CD Mastering distortion

[NealG]

Nicked form the PFM BB, thought this may be of interest:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/article...256C2E005DAF1C


Edit:

A good case for using LP over CD...

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/grou...m/551002968731

[Tony Moore]

Very good article!

Anyone remember Oasis? Their signature seemed to be compress the life of the sound and then push it up to 0db. It used to make my eyes water when played on a pub jukebox and yet people I was with couldn't understand why I was sitting in the pub with a pained expression.

[vitalstates]

A perfect example of the flat tops I was referring to in an answer to Acorn's CD mastering thread.

Its a good read, especially the analogy with capital letters.

Ed

[BOONDI]

Just what I have been hearing more and more of with cd.....

Excellent article that describes exactly where the fault in CD mastering lies, with the marketing exec that has no clue how music should sound.....

[Mel-01]

In my opinion, the latest effort from Coldplay suffers from this 'everything louder than everything else' strategy. To me, it sounds awful; I've never listened to more that a few tracks at a time.

Although popular, Coldplay have their fair-share of critics who think them 'dull and boring'. To be honest, I find the lastest album pretty boring too, although paradoxically, I also think it has many strong songs on it. I believe that 'dull and boring' quality is due entirely to the way it has been mixed.

YOMV

cheers

Mel

p.s. lots of very intersting articles here...

http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/bobsarticles.htm

[acorn]

Hi Mel


Good site Mel,it bares out what I have thought about Cds for a long time its a disgracefull sate of affairs are the publiic so gulable has to except such poor standards, is there any hope for quality Cds for the future ?.


Regards Acorn

[Mel-01]

Quite so,

for better or worse, I only have a CD source and my HI-FI has reached that stage where the more I improve it, the worse some CD sound! Invariably, when I find a tweak that makes my best recordings sound better, then more often than not, those CDs that have mediocre mastering end up sounding worse!

Mel

[petercom]

Originally Posted by acorn

Hi Mel


Good site Mel,it bares out what I have thought about Cds for a long time its a disgracefull sate of affairs are the publiic so gulable has to except such poor standards, is there any hope for quality Cds for the future ?.


Regards Acorn

I had hoped that DVD Audio would prove to be the replacement for CD, but it hasn't caught on with the general public who seem to prefer the convenience of compressed formats like MP3. The marketing nonsense used by Sony to promote SACD didn't help either in trying to capture the classical music market which is usually the first to adopt higher quality formats.

The gullibility comes about because digital has been thrust down people's throats as being perfect. This has meant that the majority of consumers don't even question the quality - whether audio or video or TV they believe that, if it's digital, it must be perfect.

The only possibility now is that HDTV makes consumers realise that there is a quality end to TV and forces higher digital data rates to be used for transmission and storage. The trouble is that the majority of the data will be used for video, leaving audio no better off.

[James D]

Peter,

The whole audio side of HDTV is concentrating on bringing in 5.1 audio rather than raising the quality by increasing bandwidth. HDTV will follow the DVD video market and so will not make one iota of difference to audio quality. There is already a problem with the dynamic range on films and made or transfered for TV films have there audio tracks compressed from the cinema release levels and more compressed than DVD releases too. It then hits the TX compressors that most TV studios use too. These make Optimods seem good...

I've spent 20 years working all over the world at the front end of TV technology deployment trying to bring about higher quality audio simply by using what we have to the highest quality possible and I have to tell you that I not met one TV Executive other than myself who was willing to stake his reputation on higher audio quality... and precious few engineers either...

Give up on the main stream and mass market its gone its own way for a generation now and won't come back in our lifetimes. What we need is a vibrant niche market that runs in a self contained and profitable way using vinyl as the high quality meduim. The quality of modern vinyl releases for the dance market is extraordinary as Dave Dove has proved - even if the music is an acquired taste!

James

[Mel-01]

Perhaps this is a naive question, but for current 'popular music' releases, is different mastering used for vinyl compared to CD (in addition to issues to do with RIAA equalization), and which has the greater dynamic range?

Vinyl is constantly touted as the superior format, but could this perceived superiority be due, in part, to vinyl generally being better mastered?

Mel