3 ms·

Even if we accept your claims about tiny earbuds and speakers (which I don't), the abysmally depressing fact is that we have nothing to listen to on them. All

Even if we accept your claims about tiny earbuds and speakers (which I don't), the abysmally depressing fact is that we have nothing to listen to on them. All popular music has been systematically destroyed with dynamic compression since the late '90s.

mrob 3y ago
You occasionally see remasters going against the trend and increasing dynamic range. Earache Records has several high dynamic range versions of classic metal albums on Bandcamp.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  That's nice to hear!
smoldesu 3y ago
You might just want to stop listening to pop music. The way people engineer and mix pop music has traditionally been different from detail-oriented recordings and audiophile trappings. Before overcompression, pop music would trapeze between quiet acoustic sections and "wall of sound" crescendos that sounded awful on radio. Even further before that, fully soundstaged recordings got mixed down to mono to sound good on commodity listening hardware. There's a tenured history of making music worse to make it more widely enjoyable. The fact that the world's most popular headphones are lower-quality versions of the Earpods should tell you everything about the modern music landscape.
- ta988 3y ago
  I would be super interested in an artist that would do a multi mastering approach where you could pick the version depending on whether you listen in a car, a single bluetooth speaker, earbuds, high quality headphones and surround install for the same album.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    That's not even necessary. Selectable compression was available at least 30 years ago on stock car radios. Mid-'90s Ford CD players had a button on them labeled "Compress," and I'm sure they weren't the only ones. Today, a selectable compression level would be trivial to offer on every playback device. There was never a reason to destroy the music, which makes the crime of doing so even more despicable. You can't get dynamic range back once the master is destroyed, but you can always get rid of it on demand during playback. Apple and Spotify should have used their market power to demand properly-mastered recordings (a la the early '90s, which is when many believe mastering quality peaked). Instead we get asinine Atmos bastardizations and "lossless" delivery of ruined songs.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Disagree with that. I'm talking strictly about pop music, which I've been listening to avidly for decades. You could tell the difference between 45s of pop songs and radio playback easily in the '80s. At first I wanted that "fat" radio sound, and even got an equalizer thinking that this was the key. But of course it wasn't; radio stations compressed music to sound "stronger" on the dial. So I don't know why your assertion about "trapezing" would hold true at all. Over time I realized that the 45s, with their greater dynamic range, sounded better than the radio and were more enjoyable to play loud. I have 45s from the '70s into the 2000s, most of which will sound better than their shitty "remastered" versions streaming right now. Yes, polystyrene 45s. That's pathetic. The shittiest part of all is that nobody is served by the destruction of pop music; and everyone is hindered. Otherwise catchy songs are quickly tiresome to listen to. Recent songs can't be mixed well with others; there's no room in the wall of noise. Hence the popularity of "mashups" that almost always feature an older song. It's not even pleasant to have recently-mastered music on during parties because you can't talk over the noise; so it's either too soft or too loud.
ta988 3y ago
Are you saying tiny earbuds from the 2000 are equivalent to those we have today? Also there is plenty of high quality music around, including music with high dynamic range... The one that existed didn't disappear, and there is still some produced today, probably much more in a year than I could listen in a lifetime.

mrob 3y ago

You occasionally see remasters going against the trend and increasing dynamic range. Earache Records has several high dynamic range versions of classic metal albums on Bandcamp.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
That's nice to hear!

smoldesu 3y ago

You might just want to stop listening to pop music. The way people engineer and mix pop music has traditionally been different from detail-oriented recordings and audiophile trappings. Before overcompression, pop music would trapeze between quiet acoustic sections and "wall of sound" crescendos that sounded awful on radio. Even further before that, fully soundstaged recordings got mixed down to mono to sound good on commodity listening hardware. There's a tenured history of making music worse to make it more widely enjoyable. The fact that the world's most popular headphones are lower-quality versions of the Earpods should tell you everything about the modern music landscape.

ta988 3y ago
I would be super interested in an artist that would do a multi mastering approach where you could pick the version depending on whether you listen in a car, a single bluetooth speaker, earbuds, high quality headphones and surround install for the same album.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  That's not even necessary. Selectable compression was available at least 30 years ago on stock car radios. Mid-'90s Ford CD players had a button on them labeled "Compress," and I'm sure they weren't the only ones. Today, a selectable compression level would be trivial to offer on every playback device. There was never a reason to destroy the music, which makes the crime of doing so even more despicable. You can't get dynamic range back once the master is destroyed, but you can always get rid of it on demand during playback. Apple and Spotify should have used their market power to demand properly-mastered recordings (a la the early '90s, which is when many believe mastering quality peaked). Instead we get asinine Atmos bastardizations and "lossless" delivery of ruined songs.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Disagree with that. I'm talking strictly about pop music, which I've been listening to avidly for decades. You could tell the difference between 45s of pop songs and radio playback easily in the '80s. At first I wanted that "fat" radio sound, and even got an equalizer thinking that this was the key. But of course it wasn't; radio stations compressed music to sound "stronger" on the dial. So I don't know why your assertion about "trapezing" would hold true at all. Over time I realized that the 45s, with their greater dynamic range, sounded better than the radio and were more enjoyable to play loud. I have 45s from the '70s into the 2000s, most of which will sound better than their shitty "remastered" versions streaming right now. Yes, polystyrene 45s. That's pathetic. The shittiest part of all is that nobody is served by the destruction of pop music; and everyone is hindered. Otherwise catchy songs are quickly tiresome to listen to. Recent songs can't be mixed well with others; there's no room in the wall of noise. Hence the popularity of "mashups" that almost always feature an older song. It's not even pleasant to have recently-mastered music on during parties because you can't talk over the noise; so it's either too soft or too loud.

ta988 3y ago

Are you saying tiny earbuds from the 2000 are equivalent to those we have today? Also there is plenty of high quality music around, including music with high dynamic range... The one that existed didn't disappear, and there is still some produced today, probably much more in a year than I could listen in a lifetime.