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Topic: K2 HD is the new crap around? (Read 16493 times) previous topic - next topic
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K2 HD is the new crap around?

Images say much more than words, people are saying they can hear the difference, how?

This is the original Japanese press of the Andrea Bocelli Sogno album.



This is the same album, with a big K2 HD label on it.



This is the Vivere album, also with a big K2 HD label on it, more compressed than the K2 HD sogno album.



How this clown, Takeshi Hakamata manage to call himself "audio engineer"? He is deaf or something?

Sorry to use this words but this crap cost money to import and it wasn't cheap! I'm tired of this shit, how come the original standard Audio CD sound better than the K2 HD version and there are people saying that the K2 HD version is better??
WHERE???

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #1
Is that not the main task of audio engineers these days, to compress the audio? Louder tracks = sell more

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #2
Is that not the main task of audio engineers these days, to compress the audio? Louder tracks = sell more
The engineer may well be acting on instructions from higher up the industry food chain. For all we know, he loathed every moment that he spent compressing this recording to buggery.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #3
The guy also signed the album...
Master Engineer: 袴田剛史 Hakamata Takeshi


Let's get rid of our volume controls, let's this clowns decide how loud we listen this stuff up...
Dynamic range, who cares?

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #4
The guy also signed the album...
Master Engineer: 袴田剛史 Hakamata Takeshi


Let's get rid of our volume controls, let's this clowns decide how loud we listen this stuff up...
Dynamic range, who cares?
The only way now is to vote with money.
If you bought a damaged record, upload log to DR database, tell other people, request a refund from the seller or label, etc.
If you know a record is gonna be shit, don't buy it.
a fan of AutoEq + Meier Crossfeed

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #5
The only way now is to vote with money.
If you bought a damaged record, upload log to DR database, tell other people, request a refund from the seller or label, etc.
If you know a record is gonna be shit, don't buy it.
I wish if life could be that easy...

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #6
It's a mastering chain/process that has been around for a long while. Some details: http://www.stereomojo.com/K2%20HD/K2HDReview.htm

In short, you can use whatever converters, dithering, etc. you want, if it is lacking in dynamic range and exhibits artifacts from overzealous dynamics processing, it simply won't matter.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #7
I have to admit that one extremely well sounding CD in my collection is Rob Wasserman's Duets as K2HD version.
I don't have the standard version anymore to compare.
The pure DR numbers are the same for my K2HD release as the regular one in the database here: http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/13760
The digipack also credits Hakamata Takeshi.
I remember to have read some of the K2HD releases are new transfers while others only seem to be pimped versions.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #8
The only way now is to vote with money.
If you bought a damaged record, upload log to DR database, tell other people, request a refund from the seller or label, etc.
If you know a record is gonna be shit, don't buy it.
I wish if life could be that easy...
At least this has some chance. Simply doing nothing obviously won't work better than this. And I'm not sure if there's some 3rd strategy that will work better than this... Other than being a musician/producer yourself and setting a good example.
a fan of AutoEq + Meier Crossfeed

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #9
Is that not the main task of audio engineers these days, to compress the audio? Louder tracks = sell more
The engineer may well be acting on instructions from higher up the industry food chain. For all we know, he loathed every moment that he spent compressing this recording to buggery.

I would hardly call the waveforms shown above 'compressed to buggery'.  They're not exactly the bricks we see in pop or rock music.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #10
Indeed.

Many tend to focus only on the loudest parts of the tracks without noticing that the quieter portions aren't also jacked. In fact the loud parts in this situation look to be only subjected to fairly mild limiting.

It seems like people are just looking at pictures and data instead of first listening inevitably leading to expectation bias.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #11
It seems like people are just looking at pictures and data instead of first listening inevitably leading to expectation bias.
I can only talk about myself, once you learn where to look in to, you get it every time and you can't ignore it, just like when you learn to ride a bike, you can't unlearn it.
This over compress music sound too full to many of us, matter of fact, the experience it's in fact not what you can hear but what you can't. Is possible to understand this if you get the experience to be in an anechoic chamber, it's a terrible experience by the way.

Your perception of hearing change 100%, you feel that something is missing, same happen with this over compressed crap, it's not about what you can or can't hear.
It's hard to describe, once you are used to music with no compression and with full dynamics, once you hear crap like this I feel anxious, eager, restless. My analogy it's like if you take a deep breath in, breathe out a small chunk of air and try to take a full breath in again, but you can't, your lungs are overloaded. You try to do this a minute or two to understand how anxious you gonna get.

I feel the same with this over compressed crap.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #12
I'd say the last version should be obvious, but the middle one not so much, especially since the first version appears to have compression/limiting applied as well!

I can say this much for certain, the amount of compression in the middle one would definitely not be an issue for contemporary, non-acoustical music.  ...unless people are first judging with their eyes. ;)

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #13
It seems like people are just looking at pictures and data instead of first listening inevitably leading to expectation bias.
I can only talk about myself, once you learn where to look in to, you get it every time and you can't ignore it, just like when you learn to ride a bike, you can't unlearn it.
This over compress music sound too full to many of us, matter of fact, the experience it's in fact not what you can hear but what you can't. Is possible to understand this if you get the experience to be in an anechoic chamber, it's a terrible experience by the way.

Your perception of hearing change 100%, you feel that something is missing, same happen with this over compressed crap, it's not about what you can or can't hear.


An experience in an anaechoic chamber of feeling that there are things you 'can't hear' comes from the fact that you are hearing *nothing*. No auditory stimuli.  With dynamical range compression this feeling, to the extent it exists at all, would come from have louder, distracting input.  IOW, just the opposite.
 

Quote
It's hard to describe, once you are used to music with no compression and with full dynamics, once you hear crap like this I feel anxious, eager, restless.

Then again, there is compression in virtually *all* popular recorded music, dating back to at least the 1960s. It's not all the same and it doesn't all produce the same response.


Quote
I feel the same with this over compressed crap.

I seriously doubt you have ever tested yourself to find what  levels constitute uncomfortable 'over compression' to you.  Especially if you rely on waveforms, replaygain values,  and TNT Meter nonsense, versus your ears. 

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #14

An experience in an anaechoic chamber of feeling that there are things you 'can't hear' comes from the fact that you are hearing *nothing*. No auditory stimuli.  With dynamical range compression this feeling, to the extent it exists at all, would come from have louder, distracting input.  IOW, just the opposite.
This is not what I was talking about, I was talking about the capability of our brain to fill in the gaps, it doesn't matter if it's music notes, images, etc. And the missing gap that our brain keeps filling in, specially when it is over stimulated, it might result in this anxious and restless feeling.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124214-your-brain-fills-gaps-in-your-hearing-without-you-realising/
https://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/19/brains-hippocampus-helps-fill-in-the-blanks-of-language/

This is related with psychophysics by the way.

Quote
Then again, there is compression in virtually *all* popular recorded music, dating back to at least the 1960s. It's not all the same and it doesn't all produce the same response.
Partially agree.
We have a much more personal and portable music now than we had in the 60's. One thing is to make your music louder to play in a 60's radio or inside a noisy store, other very different is to make it even louder to people to listen to with headphones.

Quote
Especially if you rely on waveforms, replaygain values,  and TNT Meter nonsense, versus your ears.I seriously doubt you have ever tested yourself to find what  levels constitute uncomfortable 'over compression' to you.
I don't rely only on waveforms, I've described how anyone can sense this if you know what to look/listen for. For the sake of waveforms and people saying that "you don't listen to music and just look at the graphics",  you don't stick your hand inside the fire to mesure temperature, you have more sophisticated ways to do that.
With or without waveforms, it sound like crap anyway.

Our brain makes no sense about a lot of things, I don't trust it and science have proven that you shouldn't either. A simple test made in 1995 by the Professor Edward H. Adelson at Vision Science at MIT, both A and B squares has the same values of gray and it doesn't matter how hard you look at it you'll see A and B different.


Look at this two pictures, witch one is sharper?


If you said the guy on the right, your own brain is making a foll out of you again. What you eyes see and your brain wrongly interpret as sharper is this white noise.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It doesn't matter how hard I try to tell you otherwise, you'll see the right image sharper and not noisier, unless you know where to look. Remember what I've told about learning to ride a bike, I'm sure you'll never look in to a "sharper" image the same again.

As has been shown, you can't only trust on your brain to interpret what you see or hear, if you still can't agree answer this, Yanny or Laurel? I hear Yanny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X_WvGAhMlQ

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #15
Little to none of what you presented is news to krabapple (or me for that matter).  What you haven't shown is what the actual difference between your first to examples besides what little can be gleaned from your pretty pictures.

Please keep your anecdotes to yourself.


Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #17
If you want to use pictures to provide visual support for the differences between the first two versions, show 3:05 to 3:20 zoomed in from -6dB to 0dBFS.  I recommend using a a better program than Audacity to do this, but go ahead and use what you have.

That is the area with the most significant difference.  It would be a far more reasonable baseline in terms of a visual demonstration. It still doesn't serve as objective evidence, however. Quite frankly, no amount of visual evidence or hand waving is going to cut it.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #18
Beside the obvious compression and lack of dynamics?

The Japanese CD cost me about at the time $10 bucks, maybe less, the crap cost me $300 plus shipping. I don't mind to pay premium to import products, like SACD, DVD-A, some rare QUAD album/reels.

What else can be shown?

Quote
BTW, you have shown nothing to support the idea that your brain filling gaps has any relation to dynamic range compression.
If this is not new to you or your friend, as you said, you should known better what an anecdotal evidence is. Can I hear this difference, yes I can! Can I show you how, no I can't. The only way to prove it is showing some fancy, beautiful, graphics.
The same way "Yanny or Laurel" audio does to everybody, if you are deaf at high frequencies you will never understand how people can perceive audio dynamics and you will keep hearing "Laurel" instead of "Yanny".

You can't hear it or perceive it, so to you, it will make no sense at all.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #19
Please review our terms of service which you agreed to follow upon registering, paying special attention to rule 8.

If you know anything about psychoacoustics you wouldn't have bothered trying to pass off what are unsubstantiated (i.e.: useless) claims.  Your doubling-down with unrelated scientific studies only worsens your position.

Claims without evidence are anecdotal. What you've provided thus far is textbook anecdotal.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #20
That's pretty subjective.
There is no scientific studies that can quantify how much you love your mother, for example. I have mine and you have yours, doesn't matter how scientific you want to get, it's all anecdotal, it can't be proven.

By your logic, if you say you love your mother, I can assume your "claim" is false by lack of evidence.

 

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #21
Proof...

Promise


Delivered


Standard CD


Nobody hear that high, but any way, if you want to look at something, this is another place to look.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #22
...and by that you mean, "now for something completely unrelated..."

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,3974.html
See #8 and the description that follows later.

This forum was founded on the principle of operating from objective evidence as it specifically applies to the field of psychoacoustics.

...not psychobabble.

Re: K2 HD is the new crap around?

Reply #23
I don't know how more objective that can be.
1. I've shown that you can't trust your brain to see or hear anything.
2. You need tools to assist you test something.
3. I've also shown that you can't proof anecdotal evidence.

I also recommend that you read the title, I'm affirming or questioning?
The topic is much more a discussion about the K2HD crap than a topic about objective evidence that K2HD is crap.