http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

Yep. Sad but true.

Very sad. That was an informative read. Thanks, Chess.

Damn.
I hope i didn't water bucket anyone's thoughts on quality music still in the midst of holiday party season.

Thanks for the read Chess. The subject material makes my Axioms weep.

I'm reminded of those action movie sequences that go on and on, like the last battle in "Transformers," and it stops being exciting. That's the impression I get about dynamic compression. Maybe that's why the car chase scene from "Bullitt" is so memorable--the rest of the movie's a chore to get through--the chase is the only exciting part.

I'm going to sit in silence for the next hour and then put on some popular music. Dynamic compression be damned!

Intensely compressed albums like Oasis' 1995 (What's the Story) Morning Glory? set a new bar for loudness; the songs were well-suited for bars, cars and other noisy environments.

This is what hit home to me.
I've ALWAYS thought this disc had alot of 'noise' on whatever system it was played. I liked the softer tunes but most of it provided ear fatigue. I just thought it was the music type but now i read this article and think more about the mixing of the sound.
It all makes sense.

Now and again a little Nickelback does this to me as well, but now and again i just like to crank up the noise and pick out the music in between.
Good tunes, poorly mastered.
Bastards.


This quote does provide some amount of enthusiasm though:
"I find it quite interesting, and I think its instructive, that if you focus on one area of the music business — you could generally call it music for people over twenty-four — and you look at the last ten years and look at records that have come out of nowhere, that no one's putting any money behind and have takes off, the two things that come to mind are the Buena Vista Social Club and Norah Jones. And those records were made in the most old-fashioned ways you can imagine." — Joe Boyd, producer of several Richard Thompson albums and R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction

You know, I have that Oasis album on SACD--still sounds like junk. I wonder what made them decide to put that on a supposedly higher fidelity format?



I am in complete agreement!

>>I hope i didn't water bucket anyone's thoughts on quality music still in the midst of holiday party season

Nah... I still have almost 600 LPs.

For anyone unsure what an LP is, let me know and I can post a picture of one

Thanks for the article.I am in complete agreement with it too.I have notice the difference in warmth and feeling of the sounds of cd's made over the past 10 or so years. Its too bad the youth of today, will not be able to experience the quality of music that we grew up with.Hopefully enough artists insist on quality produced cd's.in the future.

Yes, for several years now many pop recordings have been mastered ever more closely to an almost uniformly loud level with a dynamic range much closer to zero than to the more than ample range which CDs permit. Fortunately High Fidelity is alive and well in most of the classical realm and several of the CDs which I have actually drew bitter complaints from reviewers that the loud/soft factor was "uncomfortable" for them.

Thanks for the link. I hope it's not a lost cause.

Interesting article, makes me wish I still had some of my old LP's

This is one of the reasons I recently purchased a Music Hall turntable and started buying used vinyl. The other reason was frequenting the Steve Hoffman forums. Spend some time there and its almost inevitable you'll get the vinyl bug.

Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see what vinyl has to do with the article. Are you suggesting that new stuff that's put out on vinyl will sound better than the CD version by virtue of the way vinyl is made? The clipped waveform doesn't remain intact? Or is this partially in reference to the other thread about remasters sucking, and you're only talking about old vinyl releases?

If you're only talking about older music, I think I'm immune to the vinyl bug. If there's a major difference in sound quality between the CD and vinyl versions of new music, however, I'd be interested in hearing about that.

The vinyl itself is part of the issue -- overmodulated peaks on an LP don't distort as dramatically as overmodulated peaks on a CD -- so from the beginning there was more need to carefully control peak levels on CDs. This could be done in at least two ways -- lowering the overall recording level or compressing the dynamic range. I would have personally looked for some kind of soft limiter with behaviour more like that of a vinyl-based medium but that's just me.

The fact that the general public's listening habits changed (from serious listening to "listening while doing something else") is probably coincidental, but was another argument for limiting dynamic range and provided a very convenient solution for the challenges of recording high dynamic range music on a limited resolution digital medium.

It's interesting that nobody has focused on the changes in recreational self-medication over the last 30 years, from drugs which encouraged serious contemplation of music to drugs which generally made one unable to concentrate on anything

I am very new to reentering the vinyl world and am using a relatively inexpensive turntable. From what i have heard so far, older vinyl can sound very good. Yes, some does sound better than the CD of the same title. You can get newer releases on vinyl, but they are somewhat costly. I am primarily interested in picking up used vinyl of older titles. This is plentiful and inexpensive (and generally sounds good).

I enjoy both CD and vinyl. The key, I believe, is in the mastering. Many CD's do sound great. There is a certain warmth, though, to vinyl that many find pleasing.

OMG! That was the first thing I thought of, but I didn't want to make a comment that could be construed as "Just say yo" rather than "Just say no." I have always been a "stop and sniff the roses" type anyway, but I still remember the joy of vegging out for hours while listening to wonderfully beautiful and creative music. Even today, I often turn the lights low at 1 AM, when there is little to distract, sit back, close my eyes, and drink in the music. It's a joy, and I feel sorry for those who only experience music as a counterpoint to their everyday activities.

DISCLAIMER: This is now done without the self-medication. It's been decades. Interestingly, today, at my age and in my condition, I take more drugs than when I took drugs. And there is no fun involved either.

I would take some mild dynamic compression on cd over the pop click and hiss of vinyl any day. That nostalgia bug just hasn't been a problem for me. Maybe that flu shot when i was 10 took care of it.


I'm sure you could still find a big green fatty to smoke somewhere if you looked real hard Jack.

Undoubtedly. Haven't looked, real hard or otherwise, in decades, and am not interested in looking. I'd probably faint at the price now anyway.

That sentiment is a common thread to people searching for the great dynamic range that has been lost in modern CDs. Earlier this year I dusted off my old Technics turntable, played some old vinyl and was amazed how good it sounded. It was enough for me to buy a new turntable/cartridge and dig out my old record collection. Classics and jazz never sounded this good on cds.

Yet there is hope. This quote in the article caught my eye.

"So is music doomed to keep sounding worse? Awareness of the problem is growing. The South by Southwest music festival recently featured a panel titled "Why Does Today's Music Sound Like Shit?" In August, a group of producers and engineers founded an organization called Turn Me Up!, which proposes to put stickers on CDs that meet high sonic standards."

Now that I have the audiobytes and work at home the large majority of the time, I've been getting into streamed and downloaded music. I've so far been very pleasantly surprised by the quality but perhaps this has more to do with the genres of music that I've been listening to. I've been finding that acoustic blues and light jazz is mastered very well.

I have other problems though. The biggest one is the noise coming from my HP's laptop fan. I complained about this some time ago and now HP has an "improved algorithm" that keeps the fan on all the time at low speed rather than cycling it off and on (high speed). Anyway, to make a long story even longer, the noise from this improved algorithm from three feet away is 80dB. I've been finding that I'm winding up with nasty headaches at the end of prolonged listening sessions and I attribute this to the high SPL required to fight my fan's parasitic noise.

If you are setting up a home office and plan to listen through a laptop or PC, compression may be the least of your worries.

Charles, there wasn't any implication that the LP had an advantage as a format, since the contrary is clearly the case as to dynamic range and all other significant factors. The theoretical maximum dynamic range of the CD format of about 98dB(6.02n + 1.76dB)is more than can be used in home music reproduction, and the highest practical would be about 70dB. However, if the choice is made for a given recording to make things almost uniformly loud for commercial purposes when transferred to CD, then a less capable format such as the LP can show a greater dynamic range on that same performance if the manufacturer chooses not to compress the dynamics as much.

Yeah, I'm just curious if that is ever the case, where the dynamics aren't as compressed on vinyl versions of new music. Being that new vinyl releases seem mostly to exist as collector's items, I imagine there's no real difference in the mastering, but then, I don't really know what they have to do to transfer to vinyl.

In any case, since I listen to very little music that was recorded in the days of LPs, picking up a turntable wouldn't do me any good unless by some fluke some of these newer releases were ending up with greater dynamic range than their CD counterparts.

Well no, I would never seriously consider spending money these days on an obsolescent format such as the LP. However, if an LP of a particular performance contained a greater dynamic range than the CD of the same performance, it wouldn't be a "fluke", but simply an intentional decision on the part of the producers.

Mo, that just doesn't seem right: 80dB is loud! I just now blocked the inlet on my Dell laptop so that the fan turned on high after a while. About a foot from the outlet(on the back of the computer)it measured 54dB. How did you get that 80dB measurement?

I agree that it is very loud. I set my SPL meter on dBC, slow and measured from 3 feet away. Another thing I can try is shutting my 100W incandescent light off to see if this is contributing anything.

Right. As an example of the trend, last week I picked up the latest MOFI 180g release of the original Santana LP. One of the first things I did was compare it to the CD version. If range and soundstage are the criteria it wasn't even a close comparison. On the LP, the instruments were more distinct and airy and the nuances of the percussion were more prominent. A well recorded LP will always have greater range since it isn't limited by the 44.1kHz/ 16-bit resolution of a cd even assuming the engineer has not compressed the recording.

Yeah but how many times can you listen to an LP before it's deteriorated to the point of a low quality MP3?

3

I thought that was how many engineers it takes to finish a joke.

Difficult for me to say because I avoid mp3s. Compressed music doesn't cut it for me except in a noisy environment like a car. The closest I get to mp3s at home is Apple Lossless of CD tracks into my iPod.


Properly cared for vinyl will last a long time. LPs do involve more care and attention which can be bothersome and not being able to use a remote can be a pain. If the LPs are allowed to get dirty or scratched then forget it...the hisses and pops are too distracting.

chesseroo,

In the past here, I have made several posts about this subject.......CD,s sound quality being inferior, and incomplete, the quality of analog sound, and the merits of vinyl Lp's , etc.

The compression issue, is a somewhat new twist, but overall, the piece supports what I had been trying to get (sans debates)across.

I was just a year, or two ahead of the curve.

Yeah John...I hear what you're saying. I had a collection of vinyl a quarter century ago and I invested in everything that was available at the time to keep them in good condition. I finally gave up and switched to Metal/Dolby C and that of course didn't last long because shortly thereafter CDs came into the picture.

On your point about MP3s, WMAs appear to sound pretty good. And lossless WMAs should sound as good as the original, no?

I gave away most of my LPs years ago but still have 500 or so lying around. Most of the 60s/70s rock classic LPs have been to too many parties to be playable today. Anyway, its the jazz/classical music LPs that stood up and are in good condition with the stuff recorded in the late 50s/early 60's generally having the best fidelity. The classics on RCA or Mercury Living Presence or the Decca Speaker series being among the best. The European recordings,especially British and French, are usually better sounding while the quality of the later Deutsche Grammophone records can be spotty.

Anyway,on this range issue, while LPs have a general advantage because of the way the original waveform gets transformed into the vinyl pressing, a well engineered cd (ie. uncompressed) can sound just as good. Diana Krall's "Best of" is a recent case in point. I have both the CD and the LP. Her stuff is very well recorded and its tough to discern much difference between the two formats though the LP seems more airy while the CD has a better soundstage... hard to say.

On the other hand, if the turntable being used rumbles or has an inferior cartridge, the LP is dirty or scratchy, overall sound quality will favour the CD every time despite the natural advantage that LPs have with dynamic range. Then there is the handy remote for restless types that like only several tunes on a release. In many respects practicalities still favour the CD/digital formats. But not when up against a great turntable/cartridge and pristine LP...

If you mean original AIFF digital tracks from a CD, yes I agree. WMA lossless and Apple lossless are the way to go. Some people say anything north of 192k bit mp3 is good enough but that's like asking how compressed do you like your music? All this stuff adds up or detracts from the quality of sound.

The only problem with this conclusion is that it is a broad and sweeping ideal which is not true.
The article provides examples of several groups which produce high quality cd recordings and tons more can be found across many genres (not all modern pop music is a crap recording).
The clear point here is that analog vs. digital is not the issue.
How a sound engineer produces the music, is.

>>The clear point here is that analog vs. digital is not the issue. How a sound engineer produces the music, is.

Agreed. The arrival of digital formats just made the engineer's job a bit harder and made the "dark side" of compression seem all the more attractive.

The article goes into the cause and effect that is driving compressed recording techniques with the most prominent development being the advent of mp3 files and the need for compression to conserve bandwidth. With so many people listening to compressed files its is only natural that producers went with loudness as a means to distinguish sound quality. How producers are recording music today follows from what has occurred in the way most people have their music digitally delivered. My kids are a great example. My oldest teenager actually takes the time to listen and can tell better quality sound and recordings. My other two teens only want to cram as many mp3 files as the can on their computer hard drives and ipods. They admit to not hearing much difference between bit files but prefer the louder files. Producers are smarter than we care to acknowledge and are just following market trends. Many pop artists today cater to it with that in-your-face indistinguishable wall of sound.

As parents we need to educate our kids. I just spent time with my son demonstrating the difference to him and, although he is not totally convinced yet, he did say that he is going to spend the time to understand this more. As for my daughter...well...I need to work on her a bit .