Add your name to the 12,000 who’ve already signed up.
If you care about music but not about Metallica (which is probably an oxymoron anyway) you can sign up to the estimable Charles Dye’s organisation Turn Me Up! who are fighting for the right for artists to be able to release dynamic recordings.
Posted on: Monday, 29 Sep 2008
Categories: Discussing sound quality
Tags: compression, Discussing sound quality, high-quality music downloads, loudness wars, Society of Sound albums, Turn me up
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Glad to see that music dynamics is getting attention.
We lose the punch, emotion and heart of music if it is all played at “ad break” levels i.e. high dynamic range compression.
Sure, compression it has it’s place (in noisy environments like on a bus or train), but I want to control it, not have it enforced in the mix.
JohnZ
Posted: Monday, 6 October 2008Just as a follow on article, highly recommend are the IEEE Spectrum articles from August 2007 (http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429) and the follow up multimedia article (http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5499).
JohnZ
Posted: Friday, 10 October 2008It's great to see Turn Me Up get a mention.
I'm currently listening to the B&W Club Brett Anderson Wilderness CD. And in the last year I have not had to turn anything DOWN this much.
Before this I listened to some Beethoven String Quartets. Brett needed to be turned down 10db after the Beethoven. That is 10db of dynamics squashed out of Brett's recording!
Perhaps the B&W Music Club can head the message, and not compress the life out of what otherwise would be a great sound recording.
The Gwyneth Herbert Ten Lives recording is a huge improvement, and shows that things can be done right.
Cheers,
Posted: Tuesday, 21 October 2008Michael
Michael,
Possibly you have just been used to poorly mastered recordings and have gotten used to listening to your system at increased gain levels in an attempt to squeeze the most possible voltage from the original signal. Not sure if you turning down a hot signal equates to losing any dynamics but it seems as if you might be confused somewhat.
Let us know exactly what components you are using and we can assist you with what might be happening.
Regards
Posted: Thursday, 23 October 2008Black Audio
Hi Black Audio,
Almost all my classical CDs sound great. Many of my rock CDs sound great. Many of my SACDs and DVD-As sound incredible.
There is nothing wrong with my system (Cambridge Audio 840c CD player, Denon Amp, Australian Whatmough Signature 505 speakers.)
What all these good recordings have in common is that they are close to original dynamics.
Brett Anderson is a text-book case of excessive compression. Even played quietly it sounds bad.
For a simple comparison just grab any classical string quartet, piano and vocal, or similar sized group, and compare this with Brett.
Compare the volume setting for the recordings to sound as loud.
Compare the sound quality.
The only reason Brett does not sound as good is that in the final mixing or mastering of his album someone decided to compress the life out of the music. Before this was done this album would have sounded great.
Cheers,
Posted: Thursday, 23 October 2008Michael