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Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

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Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#61

Post by TomWhitwell »

sparkzilla wrote: post #42

So many problems with this article. I recently started recording music after a long break and I love that everything is in the computer now. I had one of the very first Pro tools systems and it cost $12,000 (25MB hard drive). Gear that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now available with a click. I had always wanted to use great compressors and they are almost all available now as plug-ins. I also took…

Hi, Thanks for reading! I think we agree more than you think. What I wanted to do with the article was explain why music sounds like it does, explaining why the 'rules' are the way they are. I hate it when people imply producers are stupid or lazy or unskilled or uncreative because they're making pop - if it was easy to craft a radio hit that will cut through in 7 seconds in a listening session, we'd all be doing it and living in mansions. What I thought was interesting about the Maroon 5 stuff at the start wasn't that it was lazy, but that it was really hard, boring work that they didn't seem to enjoy very much. That wasn't how I perceived the process of making pop hits. Re: the Beatles today; of course they'd use the latest technology, but they might still have a hard time cutting through in a seven second listening session. Now, as then, there are other ways to be successful beyond pop radio. When I'm talking about Neil Young & Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash, I'm looking at the way studio recording has changed. It's certainly not better or worse, but it is interestingly different.

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#62

Post by TomWhitwell »

dankoss wrote: post #2

Nitpicks: "A great deal of quality is lost as those huge files are squished to the CD format, before being further squished into MP3s on your iPod." Not true, AAC files at high bitrates are proven to be indistinguishable from the original. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html "Every part of the signal chain—from earbuds to digital/audio converters—is improving and getting cheaper." Like other technologies,…

My favourite story about file formats and recording; Sufjan Stevens recorded his album Michigan on a little digital 8-track. He hadn't realised that there was a switch to set it to 32khz or 44.1khz. So he recorded the whole album at 32khz, then dumped it into Pro Tools two tracks at a time via the 1/8th inch jack and lined up the tracks by eye. It's not some grungy, lo-fi album, but full of complicated orchestrations and it still sounds great. (source: http://www.tapeop.com/interviews/70/sufjan-stevens/ - paywall)

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#63

Post by Jgrubb »

Kiro wrote: post #60
Jgrubb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hilarious, but it sounds like those tunes were pitch shifted into the same key. Nashville producers have more skill than that. Oh, and FL/GA line is frigging awful.

FL/GA line?

The worst band in that mashup - Florida/Georgia Line. (diatribe about my upbringing in Georgia redacted)

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#64

Post by Jgrubb »

baddox wrote: post #32
Jgrubb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hilarious, but it sounds like those tunes were pitch shifted into the same key. Nashville producers have more skill than that. Oh, and FL/GA line is frigging awful.

The pitch and tempos are shifted, but more nefariously, the pieces of the songs which don't fit the VI-I-V progression are removed and replaced by pieces of other songs which do fit. It's deliberate and meticulous cherry-picking. The only thing all the songs have in common is that they're in 4/4 and the verses and choruses all start on the VI chord. I should make a table showing the actual chord progressions from eac…

That would require you to listen to and chart out these 6 mediocre songs. I wouldn't ask you to do that. You've got a music background, I take it?

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#65

Post by mproy »

Hard to pick the best nugget to use as I email this to friends, but I like this: "The Strokes recorded Is This It on an old Apple Mac in Gordon Raphael’s basement studio. But it was mastered by Greg Calbi, who also did Born To Run and Graceland."

Great essay. Really sums up modern commercially recorded music.

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#66

Post by sideshowb »

SwellJoe wrote: post #50
sideshowb wrote: post #36

We are already starting to win the loudness war now thanks to iTunes SoundCheck. I'm not an iTunes user but as far as I understand it, it causes iTunes to adjust all tunes in a mix to the same perceptual loudness. If everyone adopted this or a similar technology (such as the open ReplayGain) there would be no incentive to master loud any more, for albums at least, because the player will only turn it down again meani…

That can't actually account for perceived loudness, which modern mastering processes do account for. The absolute amplitude of a song has always been fixed, by the technology delivering the audio. Radio, the primary medium for music discovery throughout most of our lives, has a very hard upper bound (set by both the technology and the FCC), thus a compressor/limiter is employed at the final stage before sending the a…

The main weapons in raising perceived loudness are brickwall limiters such as Waves L3 which raise RMS (root mean square) amplitude while keeping peak levels constant. I think soundcheck is based on RMS, please correct me if I'm wrong - if it were based on peak levels then as you say it would indeed be useless.

I don't know how much or whether the other technologies you mention really help to boost perceived loudness much beyond what is measured by RMS. Multiband compression raises RMS. Boosting high and low frequencies (aka "bare fat bass and mad amounts of high end" [1] - beyond what is wanted for a good sound) could be defeated by measuring RMS based on equal loudness/frequency curves. I've never really used the other things you mention but whatever they are they can be defeated by technology that measures their effect in the listener device. That's if they can cheat RMS anyway - I'm not sure they can but if you do have data on that I'd be interested to see it.

As you say, sound quality is still lost, but if normalization (over the album length where necessary, of course) becomes the defacto standard in playback technology then the incentive for making bad quality/loudness tradeoffs in album mastering is gone. The standard if adopted would restore the dynamic range by taking away the engineers' incentive to compromise it. The engineers would doubtless breathe a sigh of relief as most of them are more bothered about this than we are.

Analog radio would still be mastered stupidly loud. I would assume final stage compression in radio broadcast is keyed on peak not RMS level, again please correct me if I'm wrong. But it's a dying medium anyway.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nlzwDfxVSg

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#67

Post by sideshowb »

KeytarHero wrote: post #41
sideshowb wrote: post #36

We are already starting to win the loudness war now thanks to iTunes SoundCheck. I'm not an iTunes user but as far as I understand it, it causes iTunes to adjust all tunes in a mix to the same perceptual loudness. If everyone adopted this or a similar technology (such as the open ReplayGain) there would be no incentive to master loud any more, for albums at least, because the player will only turn it down again meani…

> Hopefully iTunes support for this tech is a turning point in the loudness war. Don't hold your breath - iTunes has had Sound Check since 2002.

Damn. But I can still hope.

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#68

Post by normloman »

sparkzilla wrote: post #42

So many problems with this article. I recently started recording music after a long break and I love that everything is in the computer now. I had one of the very first Pro tools systems and it cost $12,000 (25MB hard drive). Gear that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now available with a click. I had always wanted to use great compressors and they are almost all available now as plug-ins. I also took…

But auto tune isn't always used as a "special effect" ala "Love After Loss" robo-voice. Most autotune is subtle enhancement to vocal tracks that really don't need it. It will give any singer laser like accuracy, at the expense of removing all character from their voice. How does that not contribute to homogeneity?

Granted, every decade has had its recording trends. I agree that the article misunderstands the pop business.

Re: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

#70

Post by ohquu »

TomWhitwell wrote: post #62
dankoss wrote: post #2

Nitpicks: "A great deal of quality is lost as those huge files are squished to the CD format, before being further squished into MP3s on your iPod." Not true, AAC files at high bitrates are proven to be indistinguishable from the original. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html "Every part of the signal chain—from earbuds to digital/audio converters—is improving and getting cheaper." Like other technologies,…

My favourite story about file formats and recording; Sufjan Stevens recorded his album Michigan on a little digital 8-track. He hadn't realised that there was a switch to set it to 32khz or 44.1khz. So he recorded the whole album at 32khz, then dumped it into Pro Tools two tracks at a time via the 1/8th inch jack and lined up the tracks by eye. It's not some grungy, lo-fi album, but full of complicated orchestrations…

Just a reminder that Tape Op (the magazine cited above) is free; you just have to register. They even send you their print copy for free, which is wonderful.
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