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24/192 music downloads make no sense

people.xiph.org

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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#211
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played acoustic and electric instruments for over 30 years, and recorded numerous albums. Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable. Don't confuse the foolishness of the loudness wars for "compression is bad". That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.

"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t ha…

different compressions being talked about here.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#212

The single worst thing that harms audio quality is excessive compression. It's ruining everything, I'd say. Heck, I'm sure everyone who knows their worth would agree that compression harms audio quality. Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war edit: compression as in dynamic range compression, not data compression like mp3 in audio

This is a good point. Further recommended listening, "Neil Young on Why High-Resolution Music Matters" ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oTtylYR76o (55min, 2015JAN17)

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#213
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played acoustic and electric instruments for over 30 years, and recorded numerous albums. Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable. Don't confuse the foolishness of the loudness wars for "compression is bad". That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.

"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t ha…

You are confusing two different types of compression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t ha…

You are confusing two different types of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

thanks @Leo, point noted. So the DRC effects the audio amplitude? A lot of the sounds I listen too are recorded in analog tape based studios, the DRC are used in digital studios and post processing?

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#215
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t ha…

different compressions being talked about here.

thx @mborch

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#217
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played acoustic and electric instruments for over 30 years, and recorded numerous albums. Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable. Don't confuse the foolishness of the loudness wars for "compression is bad". That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.

I respect your opinion, but it's only your opinion, not a global truth. Compression is a style. There is far more to musicality and emotion than compression. The problem compression solves is that the environments where industrialized cultures now listen in are not dedicated listening areas, but alternately loud and quiet places, so compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud so there are no drop out…

> compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud

What you are referring to is only one particular use-case for which a "compressor" is used during music production: Most often people apply dedicated plugins to the "master" mix (the final result to be put onto CD or sold as a file). These plugins will apply what's called a "multiband compressor" which can reduce dynamics individually on different parts of the frequency range, and often do quite a lot more magic than what I claim to understand. -- Done excessively the result is the mentioned "always one volume" result of the loudness wars.

The compressor as a tool isn't limited to this use-case, though. You will, for example, put it on individual instruments' track to shape the relative strength of the percussive and decaying content of an instrument, a drum or a plucked guitar for example: Typical compressor plugins have a attack-time which shape how fast the reduction of gain follows an input signal. If you have this slower than the duration of the percussive sound, the instrument will sound more "agressive", instead of being leveled down, as the "attack" sound is increased, relative to the resonating portion. -- The end result sounds just like the exact opposite of the excessive master compression people complain about.

Then you will invariably have unintended peaks in a real-world recordings, and if you don't want to level down the whole recording to account for those peaks, or manually level them down for every instance, you'll also employ a compressor plugin on problematic tracks.

Then there's the possibility to filter the part of the spectrum that will trigger the compressor (it's "sidechain") or to let a compressor be triggered by one instrument (or group of instruments) and act on the signal of another instrument (or vocals, or group of tracks): That way you increase the percieved separation of different voices in your mix, again increasing the perceived dynamics of a song.

So, if you really want to find music with no compression at all, you'll likely only find classical recordings made only with one single X/Y microphone pair... :-)

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing two different types of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

thanks @Leo, point noted. So the DRC effects the audio amplitude? A lot of the sounds I listen too are recorded in analog tape based studios, the DRC are used in digital studios and post processing?

No, compressors have also been used in analog studios for a long time... See, for example, this device... http://www.audioblendmastering.com/fairchild-670/

Often digital plugins try to recreate the characteristics of such old tube monsters, because their sound is considered superior by some.

On the other hand, mastering plugins (including compressors and much more) nowadays are algorithmically that complicated that an analog version is not feasible.

EDIT: sorry, link is to an old limiter, not strictly a compressor, but one gets the idea

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#219
post #216

Try what age is your ears https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcbppCX6Rk Or generate a tone sweep in audacity. Generate->chirp http://www.audacityteam.org/ You loose the ability to hear high frequency sounds as you age. Personally I can hear up to about 14kHZ

Huh. Downloaded a tone generator, and found that while in the video I heard a series of clicks at 16khz and beyond, I could in fact hear 16khz if I raised and lowered the volume from nothing to loudest in the app. It sounded like a whine and much harder to hear than I expected, distinguished most easily by when it quickly went from present to not present and back. In fact, I kept going up the scale doing that, and raising the volume, and found that I was able to hear even 19 to low 20khz as a high pitched noise, very quiet even at -6db. So ... yeah, probably does me no good considering that the loudness of other pitches makes it near impossible for me to hear anything practical in those frequencies. Of course, then I go to listen to music and wow, I can hear all this detail. I think I trained my ears for it, or I'm losing it. ;-)

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#220
post #136

I can hear insects and buzzing electronic devices, and my partner thinks I'm crazy some times. Thinking I might have golden ears I tested * my range and I could hear up to 18kHz. * http://onlinetonegenerator.com/hearingtest.html

Honestly, depending on your age, that still could be “golden” — I’m 31, I’ve taken very good care of my hearing, I’m very acutely aware of audio subtleties, and my hearing range tops out around 16.5KHz. The so-called standard upper limit of 20KHz really only applies to young children, which is why CD audio being able to reproduce frequencies of 22.05KHz is already beyond ideal, and calls for 48! no, 96!, no, 192! (or…

Using a tone generator on my computer and a pair of headphones, I found that I couldn't easily hear past 15-ish myself, then I started turning up the volume, or playing with turning the volume all the way up, then all the way down. Using that technique, I was able to distinguish noise and high pitches up to 20.2khz or so. So I think from now on, if I hear some whine, I'm going to trust that it's there and not my imagination. Of course, it's also the definition of going deaf, I suppose, that I have to turn up the pitches to such a loud volume to hear them in the first place...
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