KVR Audio

c_huelsbeck · Post by **c_huelsbeck** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:03 am

ermi wrote:Here's a mainstream rap song: http://users.volja.net/neres/02-juelz_s ... rumble.mp3.

What do you think they used to make it so loud?

I wouldn't want to do something like that, it's just curiousity. I think that it's definitely too loud.

Yes, it's blatantly overdriven and shows digitally truncated waves if you look in an audio editor... and in my opinion it sounds shite! People who like this must have broken ears, or I'm just getting too old and "just don't get it"...

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:52 am

ermi wrote:Here's a mainstream rap song: http://users.volja.net/neres/02-juelz_s ... rumble.mp3.

What do you think they used to make it so loud?

Basically it hasn't much bass below 100hz, and the emphasis on the master is on the presence frequency areas (+3-6 or similar drastic settings). This creates artificial loudness, and allows heavier clipping/limiting but makes it very fatiquing to listen to. There's heavy fullband (vari-mu or similar) compression going on. It has been clipped in several stages of processing, hence the crunch.

Yeah it sounds like shit, and that technique is often called "sucking the life out of shit".

Funny thing, radio does many of the same things I just listed, with few bandwidth related tricks. So all that pretty much happens twice. Talk about a curse of modern music.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:06 am

I don't mind me some drive (Motown records have all kinds of different saturation on them), but I hate that full-song drive-for-loudness stuff.

Audioslave, on a website that was once cited fairly often but whose name I forget, were shown to have one of the most "fatiguing" albums, with their first disc. It didn't surprise me to find that out, though at the time I was just learning about all this "loudness maximizing". I wasn't surprised because despite liking almost every song, I couldn't sit through the whole album.

And I'm an album kind of guy. I love listening to whole albums rather than compliations or pressing the skip button.

Greg

defjamm · Post by **defjamm** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:41 am

to bring this back up:
i did some tests, to find the cleanest clipping-style limiter:

i generated a sine-wave(1000hz) and used the same amount of limiting/clipping with all the plug-ins(izotope ozone 3 in clipping mode, elephant in clip mode with and without oversampling, gclip, t-racks clipper and sonic timeworks mastering compressor).

then i looked at the spectrum to see what was added and how much(harmonics), the sonic timeworks was the cleanest, with the least amount of added harmonics.

if there is a flaw in this setup please correct me or better repeat
this

defjamm · Post by **defjamm** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:43 am

ermi wrote:Here's a mainstream rap song: http://users.volja.net/neres/02-juelz_s ... rumble.mp3.

What do you think they used to make it so loud?

I wouldn't want to do something like that, it's just curiousity. I think that it's definitely too loud.

dipset dipset

i like loud rap-records, but this is really over the top ihmo

who mastered that? could also have happened at mixing.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:55 am

defjamm wrote:if there is a flaw in this setup please correct me or better repeat
this

Looks to me about right the way you did it. Although this test isn't the whole truth, as "clean" is a psychoacoustic phenomenon also. Some limiter might *sound* cleaner in context, even if spectrum shows more harmonics compared to something else.

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:03 am

And, sonic timeworks AFAIK is NOT a true clipper. It's a softknee thingy, waveshaper? Dunno but it doesn't completely clip the audio. Whereas iZotope Ozone at least does completely clip it when set to intelligent mode and 0.0 speed.

Cheers!
bManic

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:09 am

Well he did say he didn't specifically test clippers, but clipping/limiting.

Which is exactly what timeworks does really well. (and we've known it for quite some time)

kilroy · Post by **kilroy** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:14 am

bmanic wrote:And, sonic timeworks AFAIK is NOT a true clipper. It's a softknee thingy, waveshaper? Dunno but it doesn't completely clip the audio.

Actually, as an option you can choose "hard knee" limiting for this processor, which I believe uses a clipping algorithm if I am not mistaken. It is much more transparent than the "soft knee" algo if you don't go wild with your gain reduction. When used with respect this limiter is one of the better ones for not sucking the smash out of the transients.

ermi · Post by **ermi** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:29 am

defjamm wrote:
ermi wrote:Here's a mainstream rap song: http://users.volja.net/neres/02-juelz_s ... rumble.mp3.

What do you think they used to make it so loud?

I wouldn't want to do something like that, it's just curiousity. I think that it's definitely too loud.

dipset dipset

i like loud rap-records, but this is really over the top ihmo

who mastered that? could also have happened at mixing.

Ay!
I don't know who did the mastering, there's a certain Mike T. labeled as the engineer. I'd really like to tell that person that it sucks, it's too loud. I feel sorry for the artist and the listeners, even tho that album is not really good, so no big damage anyway.

But there were some good mastered rap albums from the same label that came out last year, like "The B. coming". It's loud but not too loud.

My guess is that with this Juelz' album they targeted a less demanding audience.

Opinions; W1 Limiter and TLS Pocket Limiter