The Loudness War (aka why music cd's sound like crap these days)

[KimTjik]

I know this isn't good timing in view of what's going on right now, but the Chinese are making some really good High End tube amplifiers, and Russia still makes some of the best tubes. Now I'm not just talking, but since my farther is in the business we have access to test and compare.

 

Fortunately for me the poor CD-quality seems to be genre related. Still my CD collection is partly undergoing ripping for corrections of errors and burning to black CD:s. Strange how it all changed: first the industry convinced the masses about how good the CD media is; we swallowed it; now vinyl has become a privilege for rich guys! How stupid can it be: now I'm ripping my own CD:s, because I was ripped off like nearly everyone else. If that wouldn't be enough we then have HDCD and SACD which potentially can give a richer sound, but if you didn't by the right player you can't use SACD and maybe listen to HDCD but without its extra feature.

 

Some of my early CD:s already have to be ripped and re-burned because the media itself is growing old and loosing quality. Great 15 years and there's a risk of it being unplayable... I don't think you've got that problem with you Blues collection in vinyl Blooz1!

 

Nothing wrong with the CD in general, though being a quite boring format, if the industry wouldn't have been so fixated on how swell it was that we now have a media that costs like nothing but can be sold for a fortune! So here we are having poorly pressed CD:s, badly made recordings, spiced with some copy protection junk, and... I'm tired.

 

The good news: some still make great music!

[red930]

Decreasing the quality of CD's could also be an attempt to push SACD and DVD audio on people as well. There's a pretty good selection out there, though I'm not certain why anybody would want to buy crappy music well recorded...

 

To each your own I suppose.

[Angry_Games]

come on though...this is the same RIAA that promised us $9.99 cd's 15+ years ago when they were replacing cassettes.

 

this is the same RIAA that uses draconian methods to keep not just customers but their own artists in line and under thumb so they can control prices and distribution. (lets just use the words...price-fixing as it takes ALL of the record companies to set those prices so high...if a single one dropped the prices, the rest would have no choice but to follow for the most part).

 

Now this same draconian RIAA is trying to charge internet radio stations insane fees for no other reason than....well who knows what reason honestly. It's the RIAA after all. They make as much sense as the MPAA who had anal . relations with Microsoft to make sure DRM was so infused into Vista that legit customers wouldn't be able to play their content while music and movie pirates just bypass all that DRM nonsense anyway with hacks and cracks.

 

So it shouldn't be any surprise that they are moronic to a degree that is usually reserved for politicians.

[Yukon Trooper]

There are exceptions though, System of a Down won an award for a CD a few years ago, Maynard James Keenan's projects also usually have pretty good recordings.

I hear that. Both quality bands and Tool is actually my favorite. Their music is extremely dynamic and complex, therefore it only makes sense to have a high quality recording with their material. Very dedicated artists who actually compose all of their material from top to bottom. One would only want to have the highest production quality available for their true art.

 

The problem with popular music of any genre is that its all about the $ unfortunately and therefore little attention is paid to the actual music. It's all about putting it on TV and radio so throngs of people, mostly teenagers, think its the shiz to listen to and buy. These "artists" who often have their material written for them flee from the music scene altogether after they have made their quick buck. That's why you see so many new artists come and go in 1-3 years. Sad really. But a big up to all of us who sift through the BS and take the time to find the quality music that is out there.

[schoolslave]

The music I listen to (underground blackmetal) actually has really crappy quality but its part of the genre and adds to the "evil" feel surrounding the music.

[red930]

The music I listen to (underground blackmetal) actually has really crappy quality but its part of the genre and adds to the "evil" feel surrounding the music.

 

That's actually a pretty good point. Thrash bands would cover up lower-quality sounds pretty well.

 

Also I suppose railing on genres that have a more limited fanbase isn't really fair. The bigger record labels are more hesitant to sign with them so they're probably hard pressed to even have a chance of getting high quality recordings out there.

[ReelFiles]

I got some old records, and I don't mean the flexible vinyl, I mean the brittle hard ones. I got some BB, Sinatra, Elvis etc, but no record player to play them on. Then again, I'd probably ruin them if I did use them. I'd rather just save them and sell them when they are worth more. I do agree though it's hard to replicate the nice warm sound of vinyl and tube amplifiers.

[Angry_Games]

ya today I dug out my ADA MP-1 guitar preamp rackmount unit which is a modified 12AX7 tube preamp (I bought it from a guy at a forum that is just like DIY-Street, crazy about overclocking (overdriving) and modding, except instead of pc's, they do it to old ADA MP-1 tube preamps!). It's locked into a portable rackmount case with a Sonic Maximizer BBE 462 that I paid $35 for on eBay.

 

I've been using a Boss GT-8 pedal unit ($#@$# thing only cost $500 and can emulate almost every single amp, preamp, microphone, speaker, speaker cabinet, etc ever made) as my main gig for my guitar.

 

Keep in mind the ADA MP-1 hasn't been in production since maybe 1992, and my unit was mfg'd in 1987. This Boss GT-8 was mfg'd in 2005, and it's all digital/solid state.

 

I can really dial just about any sound and tone out of my GT-8, thanks to digital microchips...but when I plugged in my MP-1 (and let it warm up for 30 minutes before even playing it....good old valve tubes need about 10-30 minutes to fully warm up and give you the richest tones) and ran it through the BBE 462 (the BBE basically takes the loudest tones and cuts them down, while taking the softest tones and bringing them up in volume so you get a MUCH more...I can't explain it, but there's such a killer difference between regular guitar amp and one plugged into a Sonic Maximizer that does this).

 

I was blown away by the tone of the thing (I keep forgetting because it's a 19x1" rackmount that it has a couple of the 12AX7 tubes in it)....I don't remember my Jackson sounding like that on my GT-8. The GT-8 still wins in the end because of it's versatility and amp/speaker/cabinet emulations (especially using digital outputs into a mixing board/recorder). But in the tone department, no amount of fiddling with teh zillions of tones and effects of the GT-8 can match standard 12AX7 tubes being overdriven (and while the clean tones of the tubes can get a little crunchy at high volumes, unlike solid state cleans that are crisp and undistorted even up to...11 haha, the "fat" sound/tone of the valves in the preamp are just...I dunno...there's something about them...sorta like when you look outside and it's sunny as hell but when you walk out you feel the cold of the 38F winter day vs looking outside and seeing it sunny as hell then walking out into a 72F spring day...but in an aureal sense)

 

shhhh travis

 

go away now

[kitfit1]

I must admit i'm in full agreement with comments in the links AG provided. As it stands at the moment, this stupidity is'nt going to end any time soon unless the people running the industry actually learn something about the nuts and bolts that make it up. As was said in the links though, it has been going on since the 1950's at least. Personally i'm as guilty as the next engineer of doing it as well, for the simple reason that i have to make a living. That's why over the last 10 years or so i've been doing more and more live work rather than a nice comfy studio. Also, more and more people are going to live gigs now than 10 or 20 years ago. I'm hoping the reason for that is the lack of care in record production by the labels in general, and not just the "loudness" stupidity. As posted by others, if the labels put out anything worth listening to and parting with your hard earned for, then people would buy it.

[Thasp]

i never thought I'd say this, but I truly miss the vinyl...(for the same reason I keep going back to tube amplifiers over solid-state...there's no comparison between analog and digital for warmth and depth)

 

I disagree. This is my opinion and not fact, but analog, kicks butt. Vinyl, xxxx no.

 

Master tapes or 24/192 digital recordings transferred to CD properly vs mastered for vinyl.. the CD almost always wins.

 

I think what most people compare is the sound of the time, not the sound of vinyl as a technology. In the 80s people knew how to mix and master music. CDs are in the era of the anyone-can-be-a-recording-engineer-if-they-know-protools-or-logic production, so a lot will sound like crap. CDs are also done in the era of hot mastering, for which NO ONE but the record companies are to blame. but even Bruce Swedien prefers proper digital to crappy vinyl... vinyl just sucks for so many reasons. You have to compromise a lot of the music to fit it on the medium, and forget about listening to something like Shostakovich's first symphony or godowsky's piano on vinyl without the piano either a) being ridiculously compressed or B) covered in noise and bull crap. Each time you listen even with a good turntable, you lose more highs until you have a POS unlistenable record that sounds like a telephone.

 

Tape is not realistic to the sound that comes in, but it does add distortions that a tube amp, or plugin, can't yet simulate. Analog tape is nice. Especially for drums... since you get natural tape compression, and I've yet to see someone record drums without recording ridiculously low where it didn't at least _once_ clip. But it's not honest.

 

Look at the people who defended recording analog vs people who recorded digitally early on. Roger Nichols didn't need tape to 'tint' his sound - he was a good enough engineer to get good sound without the crutch of analog distortion. I think it's all about the person doing the recording, mixing, and mastering, not in the medium.

 

Lastly, this may surprise you. While this kind of mastering is _hell_ for a lot of music, for the kind that it's done on, it works. It sounds better than it does before it's overcompressed. I'm no Roger Nichols, but I've gotten to work at a few real studios and I've been able to see what a lot of music sounds like before that happens.. it sounds slapped together, everything is scattered, and totally unprofessional. At least then it sounds professional, albeit like fatiguing ..

 

Case in point.. if some garbage like Ashlee Simpson - La La, for even _one_second_ loses your attention, you'd throw it out the window.

 

Also, compression is a quick way to pull a mix together, so to speak. This is the age of studios where you can record a 75% professional sounding track for $40/hr.. it's competitive. People want to record as much as possible as quick as possible. They don't even want you mixing as they go along, they expect it to just sound good off the bat. This is because since it's so cheap to record, a lot of people who weren't going through a record label can record. Unlike people who receive $300,000 advances, they care about the hourly rate. The band who has a contract with a nice advance could care less about an extra hour when he has a nice budget. So a lot of people who are watching the clock are recording instead of people like Michael Jackson who had an hour of vocal coaching before every session. This leaves the engineer with little time to do anything of quality. You don't have time to mess with mic positioning when people are racing through takes. If the artist cares, then so will the person recording. But if they're saying "I want to do 6 songs in 2 hours", do you think a good mix can be done? This is another reason I think music winds up getting L2'd to death instead of properly mixed.

 

A lot of modern studios aren't really equipt to be "studios" either.. a lot are home studios in a business building. I watch people running around cursing about how . never works and is always a mess, and it is, unless you work for Avatar or Abbey Road. To stay in business, you have to lower prices. This is another disadvantage of digital that has nothing to do with the technology itself. It allows things to be done very cheaply. Back in the old day, if you could afford all the stuff needed to make a professional recording, you had so much money that you could afford a halfway decent staff to maintain things. Now just to avoid losing hundreds a week you have to charge close to nothing for everything, and run around like a chicken without a head. The average studio 25 years ago vs the average studio now is no comparison.. the one 25 years ago was tons better, whether you record to tape, digitally, or to wax.

 

I put my foot down and tell the artist if you want it to not sound like ., then you can't race through it, but I'm risking my job everytime I tell the artist something they don't want to hear. They're going to go to someplace that can "mix" the song in 20 seconds and record as quick as they want, and it'll sound good temporarily, but after repeated listens, it'll be revealed for the limited . it is when you find yourself unable to continue listening.

 

I ask people when they say "but it's not as loud", do they want to make music that people want to turn off or turn up?

[Angry_Games]

I think what most people compare is the sound of the time, not the sound of vinyl as a technology.

 

no, I compare today's cd's with today's vinyl, meaning any recording on vinyl vs any recording on cd.

 

cd is cold and lifeless, with a mechanical hiss that is barely audible but once you notice it, you can't 'un-notice' it.

 

Just like the scratchy-scratch of some vinyl on an analog needle, you can't 'un-notice' it.

 

But side by size, the vinyl always sounds warmer, richer, better to me. We aren't talking about turntables made in 1980 by TEAC on a 20w stereo that might still have an 8-track deck integrated into it.

 

We are talking about good quality analog turntables that are still being made today with high-fidelity amplifiers (same ones you run the cd through!).

 

Sound is always a personal choice. My personal choice when making music is real tube amplifiers on my guitar. You have to turn the xxxxers almost all the way up to get the real gain and the full range of tone out of them (unlike solid state amps that can shape sound at any volume level, but it is a much harsher, colder tone no matter how many digital effects you drop into it to make it more robust). Nothing but nothing sounds better to my ear than a Marshall JCM 900 making your ears bleed, or my ADA MP-1 rackmount pre-amp with a couple of 12AX7 tubes in it doing the same through a valve/tube 100w Marshall (or Peavy or any decent one) rackmount power amp and a good 4x12 Celestion close-backed cabinet.

 

I've had Roland and Boss digital effects for a decade or more, and my current guitar rig is a 65w combo amp that is only used for the power amp part (solid state) and the Boss GT-8 ($500 for that bastard) digital guitar effects processor that can emulate almost any mic, cabinet, amplifier. It's an awesome setup, but I still tend to plug straight into my ADA MP-1 just to hear that rich, warm sound that simply can't be emulated by digital effects processing (though maybe with a $100,000 rack system of digital effects and track overlays...maybe...)

[Thasp]

I like tube amps on guitars too. The whole point of guitar amps vs just plugging it in direct is all the distortion.

 

I guess it depends what you're listening to in addition to preference. I can't listen to classical solo piano on vinyl because it's too noisy and has this little noise below the music that you can only hear when one instrument like piano or viola is playing, or the ringing out of a piano note. The song Lento from Shostakovich's first symphony conducted by Celibideche would have fell well below vinyl's dynamic range a lot.. it relies on the ability to peak at 0 and go down to -45 at times. -45 = noise is 20 dB louder, or 4x as loud as the music! CDs aren't cold/lifeless, they're just honest. Maybe honesty is bad.. I sure as hell don't like hearing the "honest" sound of an electric guitar plugged into a mixer, then a solid state amp, then a stereo. Because it sucks! And if something is recorded in a crappy room, I sure as hell don't like the idea of the air conditioner, rehearsals going on in the next room getting cut into the master recording.

 

On the other hand, even rock/pop mastered competantly 20 years ago only had 18 dB dynamic range for the most part.. so vinyl would be fitting.