Current CD mastering practices, And why I now buy so few new CD's. Options

[RockFan]

Although I've been aware of the ever more destructive levels of compression/limiting used over the last 5-10 years (and taken part in discussions here and other places), it only dawned on me recently that I had unconciously practically stopped buying CD's the last year or two..

By that I'm referring to largely rock, indie, jazz etc, incuding so-called 'remasters'.

There are recent releases out there which I would like to own, but with what I've come to expect from modern CD's, I know that an album which I might have 'played to death' over weeks or months in years gone by will simply get boring after a few plays. So I don't buy them. Dynamics, soft/loud contrasts, drama - squashed out of existence.

New Queens Of The Stone Age? Probably a great album - but once bitten .....

I'm increasingly going to exchanges to try and find older releases of albums I want, or even buying vinyl versions of new albums where they're released, as they tend not to be afflicted as badly.

Obviously there are a proportion of buyers who only lsiten to CD's in the car or on personals in noisy environments who couldn't care less and will keep buying, but there must be a lot of others who, like me, are completely disillusioned with this 'loudness fetish' crap and have simply lost interest.

In fact I wonder how much this has contributed to the stagnancy in sales over the last few years that the 'industry' whines about so frequently?

R.

[BradPDX]

I have produced several CDs and been a participating musician in dozens. The practice of using large amounts of "global" compression (compression applied to the entire mix and not just particular tracks) is a phenomenon with roots back into the 70's.

Let me add something really quick and important here: totally uncompressed recorded music is relatively rare in the pop/jazz/folk world and has been for a long time.

The essential psychoacoustic problems being addressed are 1) scale and 2) noise floor. Issue 1 is the fact that most recorded music is not played at realistic performance levels - it is simply impractical for me to crank up my living room rig to even small ensemble levels without bugging half the neighborhood and myself as well. The spaces in which we listen to music are often utterly at odds with the original volume levels.

Compression, judiciously applied, allows music to be perceived as "full" and satisfying at substantially lower levels. Is it "real"? Well, no - but then, neither is a 7-piece band cranking away in my 15 x 25 ft living room being reproduced through 2 sound sources. At its best, compression is a compromise made to remedy the most basic compromise in the system - the fact that the music will NOT be played in original spaces at original levels. It will be coming out of 2 speakers in your home or car.

If anyone in this group is a musician, you can try some interest experiments. For example, I recorded a CD of 10 lullabies for my kids a while back. I did this on the cheap, just the way the kids hear me every night - 2 good condensors, a hard disk recorder, me and a Martin guitar, played live.

When the tracks were played back on good cans or speakers, they sounded great - just like the real thing. I trimmed up the beginnings and endings, burned a CD and popped it into the boom box in the kid's bedroom. My god, it was awful. At low volumes (the target use case) all detail was lost - only the vocals would jump out from the tiny box. The kids hated it.

So it pulled up the tracks again and applied global compression. I burned several discs to see which amount of compression would sound good for the kids. The answer: the one with a lot of compression. Listened to closely, the compression is obvious. But when heard at low volume on the boombox, it is great. Mission accomplished and lesson learned.

What was different from my live performances in the same room? A lot. Lower volume, limited frequency response, directional speakers, etc. The net result was that the music was better served by squishing it. Don't worry; I still play "live" most nights. Lately the kids like Gram Parsons songs.

The next thing is noise. The 70's saw the birth of real FM radio, 8-tracks and cassettes. This meant that the shift to "car listening" was underway, and the record companies obliged with increased compression. In a sense, they are right: uncompressed music in a noisy car is misery. The peaks take your head off while the music floor is inaudible. The trouble is, the cure is sometimes worse than the problem.

I agree that many recent pop recordings I have are excessively compressed, lifeless and grating. That to me is sacrificing one thing for another. But take heart; well recorded music is out there in spades as well. Lately I have been listening a lot to Sufjan Steven's excellent "Illinois" CD - wonderfully dynamic and spacious, not to mention GREAT songwriting and arranging.

And I'll bet that "Illinois" is using some compression - just not too much!

[Hermit-ically Se...]

Let me add something really quick and important here: totally uncompressed recorded music is relatively rare in the pop/jazz/folk world and has been for a long time.

Uncompressed music is also rare or nonexistent in metal too. In fact metal in general is more compressed than other genre's. The distortion of a guitar is a kind of compression itself, Am I right? But this amount of compression and the added fun of severe wave smashing/clipping is far beyond enhancement of the power or prescence of a song into the realm of ridiculous idiocy. The song of the waveform I posted is actually a good song, but it sounds like utter dogshit! It's massively irritating, in fact it actually becomes a form of punishment with the goal being how much of it can you endure. I have another bands re-issue from the same company with the exact same problem.

This post has been edited by Hermit-ically Sealed: Aug 17 2005, 03:14

[richms]

The distortion of a guitar is a kind of compression itself, Am I right?

The compressed guitar is an instrument in its own right with the sound coming from the guitar+pickups, tone, pedals, amp and speaker all in unison. It is miked and mixed in just like any other instrument. On a well mastered metal CD you can hear the guitar as its own instrument placed in the soundfield with other stuff around it.

When a CD is mastered my a compulsive red line hitter, the guitar is usually the first to be affected I find, because its the most complex instrument, it will sound like its coming from all over the place long before the drums are sounding messed up (IMHO) - and is a good indicator of how bad the mixing is.

What they are doing is essentially negating the purchase of decent playback equipment.