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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.

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.
cnvogel 11y ago
> compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud What you are referring to is only one particular use-case for which a "compressor" is used during music production: Most often people apply dedicated plugins to the "master" mix (the final result to be put onto CD or sold as a file). These plugins will apply what's called a "multiband compressor" which can reduce dynamics individually on different parts of the frequency range, and often do quite a lot more magic than what I claim to understand. -- Done excessively the result is the mentioned "always one volume" result of the loudness wars. The compressor as a tool isn't limited to this use-case, though. You will, for example, put it on individual instruments' track to shape the relative strength of the percussive and decaying content of an instrument, a drum or a plucked guitar for example: Typical compressor plugins have a attack-time which shape how fast the reduction of gain follows an input signal. If you have this slower than the duration of the percussive sound, the instrument will sound more "agressive", instead of being leveled down, as the "attack" sound is increased, relative to the resonating portion. -- The end result sounds just like the exact opposite of the excessive master compression people complain about. Then you will invariably have unintended peaks in a real-world recordings, and if you don't want to level down the whole recording to account for those peaks, or manually level them down for every instance, you'll also employ a compressor plugin on problematic tracks. Then there's the possibility to filter the part of the spectrum that will trigger the compressor (it's "sidechain") or to let a compressor be triggered by one instrument (or group of instruments) and act on the signal of another instrument (or vocals, or group of tracks): That way you increase the percieved separation of different voices in your mix, again increasing the perceived dynamics of a song. So, if you really want to find music with no compression at all, you'll likely only find classical recordings made only with one single X/Y microphone pair... :-)
the_d00d 11y ago
I have to admit that you might have some kind of point regarding FF, but they are one of the more tolerable mainstream bands. funny that you use two bands that Grohl was/is a part of as a counterpoint. It would almost be like me saying Starship is everything wrong with 80s hair bands and then saying that Jefferson Airplane is what music should be like. In reality, they are the same band and are a metaphor for the demise of the baby boomer 'locust' generation.
beat 11y ago
Compression is a tool, not a style. It has existed almost as long as recording itself. It solves fundamental problems. Problem #1 - Audio speakers are not the same as instruments! If you've ever had the pleasure of getting your hair blown back by a cranked guitar amp or a drum kit... well, you just can't reproduce that experience through a set of earbuds. You can't exactly reproduce the sound of an acoustic guitar in your lap, or a violin in a beautiful hall. Speakers just aren't up to it. A recording is a miniature of a sound. Like all miniatures, it exaggerates some details and obscures others. Second, most modern music consists of many instruments of different volumes and dynamic ranges played together. Mixing the sounds so everything sounds clear and balanced is extremely difficult. Some of the most important instruments are the worst about it - acoustic guitars and drum kits in particular walk all over everything else, with wide dynamic and frequency ranges that compete with steadier sounds. And certain harmonically-dense sounds like female vocals and violins can easily distort the audio amps used in reproduction. Compression, and its close cousin equalization, help engineers "carve" spaces for each instrument to live in. You have probably never heard a recording without extensive compression, unless you've mixed records. And if you've been actively involved in recording, you'll already know all this.
shermanyo 11y ago
> Where can you find music with no compression? the pub?

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.

cnvogel 11y ago

> compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud What you are referring to is only one particular use-case for which a "compressor" is used during music production: Most often people apply dedicated plugins to the "master" mix (the final result to be put onto CD or sold as a file). These plugins will apply what's called a "multiband compressor" which can reduce dynamics individually on different parts of the frequency range, and often do quite a lot more magic than what I claim to understand. -- Done excessively the result is the mentioned "always one volume" result of the loudness wars. The compressor as a tool isn't limited to this use-case, though. You will, for example, put it on individual instruments' track to shape the relative strength of the percussive and decaying content of an instrument, a drum or a plucked guitar for example: Typical compressor plugins have a attack-time which shape how fast the reduction of gain follows an input signal. If you have this slower than the duration of the percussive sound, the instrument will sound more "agressive", instead of being leveled down, as the "attack" sound is increased, relative to the resonating portion. -- The end result sounds just like the exact opposite of the excessive master compression people complain about. Then you will invariably have unintended peaks in a real-world recordings, and if you don't want to level down the whole recording to account for those peaks, or manually level them down for every instance, you'll also employ a compressor plugin on problematic tracks. Then there's the possibility to filter the part of the spectrum that will trigger the compressor (it's "sidechain") or to let a compressor be triggered by one instrument (or group of instruments) and act on the signal of another instrument (or vocals, or group of tracks): That way you increase the percieved separation of different voices in your mix, again increasing the perceived dynamics of a song. So, if you really want to find music with no compression at all, you'll likely only find classical recordings made only with one single X/Y microphone pair... :-)

the_d00d 11y ago

I have to admit that you might have some kind of point regarding FF, but they are one of the more tolerable mainstream bands. funny that you use two bands that Grohl was/is a part of as a counterpoint. It would almost be like me saying Starship is everything wrong with 80s hair bands and then saying that Jefferson Airplane is what music should be like. In reality, they are the same band and are a metaphor for the demise of the baby boomer 'locust' generation.

beat 11y ago

Compression is a tool, not a style. It has existed almost as long as recording itself. It solves fundamental problems. Problem #1 - Audio speakers are not the same as instruments! If you've ever had the pleasure of getting your hair blown back by a cranked guitar amp or a drum kit... well, you just can't reproduce that experience through a set of earbuds. You can't exactly reproduce the sound of an acoustic guitar in your lap, or a violin in a beautiful hall. Speakers just aren't up to it. A recording is a miniature of a sound. Like all miniatures, it exaggerates some details and obscures others. Second, most modern music consists of many instruments of different volumes and dynamic ranges played together. Mixing the sounds so everything sounds clear and balanced is extremely difficult. Some of the most important instruments are the worst about it - acoustic guitars and drum kits in particular walk all over everything else, with wide dynamic and frequency ranges that compete with steadier sounds. And certain harmonically-dense sounds like female vocals and violins can easily distort the audio amps used in reproduction. Compression, and its close cousin equalization, help engineers "carve" spaces for each instrument to live in. You have probably never heard a recording without extensive compression, unless you've mixed records. And if you've been actively involved in recording, you'll already know all this.

shermanyo 11y ago

> Where can you find music with no compression? the pub?