KVR Audio

Sonic Assault · Post by **Sonic Assault** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:02 am

Those who have read the recent Photek interview in Computer Music magazine would have noticed his assertion that most home brewed mastering is crap and that ‘If your records been (professionally) mastered, then you’ve got a guy with really good ears and really good monitors fine-tuning what you’ve done’. Well to put a spanner in this little argument I will raise an unfortunate trend within the professional recording industry which has been met with derision within the Hi-Fi community over the past few years – namely, mastering to the lowest common denominator!

Anybody who’s ripped a recent CD and loaded it into a wave editor can’t have failed to notice the lack of dynamic range of many recent recordings, and the abysmal use of hard clipping that’s applied to achieve it. The pantheon of High Fidelity audio equipment is the reproduction of sound with as little distortion added to the original signal as possible: Vinyl suffers from clicks, low frequency rumble and the limitations imposed by the mechanics of stylus to groove tracking: Tape suffers from hiss and EQ bias problems. But CD, although not perfect, has increased the available dynamic range by quite a degree over previous formats – nearly 50db in the case of tape. So why is it the recording industry insists on cramming the dynamics of an entire track or album into the upper 10db of a possible 100db+ range – Simple, because it sounds better on cheap midi systems, i-pods, in car equipment or standard computer speakers: where, in the case of the i-pod or your car, the low level parts of a track get lost in the background noise of traffic, or else the they disappeared below the 10%+ of total harmonic distortion of your cheap midi system (with built in light show) or naff computer speakers. The problem here is that it has rendered many recent recordings all but un-listenable on a half way decent set of Hi-Fi separates as many modern recordings sound flat, distorted and totally gutless. Most recent power pop recordings have all the get-up-and-go of a wet fart in a wind tunnel. If this state of affairs was to happen in the Classical field there’d be hell to pay, but it seems that if you listen to any genre of popular music you must be quite willing to put up with music pumped through a quality reducing codec, therefore you won’t notice the difference. Unfortunately, many of us do notice the difference, and as any Hi-Fi enthusiast will tell you ‘the key to good sound quality is the source – crap recording techniques = crap sound’.

Obviously there are other reasons this state of affairs will be perpetuated – and as mentioned more and more people are using god awful computer speakers as their main listening source (try feeding your computer through a decent audio system and find out what it’s really supposed to sound like!... Not that any members of KvR would do anything less… I hope?), plus the rise of internet downloadable music and the use of the codec to make it a viable proposition. And ok, so the argument is we now do more listening on the move and on our computers, but it’s a lousy excuse for producing crap recordings.

For anyone who loves to critically listen to music, it’s beginning to look like
‘One giant step forwards for technology – One giant leap backwards for sound quality’.

Any comments?

Jez.

PS. Apologies – the Sonic Assault web site is down at the moment, hopefully back up in a day or two.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:16 am

crimes against sound quality?
did he mention my latest in the cafe

i do like music to have some dynamic range myself,a lot of dance and pop stuff i could not listen to at home because as you point out its pretty flat levelled at the maximum volume.great for clubs i guess but for me doesnt hold my nterest when listening

i think thats what your getting at? sorry if ive misread it

Sonic Assault · Post by **Sonic Assault** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:28 am

vurt wrote:i think thats what your getting at? sorry if ive misread it

No your spot on - As well as clubs I get the distinct feeling that radio might have a part to play as well. I've lost count the amount of times I've heard a track which sounded blinding on the kitchen radio, only to have it sound total shite when I've listened to it on CD through my main system.

robenestobenz · Post by **robenestobenz** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:43 am

I'm always reminded of PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me when this discussion comes up. At least the one advantage of the kind of production you mention is that you don't have to run backwards and forwards to attend to the hi-fi volume when you're playing music at night and don't want people to wake up. In the actual song Rid Of Me, the chorus is about 15db louder than the verse...

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:47 am

but isnt it a beautiful track

the dynamics shows the mood,dynamics in general are important to set mood,if yor watchin a film and everything was leveled out youd get bored quickly(i mean the audio was all level,not sure what level video would look like?) as in all voices at the same level and all the background noise too...

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:55 am

sorry..

Sonic Assault · Post by **Sonic Assault** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:16 am

robenestobenz wrote:I'm always reminded of PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me when this discussion comes up. At least the one advantage of the kind of production you mention is that you don't have to run backwards and forwards to attend to the hi-fi volume when you're playing music at night and don't want people to wake up. In the actual song Rid Of Me, the chorus is about 15db louder than the verse...

Yeah... I've got a track by Jade Warrior which has a gong recorded like that - blows you through the back wall when that kicks in

. Really gets the old pulse going though.

robenestobenz · Post by **robenestobenz** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:17 am

Yeah, I love the whole album [PJ Harvey].

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:21 am

vurt wrote:(i mean the audio was all level,not sure what level video would look like?)

It would be in the colour and contrast domains, no doubt.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:22 am

please forgive me...but does anyone else find it funny that Sonic Assault is complaining about crimes against sound quality...oh and that's not a dig at you Sonic...

Just poking fun at the irony of your name and topic title...

Sonic Assault · Post by **Sonic Assault** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:28 am

Hink wrote:please forgive me...but does anyone else find it funny that Sonic Assault is complaining about crimes against sound quality...oh and that's not a dig at you Sonic... Just poking fun at the irony of your name and topic title...

Yeah! no probs

- It also rhymns with 'Cronic Distort'

Steven West · Post by **Steven West** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:07 am

I agree with your sentiments Sonic. Though I do trust mastering studios more so than myself, I find them to be lacking in what I'm hoping to hear. So I'm usually thinking 'they're the proffesionals, and I guess my hopes were just ill thinking?' But now with WaveLab et al, and being able to try some of my ideas - I atleast like 'em, though I'd never call myself 'a proffesional masterer'.

But also to look at the Masterers side - I think they got to keep things down slightly for radio/tv airplay. There's either a written or unwritten rule that adverts get the 'primo db' so they literally leap out louder when the songs finish. And/or I think good Masterers figure on the type of music and where it will be played most often. Heavy Metal - I would predict is head bangers with Walkmans these days? Hip Hop - pimped out rides and wannabees with the dash speakers and woofer registering in the richter scale in some areas. Folk/Soft Rock - personal home stereos, CD players in offices, basic car stereos. And so on and so on.

But I think the realm of electronic/experimental/techno does get the bum steer at mastering houses, because they just don't know where the stuff will be played? Clubs, and what do DJ's do these days? Radio, and what volume do kids listen at? PC/Laptop speakers, up to 10 and nothing can be done to salvage quality. So I think most Masterers play safe with us. Keep it down, keep it thin, and let's wrap it up an hour before Wild T. And The Spirit arrive doing the awesome Jimi Hendrix tribute stuff.

That's my 2 cents anyways.

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:55 am

why would you want your track maximized into distortion just because it will be played in a club? How will that make it sound better?

doogs · Post by **doogs** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:16 am

Why not get a compressor installed at the club and let the rest of enjoy some dynamics. My DVD player and my MP3 player have built in compressors. It's pretty handy for watching movies late at night.

ross g · Post by **ross g** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:34 am

a good pressing of vinyl that's been analog through all the stages of recording and mastering sounds better than a cd...i don't know why, most likely because there have been no analog to digital conversions, no truncating, just pure vibration from one media to the next....i'm not an elitist, but i got ears....

rg

Crimes Against Sound Quality