4 ms·

Many (most?) vinyls are pre Loudness War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war). But CDs are mostly post Loudness

by antris 14y ago

Many (most?) vinyls are pre Loudness War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war). But CDs are mostly post Loudness War, where all the sound has become wimpy due to bad mixing practices driven by marketers. This also affects digital music, no matter how it's compressed. So in general, many vinyls actually do sound more dynamic and clear. It's not because of the media, but because of how they were produced at different times in the industry.

ZoFreX 14y ago
Which is hugely ironic as the major advantage of CDs over vinyl (at least, the one that was touted back then) is their wider dynamic range. Which we now use all of 5% of.
- dedward 14y ago
  Yup - and to be fair, there were, especially earlier on, some CDs that were mastered beautifully, and sound just fantastic on a half decent setup (no crazy stuff... just decent speakes and a plain old amp). I recall hearing some Pink Floyd at a friends place and saying "Holy crap! What are you listening to? That's an amazing recording" and he pops out a CD, from a regular old CD player and his homebuilt heathkit amp, and a pair of speakers that looked like he picked them up back in the 70s.... point being, the dynamic range was there. You can generally tell it's there when you put the CD in your car and say "Hey that's too quiet"... that's a good candidate for some more serious listening.
  - pasbesoin 14y ago
    I recall comparing several units in a listening environment. A Philips deck, plugged into the same amp and speakers, was noticeably better than the competitors we were trying. Suddenly, I could hear the scrape of the cellist's bow against the strings at the start and stop of strokes. It wasn't an absurdly high end Philips deck, but it was into the range where they spent to put in good analogue circuitry -- what happens to the signal after the D/A converter gets done with it. The CD format didn't obviate the need to take care of and spend on the rest of the delivery mechanism. And not on the associated marketing hype, but on good and well-matched components. CD's were a revelation -- in the right production hands. But then they became coasters played in $50 boom boxes. And they never outright obviated high quality analogue recordings and playback. They presented an interesting addition and counter-point to audio reproduction. I doubt that scrape survives very well at 192 Kbps.
tsotha 14y ago
One of my biggest disappointments in life was buying CD after CD that sounded absolutely muddy compared to my old vinyl. At first I thought they were just hiring, you know, lumberjacks to do the transfers. I'm still floored that was done on purpose.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  I had the same experience. For me it manifested as "this sounds louder, but I can't crank it up anymore". With a vinyl, I used to be able to just crank that volume dial into the stratosphere and rock out, the CD just turned into a sonic fog bank that tired you out trying to listen to when you tried to turn it up.
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago
    Sometimes you can fix this with better equipment (although the fact that your vinyl worked fine suggests that your equipment works fine). But, yeah, it is all kinds of frustrating to discover that the band you like has no listenable recordings. There's stuff that literally just needs to be played in the car.
    - noonespecial 14y ago
      I've got the same Cerwin Vega's and Marantz amp that I (ahem my parents... thanks dad) had in the 80's. I've tried a couple different CD players. The wakeup call came when I converted my vinyl to CD myself with nothing but the built-in ADC on my Mac and it still sounded better than the commercial release.
viraptor 14y ago
I have to completely agree here. You can still find some material that was published (on purpose or not) before it got adjusted and the difference is huge. I was really impressed by DM's Lillywhite sessions CD which was leaked before it was "finished". It's got the best sound I've heard in a long time on a professional recording. I wish more were released that way - without the unnecessary compression (of sound, not the file format).
StavrosK 14y ago
Oh God, Holy Mountains from Hypnotize actually has CLIPPING! This isn't some college band, it's System of a Down. They couldn't hire an engineer that knows the first thing about sound? I'm just a guy and I know your fucking track shouldn't clip ever. They ruined that song.
- __chrismc 14y ago
  You just reminded me of something a friend collaborated on: http://www.myspace.com/clippingdeath http://www.myspace.com/clippingdeath
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Your apt rant brings up a tragic point: It's not just the loudness war anymore. As David Lowery pointed out in his essays, recording studios are expensive beasts and audio engineering takes a lot of time by skilled labor. As the money drains out of the ecosystem all those corners get cut. Unfortunately, mic technology isn't as good as our ears and just aiming mics at a stage and pressing record won't give you high quality, even if we assume the live mix is good. Which is not always the case.
  - dedward 14y ago
    But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only getting cheaper and more accessible? I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is all it takes to produce a record, but your home PC these days can handle the mixing that it used to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear to do, and good recording gear can still cost a pretty penny, but it must be getting better and cheaper like everything else. We've seen more well-produced stuff by "amateurs" these days than any time in the past...
    - mechanical_fish 14y ago
      Unfortunately, if you make one component of the supply chain cheaper it doesn't affect the other components. Digital audio workstations are, indeed, a lot cheaper. But they're just one piece of equipment, and it's capital equipment at that. (That is, you buy it once and then use it for years, to produce hundreds of recordings. You don't pay by the hour and it doesn't wear out rapidly with use, though it does become gradually obsolete.) The rest of your kit includes mics, preamps, amps, cables, consoles with jacks and lights and knobs and sliders, power supplies, stands, properly designed studios with isolation and acoustical treatments and talkback mics and quiet air conditioning, and so forth. Although almost none of the technology behind these things has changed since 1965, they are a bit cheaper today, because we've gotten more productive at manufacturing. But they aren't "Moore's Law cheaper". Meanwhile, revenues from music sales are "Moore's Law smaller". The other thing that hasn't gotten cheaper is the time. Audio engineers are trained experts. Setting up all those mics and positioning them right and listening critically to the results through take after take is necessarily time-consuming, and your audio pros need to be around most of that time, fiddling with things. And they're paid by the hour. There are definitely specific genres of recording that are in their golden age. If you like the sound of stuff that doesn't bother with all the recording techniques that have been patiently developed since the 1950s, but just parks a few mics around the garage and plugs them into the 4-track, you're all set, because every part of the production chain after the 4-track has tiny capital cost now, and distribution is cheap. If you stick to digital instruments, you're all set. If your talent consists of taking samples and mixing them into music, or spending months recording one track at a time in your bathroom with strategically placed towels on the walls and a single decent mic, and then mixing and transforming the results in post using that cheap DAW, things are pretty good for you. And lord knows that there's never been a better time to be an amateur audio engineer. But if you want the modern equivalent of, say, Revolver? Decreasingly economical, unless it's part of a larger project, like a show or a soundtrack.
chaostheory 14y ago
Aside from cost, size, and convenience; the problem with vinyl is consistency. I remember reading a study stating that the quality degrades after only 8 plays. Then again if you're an audiophile maybe 8 good plays is better than what they consider garbage 100% of the time.

by antris 14y ago

ZoFreX 14y ago

Which is hugely ironic as the major advantage of CDs over vinyl (at least, the one that was touted back then) is their wider dynamic range. Which we now use all of 5% of.

dedward 14y ago
Yup - and to be fair, there were, especially earlier on, some CDs that were mastered beautifully, and sound just fantastic on a half decent setup (no crazy stuff... just decent speakes and a plain old amp). I recall hearing some Pink Floyd at a friends place and saying "Holy crap! What are you listening to? That's an amazing recording" and he pops out a CD, from a regular old CD player and his homebuilt heathkit amp, and a pair of speakers that looked like he picked them up back in the 70s.... point being, the dynamic range was there. You can generally tell it's there when you put the CD in your car and say "Hey that's too quiet"... that's a good candidate for some more serious listening.
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  I recall comparing several units in a listening environment. A Philips deck, plugged into the same amp and speakers, was noticeably better than the competitors we were trying. Suddenly, I could hear the scrape of the cellist's bow against the strings at the start and stop of strokes. It wasn't an absurdly high end Philips deck, but it was into the range where they spent to put in good analogue circuitry -- what happens to the signal after the D/A converter gets done with it. The CD format didn't obviate the need to take care of and spend on the rest of the delivery mechanism. And not on the associated marketing hype, but on good and well-matched components. CD's were a revelation -- in the right production hands. But then they became coasters played in $50 boom boxes. And they never outright obviated high quality analogue recordings and playback. They presented an interesting addition and counter-point to audio reproduction. I doubt that scrape survives very well at 192 Kbps.

tsotha 14y ago

One of my biggest disappointments in life was buying CD after CD that sounded absolutely muddy compared to my old vinyl. At first I thought they were just hiring, you know, lumberjacks to do the transfers. I'm still floored that was done on purpose.

noonespecial 14y ago
I had the same experience. For me it manifested as "this sounds louder, but I can't crank it up anymore". With a vinyl, I used to be able to just crank that volume dial into the stratosphere and rock out, the CD just turned into a sonic fog bank that tired you out trying to listen to when you tried to turn it up.
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Sometimes you can fix this with better equipment (although the fact that your vinyl worked fine suggests that your equipment works fine). But, yeah, it is all kinds of frustrating to discover that the band you like has no listenable recordings. There's stuff that literally just needs to be played in the car.
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    I've got the same Cerwin Vega's and Marantz amp that I (ahem my parents... thanks dad) had in the 80's. I've tried a couple different CD players. The wakeup call came when I converted my vinyl to CD myself with nothing but the built-in ADC on my Mac and it still sounded better than the commercial release.

viraptor 14y ago

I have to completely agree here. You can still find some material that was published (on purpose or not) before it got adjusted and the difference is huge. I was really impressed by DM's Lillywhite sessions CD which was leaked before it was "finished". It's got the best sound I've heard in a long time on a professional recording. I wish more were released that way - without the unnecessary compression (of sound, not the file format).

StavrosK 14y ago

Oh God, Holy Mountains from Hypnotize actually has CLIPPING! This isn't some college band, it's System of a Down. They couldn't hire an engineer that knows the first thing about sound? I'm just a guy and I know your fucking track shouldn't clip ever. They ruined that song.

__chrismc 14y ago
You just reminded me of something a friend collaborated on: http://www.myspace.com/clippingdeath http://www.myspace.com/clippingdeath
mechanical_fish 14y ago
Your apt rant brings up a tragic point: It's not just the loudness war anymore. As David Lowery pointed out in his essays, recording studios are expensive beasts and audio engineering takes a lot of time by skilled labor. As the money drains out of the ecosystem all those corners get cut. Unfortunately, mic technology isn't as good as our ears and just aiming mics at a stage and pressing record won't give you high quality, even if we assume the live mix is good. Which is not always the case.
- dedward 14y ago
  But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only getting cheaper and more accessible? I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is all it takes to produce a record, but your home PC these days can handle the mixing that it used to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear to do, and good recording gear can still cost a pretty penny, but it must be getting better and cheaper like everything else. We've seen more well-produced stuff by "amateurs" these days than any time in the past...
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago
    Unfortunately, if you make one component of the supply chain cheaper it doesn't affect the other components. Digital audio workstations are, indeed, a lot cheaper. But they're just one piece of equipment, and it's capital equipment at that. (That is, you buy it once and then use it for years, to produce hundreds of recordings. You don't pay by the hour and it doesn't wear out rapidly with use, though it does become gradually obsolete.) The rest of your kit includes mics, preamps, amps, cables, consoles with jacks and lights and knobs and sliders, power supplies, stands, properly designed studios with isolation and acoustical treatments and talkback mics and quiet air conditioning, and so forth. Although almost none of the technology behind these things has changed since 1965, they are a bit cheaper today, because we've gotten more productive at manufacturing. But they aren't "Moore's Law cheaper". Meanwhile, revenues from music sales are "Moore's Law smaller". The other thing that hasn't gotten cheaper is the time. Audio engineers are trained experts. Setting up all those mics and positioning them right and listening critically to the results through take after take is necessarily time-consuming, and your audio pros need to be around most of that time, fiddling with things. And they're paid by the hour. There are definitely specific genres of recording that are in their golden age. If you like the sound of stuff that doesn't bother with all the recording techniques that have been patiently developed since the 1950s, but just parks a few mics around the garage and plugs them into the 4-track, you're all set, because every part of the production chain after the 4-track has tiny capital cost now, and distribution is cheap. If you stick to digital instruments, you're all set. If your talent consists of taking samples and mixing them into music, or spending months recording one track at a time in your bathroom with strategically placed towels on the walls and a single decent mic, and then mixing and transforming the results in post using that cheap DAW, things are pretty good for you. And lord knows that there's never been a better time to be an amateur audio engineer. But if you want the modern equivalent of, say, Revolver? Decreasingly economical, unless it's part of a larger project, like a show or a soundtrack.

chaostheory 14y ago

Aside from cost, size, and convenience; the problem with vinyl is consistency. I remember reading a study stating that the quality degrades after only 8 plays. Then again if you're an audiophile maybe 8 good plays is better than what they consider garbage 100% of the time.