an emulation of it to see if I'm sufficiently right.

The main concern I have is that an album recorded at a low level with a few stray clicks on it would have an abnormally high reading.  As such, if they catch on sufficiently that publishing the highest possible DR score becomes fashionable, it is possible to "game" it - the highest possible score, which would have to be generated synthetically, is likely to be in the 90s.  Any good mastering engineer would, I hope, strive to avoid or remove clicks, so this *shouldn't* be a problem, but I'm just not entirely satisfied with a fragile system.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Chromatix on 2009-02-25 00:23:41
Continuing:

I've run their offline tool against a subset of my test archive.  This is on a per-track basis, which is not how they recommend, but it's still instructive.

Let's start with the good news: anything recorded without compressors (Bach, Berlioz, Leftfield) is very consistently in the 11-14 dB range.  There are exceptions in the form of Wachet Auf, which is predictably a little lower (due to the timbre of the only instrument), and one track of the Berlioz, which is all the way up at 17 dB (!) due to the relatively few, brief, yet dramatic climaxes in it.  (Berlioz has downright extreme long-term DR, which seems to have caused some difficulty for the recordist on the final, loudest track.)

Now for the bad news: RHCP "Californication" consistently gets a per-track score of about 4 dB, with at least one stuck at 3 dB.

Wait, did I say that was bad news?  Bad scores, yes, but very good news - since the tool has successfully identified a classic offender from a sea of excellence.

And now for the really bad news.  I tried to use it on some files from a game's soundtrack.  It refused to process them on the grounds that they were 48kHz rather than CD format.  So I would have to resample them before I can measure them.  There's no reason for this restriction that I can imagine, except for cutting down on the test regimen.  The authors specifically state that they do not use any psychoacoustic filtering, which would occasion the algorithm being sample-rate specific.

I "treated" my dad to one of the worst RHCP tracks.  I asked him: "Can you even tell the difference between the verse and the chorus?"  He is competent in singing himself, though more likely 16th century than 21st century music.  Then I contrasted it with some 1995 Leftfield, noting that with the compressors and limiters removed, there was actually room to put things in the background of the music.  He agreed completely, and this was with his mid-50s ears and a huge pile of my computer fans whirring away.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-02-25 00:48:17
They use plain vanilla RMS (no BS.1770) on 3-second non overlapped windows if my implementation is right. The 10000 refers to the "Schubladen" (drawers) of the histogram.

Their result for Underworld - A Hundred Days Off:
DR 8
Dynamic Range: 7.8 (left), 7.7 (right)
Peak: -0.17, -0.17
RMS: -10.1, -9.9

This is what I got:
DR 7.786151716671393
Dynamic Range: 7.824601544286622, 7.747530909009571
Peak: -0.16941573141763458, -0.16941573141763458
RMS: -10.06189178486872, -9.909813233507633


Or for Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel:
DR 4
Dynamic Range: 3.6, 3.8
Peak: over, over
RMS: -6.8, -6.9

vs
DR 3.7152858476665918
Dynamic Range: 3.6097436552998055, 3.819560853398123
Peak: -2.6504994725949876E-4, -2.6504994725949876E-4
RMS: -6.846427797626369, -6.884196252943992


I have tested it on many more albums, and the values match up.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-02-25 08:54:20
That's bad news, then.

This should be testable by taking a sample, speeding it up by 0.1%/1%/10% etc, and observing by how much the final numbers change. This should be a more prominent effect for higher amounts of dynamic range in the music to start with.

It also overestimates the loudness of low frequency content, which is a good move for being hard on modern hypercompressed masterings, but is harder to defend on psychoacoustic grounds.

EDIT: Gawd, that was fast - I just found a semi-realistic example of this. Current killer sample for speed variation is the Bach's Duetto No. 1 in E Minor by Christophe Rousset on harpsichord. Normal WAV is DR12; after speeding it up 1% via Audacity resampling, it's DR11. (Slowing it down 1% also yields DR11.) The decimal L/R DR values only changed by 0.1db, but that was all that was needed to knock the rounding over. And if it can work to reduce the DR value it can certainly also work to increase it. This is at least a proof of concept that skullduggery might be employed to cheat the meter, and I would strongly suspect that overlapping the windows would fix it.

Ultimately, this means that DR values should only be considered accurate to within +-1 without more info, and given that the difference between "white noise" and "barely acceptable pop" is 7, that implies a significant lack of accuracy.

re the manual: "10,000 pieces of loudness information within a time span of 3 seconds" - yeah, this is pure fantasy if interpreted literally, it implies a block length of 13.23 samples.

The util also bails out on 24-bit 44.1k WAVs too - not really that big of a deal, but it's kind of a hassle. I'm sure (or I hope) they'll fix it later.

Quote
Wait, did I say that was bad news? Bad scores, yes, but very good news - since the tool has successfully identified a classic offender from a sea of excellence.
Heh. I could have told you the results of that test without even knowing what was being tested.

Another test would be to run it between two different masterings of the same record that we absolutely know are significantly different in terms of compression - eg, the Mudcrutch vinyl vs CD masters, or Icky Thump vinyl vs CD - and see how much of a difference exists. Or apply some light compression to an existing track and see how much is necessary before the DR value changes. Those things help establish sensitivity.




Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Raiden on 2009-03-11 01:48:06
Version 1.2 is up. The offline tool is still the same, though. And they have not fixed the English manual. They should release the source for the algorithm.

It also overestimates the loudness of low frequency content, which is a good move for being hard on modern hypercompressed masterings, but is harder to defend on psychoacoustic grounds.

Isn't the exact opposite the case? The current algorithm will assign a lower DR value to a recording with more bass. This is bad behaviour as bass is the first thing that suffers from hypercompression. An example: SND's first album (RG of -0.59 dB and very dynamic) is just a DR7!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: outscape on 2009-03-11 02:13:57
Good effort but I doubt it will gain any traction. Remember that sound engineers are there to perform service at the request of the artist. Moreover, certain types of music are just meant to sound, well, loud. Given how the Internet is giving rise to a lot of independent labels and musicians who do their own mixing and mastering, to expect everyone to follow the same standard will be virtually impossible. I applaud the effort, however I doubt it will ever take off.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-03-11 02:24:57
Version 1.2 is up. The offline tool is still the same, though. And they have not fixed the English manual. They should release the source for the algorithm.

It also overestimates the loudness of low frequency content, which is a good move for being hard on modern hypercompressed masterings, but is harder to defend on psychoacoustic grounds.

Isn't the exact opposite the case? The current algorithm will assign a lower DR value to a recording with more bass. This is bad behaviour as bass is the first thing that suffers from hypercompression. An example: SND's first album (RG of -0.59 dB and very dynamic) is just a DR7!


Right, that's exactly what I'm saying - but on top of that, that is not accurate. The reason bass suffers after aggressive mastering techniques is because it is simply not as audible as other frequencies. The overall loudness of the track simply does not change all that much from simple removal of bass. As an eq choice it tends to coincide with hypercompression, but the lack of a direct correlation between the two means that this bass overemphasis slightly distorts the meaning of DR comparisons across different mastering styles and music genres.

For instance, this means that compression differences in classical music (with very little bass) might make a less substantial DR change than with rock music; even if a classical piece is hypercompressed, the lack of effect on the bass signal means that the same amount of compression does not go as far with manipulating the DR figure.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Zilog Jones on 2009-03-19 19:01:36
Just noticed yesterday that 1.3 is out. The offline tool has an option to scan entire folders now and can output results to a log file. Still only supports MP3 and WAV though, and they haven't mentioned any changes in implementation.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Antonski on 2009-08-02 22:13:15
Unfortunately, it is no more free available for download.
Are there any alternatives?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-08-02 22:27:10
Given the above commentary on TT's algorithm, if all you want is offline analysis, pfpf will probably tell you what you need to know. But it was never really meant for prime time and considerable care is necessary to interpret its results (although the same must be said for any dynamics estimator, really..)
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-08-02 23:03:28
They've really shot themselves in the foot by restricting access to their meter. They'd rather a donation, than get people to use their meter. Desperate administrators always act the same way (get the money in and then we can spread the message). The thing that was spreading the message is the thing they've just locked away. 

I'm still hopeful that Chromatix and Axon will produce a meter that combines their different approaches and yields 3 results: 2 individual scores and one combined score.

C.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Antonski on 2009-08-02 23:19:37
Given the above commentary on TT's algorithm, if all you want is offline analysis, pfpf will probably tell you what you need to know. But it was never really meant for prime time and considerable care is necessary to interpret its results (although the same must be said for any dynamics estimator, really..)

Well, I've just tried pfpf, looks good, but it is a bit too... big for my laptop screen. I was rather thinking about something like command line tool?  Sorry for being oldschool : )
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Grunpfnul on 2009-08-02 23:26:22
They way of acting was since my first contact (about 2-3 Months away) like "give money, kk?" - i asked them, why their dr meter does not provide support for flac.
The answer was: Many formats, many different problems - you could help by provide a amount of cash.
The other question, why not spread the word in the "base" (us freaky little music lovers), instead of the "head" (music engineers, e.g.) was little "arrogant"; To reach the important people.

After a namecalling in a known german magazin (c`t - www.heise.de), they went probably totaly mad.
It´s not like their board is about to collapse, they just earned some "fame" in places for their work (in fact most for the database at dr.loudness-war.info, who supports FLAC Sources).

The active membership provides:
Passwortgeschützter Bereich mit Zugang zu diesen exklusiven Vorteilen für Active Member (ab 01.07.09):
Password secured member-access, with exclusive Gadgets for active members (since 01.07.09):

· Freie Nutzung von Software Updates (TT Dynamic Range Meter Plugin und TT DR Offline Meter Software)
Free access to software updates (TT Dynamic Range Meter Plugin and TT DR Offline Meter Software)

· Lizenzfreie Nutzung des DR-Logos (für CD Booklets und Online Shops)
License free use of the DR icons (for CD Cover / Booklets and Online Shop)

· Freie Nutzung der in Kürze gelaunchten DR-Online-Datenbank mit der Möglichkeit,
  Ihre eigenen Releases einzupflegen, damit Musikkäufer Ihre dynamischen Veröffentlichungen finden
Free use of the DR Database, which will be launched in the next time, provided with the possibility of adding your own releases, so that customers can find your releases

· Freier Zugang in eine wachsende Wissensdatenbank, in der Doktor-Arbeiten und Studien rund um
  das Thema Loudness gesammelt werden
Free access to a knowledge base, which will provide studies and dissertation about the loudness war.

· Active Member Newsletter mit Hintergrundinfos
Active Members newsletter with backgroundinformations

· Listung als Active Member auf der Website (Tabelle > view list)
You´ll get a cookie.

Better than google, i hope.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-08-02 23:51:20
They've really shot themselves in the foot by restricting access to their meter. They'd rather a donation, than get people to use their meter. Desperate administrators always act the same way (get the money in and then we can spread the message). The thing that was spreading the message is the thing they've just locked away. 
That's not exactly the criticism I think is valid here. I think they are trying to make what they have self-supporting. What this tells me is, and note I am completely speculating here, they have people working on this, either full-time or part-time, and their initial developer sponsorship (Algorithmix) might have pulled the plug on large-scale financial assistance. If they want to keep the momentum going, they have to find some way to monetarize what they have, even if they are a 503© (which are pathologically well audited in the US so I tend not to have any doubts about the veracity of their nonprofit status).

Quote
I'm still hopeful that Chromatix and Axon will produce a meter that combines their different approaches and yields 3 results: 2 individual scores and one combined score.

Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait a long time on me for that. Part of that is that I've been occupied by other audio pursuits recently, but there's a larger issue afoot here....

Quite simply, there is no testing or validation model for the accuracy of a dynamic range meter. TT has its number, and pfpf has its numbers, and the Sparkle-Meter has its numbers, and they do not agree except in the vaguest of terms. Until such a model is devised, and is well justified on psychoacoustic and listening-preference grounds, no progress will be made beyond what we already have.

Because of this, I am frankly skeptical of the DR databases like on dr.loudnesswar.info, or even some people who have wanted to do the same with pfpf. People are incorrectly looking at these numbers as if they had a shred of authoritativeness to them.

So if/when I revisit this it will be on the QC side of things and not on the actual implementation side of things. Incidentally, I stated almost exactly this intent in my registration entry to Pleasurize when their site first started. No response.

Well, I've just tried pfpf, looks good, but it is a bit too... big for my laptop screen. I was rather thinking about something like command line tool?  Sorry for being oldschool : )
What, you mean nobody else has a 1920x1200 display on their laptop like me?

They way of acting was since my first contact (about 2-3 Months away) like "give money, kk?" - i asked them, why their dr meter does not provide support for flac.
The answer was: Many formats, many different problems - you could help by provide a amount of cash.
The other question, why not spread the word in the "base" (us freaky little music lovers), instead of the "head" (music engineers, e.g.) was little "arrogant"; To reach the important people.
I can't really blame them for this; I think the base has been pretty pumped up already. It's a much harder problem to make headway with the people actually producing the music. You essentially have to tell them how to do their own jobs.

But like I said, to put things mildly, that gets harder if your statistics are potentially faulty.

Quote
After a namecalling in a known german magazin (c`t - www.heise.de), they went probably totaly mad.
It´s not like their board is about to collapse, they just earned some "fame" in places for their work (in fact most for the database at dr.loudness-war.info, who supports FLAC Sources).
OK, cough it up. You can't allude to a fight with c't without describing it in more detail
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-08-03 00:16:18
Axon, regarding the meters. I understand that there is no "model for the accuracy of a dynamic range meter", but don't yours and Chromatix give an indication? As such aren't, for example, 5 meters' indications (that may cover each others backs) better than one (as long as they're all making good attempts)? So if all 5 meters give a poor rating (little DR) doesn't that say something? In the same way that one ABX report (I realise ABX is a tried and tested method, but you get the point) is an indication, but 5 individual results are much more of an indication.

Additionally, one doesn't have to use the same methods to produce a synthesised score (i.e. if each could produce an indexed result).

Forgive me if this is naive, I'm out of my depth technically in this area, but very interested in it nonetheless.

C.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Grunpfnul on 2009-08-03 01:17:17
Quote from: Axon link=msg=0 date=
I can't really blame them for this; I think the base has been pretty pumped up already. It's a much harder problem to make headway with the people actually producing the music. You essentially have to tell them how to do their own jobs.


market follows the demands of the consumer, and the producers make music so loud because the consumers had an wish for it (on it? crap, should take some english lessons) - louder music sounds "better", for many people.
But if you jump over the shark, and the music get toooooo loud, you can´t get go back to normal.
This is what we got with the latest metallica release.
So, if the base would know about the problem and would understand it (some people were serious shocked, as they first seen one of the youtube vids, who provide a sample of the loudness war and his "victims"), the "big" fishes must take a correction of their heading.
The little sound engineers will never rebell against the big corps. If they say no - anyone else will do it. Everyone wants to feed his family and him self.

Quote from: Axon link=msg=0 date=
OK, cough it up. You can't allude to a fight with c't without describing it in more detail


Little translation fault from me - didn´t know "namecalling" was a complete negativ headed word ;-)
they were mentioned in a article - i hope this will fit it better.

Could search and translate it, if you wish
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Axon on 2009-08-03 01:20:01
Any sort of fuzzy logic revolving around a committee of multiple dynamic range estimators is not going to solve the fundamental flaws which are common to all of them.

I know that's vague, but I don't have time to answer this in better detail today.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: carpman on 2009-08-03 01:23:10
Thanks Axon. No, that makes sense. I think I may have underestimated how fundamental the flaws are.

C.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: unfinished.hide on 2013-05-23 23:10:15
I'm sorry to bump this old topic after 4 years, but does anyone know what happen to the Foundation website? Are they gone? Since this morning I can't access their site anymore, there's a german message about the domain, which does not seem to be a temporary issue. Hope I am wrong.

Also coincidentally the site hosting the Dynamic Range Meter plugin for Foobar is unreachable as well: http://www.jokhan.demon.nl/DynamicRange/ (http://www.jokhan.demon.nl/DynamicRange/)
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-05-29 18:42:02
I'm sorry to bump this old topic after 4 years, but does anyone know what happen to the Foundation website? Are they gone? Since this morning I can't access their site anymore, there's a german message about the domain, which does not seem to be a temporary issue. Hope I am wrong.

Also coincidentally the site hosting the Dynamic Range Meter plugin for Foobar is unreachable as well: http://www.jokhan.demon.nl/DynamicRange/ (http://www.jokhan.demon.nl/DynamicRange/)


The forum seems to be dead but the foundation website works now 
One thing i don't understand is why they developed a plugin that's not resizable 
If you haven't a full hd screen is unusable, it gets cutted off at the bottom...
(http://i.imgur.com/Uaxb789.png)
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: itisljar on 2013-05-30 10:07:38
Is there a working link for downloading plugin? Please?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: skamp on 2013-05-30 11:05:20
I couldn't find the original zip file, so I just made a new one with the .dll and .chm files that I have in my fb2k installation: foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip) (Dropbox).

Code: [Select]
10b3be7c5dab4b055867588e731ddf79  foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip
c18a6eea356e80a7397f8431fc123cc5  foo_dynamic_range/foo_dynamic_range.chm
65a5392ac0cb21a9bf820518bbead3ee  foo_dynamic_range/foo_dynamic_range.dll
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: itisljar on 2013-05-30 11:33:21
Thank you, skamp.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-05-30 12:19:18
Wait...this is "only" the foobar2000 component to analyze a file, not the real time vst plugin (the one i posted in my image)!!
I can't find a link for the vst though, if someone want it i'll post it when i'll be at my pc.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: skamp on 2013-05-30 13:21:14
TT-DR-Install.zip (http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/sites/default/files/file/TT-DR-Install.zip), mirrored on Dropbox (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/TT-DR-Install.zip) in case the original link stops working.
Edit: and here's the manual (http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/sites/default/files/DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf) (mirrored on Dropbox (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf)).

Code: [Select]
113ce5e87ad382672b56914388db2620  TT-DR-Install.zip
3d6b88ed053043f8604de301da4e758f  DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-05-30 14:23:20
TT-DR-Install.zip (http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/sites/default/files/file/TT-DR-Install.zip), mirrored on Dropbox (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/TT-DR-Install.zip) in case the original link stops working.
Edit: and here's the manual (http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/sites/default/files/DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf) (mirrored on Dropbox (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf)).

Code: [Select]
113ce5e87ad382672b56914388db2620  TT-DR-Install.zip
3d6b88ed053043f8604de301da4e758f  DR-Manual-V1_1-English.pdf


Perfect!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Stone Free on 2013-05-31 15:40:38
How do you add the realtime meter to foobar?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: db1989 on 2013-05-31 15:56:30
Just as with any other plugin for foobar2000 provided as a DLL (i.e. not as an fb2k-component):


Edit: Sorry, I had not realised it was a VST.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Hotsoup on 2013-05-31 17:52:59
How do you add the realtime meter to foobar?
I'm having a time of that too.. Only way I could get that to work was by installing a foobar VST plugin, dropping the "...Algorithmix\TT-Dynamic-Range 1.1\DR-Meter" folder into it, then finding it and applying it through the DSP chain. And then I only could see it if I opened up the DSP chain and hit "Configure Selected". I have to be doing it wrong.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-05-31 18:49:20
How do you add the realtime meter to foobar?
I'm having a time of that too.. Only way I could get that to work was by installing a foobar VST plugin, dropping the "...Algorithmix\TT-Dynamic-Range 1.1\DR-Meter" folder into it, then finding it and applying it through the DSP chain. And then I only could see it if I opened up the DSP chain and hit "Configure Selected". I have to be doing it wrong.


No, you're right...
it's a VST plugin so it needs to be installed like all the other VST, and marked ad "available dsp" in the dsp chain.
One time you've setted it like this you can also reach it within the foobar menù -> View ->DSP -> TT-DR-Meter.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Hotsoup on 2013-05-31 19:43:13
it's a VST plugin so it needs to be installed like all the other VST, and marked ad "available dsp" in the dsp chain.
One time you've setted it like this you can also reach it within the foobar menù -> View ->DSP -> TT-DR-Meter.
OK, I had zero experience with VST's in foobar, so I felt like I was fumbling it up. Nice to know I can bring it up through the view menu too, thank you!
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-06-01 09:00:00
it's a VST plugin so it needs to be installed like all the other VST, and marked ad "available dsp" in the dsp chain.
One time you've setted it like this you can also reach it within the foobar menù -> View ->DSP -> TT-DR-Meter.
OK, I had zero experience with VST's in foobar, so I felt like I was fumbling it up. Nice to know I can bring it up through the view menu too, thank you!

You're welcome!

One thing i don't understand about this plugin is the behaviour of the peak meter...
I mean...does when i get a "OVER" value in the peak meter means that i'm experience some clipping??
I get "over" also in quite good registration sometimes... 
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: itisljar on 2013-06-04 14:21:52
Well, for me the DSP shows peaks one second in advance, for some reason - I guess id gets the data before it's sent to decoder...
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Robertina on 2013-06-04 19:53:58
for me the DSP shows peaks one second in advance,

It's probably a latency issue.

Adjusting foobar2000's buffer length (Preferences > Playback > Output) may help.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-06-06 19:50:07
for me the DSP shows peaks one second in advance,

It's probably a latency issue.

Adjusting foobar2000's buffer length (Preferences > Playback > Output) may help.


Yes, i can confirm that the problem is related to buffer lenght setting.
I'd like to set it to 0 to have a better dymanic range representation with the plugin, but...are there any problem in setting it to 0 or a very low value near 0?
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Robertina on 2013-06-06 20:34:36
are there any problem in setting it to 0 or a very low value near 0?

When you move foobar2000's buffer length slider to a position that represents a value < 1000 ms you get already a hint to a possible drawback:

Quote
Warning: setting too low buffer length may cause some visualization effects to stop working.

Besides the possible loss of synchronous playback/visualisation, you may also run into audible dropouts, depending on your system and its workload.

You may want to read this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=100769&view=findpost&p=833758) post and the following one on how you can benefit by an increased buffer length, and you can derive from it possible disadvantages if using too low values.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: foomark on 2013-06-07 20:59:56
are there any problem in setting it to 0 or a very low value near 0?

When you move foobar2000's buffer length slider to a position that represents a value < 1000 ms you get already a hint to a possible drawback:

Quote
Warning: setting too low buffer length may cause some visualization effects to stop working.

Besides the possible loss of synchronous playback/visualisation, you may also run into audible dropouts, depending on your system and its workload.

You may want to read this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=100769&view=findpost&p=833758) post and the following one on how you can benefit by an increased buffer length, and you can derive from it possible disadvantages if using too low values.


Thank you for the explanation! so there's no way to have the benefits of a good amount of buffer lenght AND a syncronized real time DR meter vst...
Not a big problem though
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Robertina on 2013-06-08 00:38:35
so there's no way to have the benefits of a good amount of buffer lenght AND a syncronized real time DR meter vst...

Possibly you will get more satisfying results by using an ASIO driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIO4ALL) as your output device.

And Voxengo offers Latency Delay (http://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/) for free, an "auxiliary AU and VST plugin which allows you to compensate latency produced by any audio plug-ins".

Due to lack of time I haven't tried it up till now though, so I don't know whether or not it is compatible with foobar2000.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: Kohlrabi on 2013-08-28 08:23:11
Thanks for keeping that component alive, skamp. Could you change the archive so that the files are not in a subfolder? When installing this component using foobar2000 the component is put into an additional subfolder in user-components, and the component DLL won't load.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: skamp on 2013-08-28 08:55:35
Could you change the archive so that the files are not in a subfolder?


Done (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61403931/foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip) (URL is the same). Can you update my post (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=68945&view=findpost&p=835662) with the new MD5 hash?

Code: [Select]
b6765c2a60a06d5c5780be6b9331c17d  foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip
c18a6eea356e80a7397f8431fc123cc5  foo_dynamic_range.chm
65a5392ac0cb21a9bf820518bbead3ee  foo_dynamic_range.dll


Also, I think a couple more people should mirror the archive, just in case.
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: skamp on 2013-08-28 09:02:07
I mirrored it on Google Drive (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-JyrvDIScLhTmRzMUdzWEhSSFk/edit?usp=sharing) as well.

Code: [Select]
b6765c2a60a06d5c5780be6b9331c17d  foo_dynamic_range-1.1.1.zip
c18a6eea356e80a7397f8431fc123cc5  foo_dynamic_range.chm
65a5392ac0cb21a9bf820518bbead3ee  foo_dynamic_range.dll
Title: Pleasurize Music Foundation
Post by: lameboy on 2013-08-28 12:10:05
Has anyone mentioned this (http://dr.loudness-war.info/) site?
It has the standalone tools for Windows and Mac as weel as the foobar plugin available for download (links in the upper right corner)