Post by Claude October 10, 2014 (51 of 109)
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Post by gumby October 10, 2014 (52 of 109)
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Simon V. said:
While we're on the subject of the loudness war, I wonder if any of you good folk could help me choose a new copy of Graceland. The 2004 remaster I have sounds badly compressed to me. Should I seek out the original 1986 release, or is the 2011 remaster (assuming it's different) an improvement on the previous one?
Simon,
I can recommend the 1986 version. I have it and it is one of the albums I use to demonstrate "compression" to friends and acquaintes how recordings used to sound. You can turn this up at least 4db to 6db over even well recorded music and it sounds tremendous. The drums and the bass hit you in the chest like they should. The remastered editions have poor DR scores. I have not heard these but cannot imagine how they would have been improved.
I find the scores on the website just about right from my listening experience of the couple dozen or so albums I have and have checked. Paul Simon's latest offering, So Beautiful So What, sounds terrible to me when played at home on a good system. The web site reflects this. I love the music on this album and listen to it in the car, but cannot listen to it at home.
Based on my experience, I know I will not enjoy anything with a DR down around 9.
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Post by Simon V. October 10, 2014 (53 of 109)
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Thanks to you both!
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Post by rammiepie October 10, 2014 (54 of 109)
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I wonder how many unsuspecting collectors have put their perfectly wonderful older RBCDs on e~bay or Amazon or have donated them to Goodwill or their local library when they replaced them with "remasters" promising better sound and of course loading the package with bonus tracks?
Being the pack rat that I am, glad I held onto my "vintage" RBCDs and that I have become very selective when buying newer titles fully cognsicent of compression artifacts, etc.
Never has the adage "Everything Old is New again" rung so true!
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Post by Simon V. October 10, 2014 (55 of 109)
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rammiepie said:
I wonder how many unsuspecting collectors have put their perfectly wonderful older RBCDs on e~bay or Amazon or have donated them to Goodwill or their local library when they replaced them with "remasters" promising better sound and of course loading the package with bonus tracks?
Compression can't be the whole story, though. I replaced my old Creedence CDs with the 40th anniversary edition. According to the website Claude linked to, the remasters are more compressed than their predecessors, but they sound much better to me: warmer, crisper and livelier. Perhaps my ears are at fault, but I did use them in reaching my judgement.
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Post by Marpow October 10, 2014 (56 of 109)
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rammiepie said:
I wonder how many unsuspecting collectors have put their perfectly wonderful older RBCDs on e~bay or Amazon or have donated them to Goodwill or their local library when they replaced them with "remasters" promising better sound and of course loading the package with bonus tracks?
Being the pack rat that I am, glad I held onto my "vintage" RBCDs and that I have become very selective when buying newer titles fully cognsicent of compression artifacts, etc.
Never has the adage "Everything Old is New again" rung so true!
Well my minimalist pursuit has seem to failed me. Too bad I have gotten rid of all that.
Very interesting fact finding. I know that Neil Young and Tom Petty have been at war with compression and loudness for years. I just looked at the DR site under those two artists and every release of theirs is basically top notch. Tom Petty has some greatest hits, compilation discs that have poor ratings but he probably doesn't have a lot of say on those versions. If the artist stays true, we the consumer benefit. See I am learning and feeling happy.
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Post by rammiepie October 10, 2014 (57 of 109)
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Marpow said:
Well my minimalist pursuit has seem to failed me. Too bad I have gotten rid of all that.
Very interesting fact finding. I know that Neil Young and Tom Petty have been at war with compression and loudness for years. I just looked at the DR site under those two artists and every release of theirs is basically top notch. Tom Petty has some greatest hits, compilation discs that have poor ratings but he probably doesn't have a lot of say on those versions. If the artist stays true, we the consumer benefit. See I am learning and feeling happy.
Mark, since I have a rather large collection of Blu Ray Videos, the same applies as regards "remasters."
When you see 40th Anniversary remastered edition it still pays to read the reviews as it's sometimes the very same older remaster with a few bonus materials included or sometimes an upgrade from lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 > 5.1 lossless (which is sometimes a deal maker for me, personally).
And anyone who has followed this site for many years....even SACD doesn't necessarily mean better (just sometimes MORE expensive).
The main problem I've found: the record companies aren't straightforward with the origin of their remasterings and mastered from 96/24 digital sources also doesn't necessarily mean better, as well.
That's what we have Google and Bing for. Type in the title and reviews usually pop up and I would peruse these reviews for at least a glimpse into the quality of the recording in question. Too many negative reviews would indicate a non~purchase......for me, at least.
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Post by Lochiel October 10, 2014 (58 of 109)
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Audio Ed said:
Loudness wars, what does it mean. To me it means two things. One is that many people value portability of their music over the sound quality (SQ) of their music.
.... This has been done by creating compressed music files that take a minimal of space. To minimize the space, SQ is sacrificed. The sound of these files is limited by taking out the low, bass, and the highs, treble. These attributes give recorded music a sense of fullness. The middle is what is left and then the soft, or quiet passages are raised or made louder. If you think of a waveform. Imagine chopping or clipping the tops and bottoms off and then raising the bottom up toward to top. This result takes much less data to encode and hence allows for portability. I hope this was helpful
This is not exactly correct. There is a huge difference between dynamic compression and lossy compression (as accomplished via MP3 or AAC encoding). Dynamic range is not sacrificed as a result of the latter, nor are lows and highs if a sufficiently high bit rate is used.
The Loudness War is partially a by-product of the (unproven) perception that dynamically compressed music sounds better when encoded in a lossy format. From personal experience, I can assure everyone that classical music sounds just fine using iTunes or EAC; classical music with DR's north of 15, for example.
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Post by Marpow October 11, 2014 (59 of 109)
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Well thanks everybody I have learned a lot. If you have been following this discussion I have now become comfortable with my research, thanks to all of you. A few notes (still more to learn):
Compression of music is bad, it is an industry thing started long ago for radio commercials, juke boxes, and eventually to what they now call the Loudness Wars. The music is compressed to make up for a higher initial volume, thus when compressed takes much of the sonic beauty out of a recording. There was never a demand for this by the consumer and nobody really knows why the industry thought of this as better, outside of TV commercials, etc. Best link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
My original question: http://dr.loudness-war.info/ Seems to be a very good tool but not to be considered the be all and end all. In the LINKS bar top right, there is everything you need to know about this site, you can also download a plug in and that is what others use to put there information into the site. I strongly recommended reading the user manual. I believe the owners of site are German based. I did email them a question and to date there has been no response. The manual is very informative and I am tempted to download the plug in but for now it is a little over my head, so I will wait before I participate. This site in there user manual personally recommends another site that I found to be very interesting http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/.
As Gumby said below a 9 is not desirable, page 6 of the user manual talks about this. As Ralph said, "the site is best when there are multiple DR's of a particular recording".
Another question that nobody touched, are they the same as DR.Loudness on Facebook?, my answer is I don't think so.
Well in the end even though it took me awhile to find out what I was looking for I do believe I am more educated on this subject and can be helpful to another if needed. Hopefully my education has helped others, there are definitive answers, web links, etc, to support the original questions.
If you are in the industry and are compressing music I am dead against it and in this LOUDNESS WAR I take side with others that are against it.
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Audio Ed said:
Loudness wars, what does it mean. To me it means two things. One is that many people value portability of their music over the sound quality (SQ) of their music.
Two, is that music recording and distribution is a business first and the players wish to make the most money they can. The portability issue drives the loudness wars bus. ..... This has been done by creating compressed music files that take a minimal of space. To minimize the space, SQ is sacrificed. The sound of these files is limited by taking out the low, bass, and the highs, treble.
Just to reinforce an earlier post, the above is misleading.
Look at the graphs of dynamics on the previous page and it is clear that the bottom graph is a victim of the loudness wars (and the top graph is what we often had pre, say, 1990).
But it is possible that the top graph came from an 128kpbs MP3 taken from the first 1980 CD issue of Duke by Genesis, and the bottom graph could be from the SACD of the 2007 remix of Duke.
(In reality the difference with Duke probably isn't as bad as shown in the graphs).
An audiophile might be able to cope with an MP3 of the bottom graph on their iPod when they are going for a run. But such compressed music is not going to sound good (to an audiophile) when played on a good system - even if the source is SACD or Blu-Ray.
As to WHY the loudness war happened. It started well before most people were listening to music on iPods. As I said before, CDs before 1990 are usually good, after that loudness tends to creep in. The FIRST iPod (the beginning of mass market portability) wasn't released until the end of 2001.
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