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A Surprising Advantage of Vinyl (2011)
- mborch 3y agoHere's another reference on this: https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-war/ https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness.... > As explained earlier, due to the physical limitations of vinyl, there are limits as to how loud you can press a record, and because vinyl is “for audiophiles” – there is less incentive for record companies to compromise the quality of vinyl releases. As a result, many vinyl records are mastered differently to the CD release with more dynamic range and at lower volumes. But I read some place that Radiohead themselves preferred the more compressed sound, perhaps owing to listening in a car rather than a high fidelity setup.
- tekla 3y agoI've seen this trotted around and I think its absolute bullshit. I've asked multiple people in the music business, and they've all told me they use the same masters for CDs and Vinyl.
- slily 3y agoYeah, it's mostly wishful thinking. The primary audience for records is not audiophiles, it's collectors who often don't even own a record player putting them up on display. Unless an artist/mastering engineer has a particular fondness for the medium they're not going to put much effort into the "analog" master.
- JALTU 3y agoI would guess to agree: the "audiophile" is a microscopically small segment of the music market, and music companies, let alone manufacturers, are NOT going to spend extra time money on producing stuff for specialty segments (hence the MoFi fiasco). Marketing is enough! Most so-called audiophiles also are not really into DR or "dynamic sound" or anything but just their audio preferences, whether that's cool/expensive hardware or hanging out on head-fi.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago> the "audiophile" is a microscopically small segment of the music market A small portion of the market but the portion most willing to spend large amounts of money on music and music related products.
- JALTU 3y agoGuilty as charged, because the emotional return is exponentially high. But we're still microscopic.
- d-lisp 3y agoI have two versions of the same album, one on CD, one on vinyl. They don't sound the same and I prefer the version on vinyl, I am not implying it objectively sounds better, maybe it sounds worse at the wave level, but it sounds better to me, it seems much more "present". Could you teach me what is the reason for this ?
- squarefoot 3y agoVinyl's dynamic range is way inferior to CD's one, that makes it a natural compressor. Most like vinyl sound because it's compressed as well, albeit not awfully bad like modern digital productions. Many vinyl records made in the 90s were mastered digitally before printing, and audiophiles swear they hear the same magic sound although what they listen to comes from 100% digital material. > it seems much more "present" That could be due to some low frequencies that vinyl can't reproduce and are reduced to avoid distortion. Also vinyl's poor crosstalk figures could play a role here.
- ricardobeat 3y ago> and audiophiles swear they hear the same magic sound although what they listen to comes from 100% digital material Not unlikely, as the signal did get converted back to analog, and the physical media's characteristics influence the mastering even when it's being done digitally.
- WorkerBee28474 3y agoDifferences in the sound waves that reach the ear can come from the audio data being written to and retrieved from an imperfect recording medium (vinyl), as well as differenced in frequency responses between the amplifiers or speakers used after the audio is read. "Presence" is usually associated with high frequency content. Turn up the high frequencies and the music seems more present. Therefore, differences in media/amplifier/speaker high frequency response will make the music seem more or less "present".
- butterknife 3y agoMastering engineer here. I supply less compressed versions for vinyl and would not sign under it if it was the same as CD/streaming. What labels do after the fact is another story...
- crtasm 3y agoThat's great to hear (!) - any idea how common this is with other engineers?
- butterknife 3y agoI would like to think that it is quite common. Certainly for guys who provide lacquer/DMM cutting services. There is an issue with vinyl brokers and certain unnamed plants that advertise "mastering" that consists of running any delivered audio through proprietary software that "fixes" all physically problematic issues that could affect cutting or playback (excessive sibilance, excessive negative stereo correlation etc.). There is minimal listening involved and they can cut almost any audio. All optimised for maximising the factory throughput, not sound quality. Personally I have a hope that this will become less of an issue in future as vinyl is getting more popular and people little bit more educated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- viburnum 3y agoNow they do but they didn’t used to.
- badgersnake 3y agoStadium Arcadium for example is definitely different on vinyl. The CD version and the ‘audiophile’ 24bit version are both horribly compressed.
- arrowsmith 3y agoMetallica's Death Magnetic is the worst example I know of an album that's been utterly butchered by the loudness war. It is absolutely unlistenable - the compression makes my ears bleed. And it's a crying shame because in terms of raw songwriting it could have been the best thing they've put out since the Black Album. What a waste of some good riffs.
- hnburnsy 3y agoFamously Rush`s Vapor Trails was also a victim with the band and fans unhappy with the mixing. Luckily a remix was produced... https://popdose.com/popdose-qa-david-bottrill-on-rushs-vapor-trails-remixed/ https://popdose.com/popdose-qa-david-bottrill-on-rushs-vapor...
- pkkm 3y agoThere are multiple unofficial fan remasters based on tracks extracted from Guitar Hero, and now a Mastered for iTunes version too. Try these, they sound far better.
- mtillman 3y agoRelated, many SACDs contain a two channel SA layer that is completely different than the red book layer. The medium is normally mastered to appeal to the widest audience. In the 80’s, CD players were very expensive so the mastering were made for that type of consumer. As CD players in cars became the more popular listening mechanism, the DR shrunk and loudness increased. Some (most I think) modern vinyl is actually just the digital mastering and the newer stuff is written from a DSD source-not tape. Even Mobile Fidelity got in trouble for claiming tape when in fact it was from a digital source. I’m old so my ears can’t tell the difference at normal listening volumes to DR as the article agrees but I can absolutely tell original redbook vs modern mastering. Black Sabbath Sabotage is a good example of mastering techniques to “correct” for mic dropouts and what not. For loudness comps check out: https://dr.loudness-war.info/ https://dr.loudness-war.info/
- m463 3y agoI have some SACDs but can't actually play them, even though my dac can do the audio. Is there some way to put the tracks on a computer?
- smitty1110 3y agoYou should be able to with a PS3 and linux installed. You need a PS3 from one of the first two hardware revisions (the fat body ones), they dropped the expensive SACD reader to cut costs after that.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThere’s custom firmware for Oppo blu-ray players to dump the raw DSD over Ethernet to a listening PC.
- m-i-l 3y ago> "I have some SACDs but can't actually play them, even though my dac can do the audio. Is there some way to put the tracks on a computer?" As per the other comments, it is technically possible, but not exactly straightforward: if you have access to a compatible BluRay player, you can create a special bootable USB stick, boot the player from that, connect to the player over the network, and use an SACD client to extract the ISO and/or DSF files containing the DSD data. You probably won't be able to play these directly on your media server, but you can use ffmpeg to convert to e.g. 24-bit/88.2kHz FLAC files. If you're interested, I wrote up the process I followed (with links to original sources) at https://www.michael-lewis.com/posts/extracting-multichannel-audio-files-from-dvds-and-sacds/ https://www.michael-lewis.com/posts/extracting-multichannel-... .
- mrob 3y agoLooking at waveforms can be misleading because of the frequency-dependent sensitivity of the human ear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour It's possible the vinyl version just has less bass, and doesn't sound noticeably more dynamic. The waveforms might look more similar after high-pass filtering at 100Hz or so.
- sfwf 3y agoTrue, this is how the CD track looks after applying 100Hz high-pass filter and volume normalization https://i.imgur.com/lxMMDxd.png https://i.imgur.com/lxMMDxd.png
- bjt12345 3y agoGood point, Vinyl can't have stereo bass - it makes the needle jump.
- bscphil 3y agoYep. In fact the argument that the article makes, when applied generally across all vinyl records (I can't speak for the specific one they're talking about), is a common myth that the HydrogenAudio wiki debunks: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_requires_a_better-sounding_master_because_it_is_physically_incapable_of_reproducing_the_hypercompressed_sound_mastered_to_CD https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#My... Article: "It’s the data on the record that’s superior, and it’s a conscious choice made by today’s artists and producers." HydrogenAudio: > A related myth is that when vinyl has a higher dynamic range than CD, it means the audio was sourced from a different, more dynamic master, and that the difference in dynamics will be audible. > It is true that recordings on vinyl sometimes have a spikier waveform and a measurably higher dynamic range than their counterparts on CD, at least when the dynamic range is reported by crude "DR meter" tools that compare peak and RMS levels. The higher "DR value" could indeed be a result of entirely different master recordings being provided to the mastering engineers for each format, or different choices made by the engineers, as happens every time old music is remastered for a new release. > But even when the same source master is used, the audio is normally further processed when mastering for the target format (be it CD or vinyl), and this often results in vinyl having a spikier waveform and higher DR measurement.
- mikae1 3y agoDidn't LUFS and streaming services stop the loudness wars? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880962 https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
- mrob 3y agoSadly, loudness war mastering is still common. People still listen to music in cars and on phone speakers. Low dynamic range sounds better with noisy listening environments and bad playback equipment.
- user_7832 3y agoPerhaps maybe not a super recent example but I remember Bruno Mar's 24k magic sounding very "loud"/compressed.
- leokennis 3y agoExtremely anecdotal, but if I compare top 40 pop from the early 2000’s (Black Eyed Peas, Anastacia, Maroon 5) with stuff from today (Ariana Grande etc.) then the old music sounds like boomy maximalism while the new music usually has crisper drums, more subtle details etc.
- apecat 3y agoA lot of present-day mastering can technically remain loud while sounding a lot less harsh. That's thanks to aesthetic mixing choices and at least in part due to audio processing and tools like plugins from Oeksound (Soothe) and others, which are used on nearly all top-selling music now https://oeksound.com https://oeksound.com I find that the likes of Ariana Grande have a lot more air in their music those 00s acts you describe, while still being quite loud. So do my absolute favorite artists Tame Impala, Caroline Polachek and Dua Lipa. Commercially this probably works out with better headphones and earbuds as a default listening mode, as opposed to things like the 00s earbuds delivered with digital music players and early smartphones. That first Billy Eilish record would probably not have been a hit if the target audience was getting their first impression of new music in cars driving at highway speeds.
- squarefoot 3y agoYeah, loudness war is a plague, but vinyl and CD differences have nothing to do with it; it's just incompetent producers and sound engineers aiming at making their work more loud to attract listeners. I miss vinyl records for only one thing: big sleeves and their art.
- wolrah 3y ago> but vinyl and CD differences have nothing to do with it; it's just incompetent producers and sound engineers aiming at making their work more loud to attract listeners. The physical limitations of vinyl don't allow it to be pushed as hard as a digital medium, or even tape, can be. It's kind of like making a road that only allows air-cooled VWs and noting that speeding drops to almost zero.
- ZiiS 3y agoTill someone makes a Porsche.
- pgeorgi 3y agoIf everybody went for vinyl, they'd bring the loudness war over as far as it's possible (the medium is more limited). Right now, sound engineers, not incompetent at all, optimize CDs for the CD audience (and for the most part, they preferentially buy "louder," even if they'd deny it if you ask) and vinyl for those freaks who maintain their diamond needle. So vinyl sounds better _because_ it's a hipster medium.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- copperx 3y ago> optimize CDs for the CD audience CDs haven't been on anyone's radar for a long time.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago> Yeah, loudness war is a plague, but vinyl and CD differences have nothing to do with it; it's just incompetent producers and sound engineers aiming at making their work more loud to attract listeners. The claim (not directly made by the article, but generally made to support the difference) is that vinyl’s physical characteristics limit how “loud” a recording can be. Specifically, that a vinyl pressing of a “brick walled” recording becomes unplayable—or at least unreliably playable—because its physical tracks are insufficient to keep a stylus in place for playback. I don’t know how true that claim is, but the analysis seems cromulent, and analysis of comparable media seems to support it well enough. It isn’t a claim that pressing vinyl attracts or requires better production etc, but that the medium has inherent physical constraints that benefit, at least as a side effect, from greater dynamic range.
- ghusto 3y agoFixed title: Vinyl Can't be Abused as Badly as Higher Quality Mediums Such as CDs. Also, this only effects recent stuff, after the "loudness wars" started.
- dylan604 3y ago"recent stuff" is somewhat relative. the loudness war has been fought on other fronts than just CDs/mp3s. my cassette player from the 80s had a loudness button. the sales rep at Guitar Center bragged about the easiest one-button sale for a 1RU piece of gear to add to your rack that made your sound better. it was just a loudness on/off button. so it was playback device dependent at that time which allowed the listener to choose it. they just moved the battle field to format itself and took away the choice
- mrob 3y agoThe "loudness" button on old equipment is actually a combined bass and treble boost, designed to the make the music sound louder at low listening levels by compensating for the effects of the equal loudness contour. It's a great idea for anybody who cares about protecting their hearing. You can do even better using modern DSP by equalizing to a curve based on the difference between the equal loudness contour at your preferred listening level and the equal loudness contour several decibels louder.
- pkkm 3y agoInteresting. I found this blog post implementing your idea: https://artefact2.com/b/20220408-pipewire-loudness.xhtml https://artefact2.com/b/20220408-pipewire-loudness.xhtml
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThese nicer masters tend to also be used on other audiophile digital formats, such as "High resolution" downloads, Super Audio CDs, DVD-Audio, and other niche formats.
- coretx 3y agoBut unlike Vinyl those are designed to rot away over time. When you buy vinyl, you can rip & use it and store the vinyl somewhere save without having to worry about losing it,ever.
- kstrauser 3y agoI can’t tell if this is serious or satire. If serious, LOL. You most assuredly cannot use vinyl, a medium that physically wears out a little bit every time you listen to it, forever. Source: owned hundreds of LPs over the years. Also, just look at it.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoYou can “rip” all these formats (downloads are of course “pre-ripped”) and the physical formats I mentioned are definitely not designed to rot. Unlike Vinyl, they also sound exactly the same each time you play them, since they are not worn by the playback head.
- Animats 3y ago"You don't want your CD to be the quietest one in the stack" - some writer on mastering in the 1990s.
- itronitron 3y agoInteresting, both 15 second segments sound like the same garbage to me.
- CharlesW 3y agoYes, the first re-compressed CD segment sounds so much worse than the iTunes version that I'm not sure what to think. Two possibilities: (1) The album was remastered for a subsequent CD reissue. (2) I'm hearing the benefits of the "Apple Digital Masters"¹ process. ¹ https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/ https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/
- itronitron 3y agoI occasionally play a used CD of Bob Marley's Legend album in the car and the clarity of the music is so much greater than any of the current songs playing on the radio. Not sure if it's a measure of the quality of the artist, the producer, or the technology.
- CharlesW 3y agoThe degree to which radio stations process the life out of music is unbelievable. https://web.archive.org/web/20210618142217/http://www.masterdigital.com/24bit/mastering/radio.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210618142217/http://www.master...
- ricardobeat 3y agoApple Digital Masters is the real deal. The quality difference is noticeable even on modern pop songs, especially when compared to Spotify.
- bwanab 3y agoI dunno. I just listened to it on Spotify and it sounded much better than either of the versions in the article. Maybe it's because it was in the context of the whole song.
- gizajob 3y agoVinyl actually has quite a limited bandwidth too, so what you gain by not having digital limiting, you often lose by only having a small amount of dynamic range.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThe dynamic range also reduces as you get closer to the center of the record because the linear tracking speed reduces. Some albums had to have their tracks rearranged so that the louder tracks weren't near the end.
- cesaref 3y agoWhatever you may think is wrong with vinyl, limited bandwidth isn't the problem - it's totally possible to get 50Khz onto a record, and there were even quadraphonic recordings made by modulating an extra two channels into these otherwise unused higher frequency ranges. Dynamic range may be what you mean? It's around 70-80db, which is good enough for most things, certainly when records are new and/or undamaged so surface noise is lower.
- giantrobot 3y ago> certainly when records are new and/or undamaged so surface noise is lower. Then you play them once and the record forever has surface noise. The best part, it only gets worse the more you listen! I've yet to have a CD ruined by the laser in a CD player.
- CharlesW 3y agoThe Audacity waveform rendering is a bit misleading because each pixel is reflecting the peak of nearly 10,000 samples. Here's a higher-resolution look ("Open Image in New Tab" and click to zoom for detail) at one segment of the track: https://imgur.com/a/7mncY77 https://imgur.com/a/7mncY77 From the waveform analysis, you can see that the LRA of the selected segment is fairly narrow at 2.1 LU, but the dynamic range is quite high at 38.59 dB. The effect is minimal variation in music intensity, but a substantial difference between the quietest and loudest sounds in that segment. I'd guess that the degree to which this causes ear sparkles is probably not achievable when mastering to plastic.
- ternaryoperator 3y agoMandatory New Yorker cartoon (2015): www.ratherrarerecords.com/wp-content/uploads/AlexGregory_cartoon_vinyl_1000.jpg
- dredmorbius 3y agoLinkified: https://www.ratherrarerecords.com/wp-content/uploads/AlexGregory_cartoon_vinyl_1000.jpg https://www.ratherrarerecords.com/wp-content/uploads/AlexGre...
- musicale 3y agoOn the rare occasions I hear vinyl being played I'm surprised at how good it sounds. It shouldn't sound good, but it does.
- derwiki 3y agoCan you elaborate on why you think so? I’ve always said that vinyl sounds “warmer” but that is a squishy term that I can’t really elaborate on.
- badgersnake 3y agoA decent amplifier and speakers probably. People tend to spend money on their vinyl setup. CD played through the same setup would also sound good.
- user_7832 3y ago> I’ve always said that vinyl sounds “warmer” but that is a squishy term that I can’t really elaborate on. I think it is at least partly due to a reduced top end/treble. Though googling something like "why does vinyl sound warmer" will give more information. Sites like ASR forums or diyaudio will help if you want to get more technical.
- musicale 3y agoI'm not sure. Adjectives like warm (or maybe smoother and less brittle) usually mean less high end, but I don't think that's all there is to it. I think part of it may be good mastering without overcompression or clipping, and good instrument tone and arrangement (and probably equalization) - with discernible bass, midrange, and highs (though cymbals and high end can get sanded off with repeated plays I guess.) Better playback systems (vs. bluetooth speakers etc.) may also be helping. The number of tracks and stereo image might be helping. And maybe there's some kind of synergy between vinyl-era popular music and its recording media - bands that sounded good on vinyl probably sold more records, etc. On the other hand, I am sometimes blown away by the dynamic range of good classical CDs. Also: has FM radio gotten worse in sound quality?
- possibleworlds 3y agoThis is an amazingly in depth resource that touches on this topic: https://magicvinyldigital.net/blog/ https://magicvinyldigital.net/blog/
- Projectiboga 3y agoDigital is only part of the audio waveform. CD especially is based on 1970s digital audio processing, not even professional quality. Vinyl is a full waveform. Much fuller, bass, drums, and voices.
- pie314isi 3y agowhat a load of crap. every sentence is bullshit.
- sushibowl 3y agoTechnically speaking, there is just no discussion to be had. CD from its very first release offered an orders of magnitude better, more faithful reproduction of a recording than vinyl. - better signal/noise ratio. Cutting a groove inevitably has limited precision and the waveform will have imperfections. CD is a perfect reproduction each time. - wear and tear. Every time the needle moves through the groove, imperfections will get worse and more noise is added. CD has error correction built in and even scratching doesn't affect quality (up to a certain point) - playback speed deviation: CD doesn't suffer from wow/flutter effects - quality of vinyl decreases toward the inside of the record Just because the storage medium is analog doesn't translate into a more faithful reproduction of the sound. It mostly leads to more opportunities for distortion and noise.
- scns 3y agoThere is a free plugin by Tokyo Dawn Labs that lets you play with vinyls limitations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqL3WjWYbY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqL3WjWYbY8
- znpy 3y agoI listened to the two 15-seconds sample from cd and vinyl... I couldn't tell the difference. I tried playing back and forth with the controls... Still no difference. I'm playing the music on an m1 macbook pro (so not a cheap-ass machine) and I tried with and without my headset (sennheiser, so not really a cheap-ass headset). Not sure what to make of this. It does add a bit to my "audiophiles are gullible people" suspect though.
- leephillips 3y agoI didn’t hear a difference either. I think the reason is explained in the comment by mrob above. Obviously the author believes he can hear a clear difference. I wonder if he blind tested himself.
- matchamatcha 3y agoTo me, the vinyl sample sounded a bit 'louder', but as I understood the article, it should be the opposite way?
- apecat 3y agoYou are very unlikely to hear a difference like this on laptop speakers. Present-day Apple laptop speakers are great feats of engineering for what they are, but they use a bunch of trickery to create the illusion of bass and such. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental Even with decent headphones, the difference between these samples isn't trivial to spot, unless you have moderately trained ears. I'm not an audio professional but I have a great interest in this space. My first impression is that the the bass in the second sample stands out a bit more in the mix, perhaps thanks to higher dynamic range. The high range is muted and the mid range in the percussion and such may be more pronounced. That's not to say you're wrong about audiophiles. A lot of claims made by this subculture are nonsense and especially not applicable to situations where an everyday person seeks some improvement to their audio reproduction. For example, lossy audio codecs have a bad reputation among certain people, due to old technology. Mp3 is undoubtedly garbage, 90s tech. If I waste a bunch of time on blind tests, I can spot even a 320 kbps mp3 sample with my regular listening headphones. Lower bitrates are a lot more obvious to spot. However, this problem is gone for almost all people in most listening environments, mine included. This is thanks to the more modern lossy delivery codecs at decent bitrates, as employed by the the premium tiers of the big streaming services, which are Vorbis (Spotify) and AAC (Apple and most others) and Opus (Youtube Music in some circumstances). Archival and editing copies of audio should obviously be lossless. Generational loss over lossy media are as real with digital re-encodes as with analog tape. A regular person who wants to improve their listening experience can easily get decent headphones now. However, anyone who wants to invest in a better shared listening experience than a decent portable mono Bluetooth speaker can offer, should probably start by thinking through the the acoustics of the room they want to listen in. This doesn't have to be fancy, just having shelves with actual books on the walls in the direction looking towards a speaker system does a lot. Spending more than 200 USD on speakers in a room with blank walls is ridiculous, unless it's a log cabin. Those actually sound great.
- tacocataco 3y agoOne thing about vinyl that I've noticed is that you don't have a play list, you listen to the whole album. No one puts on a vinyl record to play one song. I used to have a huge folder where I dumped all my music files and I would have them play at random. When I streamed online, I would have a play list or pick one song at a time. Lately I've been going through some of my favorite arists and listening to each of their albums in chronological order. Listening to the entire album as the artist intended is just a little different and it's how I play music for myself now. Perhaps people like vinyl because it encourages listening to the entire album in one sitting.
- euroderf 3y agoExcellent point! So how tough to program a playlist to play sets of three by artists...
- anta40 3y agoWell that's the same mindset when listening to casettes, yes? Except choosing a specific track on vinyl is a bit tougher: you have to move the needle to certain position...
- jimlikeslimes 3y agoSkipping tracks on vinyl is super easy, especially compared to fast-forward or rewind on casette. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF5toXl3H3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF5toXl3H3c
- dTal 3y agoChoosing a specific track is easier on vinyl than cassette, not tougher; there are often visual cues, and you can seek in constant time rather than linear. It takes a steady hand to be sure, but I'll take it any day over fast forwarding / rewinding some arbitrary amount, hunting for the start by sound... (There are cassette players that can stop winding when they detect silence, and that helps, but they fail on albums with gapless mixing. Admittedly such albums are also difficult to seek by sight on vinyl. On the other hand, there are vinyl players with motorized arms that obviate the need for a steady hand, at the cost of introducing a linear term in seek time, albeit still faster than cassettes.)
- analog31 3y agoThe "volume wars" predate CDs, but tended to be fought by the radio stations themselves. Virtually every radio station (I worked in college radio) had a dynamic processor that managed signal levels for maximum loudness. The conventional wisdom was that people would choose the loudest station when listening in their cars. Commercials were mixed as loud as possible too. The use of compression in this way may have emanated from the fact that the station already needed to have a compressor limiter in the signal chain, to prevent overmodulation, which could earn you a fine from the FCC. I was told to dial the compressor to within a gnat's ass of 100% modulation. How the two recordings sound in your phone or laptop might be clouded by those devices also processing your sound to make tiny speakers sound louder. A popular processor was the Orban Optimod, so I checked to see if it's still in production, nearly 40 years later: https://www.orban.com/optimodfm-8700i https://www.orban.com/optimodfm-8700i Ironically, the new model claims that it "brings hyper-compressed music back to life."
- justincormack 3y agoAlso the Aphex Compellor.
- subpar 3y agoThe conventional wisdom was that people would choose the loudest station when listening in their cars. But also, the louder your station is the wider your FM broadcast, so you can really fill out the FCC-allowed +/- 0.15 MHz on either side of your allotted channel.
- xbar 3y agoThe 2nd audio clip sounded more pleasant to me.
- pkkm 3y agoAnecdotally, I can confirm. I remember listening to a vinyl rip of Opeth's Blackwater Park because the CD version's dynamic range has been butchered enough that it more than made up for vinyl's technical inferiority. However, now that most people have moved to streaming services, I think that CDs may become the audiophile/hipster format of choice. They have the advantages of vinyl - being able to physically touch your collection and look at the cover art, generally no DRM, the nostalgia factor of using old technology - while also having near-perfect quality and not degrading with every listen.
- tambourine_man 3y ago> Maybe it’s time to hit up your local record store. No, it’s time to end the loudness war or offer an option with the full dynamic range for those that care.
- buildsjets 3y agoWhat a silly article. Of course headroom and compression is manipulated and optimized by the recording engineer when mastering for vinyl, sometimes to good results and sometimes to bad. A skilled engineer will know how to make any recording medium sound optimized, a schmo will phone it it and either under or over use compression, to poor results in either case regardless of media. For example, I own two different 1969 pressings of Led Zeppelin II, both from the same pressing plant, but made from different masters. One pressing was mastered by the mighty Robert Ludwig. It uses extensive compression and barely leaves any headroom. The sound is rich, full, and driving. It sounds great on medium to high-end turntables, but caused cheap ones to skip due to the bass excursions. After a week on the market Atlantic Records recalled it an replaced it with a version they remastered internally, which leaves plenty of headroom but sounds puny and pathetic in comparison. Guess which one collectors value today? https://www.discogs.com/release/4699428-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-II https://www.discogs.com/release/4699428-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zep... https://www.discogs.com/release/8753624-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-II https://www.discogs.com/release/8753624-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zep... https://nowspinning.co.uk/led-zeppelin-robert-ludwig-the-strange-case-of-his-1969-hot-stampers/ https://nowspinning.co.uk/led-zeppelin-robert-ludwig-the-str... On the flip side, my original pressing of "Are You Experienced" is pretty terrible compared to the remastered pressing that was authorized by the Hendrix family in 2014, so choose modern over vintage on that one.
- nemo44x 3y agoSimilarly a lot of not as popular old music has never been remastered properly for new formats and this is one of the reasons collectors of old vinyl are often on to something. A lot of it was created from vinyl masters and sounds sub-optimal in digital form. Interesting fact regarding Zep ][, thanks!