I think I'm a victim of the loudness war....

[myriad1973]

Recently I picked up the 1999 remaster of Tears For Fears' - Songs From The Chair. It's a great album with a lot of great songs and great dynamics that bring back a lot of memories for me in the 80's.

I ripped the CD into MP3s 320kbps, and played them back on my computer. I noticed some audible distortion that made it fatiguing to listen to during most of the songs, so I adjusted the digital EQ, and the distortion didn't go away. So I took the CD and played it back on my home theater system, and I had the same results! Very fatiguing to my ears.... I was very disappointed. It turns out the mastering engineers must have done their own eq'ing and overlimiting of the mix and it clipped the signal. What a shame to ruin such a good album.

So I went and purchased a copy of a mastering from 1990. It sounds much better!

 

[3db]

Recently I picked up the 1999 remaster of Tears For Fears' - Songs From The Chair. It's a great album with a lot of great songs and great dynamics that bring back a lot of memories for me in the 80's.

I ripped the CD into MP3s 320kbps, and played them back on my computer. I noticed some audible distortion that made it fatiguing to listen to during most of the songs, so I adjusted the digital EQ, and the distortion didn't go away. So I took the CD and played it back on my home theater system, and I had the same results! Very fatiguing to my ears.... I was very disappointed. It turns out the mastering engineers must have done their own eq'ing and overlimiting of the mix and it clipped the signal. What a shame to ruin such a good album.

So I went and purchased a copy of a mastering from 1990. It sounds much better!

And thats the reason why generally, vinyl sounds better than today's CD..for that very exact reason. There are always excpetions. I picked up the latest Von Bondies album on vinyl about a year ago but it alos hsipped with a CD. The vinyl was far worse sounding than the CD becuase the recording levels were set much too high and teh vinly sounded just horrible. It was still present on the CD but not as noticeable because of teh CD's better ability to handle higher recording levels.

 

[myriad1973]

I guess I've been fortunate when I pick up CD's these days. The recordings sound really good. This is the first time I've had a problem with the master being too loud.

 

[highfigh]

And thats the reason why generally, vinyl sounds better than today's CD..for that very exact reason. There are always excpetions. I picked up the latest Von Bondies album on vinyl about a year ago but it alos hsipped with a CD. The vinyl was far worse sounding than the CD becuase the recording levels were set much too high and teh vinly sounded just horrible. It was still present on the CD but not as noticeable because of teh CD's better ability to handle higher recording levels.

Sounds like a case of them not taking the time (and considerable expense) of mastering for the album separately from the CD. The first CDs were originally mastered for vinyl, which is why they didn't all sound particularly good. Then, the first remastered CDs came out and everyone went bonkers. After the CD became ubiquitous, there was no need for people to learn how to master for vinyl. If the mixing and mastering engineers are young and never worked with vinyl, I wouldn't expect them to do a good mix for vinyl. Many tricks are used to get good results on vinyl and if they're not used, it will definitely sound like crap.

For that matter, which tracks went where on an album used to be changed on test pressings and that's not needed for CDs. There's no difference in sound when you compare the inner and outer tracks on a CD because the data is read using constant linear velocity (it starts at the inside at about 500 RPM and gradually slows to about 215 RPM at the outside) and vinyl is read with constant angular velocity. A song may sound great at the beginning of a side but terrible at the end, or vise-versa.

 

[myriad1973]

I went through my MP3's and I noticed that the more recent releases from this decade have a similar problem, but not to the degree of the TFF remaster. The worst offender for an original release is Rush's Vapor Trails. Rush is one of my favorite bands, and I hadn't noticed how loud the recording was until now. It's almost as distorted as TFF's remaster.

 

[yepimonfire]

i agree and disagree music today is overly compressed dynamicaly. i have some old tracks from Dio and Hammerfall (80's power metal bands) and they sound like they came right off vinyl, one thing i notice with vinyl is it lacks in deep, dynamic bass and really crisp highs (harmonics and airiness above 16khz), CD's can carry full range bass and super crisp highs, but many of them if you load the tracks into an audio editing program and look at the waveform, you can see that the entire thing just misses the clipping point by a millimeter, now not all of it is like this, but many mainstream songs are. this destroys dynamics and real feeling of the instruments ability to change in loudness. one annoying thing i have noticed from this is that when im listening to something involving alot of double bass drums, sure i get great dynamics when ONLY the drums are playing, once the guitars come in, the bass drums get drowned out in dynamics. here is a good example of well done dynamic range compression in music. none of the instruments are drowned out by one another and it all seems to flow smoothly.

here is what the waveform of a vinyl to digital transfer looks like.

and here is a modern day master from 2009

the difference is, there is absolutley no headroom in the signal, and the vinyl transfer lacks below 60hz. the lack of 60hz is not the cause of the extra headroom in the signal either because if you remove all frequencies below 60hz, you still have little headroom.

i think dynamic range compression is a good thing, when done correctly, problem is it is often not done correctly and ends up with having an overdriven signal not capable of good dynamics.

 

[3db]

Sounds like a case of them not taking the time (and considerable expense) of mastering for the album separately from the CD. The first CDs were originally mastered for vinyl, which is why they didn't all sound particularly good. Then, the first remastered CDs came out and everyone went bonkers. After the CD became ubiquitous, there was no need for people to learn how to master for vinyl. If the mixing and mastering engineers are young and never worked with vinyl, I wouldn't expect them to do a good mix for vinyl. Many tricks are used to get good results on vinyl and if they're not used, it will definitely sound like crap.

For that matter, which tracks went where on an album used to be changed on test pressings and that's not needed for CDs. There's no difference in sound when you compare the inner and outer tracks on a CD because the data is read using constant linear velocity (it starts at the inside at about 500 RPM and gradually slows to about 215 RPM at the outside) and vinyl is read with constant angular velocity. A song may sound great at the beginning of a side but terrible at the end, or vise-versa.

In this case, it was simply poor mastering of the vinyl. The sound from the vinyl was analogous to overdriving cassettes with too high a recording levels. Whats weird is that the songs that sounded bad werenn't good at the start and bad at the end. They sounded bad alll the way through and were at different locations of teh album, not just the songs located near the end of an side. The CD contained teh same distorted sound but it wasn't as strong. This is the first time I encountered somethigng like this. Even teh used albums I pick up sound much better than this Von Bondies album.

 

[3db]

i agree and disagree music today is overly compressed dynamicaly. i have some old tracks from Dio and Hammerfall (80's power metal bands) and they sound like they came right off vinyl, one thing i notice with vinyl is it lacks in deep, dynamic bass and really crisp highs (harmonics and airiness above 16khz), CD's can carry full range bass and super crisp highs, but many of them if you load the tracks into an audio editing program and look at the waveform, you can see that the entire thing just misses the clipping point by a millimeter, now not all of it is like this, but many mainstream songs are. this destroys dynamics and real feeling of the instruments ability to change in loudness. one annoying thing i have noticed from this is that when im listening to something involving alot of double bass drums, sure i get great dynamics when ONLY the drums are playing, once the guitars come in, the bass drums get drowned out in dynamics. here is a good example of well done dynamic range compression in music. none of the instruments are drowned out by one another and it all seems to flow smoothly.

here is what the waveform of a vinyl to digital transfer looks like.

and here is a modern day master from 2009

the difference is, there is absolutley no headroom in the signal, and the vinyl transfer lacks below 60hz. the lack of 60hz is not the cause of the extra headroom in the signal either because if you remove all frequencies below 60hz, you still have little headroom.

i think dynamic range compression is a good thing, when done correctly, problem is it is often not done correctly and ends up with having an overdriven signal not capable of good dynamics.

Vinyl is capable of holding the complete 20Hz to 20 KHz audio spectrum. My arguement is that its recording engineer dependant. You want dynamic bass and and good highs? Listen to any of the first 4 to 5 Led Zeppelin albums. Those recordings were of very high quality.

 

[yepimonfire]

well ive listened to a load worth of vinyl and never heard good highs and lows. if its dependent on the mastering, then alot of people must have not known what they were doing back then.

 

[bandphan]

well ive listened to a load worth of vinyl and never heard good highs and lows. if its dependent on the mastering, then a lot of people must have not known what they were doing back then.

Not sure what you were listening to cause there is and was a load out there Some of the best recording engineers ever were back in the day. Even the direct to disc recordings without mixing had wonderful dynamic range

 

[yepimonfire]

discs must be worn then, of course i wasnt around for the vinyl era.

 

[3db]

discs must be worn then, of course i wasnt around for the vinyl era.

Or the turntable was not set-up properly. I've many recordings in both formats and I can tell you that there are many cases where the vinyl version sounds many times better than the CD counterpart in terms of dynamics, solid bass and crystal clear highs.

 

[yepimonfire]

oh no! dont tell me this is going to turn into an analog vs digital audiophile beatdown hoedown disco ball!

 

[bandphan]

oh no! dont tell me this is going to turn into an analog vs digital audiophile beatdown hoedown disco ball!

if Joe Schmoe was still around it would. There are a lot of great digital recordings out there, just check out Chesky's catalog and Dawgs company

 

[skizzerflake]

......

the difference is, there is absolutley no headroom in the signal, and the vinyl transfer lacks below 60hz. the lack of 60hz is not the cause of the extra headroom in the signal either because if you remove all frequencies below 60hz, you still have little headroom.

i think dynamic range compression is a good thing, when done correctly, problem is it is often not done correctly and ends up with having an overdriven signal not capable of good dynamics.

I hear this all the time. I don't get the why of it, but it seems important to engineers to have the entire cd at about 3 DB below the brick-wall maximum. The result is that loud transients like drum beats cause other instruments to have temporary drop outs. In addition, the entire recording is muddy and lacking in sonic "air", sort of like a loud band in a small room.

I was recently reminded of this when I pulled out an old CD of Led Zeppelin IV. After I cranked up the loudness to compensate for the low level of the recording, I realized how wonderfully recorded this was compared to what I generally buy today...clarity and dynamic headroom and a generally clean spacious sound. You just can't get this sort of sound when you always have the level set at the proverbial "11".

 

[yepimonfire]

or in the case of the styles i listen to the guitars destroy the drum dynamics. best modern day recording ive heard that wasnt drowned out is either Lazarus A.D.s album or Obscura's Cosmogenesis, the latter is so well done you can clearly seperate the bass guitar from the other guitars. this is by far my favorite recording of all modern recordings.

 

[supervij]

Has anyone listened to the new remaster of Def Leppard's Hysteria? I've never owned it on CD or vinyl (though I have an old, battered cassette of it somewhere, though with nothing to play it on!) and I was thinking of picking it up. Knowing today's trend of "remastering" being to turn up the loudness, I'm hesitant to pick it up without hearing from someone who dislikes this new trend. Anyone heard it, and if so, what did you think?

cheers,
supervij

 

[3db]

I hear this all the time. I don't get the why of it, but it seems important to engineers to have the entire cd at about 3 DB below the brick-wall maximum. The result is that loud transients like drum beats cause other instruments to have temporary drop outs. In addition, the entire recording is muddy and lacking in sonic "air", sort of like a loud band in a small room.

I was recently reminded of this when I pulled out an old CD of Led Zeppelin IV. After I cranked up the loudness to compensate for the low level of the recording, I realized how wonderfully recorded this was compared to what I generally buy today...clarity and dynamic headroom and a generally clean spacious sound. You just can't get this sort of sound when you always have the level set at the proverbial "11".

Exactly. There is more dynamics in vinyl then there is on the CDs recorded today. Of course there are always exceptions and I note these on "What have you been listened to lately thread".

Given a remasterd Led Zeppelin CD or its vinyl counterpart, I'd go with the vinyl anyday. Its just better. Better bass, better highs and better dynamics making it sound more real. I always maintain thats it the recording engineer that makes or breaks the medium. This is not an arguement of which media is better.

 

[skizzerflake]

Exactly. There is more dynamics in vinyl then there is on the CDs recorded today. Of course there are always exceptions and I note these on "What have you been listened to lately thread".

Given a remasterd Led Zeppelin CD or its vinyl counterpart, I'd go with the vinyl anyday. Its just better. Better bass, better highs and better dynamics making it sound more real. I always maintain thats it the recording engineer that makes or breaks the medium. This is not an arguement of which media is better.

This especially true for an old recording where the engineer was working specifically for vinyl sound.