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I've played acoustic and electric instruments for over 30 years, and recorded numerous albums. Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing

by beat 11y ago

I've played acoustic and electric instruments for over 30 years, and recorded numerous albums. Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable. Don't confuse the foolishness of the loudness wars for "compression is bad". That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.

chillingeffect 11y ago
I respect your opinion, but it's only your opinion, not a global truth. Compression is a style. There is far more to musicality and emotion than compression. The problem compression solves is that the environments where industrialized cultures now listen in are not dedicated listening areas, but alternately loud and quiet places, so compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud so there are no drop outs where the quieter parts would be. There is no need to compress music in headphones, for example, to the extent that it is currently compressed. I find compression and other techniques such as removing vocal breath sounds, makes most recordings unlistenable. They don't sound like humans anymore, but synthetic puppets animated by humans with conflicting values. Take the Foo Fighters, for example. They're popular, sure, but all of their songs sounds like one continuous din. Between the compression induced by the guitar distortion settings and the compression added to the recording, then the compression added by the radio station, it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus. Also their vocals have no dynamics. When he yells loud, the vocals don't get louder but the timbre changes. That changes it from cathartic to strained. The dynamics have all been flattened. Why do you think the indie rock movement and bands and styles with wide dynamic range like the Pixies, Nirvana and dubstep got so popular? They eschewed the trend of hardline compression with alternating loud and quiet parts. They match the rhythm of human thought and motion which has fast and slow, detail and empty parts. > That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it. Yes but on the internet you can go where there is no porn. Where can you find music with no compression?
- lfam 11y ago
  > it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus. That's a good way to put it. I hate over-compressed music. It sounds terrible and is no fun to listen to once you notice the issue. But, are you an audio engineer? I ask because I work in the field, and all engineers I know accept that dynamic range compression is a necessary part of creating recorded music. The problem is when you abuse compression to create a wall of noise with no dynamic range. It's like autotune: you can use it to correct one bad note, or you can abuse it create T-Pain. The engineers behind The Pixies and Nirvana [1], and all dubstep producers use or have used compression at various stages of the creative process. [1] I guarantee you that whoever mixed Smells Like Teen Spirit spent a lot of time doing the compression on that song.
  - cdcarter 11y ago
    Obviously there is a difference between "excessive compression" (the term the GP used...) and "no compression at all" (what you seem to be arguing against).
- w4 11y ago
  > bands and styles with wide dynamic range like the Pixies, Nirvana and dubstep One of these things is not like the others. I can't tell if you're trolling here, or if you legitimately don't know much about audio engineering, because Dubstep (and electronic music in general) is probably the most aggressively compressed and limited genre of music out there. If you actually do feel that Dubstep has a lot of dynamics, then you're misattributing the lack of dynamic range in a lot of modern music to audio engineering. What you're really bothered by is the songwriting and musicianship, not the engineering or compression.
  - chillingeffect 11y ago
    heh no, sorry, I didn't meean to sound like i'm trolling - it is extra-ironic, b/c yes dubstep uses compression a lot, but at the same time, a lot of the dubstep I've heard uses silence judiciously to create huge amounts of contrast - in between the speaker-shreddingly compressed passages. Both house music and dnb IME tend to employ quiet as well to make the loud seem louder. It's mostly just rock and some americana these days on the radio that gets to me. Actually country is one of the most egregious genres, too. Sounds totally flat like AM radio.
bootload 11y ago
"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice." -- Neil Young. [0] Not every artist wants this to happen. They have no choice and listeners get a fraction of the sound recorded. This was not the case with vinyl. @mborch, the exact compression method is of less importance than recognising that for all the compression being discussed, is a retrograde step from vinyl. Why? [0] http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-young-and-the-sound-of-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-young-and-the-sound-of-m...
- mborch 11y ago
  different compressions being talked about here.
  - bootload 11y ago
    thx @mborch
- LeoPanthera 11y ago
  You are confusing two different types of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
  - bootload 11y ago
    thanks @Leo, point noted. So the DRC effects the audio amplitude? A lot of the sounds I listen too are recorded in analog tape based studios, the DRC are used in digital studios and post processing?
    - cnvogel 11y ago

by beat 11y ago

chillingeffect 11y ago

I respect your opinion, but it's only your opinion, not a global truth. Compression is a style. There is far more to musicality and emotion than compression. The problem compression solves is that the environments where industrialized cultures now listen in are not dedicated listening areas, but alternately loud and quiet places, so compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud so there are no drop outs where the quieter parts would be. There is no need to compress music in headphones, for example, to the extent that it is currently compressed. I find compression and other techniques such as removing vocal breath sounds, makes most recordings unlistenable. They don't sound like humans anymore, but synthetic puppets animated by humans with conflicting values. Take the Foo Fighters, for example. They're popular, sure, but all of their songs sounds like one continuous din. Between the compression induced by the guitar distortion settings and the compression added to the recording, then the compression added by the radio station, it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus. Also their vocals have no dynamics. When he yells loud, the vocals don't get louder but the timbre changes. That changes it from cathartic to strained. The dynamics have all been flattened. Why do you think the indie rock movement and bands and styles with wide dynamic range like the Pixies, Nirvana and dubstep got so popular? They eschewed the trend of hardline compression with alternating loud and quiet parts. They match the rhythm of human thought and motion which has fast and slow, detail and empty parts. > That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it. Yes but on the internet you can go where there is no porn. Where can you find music with no compression?

lfam 11y ago
> it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus. That's a good way to put it. I hate over-compressed music. It sounds terrible and is no fun to listen to once you notice the issue. But, are you an audio engineer? I ask because I work in the field, and all engineers I know accept that dynamic range compression is a necessary part of creating recorded music. The problem is when you abuse compression to create a wall of noise with no dynamic range. It's like autotune: you can use it to correct one bad note, or you can abuse it create T-Pain. The engineers behind The Pixies and Nirvana [1], and all dubstep producers use or have used compression at various stages of the creative process. [1] I guarantee you that whoever mixed Smells Like Teen Spirit spent a lot of time doing the compression on that song.
- cdcarter 11y ago
  Obviously there is a difference between "excessive compression" (the term the GP used...) and "no compression at all" (what you seem to be arguing against).
w4 11y ago
> bands and styles with wide dynamic range like the Pixies, Nirvana and dubstep One of these things is not like the others. I can't tell if you're trolling here, or if you legitimately don't know much about audio engineering, because Dubstep (and electronic music in general) is probably the most aggressively compressed and limited genre of music out there. If you actually do feel that Dubstep has a lot of dynamics, then you're misattributing the lack of dynamic range in a lot of modern music to audio engineering. What you're really bothered by is the songwriting and musicianship, not the engineering or compression.
- chillingeffect 11y ago
  heh no, sorry, I didn't meean to sound like i'm trolling - it is extra-ironic, b/c yes dubstep uses compression a lot, but at the same time, a lot of the dubstep I've heard uses silence judiciously to create huge amounts of contrast - in between the speaker-shreddingly compressed passages. Both house music and dnb IME tend to employ quiet as well to make the loud seem louder. It's mostly just rock and some americana these days on the radio that gets to me. Actually country is one of the most egregious genres, too. Sounds totally flat like AM radio.

bootload 11y ago

"Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable." That is your artistic choice, as it should be. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice." -- Neil Young. [0] Not every artist wants this to happen. They have no choice and listeners get a fraction of the sound recorded. This was not the case with vinyl. @mborch, the exact compression method is of less importance than recognising that for all the compression being discussed, is a retrograde step from vinyl. Why? [0] http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-young-and-the-sound-of-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-young-and-the-sound-of-m...

mborch 11y ago
different compressions being talked about here.
- bootload 11y ago
  thx @mborch
LeoPanthera 11y ago
You are confusing two different types of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
- bootload 11y ago
  thanks @Leo, point noted. So the DRC effects the audio amplitude? A lot of the sounds I listen too are recorded in analog tape based studios, the DRC are used in digital studios and post processing?
  - cnvogel 11y ago