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I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. So I'm not s

I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. So I'm not sure if overcompression is necessary for newer songs, but rather that it's just what the mass market has become accustomed to because of the loudness war.

tammer 11y ago
It's a common misconception that vinyl necessarily imparts all possible audio benefits to whatever is pressed into it. Now, I'm not Gaga's recording engineer, and for all I know you're absolutely right and her & her team remastered each track without compression for the vinyl pressing. Considering how rare such a process is in industry recording, however, I doubt it. I assume that really the difference you're hearing is typical of all vinyl recordings: a type of distortion that comes from both pressing and playback through an RIAA preamplifier. People use all sorts of terms to describe the difference between vinyl & digital sound, but mostly descriptors center around words like "warmer," or "more open" or "brighter." These are really just beneficial side-effects of the standards developed to overcome vinyl's limitations as a recording medium. So, in reality quality and compression come in to play long before the pressing actually occurs, on the mastered track itself. I've come to realize that a poorly handled transfer to vinyl will often sound not nearly as clear or detailed as a high-res or even "Mastered for iTunes" track.
- shmageggy 11y ago
  Mastering for vinyl is very common in the industry. I don't have time to dig up a reference right now, but the medium has different constraints than digital so is usually mastered separately, especially for big budget stuff. The differing constraints are mainly that while CD has a hard amplitude limit (hence brickwall limiting), the constraint on vinyl is not hard in the same way -- it mostly has to do with amplitude of low frequencies and skipping grooves.
  - earlz 11y ago
    My understanding is that with vinyl, if the signal has too high of an RMS at low frequencies the needle can literally skip off the groove, and for this reason vinyl can't necessarily be as compressed and loud..
    - nosuchthing 11y ago
      • The audio is subjected to low-pass or all-pass filtering, which can result in broad peaks becoming slanted ramps. • The amount and stereo separation of deep bass content is reduced for vinyl, to keep the stylus from being thrown out of the groove. http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29#Effect_of_vinyl_mastering_on_dynamic_range http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29... http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162 http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-bet...
    - beat 11y ago
      Not necessarily, but full-power vinyl grooves would cause all sorts of distortion and misbehavior for the very mechanical nature of cartridges and tonearms. Likewise, high frequencies would be so small they couldn't really be picked up. Hence the RIAA curve, which is an eq curve applied to the mastering before put to vinyl that reduces the lows and exaggerates the highs. It is reversed by the phono preamp during playback.
    - lfam 11y ago
      This is true. Mastering for vinyl is basically a completely different set of skills than mastering for other media.
  - ZoFreX 11y ago
    I agree that mastering for vinyl happens, but you're not right about the dynamic range. CDs were popular initially because they have a wider dynamic range, the overly compressed / "loudness wars" tracks are nowhere near the limits of the medium. It is true that vinyl these days often has wider dynamic range - because the market for how songs sound is different for people buying vinyl, so they're mastered with wider range.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. I was skeptical of this, so I sought out a copy on Youtube[0]. "Better" is subjective, and this is definitely lower quality overall (given the Youtube compression). But it is undeniably a very different song. I've listened to the CD version of this song countless times, and I don't think I ever remember hearing the male voice in the intro so prominently. For someone hearing the song for the first time (or even the first few), it may not be as obvious, but as someone who's used to hearing that song on a regular basis, it definitely jumps out as having a crisper sound. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AgdAkjOjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AgdAkjOjo
- __david__ 11y ago
  To me it just sounds like the original song put through a high pass filter. All the subwoofer bass that makes it a dance song is just gone. That's not lack of loudness war style compression, it's mostly sounds like bad equipment. There's a major 60hz ground loop in there, too.

tammer 11y ago

It's a common misconception that vinyl necessarily imparts all possible audio benefits to whatever is pressed into it. Now, I'm not Gaga's recording engineer, and for all I know you're absolutely right and her & her team remastered each track without compression for the vinyl pressing. Considering how rare such a process is in industry recording, however, I doubt it. I assume that really the difference you're hearing is typical of all vinyl recordings: a type of distortion that comes from both pressing and playback through an RIAA preamplifier. People use all sorts of terms to describe the difference between vinyl & digital sound, but mostly descriptors center around words like "warmer," or "more open" or "brighter." These are really just beneficial side-effects of the standards developed to overcome vinyl's limitations as a recording medium. So, in reality quality and compression come in to play long before the pressing actually occurs, on the mastered track itself. I've come to realize that a poorly handled transfer to vinyl will often sound not nearly as clear or detailed as a high-res or even "Mastered for iTunes" track.

shmageggy 11y ago
Mastering for vinyl is very common in the industry. I don't have time to dig up a reference right now, but the medium has different constraints than digital so is usually mastered separately, especially for big budget stuff. The differing constraints are mainly that while CD has a hard amplitude limit (hence brickwall limiting), the constraint on vinyl is not hard in the same way -- it mostly has to do with amplitude of low frequencies and skipping grooves.
- earlz 11y ago
  My understanding is that with vinyl, if the signal has too high of an RMS at low frequencies the needle can literally skip off the groove, and for this reason vinyl can't necessarily be as compressed and loud..
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    • The audio is subjected to low-pass or all-pass filtering, which can result in broad peaks becoming slanted ramps. • The amount and stereo separation of deep bass content is reduced for vinyl, to keep the stylus from being thrown out of the groove. http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29#Effect_of_vinyl_mastering_on_dynamic_range http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29... http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162 http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-bet...
  - beat 11y ago
    Not necessarily, but full-power vinyl grooves would cause all sorts of distortion and misbehavior for the very mechanical nature of cartridges and tonearms. Likewise, high frequencies would be so small they couldn't really be picked up. Hence the RIAA curve, which is an eq curve applied to the mastering before put to vinyl that reduces the lows and exaggerates the highs. It is reversed by the phono preamp during playback.
  - lfam 11y ago
    This is true. Mastering for vinyl is basically a completely different set of skills than mastering for other media.
- ZoFreX 11y ago
  I agree that mastering for vinyl happens, but you're not right about the dynamic range. CDs were popular initially because they have a wider dynamic range, the overly compressed / "loudness wars" tracks are nowhere near the limits of the medium. It is true that vinyl these days often has wider dynamic range - because the market for how songs sound is different for people buying vinyl, so they're mastered with wider range.

chimeracoder 11y ago

> I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. I was skeptical of this, so I sought out a copy on Youtube[0]. "Better" is subjective, and this is definitely lower quality overall (given the Youtube compression). But it is undeniably a very different song. I've listened to the CD version of this song countless times, and I don't think I ever remember hearing the male voice in the intro so prominently. For someone hearing the song for the first time (or even the first few), it may not be as obvious, but as someone who's used to hearing that song on a regular basis, it definitely jumps out as having a crisper sound. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AgdAkjOjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AgdAkjOjo

__david__ 11y ago
To me it just sounds like the original song put through a high pass filter. All the subwoofer bass that makes it a dance song is just gone. That's not lack of loudness war style compression, it's mostly sounds like bad equipment. There's a major 60hz ground loop in there, too.