There's a nice tool over here: https://www.lts.a.se/ljudteknik/masvis/
It can analyse multiple music files or different releases and reveals a lot of info that would otherwise be difficult to extract.
Make sure to read the manuals. 😉
Hugo
It can analyse multiple music files or different releases and reveals a lot of info that would otherwise be difficult to extract.
Make sure to read the manuals. 😉
Hugo
Totally agree with threadstarter.
Remember way back, helping out one of my friends with a weekend audio show, where he represented AVM, Octave & Piega speakers.
He had heard some original CD´s of Peter Gabriel at my home, and was really into them. So much, that he had bought the same and
brought them to the show. It almost made people leave. The sound was awful. He was surpised, that was sounded sooooo good in
my living room sounded so awful at the show.
That was, when we discovered, that all his newly bought P.G. CD´s had "digitally remastered" written on them. 🤣 🤣
Remember way back, helping out one of my friends with a weekend audio show, where he represented AVM, Octave & Piega speakers.
He had heard some original CD´s of Peter Gabriel at my home, and was really into them. So much, that he had bought the same and
brought them to the show. It almost made people leave. The sound was awful. He was surpised, that was sounded sooooo good in
my living room sounded so awful at the show.
That was, when we discovered, that all his newly bought P.G. CD´s had "digitally remastered" written on them. 🤣 🤣
I think a lot of people don't realize that the phonograph format simply cannot take excessive clipping and higher average amplitudes in order to make the tracks sound louder--the needle jumps out of the groove.
One of the checks used in mastering phonograph record masters is to play them on a turntable to make sure the needle tracks all the way through. If not, another--less aggressive--iteration of the mastering is required.
Chris
Just look at all the earbud users walking around...that's the lion's share of the "why", I believe.
Record company A&E executives use a "one size fits all" mentality when it comes to their products--which is extremely unfortunate. Hi-fi quality immediately gets dispatched without a second thought.
It's so pervasive that even those mastering people working on hi-fi releases apparently do not presently have a "hi-fi switch" in their skill set--something that they've built over the past 30 years or so--and are even afraid to make their music tracks "that quiet".
A lot of reasons for the "why" in music production companies is about the perceived money to be made and organizational culture of the people involved--not the quality of the product.
Chris
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Notice anything that happened in the mid-1990s? All those guys doing that have been around for 30 years or more, and really have no other "mode of operation" in their skill set:
Chris
Chris
Ironically audio cassettes did not suffer the indignities of over compression and are generally preferable to me to their CD counterparts. Fully, much more bass and without boom and more detailed, much more dynamic, and the treble sounds like real treble as opposed to digital treble. Case in point Beatles White Album. No contest.
I’ve done this on several songs that were unlistenable. I didn’t know it was so pervasive! I agree with the assessment of The Who and Jean Luc Ponty. Cosmic Messenger is a religious experience when re-equalized.
The tutorials are missing, do you have links to these documents?
I’m aware there is a frequency dependant maximum amplitude that consumer styli can track. Dynamic mastering is beneficial to reduce the average amplitude and stylus velocity.
There is software available which runs several parameter checks prior to cutting, allowing the cutter to observe stylus velocity in the tracks, specify minimum groove wall thickness (spacing of lathe cutting) and groove lift (high-amplitude stereo pan at low frequencies can momentarily cause the groove to disappear). It reduces the number of trial cuts that have to be made.
With that in mind, I still think it’s absurd that masters of digital music are abused to the point that they sound worse.
Are you sure?
These are more like phonograph DR ratings. Not good...but perhaps not quite as bad as digital discs and downloads.
They're not missing--you simply have to log in to the forum to get them there.
Both the size and file extension limitations set in this forum are fairly difficult to work around.
I can post them to my personal Google Drive and let you access them there. If you PM a usable email address to me, I can access you to the PDFs and a few example FLACs.
Chris
Some parting words on the above subject:
1) The tutorials are just meant to get someone going using Audacity and are not meant to be an in-depth (book-type) tutorial on the subject.
2) in general, take the advice of a smooth and straight "plot Spectrum" view with a grain of salt, since many instrumentations (piano, voice and piano, orchestra, opera, etc.) are not straight lines. You'll figure it out by EQing and listening to the result.
3) If you want more explanations, or you disagree with the 6-year-old PDF documents, note that I, too, now disagree with some of the things said.
4) Feel free to ask questions.
Chris
1) The tutorials are just meant to get someone going using Audacity and are not meant to be an in-depth (book-type) tutorial on the subject.
2) in general, take the advice of a smooth and straight "plot Spectrum" view with a grain of salt, since many instrumentations (piano, voice and piano, orchestra, opera, etc.) are not straight lines. You'll figure it out by EQing and listening to the result.
3) If you want more explanations, or you disagree with the 6-year-old PDF documents, note that I, too, now disagree with some of the things said.
4) Feel free to ask questions.
Chris
It's also interesting to take a look at Voxengo's Curve EQ that sports a "Static & Match feature".
It's a professional tool that has incredible capabilities but the learning curve is a bit steeper and it is not free.
It works with Audacity IIRC.
https://www.voxengo.com/product/curveeq/video/
There is also a very nice and free FFT analyzer: https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/video/
Hugo
It's a professional tool that has incredible capabilities but the learning curve is a bit steeper and it is not free.
It works with Audacity IIRC.
https://www.voxengo.com/product/curveeq/video/
There is also a very nice and free FFT analyzer: https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/video/
Hugo
Audacity takes VST plugins, among others. I use a variety of these from time to time, but I find just the basics that come with the app and its extensions (e.g., clip fix, brickwall limiter, notch filter, and one very simple freeware plugin called Transient Monster) pretty much suffice for most of my CD demastering efforts. My objective is to get the best bang-for-time spent. I no longer do much with upward expanders, but I do have a couple of alternatives that are freeware (Voxengo being one). I use the DR Database to help me look for older CDs having higher crest factor ratings, and these CDs are usually the cheapest ones available on Discogs and Amazon Marketplace used. A little EQ to remove their pre-1991 mastering EQ to make them sound louder (i.e., attenuated bass) is all that is needed to produce greatly improved tracks of older recordings--pre-1991, etc.
foobar2000 also takes VST plugins that run in real time with the player--like Transient Monster, etc. I have used those when listening to music tracks that I don't intend to keep and that are difficult to listen to due to excessive compression used during their mastering.
Chris
foobar2000 also takes VST plugins that run in real time with the player--like Transient Monster, etc. I have used those when listening to music tracks that I don't intend to keep and that are difficult to listen to due to excessive compression used during their mastering.
Chris
The Loudness War? Don't get me started on the Loudness War. You know the world has taken a wrong turn somewhere when an "HD" 24/96 release, which could have a ridiculously wide dynamic range of up to 144dB, is actually worse than vinyl. Despite advances in technology, the best sound quality is still old CDs. Of course you can't get old CDs of new music 🙁
It would be helpful if ReplayGain (or something like it) became ubiquitous. This would remove the incentive to over-compress music because it would still be played back at the same perceived volume.
It would be helpful if ReplayGain (or something like it) became ubiquitous. This would remove the incentive to over-compress music because it would still be played back at the same perceived volume.