I'd love to check this out myself, but I don't have equipment to play DVD-A:

Iron Maiden's last album, 2003s Dance of Death, suffered from something that seemed like bad production...but I'm pretty convinced that the problem is the mastering...the "LOUDER IS BETTER"-race and all that.

Here's the Replaygain-results of Dance of Death:



What I want to know, is if the DVD-A released today is any better.
So, if somebody has the time, skill and equipment, please post an in-depth review, not only for Maiden-fans, but for people who is a bit tired of CDs with inferior quality.

(Who knows, the bad-sounding CDs released nowadays may be a record company-scheme to get us over to new formats, that have better copy-protection and all that).


Thanks in advance,
Agitator

hi that man.

"...(Who knows, the bad-sounding CDs released nowadays may be a record company-scheme to get us over to new formats, that have better copy-protection and all that)."

You're not wrong. It's NO accident that CD has become so conspicuously lo-fi in the last 5 years or so.

And I can guarantee that any other format will NOT be subjected to this vandalism (compression, limiting), whether it's DVD-A, DVD-V, SACD or, of course, vinyl.

The corporations are obviously trying to get behind SACD, as it will probably never be readable on any kind of ROM drive.

They want CD dead, ASAP, to be replaced with 128KbS pay-per-download WMA or whatever, which sounds no worse than these horrible CDs.

Back to square one for all of us. The industry is basically going to offer us the 'choice' of crappy compressed downloads at the kind of money they should have been charging all along for proper transfers, ie about £7-8 GBP per album, or £15-17 GBP for a 'proper' transfers on the aforementioned formats. Most likely to be SACD if they get their way, vinyl if your lucky. Both can only be copied via analogue line.

The artists/performers will continue to get the desultory royalty rates per unit sale - maybe 30p per disc. Fine for the unit-shifting mediocrities the industry favours for obvious reasons, less so for committed artists who may only sell a few thousand discs.

Bastards.

ciao,
RF

It would be interesting to get the analysis of an analog recording of the DVD-A before claiming this.
You talk about vinyl, but my experience is that vinyl fidelity was destroyed much before CD, in the early 90's. My last properly mastered vinyl was Kraftwerk - The Mix, 1991. All that I bought between 1993 and 1995 was distorded because of too loud cutting, even a 180g audiophile pressing of Photek - Modus Operandi.

In various articles about loudness race, some explain it as a sequel of loudness race in singles cutting, in the disco era, that was acheived by shortening the duration of the audio content.

http://www.johnvestman.com/hot_cd.htm
http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Dynamics.html
http://www.georgegraham.com/compress.html

Hi Pio,

in theory, it should be possible to rip a DVD-A title and look at the raw PCM waveform. Which is in fact the reason the music industry is increasingly leaning toward SACD.

I don't have a website to post images on at the moment, but I wish I could screen grab a few waveforms to show you from some of the worst CDs I've looked at.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that CD sound quality (rock/pop at least) has been deliberately and systematically degraded to a compressed sub-FM-radio standard. Ironically, given the industry's whining about P2P etc', a transfer treated this way will sound little different if it's then digitally compressed to low (128 KbS and lower) bitrate lossy formats.

That may be part of the idea - the industry then then continue to tout it's own(expensive) MP3/WMA downloads as being of "CD quality". In fact you cannot compress complex, full-range 16/44 PCM at much under 256 KbS without audible degradation. I've know, I've tried.

On hybrid releases he CD layer is nearly always inferior (*by design*, not any notional resolution limitations) to the DSD layer - case in point the SACD of Dark Side Of The Moon, much discussed elsewhere.

EDIT - of course it could be argued that if it's a just a matter of *some* judiciously applied dynamic compression to the CD layer that's not necessarily a bad thing - at least then owners can make CDRs which are more suited to in-car, portable etc listening. But I wouldn't give the corperate execs cresit for even that much altriusm at the moment.

Think about it; how can the industry possibly hope to sell either format (DVDA SACD) if they don't sound any better than CD (which I can assure you they wouldn't to *most* people were it not for the destruction of CD sound quality I just mentioned)?

And given the fact that most people still think CD is 'perfect', what would they do otherwise - advertise them as "more perfect sound for even longer" and hope buyers take it on faith?

The point is that the 'quality' or lack of it in of any of these formats is not a matter of some arcane kwowledge being irretrievably lost, but laziness/indifference or worse, as is happening currently with CD, what amounts to deliberate sabotage of the format.

In the days CD was being hyped to replace LP, shelves cleared of vinyl *despite demand* there was little incentive from the industry's point of view in maintaining quality in LP production - quite the reverse, as proved to be the case.

ciao,
RF

Thank you for offering, but we have already lots of them in threads about over compressed releases.

This is one example, yes. It would be interesting to know if it is an isolated case, or if there are other hybrid releases in this case.
Link for people interested : http://www.stereophile.com/news/11649/index.html

This is a completely different matter. As you'll quickly see, this board is focused on this very topic, but with very rigorous methods of testing (double blind ABX, as explained in the FAQ, and in the Terms of Service). Tests shows that your statement is quite right for the most difficult samples to encode (the "killer samples", that are not transparent at any bitrate anyway). However, on regular music, transparency can be achieved, with some very rare flaws, as soon as 170-180 kbps VBR (with MusePack 1.14).

It's not that a big problem to convert a DSD stream to PCM. I've tried it on my own with a DSD sample I received from a gentle sony.com-guy. (raw 2,8 MHz, 1-Bit, Mono, MSBF, about 5 MB)
The bigger problem would be to get enough information about DTS (in this case: Digital Stream Transfer) which is a compression sheme designed to compress DSD streams and probably informations about the encryption.

But, as long as SACDs are shipped with a CD-compatible layer, which is derived from the DSD stream using this "super-bit-mapping"-chip (see Super Audio CD web page) I would not worry about quality.

Of course, they'll probably stop creating such layers in the future...

bye,
Sebastian

Interesting ... thou they willl never create an unbeatable format ...
just a matter of time So dont worry !
We can even play backup gamecube games now

Is it possible to play backup GameCube-games now?
I've got a GameCube, I would love to make backups

Try http://www.cdfreaks.com

I don't know about the DVD-A, but the CD sure does sound like crap. It's not because of it has no dynamics due to compression but the sound is dull like hell, the bass hasn't got the familiar 'rattle', drums are by no means punchy, and due to deessing vocals sound like Bruce has had gone major dental surgery (front teeth removed) or he sung through a thick pillow.

For instance, Brave New World sounds good to me and it's just a tad bit 'softer'

replaygain_album_gain = -9.02 dB
replaygain_album_peak = 1.251434

The flaw in this often quoted conspiracy theory is that, to most people, louder does equal better.

Now, if they were trashing CDs with heavy DRC, and then reducing the level by 6dB to leave nothing above -6dB FS - then I'd believe the conspiracy theory.

Ooops - I shouldn't give ideas like that away, should I?

Cheers,
David.

Hi Pio - thanks for the link to that forum.

It gives me some solice that people are begininng to take notice and discuss this.

Hi David - funnily enough; up until a few years ago the replication plants would actually *reject* masters at the glass-master stage if they showed 'overs', so a common trick was to 'normalise' a clipped recording by a coulpe of dB to fool the engineers or their equipment. I've seen more than afew late 90's discs that do this.

The thing that puzzles me is the silence of the so-called hi-fi press about this whole issue. They must be aware of it.


RF

PS just discovered that Songs For The Deaf has been discontinued on LP. Balls.

David- You're assuming that the labels would actually read HA...

I'd be surprised if no one in the record industry reads HA, just like I'd be surprised if no one in the movie industry reads doom9.

Cheers,
David.