Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spotify: http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-loudness/
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Loudness (2007)
81–88 of 88 posts
Re: Loudness (2007)
#82It's amazing how audio professionals talk about this.. but take a look on EDM industry.. everyone mastering they records max as possible.
Then comes mr. Righteous "youtube" who as usual "punish" producers..
Dog eats dog out there, let me ask ?
Why we have so many audio standards for 2 channel audio ?
It's amazing jungle there.
Re: Loudness (2007)
#83I'm a self-described audioweenie who has a dedicated listening room with a decent setup. It does make me sad that much new music is mastered so loud because information is lost when you "brickwall master". For older music, a lot of audiophiles will seek out original non-remastered releases of music made before the "Loudness Wars" (early 90s and before) where, as I understand it, it was generally considered taboo to have a "digital over" in a mastering. However some "Loud" masterings still sound quite good. It depends a lot on the type of music and how the compression was applied. I mean, someone overdriving a tube guitar amp into soft clipping is essentially compressing the sound in the analogue domain - that's what makes guitars sound so awesome.
I wish to make one main observation about the vinyl resurgence. Vinyl (which I enjoy, mostly for nostalgia because I'm old enough to remember when it was the main format) is on the rise for the wrong reasons. One reason is that it has become trendy - and I have no problem with this, but it's a real thing. Another more frustrating reason is the perception that vinyl masters cannot have the same amount of compression as digital masters, hence the perception is that vinyl version of a modern master will less compressed. Many, many audiophiles believe this. However I can tell you that the vast majority of modern vinyl releases are the same exact mastering as the digital version. The digital tracks have already been "squashed" and that mastering is fed to the cutting head after applying the RIAA curve.
However, the "dynamic range database" (results from a piece of free software that applies an algorithm to digital music and assigns a number related to the ratio between peak and RMS energy in the music) will regularly indicate vinyl versions of music (recorded and digitized by someone on their home setup) with more dynamic range. The problem is that this "extra" dynamic range arises from the inability to reproduce square waves (those flat-topped 0 dBFS regions in the article) in the analogue domain... there are overshoots that "add" peak energy that didn't exist on the squashed digital master. So you have people who think squashed music that has gone through all of the processing that is required to make a vinyl record magically comes out on the other end with more dynamic range, sounding better, when it's added a bunch of additional distortion. It's part of what makes the audio hobby so much.... fun.
Re: Loudness (2007)
#84For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite. With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make…
Do you also want explosions in movies to sound just as loud as whispers? Quiet parts of songs are meant to sound quieter, there's even special notation in sheet music for this.
Re: Loudness (2007)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it still depends how it was mastered. You can have crap sounding vinyl and lossless, too.
yes you are right you can have very crappy sounding vinyl, your best bet is vinyl but you always do your research. Unfortunately SACD is dead and even on SACD the CD tracks can be a diferent mastering and very diferent from the SACD track.
39 essential albums for audiophiles
https://www.stuff.tv/features/39-essential-albums-audiophile...
Re: Loudness (2007)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's like saying you want low dynamic range on all of your photographs so you can see every detail. Which is actually a super common problem in amateur and even some pro photography today. "High dynamic range" (HDR) lets you capture an image with a greater dynamic range than the sensor itself can detect, usually by stacking a few photos taken with different settings. It preserves details that would otherwise be l…
> In other words, it's compression for images. No, it’s not. There are two parts to this. First is capturing a HDR image, either by stacking photos or using a sensor with a good dynamic range (and capturing in raw). This is a good thing as you are capturing more information. The compression you talk about is called tone-mapping and is used to make it possible to view HDR images on a non-HDR display. It can either be…
> The compression you talk about is called tone-mapping and is used to make it possible to view HDR images on a non-HDR display.
Yes, and it's exactly how audio compression works. You have a fixed dynamic range and in input signal that doesn't fit in that range. So you attenuate the values near the endpoints (shadows and highlights in the case of imagery) to fit within the range while still leaving values in the midrange with their original spread.
> Now, viewing HDR material on an actual HDR display, that is something different and can look absolutely stunning.
Yes, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Re: Loudness (2007)
#87I'm a self-described audioweenie who has a dedicated listening room with a decent setup. It does make me sad that much new music is mastered so loud because information is lost when you "brickwall master". For older music, a lot of audiophiles will seek out original non-remastered releases of music made before the "Loudness Wars" (early 90s and before) where, as I understand it, it was generally considered taboo to h…
[deleted]
Re: Loudness (2007)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In other words, it's compression for images. No, it’s not. There are two parts to this. First is capturing a HDR image, either by stacking photos or using a sensor with a good dynamic range (and capturing in raw). This is a good thing as you are capturing more information. The compression you talk about is called tone-mapping and is used to make it possible to view HDR images on a non-HDR display. It can either be…
> The compression you talk about is called tone-mapping and is used to make it possible to view HDR images on a non-HDR display. Yes, and it's exactly how audio compression works. You have a fixed dynamic range and in input signal that doesn't fit in that range. So you attenuate the values near the endpoints (shadows and highlights in the case of imagery) to fit within the range while still leaving values in the midr…
> Yes, and it's exactly how audio compression works. You have a fixed dynamic range and in input signal that doesn't fit in that range.
Not exactly. Audio compression is usually used to compress to a much smaller dynamic range than the output format or playback equipment can support. Some recordings compress to within just a few dB. With HDR pictures it's usually because the display is physically incapable of reproducing the image without compression.