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Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

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Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#221

Post by ToucanLoucan »

genewitch wrote: post #161
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the topic of HN users, is it our collective first day on earth? The disease of financialization at work. Money is all that matters to people, everything is converted into money. It's only value is what you could get from selling it, and/or what you spent to acquire it. Like those weird fuckers who buy $200k supercars so they can sit in a damn garage. (She said, having put 30k miles on a Corvette inside of 3 year…

10k mi/yr is a nice round "lease" number of miles. Are you sure you don't value the resale value of your car more than the joy value? someone, above: > believing you hunted down a 'deal' causes you to wildly change how you perceive value at an emotional level. I'm going to quote myself, paraphrased, because i forget the exact phrasing. "All else equal, which tastes better: ice cream you've paid for; or ice cream that…

> 10k mi/yr is a nice round "lease" number of miles. Are you sure you don't value the resale value of your car more than the joy value?

I mean it's helped by the fact that I can only realistically drive it like 7-8 months out of each year, and it's my fun car, not a commuter. As much as I'd love to drive for fun every day that's just not feasible, lol. That said it's resale value has never once entered my mind. I'm waiting until the loan is paid off at which point I'm planning several modifications to get more power out of it, and probably a lambo-door-hinge kit.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#222

Post by idiotsecant »

pier25 wrote: post #205
idiotsecant wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole thread is about subjective perception, other than yours

That's your interpretation. When someone claims that vinyl has less than half the DR of a CD then I think it's important to clarify how big of a difference it actually is. I would imagine HN would care about 16bits vs aprox 10bits of dynamic range.

Pedantry isn't interesting.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#223

Post by bbatha »

mancerayder wrote: post #209
functionmouse wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDs were most commonly played in cars on the loud highway

Says who? I remember having one of those cassette adapters that was a tape that you'd stick in the tape drive, and you'd attach to the headphone jack of a portable CD player. Maybe I was poor, but cars had cassettes most of my youth, while people had CD players at home.

Exactly cd players in cars didn’t become common until the 2000s when anti skip became common place.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#224

Post by esikich »

majkinetor wrote: post #102
esikich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why vinyl is inferior to tape and digital.

You mean beside all the noise it has?

A new dust free record shouldn't have any but yeah, that'll happen over time.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#225

Post by esikich »

shmageggy wrote: post #76
esikich wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastering doesn't change much. They're just going to roll off the low end a bit. A separate mix is an entirely different thing though.

Sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Many releases get mastered separately for digital and for vinyl, and one or both of them often does “change much”. Usually the brickwall limiting (among other things) on the digital master.

I absolutely know what I'm talking about and have released multiple records. I don't think you know what mastering is and how subtle it is. You're thinking of a separate mix which, yes, does sound quite different.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#226

Post by soulofmischief »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #219
soulofmischief wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess friendship means different things to different people. I've had friends spot me plenty more than $600 and I've spent thousands on friends in return. I can't imagine having such an indifferent attitude towards someone I care about.

"Spot you" implies you actually had a level of need for the money. Declining to give you $600 out of the blue because you'd rather have more money is not being indifferent.

It can imply that, but it can imply other things too and you shouldn't draw conclusions from one interpretation. You've never just paid for a friend's dinner or ticket?

Perhaps this is a cultural thing. I routinely buy gifts for friends, pay for their meals, travel and vice versa. Having more money is not some supreme objective that is more important than the people around you. Money is just a tool for enjoying life. I come from an impoverished and deprived background, spent years homeless since I was a teenager, and I still recognize that putting money before friends is a scarcity mindset.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#227

Post by hulitu »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #110

Vinyl literally has less than half the dynamic range of CD and has always been compressed before cutting. Hard limiting is a (stupid) choice, but some limiting has always been necessary. The "warm vinyl sound" is basically analog compression with added low-end distortion from the RIAA compensation and some wrinkles at the high end caused by stylus resonance.

> Vinyl literally has less than half the dynamic range of CD

In theory, yes. In practice it depends on the "loudness".

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#228

Post by mixmastamyk »

functionmouse wrote: post #187
mixmastamyk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? CDs are a poor fit in cars to the point that the ten disc changer in the trunk was a thing. To avoid the inevitable damage from swapping them.

alternatively, there was such a market desire for CDs in the car that the ten disc changer in the trunk was a thing.

They were never good in the car, merely tolerable without option. Early on they skipped, and they were always bigger than cassettes, more expensive, and significantly more fragile. The changer made them very expensive to boot.

Why most CD listening was done in the home, and cassettes held on for longer than expected.

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#229

Post by [deleted] »

vel0city wrote: post #193
mixmastamyk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? CDs are a poor fit in cars to the point that the ten disc changer in the trunk was a thing. To avoid the inevitable damage from swapping them.

Right? Why didn't we think to just use Android Auto or Carplay in the 90s/2000s. We were all such idiots back then.

[deleted]

Re: Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)

#230

Post by Demiurge »

asdff wrote: post #218
Demiurge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as over the ear monitoring. There good headphones like HD600. It has good mids and great highs, however the base rolls off towards 20hz. Many AirPods, include AirPod Pro 2 have better low end than what people use for monitoring, which is what, by the way? I play electric guitar, and use different types of audio equipment, and I really wouldn’t care if I use BD DT770 for tracking, despite the fa…

>There is no such thing as over the ear monitoring Uhh, what? You go into any recording studio its is probably going to have a set of mdrv6 or mdr7506. Most of what you listen to are probably mixed and mastered with these same cans and its been that way with these same cans for like 4 decades now.

You're wrong. Here is the ranking based on aggregate sales to studios:

1. Audio-Technica ATH-M50x 2. Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 3. Sony MDR-7506 4. Sennheiser HD 600 / 650

These are used in different situations. Most of the time headphones are used for tracking, which is listening to the live recording of one track. What most people call "monitoring", which is listening to the studio mix, is done on speakers, not headphones. Furthermore, items 1-3 represent quite distorted and inaccurate sound signatures, and people only buy these because it's their reference headphone, something they're used to. They're not actually the best sounding or accurate headphones, like say >1k Focals.

Most of the music is absolutely, definitely, is not mixed and mastered on headphones, let alone Sonys. Any decent mix requires speaker monitors for proper soundstaging. Mixes done without speakers sound quite wrong. This has been true since stereo recordings existed.

I'm sorry, but you're regurgitating cliches, and probably don't have deep knowledge of this subject.

You should get some Airpod Pros, you might like them.

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