On 26-11-07 03:35, Bill Unruh wrote: >> [ the loudness war ]
>> Clipping nor analogue distortion by the way is the problem. As said, >> it's the range compression to _avoid_ the clipping that they have to >> do when they master at these insane averages -- when you then later >> play them back at sensible home-levels, you have flat, boring, >> unexciting, muddy crap. >> > > I agree that it is crap. That is why I do not buy or listen to it. But then > I am just an old fuddy duddy that does not get it anyway. I myself buy a rather large number of CDs, including second-hand ones from the 80s to now. It's real fun to watch the loudness war throughout those. Upon release of the newest offering from Dream Theater for example I looked at the average levels of their discography and it starts out at -15 dBFS for their debut (in itself not a well sounding production unfortunately) through -12 dBFS for their most universally acknowledged album (Images and Words) through -9 dBFS for everything upto and including the previous one (Octavarium) and now to an insane -6 dBFS for the newest, Systematic Chaos. They switched to a kiddie-metal label (a fine category in itself, don't get me wrong...) and it shows. Those -9 releases are already quite loud, but still sound good. Now though the music's been so horribly compressed that especially the entire kick of the drums is gone and this while Dream Theater specifically has one of the best drummers in rock! The mastering there has destroyed the music and as someone appreciative of their music this bugs the hell out of me. I even re-bought the album on vinyl as well to see what they had done to that one, but that was rather pointless. Same master it seems, just shrunk down completely to fit it on LP. Horrid! For anyone interested, most instructive description of the loudness war: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ The wikipedia page is also good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war > I wonder what you would get if you took each relaive max in teh music and > made it equal to the max amplitude, and each relative minimum and made it > the greatest minimum with square wave transitions between each max and min. > That would be a signal with 0 dB headroom, and 0dB dynamic range (ie, it > would be the max rms signal. > Would it be comprehensible at all? > > That seems to be what the music industry is heading toward. :-) Somewhat of a push-back is mounting but whether or not it will succeed I don't know. I'm still hoping for SACD but have been forced to give up holding my breath for it... Rene. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
