lovejoy wrote: > I tend to avoid the vast majority of stuff that carries the word > 'remastered' as it seems to be an excuse just to make everything LOUD > and completely sap the life and dynamics out of a recording - the only > exception to this I can think of has been the Nick Drake albums which > were lovingly restored from the master tapes with little tweaking. Last > years re-issue of Nirvana's Nevermind was a good case in point. The > original never had a problem so why remaster it anyway - Loudness wars, > that's why! It's crazy, and these remasters are so completely fatiguing > to listen to as there is never any let up in the volume pinning you > against the wall. The last Foo Fighters album was another bad example on > CD. It's actually a good reason for buying vinyl these days as the > mastering tends to be more sympathetic. The Foos album on vinyl is a > different beast altogether and can be enjoyed all the way through > without feeling like someone is hitting you over the head with a hammer. > It has been pretty well documented but I keep mentioning the Red Hot > Chilli Peppers output. Take the CD and vinyl of Stadium Arcadium. > Absolutely sublime on vinyl having received a sympathetic mastering from > Steve Hoffman, but the CD is right up against the ceiling all the way > through having been mastered by Vlado Meller, and if I see this guys > name on anything I now refuse to buy it. He did even worse with the > latest Chilli Peppers CD and it's not only up against the ceiling but > there's digital clipping in there too. It's horrible, and it completely > destroys the work that a band have done in creating an album. There was > a white paper done a little while back that concluded 'LOUDNESS does NOT > equal more sales', and for me that's most definitely true, so you wonder > why the message hasn't sunk in with so many people yet. Thankfully it's > not everyone. There's the odd album appearing here and there which bears > the words 'This recording may be a bit quieter than some of your other > new CDs, to enjoy it at it's best, just turn the volume up and enjoy the > full dynamic range this recording has to offer'. > > Amen to that.
You wonder why the same morons who continue to try to sell 40 year old recordings on CD for twice the price of a 2 year old movie on DVD and yet refuse to make these recordings available as low priced lossless downloads (for fear that this will lead to pirated copies becoming available even though pirated copies of lossless digital rips of these CDs are already available) would understand that the Loudness War is actually hurting business???? I believe that the best word most present day record company executives would be "clueless". trott3r wrote: > I didn't realise different formats had different people mastering them. > I thought the record companies would do things on the cheap and shoe > horn > the same master onto vinyl but reduce the dynamic range so the stylus > doesn't > jump out of the groove. You are confusing dynamic range with overall loudness. The problem with most modern remasters of popular music recordings (I say "popular music" since jazz and classical music have so far mostly been spared from adverse affects of the Loudness War) is that there is way too little dynamic range and too much overall loudness. Dynamic range is the difference between the loudest and quietest passages on a recording. A recording with little dynamic range means that all music is at almost the same loudness and becomes the musical equivalent of TYPING EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS! The use of dynamic range compression (which is what the Loudness War is all about) has been going on for many, many years in television and radio broadcasting for various different reasons (quiet passages can sound like silence while listening to a car radio or a loud advertisement will stand out from the quieter levels of the program audio) but it only relatively recently that this type of dynamic range compression has been applied to the actual recordings themselves. Back to your statement all the record companies would need to do to use the overly compressed CD master for a vinyl issue is lower the overall volume so that "the stylus doesn't jump out of the groove". However the record would then sound as horrible as the CD and the dynamic range would still be almost nonexistent, i.e. there would be little volume difference between the loud and quiet passages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95872 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
