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> The sound quality isn't better For some bands, I'd actually disagree with that. Both what they are playing is better, and their released material is compress
by stordoff 7y ago
> The sound quality isn't better
For some bands, I'd actually disagree with that. Both what they are playing is better, and their released material is compressed to hell and back[1], which seems to be less prevalent live (though far from gone).
No doubt they _could_ do that recorded (anything you can do live you can match in a studio), but they _aren't_ doing.
There's also the non-musical elements - there's a difference between just playing some music and putting on a show.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- kibibu 7y agoIn a very concrete way, the inability to apply hard-clipped brick-wall limiting and extreme compression is why vinyl often does sound better than CD - the physics of the needle-in-groove mean that there are limits to the amplitudes you can try to encode without bouncing the damn thing out. So vinyl masters often (but not always) avoid the loudness war and have a wider dynamic range.
- ScottBurson 7y agoHmm, this seems to be a common idea, but I don't think it's true. As I said above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20914699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20914699
- kibibu 7y agoThe problem isn't with the compression part per se, but rather with clipping. The two typically go hand in hand for modern needle-in-the-red CD masters.