CD Compression Depression Music Industry Idiocracy

[admin]

Imagine, if you can, going to Paris to see the Mona Lisa. You wait in line for hours only to come to what appears to be a postcard of the Mona Lisa placed where the original had been. You ask the museum staff what happened to the original and you are told that this representation is what is required for the commercial success of the painting. Totally disgusted, you walk out with a severe case of what I call Compression Depression. The music industry as of late seems to be no different as they pump up the output levels and lay on the compression to play into the LOUDER is better mentality.

Discuss "CD Compression Depression Music Industry Idiocracy " here. Read the article.

 

[jliedeka]

From what I've read, it's definitely worse now but it's not a new thing. A lot of 45s and LPs were mixed to sound good over FM radio. I think compression may not be a bad thing in a car stereo but not for home use. I wish they would just build the compression circuitry into car stereos and boom boxes and mix the CDs normally.

While dynamic range is great on a home stereo, it's not appropriate everywhere. If I leave my volume set to some normal value on the Monsoon in my car, I miss the first two minutes or so of Bolero because I can't hear it. And I'm not talking about highway driving where the tires are generating more noise.

I've heard that part of the problem is A&R guys don't know how to work their volume controls and reject anything too loud or too quiet for whatever setting they use. That's just one more reason why record labels need to die a quick but hopefully painful death.

Jim

 

[MDS]

A compressor or limiter is a tool and is not bad in and of itself. It is the overzealous use of such tools that destroys things.

Having the waveform peak at 0 dB is also not a bad thing. It is when there are many such peaks in a row or that the reason for many 0 dB peaks is that the waveform was clipped. Sound Forge will light the clip indicators if there are 4 0 dB samples (either positive or negative) in a row. 4/44,100 of a second is inaudible - but if the entire waveform is filled with such peaks it can become audible.

The Waveform Dan posted is obviously clipped and not in the sense that there are N consecutive max value samples. It is obvious that the tops of the waveform are squared off. Now if that happened due to a too high recording level or overzealous use of the compressor or limiter is irrelevent - it's just plain poor practice.

I have many 'highly compressed' waveforms (in the sense that the average level is extremely high, like -9 dB) that do not clip and do not have squared off tops. They don't sound all that bad but the dynamic range is minimal. When you play the track and the peak meters never descend below -6 dB, something is definitely missing.

 

[WmAx]

When you play the track and the peak meters never descend below -6 dB, something is definitely missing.

I must sadly report that it appears as if compression may be on the verge of increasing yet again. Think it not possible? I may have bad news.

I purchased a copy of Britney Spears brand new album titled Blackout after hearing some live streams of it on a radio station's website. It sounded unusually compressed, even for modern pop music. There for I picked up a copy of the CD to see if this was on the actual CD(maybe the stream was a special dynamically compressed processed version for broadcast). Well, alarmingly, it is the CD. If you watch the level meters during play, it is rare that they go under -3 or -4. Up to this point, modern music seemed to stay in the -5 to -6 level meter range. Windowed statistical analysis of the tracks returned alarming results: for most tracks, average RMS power below 0dBFs is -8dBFs to -9dBFs. This is the most aggressive compression I have personally observed. Until this point, within the last year or two, -10dBFs to -12dBFs has been typical. The Britney Spears CD, subjectively, makes me feel ill and it causes fatigue. I formed the subjective listening impression of this on my extremely linear, low resonance near-field monitor speaker system ( a more precision/accurate monitor system than is used in most studios ) which is in a highly acoustically treated environment.

While this is an isolated example. I think it is just a matter of time before future releases take action to decrease sound quality yet again in order to match this new 'standard'.

-Chris

 

[MDS]

Britney Spears at -9 dB average level? Hardly seems fitting yet I've seen it time and time again. The Barenaked Ladies Greatest Hits disc doesn't have one song with an average level higher than -9 dB.

I can see Iron Maiden at such a high level but mainstream pop music?

In the past I posted pictures of waveforms to illustrate the trend. Older music has a huge dynamic range - even if it has multiple peaks at 0 dB. The trend is disturbing, no doubt.

 

[WmAx]

I can see Iron Maiden at such a high level but mainstream pop music?

Actually, the last Iron Maiden album has the most dynamic range of any modern rock/metal popular band release of which I am aware, which is not saying much. It has an average RMS power level of -13dBFs to -14dBFs on many tracks and I don't remember seeing any track with constant clipped off waveforms as is typical in most modern releases.

-Chris

 

[Dan Banquer]

Compression

Just a quick follow up here: I emailed the link for this article to Heads-Up records who produced/released the Joe Zawinul CD Brown St. The response from Heads-Up was "Thanks, nice article."
I suppose it would be too much to ask for them to take 5 minustes and read it, nevermind understand it.
d.b.

 

[Joe Schmoe]

Blame Oasis (or rather their engineer.)
I read an article about them in Q. To make their album Definitely Maybe "catchier", it was mixed "with the meter always in the red". This made it "the loudest thing on every jukebox", and led to it being a hit. Mixing engineers have been following this practice ever since.
Most of the time, compression is not obvious enough to bother me, or even to be noticeable at all (though this is partly because I don't listen to much mainstream pop/rock anymore.) There are exceptions, though. I cannot listen to the most recent CDs by The Editors or Arctic Monkeys, for example.

 

[Audioholics]

The Britney Spears CD, subjectively, makes me feel ill and it causes fatigue.

And that's BEFORE you even press 'Play'

 

[pzaur]

All this boils down to is education. People aren't trained for what to listen for. We're trained as to what to listen to, by marketing.

Quality has gone down the sewers. Everything is disposable and nothing is really meant to last a lifetime. Not even the music being force-fed to the masses.

To use jliedeka's example of Bolero, it was never meant to be listened to with any type of background noise. Adjusting for car driving would ruin the CD, not that this was suggested, it wasn't.

All stereos have volume knobs that need to be used. To reiterate what has been said before, the gear available now is so much more powerful than it has ever been. Speakers are clearer. Receivers are more powerful. Amps are abundant for every situation. Why accept a bad source?

All of the compression issues are only going to get worse until everyone accepts it as normal and just wonders why a live performance record never sounds as good as the actual live performance.

The world is raising the first iPod generation that is growing up with compressed music. They don't know any different. Most will never know and then they end up as record execs...

Has anyone else noticed artifacting in normal, everyday FM radio music? Listen to the cymbals/percussion. It's the first place the problems arise in sound with compression (according to my ears).

Oh the pain, anyone else find issue with the audio for the HD Radio website?
It's what radio is gonna sound like on every channel, eventually. Absolute crap. Crystal clear, tinny, compressed. I think I may just take up harmonica.

-pat

 

[avaserfi]

All this boils down to is education. People aren't trained for what to listen for. We're trained as to what to listen to, by marketing.

Quality has gone down the sewers. Everything is disposable and nothing is really meant to last a lifetime. Not even the music being force-fed to the masses.

To use jliedeka's example of Bolero, it was never meant to be listened to with any type of background noise. Adjusting for car driving would ruin the CD, not that this was suggested, it wasn't.

All stereos have volume knobs that need to be used. To reiterate what has been said before, the gear available now is so much more powerful than it has ever been. Speakers are clearer. Receivers are more powerful. Amps are abundant for every situation. Why accept a bad source?

All of the compression issues are only going to get worse until everyone accepts it as normal and just wonders why a live performance record never sounds as good as the actual live performance.

The world is raising the first iPod generation that is growing up with compressed music. They don't know any different. Most will never know and then they end up as record execs...

Has anyone else noticed artifacting in normal, everyday FM radio music? Listen to the cymbals/percussion. It's the first place the problems arise in sound with compression (according to my ears).

Oh the pain, anyone else find issue with the audio for the HD Radio website?
It's what radio is gonna sound like on every channel, eventually. Absolute crap. Crystal clear, tinny, compressed. I think I may just take up harmonica.

-pat

While I do agree with you in part, Pat, as the iPod generation really has grown up with crap music, quality wise. I am currently doing a study on preference between dynamic compression vs uncompressed dynamics. Using perceptually level matched samples of the same song. So far the findings have been pretty refreshing as everyone - no matter the generation - has preferred the uncompressed sample in a single blinded test on my reference headphones. While I do not have enough subjects to make any definitive analysis yet I will be sure to post more in depth findings at the end of the pilot study (this semester) and I have actually received the go ahead from a professor so it will be my independent study next semester allowing more time to be spent on the subject.

 

[gene]

I purchased a copy of Britney Spears brand new album titled Blackout after hearing some live streams of it on a radio station's website.

The fact that one of our readers bought a Britney Spears album makes me feel ill

 

[Dan Banquer]

The fact that one of our readers bought a Britney Spears album makes me feel ill

I think it speaks volumes that the record companies put Wynton Marsalis and Joe Zawinul in the same or similar category (let's compress the living crap out of this for airplay) as Brittany Spears.
Do you think record company executives know the difference?
d.b.

 

[Audioholics]

What I've never understood is this: How hard is it to make a compressed version for Radio Stations? Is it all that hard? I don't think so... Does it costs all sorts of money to press a special "for radio play" version to send out? No...

 

[Dan Banquer]

What I've never understood is this: How hard is it to make a compressed version for Radio Stations? Is it all that hard? I don't think so... Does it costs all sorts of money to press a special "for radio play" version to send out? No...

Actually they don't have to do anything at all from what recording engineers tell me: the radio stations will do it on their own. I note the classical station here in Boston has no trouble adding lots of compression, and classical typically has the least amount of "built in compression" when released on CD.
d.b.

 

[gene]

What I've never understood is this: How hard is it to make a compressed version for Radio Stations? Is it all that hard? I don't think so... Does it costs all sorts of money to press a special "for radio play" version to send out? No...

Also realize in many cases for long songs, there are special cut versions for Radio play. So why not compress the heck out of those and call it a day?

To play Devils advocate for a moment, even if the record industry did produce less compressed music, the majority of people, even in their homes, are listening on cubed speakers and clock radios. So would they even notice a difference ?

 

[annunaki]

I know the feeling Wmax is speaking about with the Britney Spears album. My daughter listens to Hannah Montana. Occasionally when she forgets her disc player and headphones I will play it in the system in my car. While the CD is on I can hear loads of compression/clipping. I find that I get very easily frustrated/annoyed by traffic and, in general, do not feel like myself. It is more difficult to concentrate. As soon as the music is off, after 10-15 minutes I feel fine. I know it is not just the music either. She also listens to Carrie Underwood and that is played sometimes. I do not get the same feeling or hear the harshness of the recording as it is done much better even though I dislike both types of "music".

I usually find myself having to play a fairly dynamic record afterwords like Dire Straits or something. It helps me "get back to normal" much faster.

 

[Dan Banquer]

"While I do agree with you in part, Pat, as the iPod generation really has grown up with crap music, quality wise. I am currently doing a study on preference between dynamic compression vs uncompressed dynamics. Using perceptually level matched samples of the same song. So far the findings have been pretty refreshing as everyone - no matter the generation - has preferred the uncompressed sample in a single blinded test on my reference headphones. While I do not have enough subjects to make any definitive analysis yet I will be sure to post more in depth findings at the end of the pilot study (this semester) and I have actually received the go ahead from a professor so it will be my independent study next semester allowing more time to be spent on the subject."

As avaserfi points out above, and what appears to be common knowledge, decent dynamic range such as 20 to 30 db appears to be preferred than 6 db or less.
The hyper compression we are hearing today has only been "doable" due to digital recording, as they could not do this for tape & vinyl or so I have been told.
I think the record companies are convincing themselves into lower sales with the present state of affairs.
d.b.

 

[pzaur]

I think the larger problem is that the abundance of low-compressed or uncompressed music is probably dropping. If you never know what it's supposed to sound like, why would you want anything different?

avaserfi - very cool to hear about your project. The findings are encouraging. My only question will be whether they will demand the better recordings or simply accept it as is...

-pat

 

[3db]

From what I've read, it's definitely worse now but it's not a new thing. A lot of 45s and LPs were mixed to sound good over FM radio. I think compression may not be a bad thing in a car stereo but not for home use. I wish they would just build the compression circuitry into car stereos and boom boxes and mix the CDs normally.

While dynamic range is great on a home stereo, it's not appropriate everywhere. If I leave my volume set to some normal value on the Monsoon in my car, I miss the first two minutes or so of Bolero because I can't hear it. And I'm not talking about highway driving where the tires are generating more noise.

I've heard that part of the problem is A&R guys don't know how to work their volume controls and reject anything too loud or too quiet for whatever setting they use. That's just one more reason why record labels need to die a quick but hopefully painful death.

Jim

Curious. What would you like to see replace the record labels?