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>[on YT] Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed. None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and so

by polshaw 12y ago

>[on YT] Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed. None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and sound engineers may have; take this image comparing the dynamic range of the CD and youtube releases of Pharrell's "Happy"[1]- I thought at the time it might just have been a mishap or random occurance, but now it looks like it was a very deliberate move. So, rather than ending the loudness wars on CDs and radio, we might end up long-term with the ludicrous situation where CD's sound worse than technically inferior Youtube videos. Youtube is the new vinyl. - E: I added links to the YT release[2] and (presumaby) a CD-sourced video[3] for anyone who wants to listen to the difference. Pay attention to the claps and drums (but I think it's obvious even on my laptop speakers). 1. https://imgur.com/KRj5DDS https://imgur.com/KRj5DDS 2. https://youtu.be/ZbZSe6N_BXs https://youtu.be/ZbZSe6N_BXs 3. https://youtu.be/nVH6RcLHqMo https://youtu.be/nVH6RcLHqMo

raverbashing 12y ago
Yeah if you buy commercial pop crap on CD it is going to sound crap regardless of compression. "Better heard on Beats headphones" maybe?
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Sorry, I couldn't hear your comment due to the overwhelming bass; it muddied up the mids and treble so I couldn't actually hear what you were saying?
72deluxe 12y ago
I noticed! I am a bass player who now happens to write software in the audio industry (I work for a company that makes hardware). But I noticed before coming here. Some of the worst CDs in my record collection are: 1. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (this is the worst album I own - considering Sir Paul left The Beatles over the mix of The Long and Winding Road, he should leave his own band over his master of this album.... I wonder if Phil Spector bribed Bob Ludwig to do that in time-delayed revenge???) 2. Rush - Vapor Trails (not helped by distortion during recording; it's one BIG square wave) 3. The Fratellis - Costello Music (distortion all the way through the album) 4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium (there's no possible way to make the first track sound quiet, try it!); apparently the vinyl has a different master and sounds infinitely better. 5. Foo Fighters - One By One (boxy drum sound and non-compliant CD format aside [chock full of copy protection so you won't see "Compact Disc" on the CD at all....], it's loud loud loud). I could go on. Considering the effort musicians go to get the best sound engineers, recording equipment, A to D converters, studio time and instruments, to throw it all away on a LOUD CD seems stupid to me. It means the album won't stand the test of time, and will sound as abysmal in the future as the day it was released; it is very short-sighted to release a LOUD CD for commercial gain (radio??? does anyone master just for radio still?) in the short term.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Try System of a Down's Holy Mountain, where the damn CD clips! I can't imagine who would let a CD track clip.
  - boomskats 12y ago
    Pretty sure that first MGMT album clips all over the place. And yeah I agree. That first SOAD album is an impressive piece of mastering though.
    - morganvachon 12y ago
      > Pretty sure that first MGMT album clips all over the place. I haven't heard their first album but I'm surprised at this. In my experience, most indie acts have greater creative control over mastering and just about every indie act I listen to (with the exception of some of the heavier stuff) is very light on the "loudness". By contrast, some of the more "pop" stuff I like, even songs that should be clean and distortion free, are unnecessarily jacked up way past the redline. A great example is John Mayer's "Heavier Things" album, with clipping and distortion on the lightest, cleanest tracks, and it gets worse with each of his albums after. It's frustrating because I know he's a brilliant musician who knows better, but I imagine it's the label who has the final creative control over what sound is heard on the CD.
      - rev_null 12y ago
        It was produced by Dave Fridmann, who is pretty notorious for mastering albums way too loud.
  - cnvogel 12y ago
    It's not clipping, it's just compressed at infinitely high compression ratio, and infinitesimally short attack and release.... ;-)
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    Unbelievably, some "mastering engineers" have been known to deliberately clip the track in pursuit of loudness, often at an ADC stage, and then turn the level down a fraction so it doesnt clip on playback. unfortunately, lots of DACs will produce inter-sample peaks under these conditions, which leads to that awful sound.
rplst8 12y ago
The examples you've cited look to be mastered (or at least sourced) differently. True loudness normalization should not affect the short term dynamic range of the material. It simply looks at the average level and lowers or raises it to some preset point. YT could be doing inter-song normalization, i.e. adjusting parts within the song to the same overall level - but this is not a good thing as it would affect properly mastered tracks too. Your example seems to show a completely clipped sample (in the CD) and a more reasonably mastered copy (in the YT clip) with greater dynamic range. Once the dynamic range has been destroyed through compression (not digital compression, I'm speaking of gain compression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_compression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_compression) it would difficult or nearly impossible to restore without affecting the quality. My guess - in this instance, I think the CD and YT clips come from different masters.
- currysausage 12y ago
  I think that is exactly what OP was trying to say: > None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and sound engineers may have They noticed and adjusted their YouTube masters accordingly.
Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
Wait, the audio in YouTube doesn't come from the CD? I never suspected that. I thought the article referred to that they took the audio, sourced from the CD, and lowered the volume if it was too loud (which obviously can't bring the dynamic range back).
- rspeer 12y ago
  That's what they're doing to the music that people upload, yes. Nobody's literally sticking a CD into a YouTube server, so what's on the CD is kind of beside the point. The parent poster's observation is that labels are uploading different, less-compressed mixes to YouTube now than the mix they release on CD, so that they sound better given YouTube's normalization.
discardorama 12y ago
Both of your links ([2] and [3]) are to YouTube; if they are normalizing the audio (as claimed by the author), then you shouldn't be able to hear a difference, right?
- sigmar 12y ago
  wrong. They are normalizing the perceived loudness. Which means [3] (which is the louder CD) will end up sounding squashed and equally as loud as [2].
IshKebab 12y ago
The second video you link is 240p which is always going to have awful quality. You can't really use that for a comparison (unless I guess you force the first one to 240p too).
- pcl 12y ago
  Are you suggesting that YouTube correlates audio quality to video resolution? If so, do you know what the correlations are?
  - sigmar 12y ago
    Youtube does indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_formats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_formats (click the "show")
  - vmarsy 12y ago
    yes it does, if you use a video extractor, and look at the different settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U .mp4 in 720p: AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 192.0 kbit/6.80% (ratio: 24000->352800) ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=192000 .mp4 in 360p: AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 96.0 kbit/3.40% (ratio: 12001->352800) ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=96008 (compared using : mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -identify videofile.mp4 http://superuser.com/questions/595177/how-to-retrieve-video-file-information-from-command-line-under-linux http://superuser.com/questions/595177/how-to-retrieve-video-... )
    - kbart 12y ago
      Wow, that's new for me, would never thought of that.

by polshaw 12y ago

raverbashing 12y ago

Yeah if you buy commercial pop crap on CD it is going to sound crap regardless of compression. "Better heard on Beats headphones" maybe?

72deluxe 12y ago
Sorry, I couldn't hear your comment due to the overwhelming bass; it muddied up the mids and treble so I couldn't actually hear what you were saying?

72deluxe 12y ago

I noticed! I am a bass player who now happens to write software in the audio industry (I work for a company that makes hardware). But I noticed before coming here. Some of the worst CDs in my record collection are: 1. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (this is the worst album I own - considering Sir Paul left The Beatles over the mix of The Long and Winding Road, he should leave his own band over his master of this album.... I wonder if Phil Spector bribed Bob Ludwig to do that in time-delayed revenge???) 2. Rush - Vapor Trails (not helped by distortion during recording; it's one BIG square wave) 3. The Fratellis - Costello Music (distortion all the way through the album) 4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium (there's no possible way to make the first track sound quiet, try it!); apparently the vinyl has a different master and sounds infinitely better. 5. Foo Fighters - One By One (boxy drum sound and non-compliant CD format aside [chock full of copy protection so you won't see "Compact Disc" on the CD at all....], it's loud loud loud). I could go on. Considering the effort musicians go to get the best sound engineers, recording equipment, A to D converters, studio time and instruments, to throw it all away on a LOUD CD seems stupid to me. It means the album won't stand the test of time, and will sound as abysmal in the future as the day it was released; it is very short-sighted to release a LOUD CD for commercial gain (radio??? does anyone master just for radio still?) in the short term.

StavrosK 12y ago
Try System of a Down's Holy Mountain, where the damn CD clips! I can't imagine who would let a CD track clip.
- boomskats 12y ago
  Pretty sure that first MGMT album clips all over the place. And yeah I agree. That first SOAD album is an impressive piece of mastering though.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    > Pretty sure that first MGMT album clips all over the place. I haven't heard their first album but I'm surprised at this. In my experience, most indie acts have greater creative control over mastering and just about every indie act I listen to (with the exception of some of the heavier stuff) is very light on the "loudness". By contrast, some of the more "pop" stuff I like, even songs that should be clean and distortion free, are unnecessarily jacked up way past the redline. A great example is John Mayer's "Heavier Things" album, with clipping and distortion on the lightest, cleanest tracks, and it gets worse with each of his albums after. It's frustrating because I know he's a brilliant musician who knows better, but I imagine it's the label who has the final creative control over what sound is heard on the CD.
    - rev_null 12y ago
      It was produced by Dave Fridmann, who is pretty notorious for mastering albums way too loud.
- cnvogel 12y ago
  It's not clipping, it's just compressed at infinitely high compression ratio, and infinitesimally short attack and release.... ;-)
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  Unbelievably, some "mastering engineers" have been known to deliberately clip the track in pursuit of loudness, often at an ADC stage, and then turn the level down a fraction so it doesnt clip on playback. unfortunately, lots of DACs will produce inter-sample peaks under these conditions, which leads to that awful sound.

rplst8 12y ago

The examples you've cited look to be mastered (or at least sourced) differently. True loudness normalization should not affect the short term dynamic range of the material. It simply looks at the average level and lowers or raises it to some preset point. YT could be doing inter-song normalization, i.e. adjusting parts within the song to the same overall level - but this is not a good thing as it would affect properly mastered tracks too. Your example seems to show a completely clipped sample (in the CD) and a more reasonably mastered copy (in the YT clip) with greater dynamic range. Once the dynamic range has been destroyed through compression (not digital compression, I'm speaking of gain compression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_compression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_compression) it would difficult or nearly impossible to restore without affecting the quality. My guess - in this instance, I think the CD and YT clips come from different masters.

currysausage 12y ago
I think that is exactly what OP was trying to say: > None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and sound engineers may have They noticed and adjusted their YouTube masters accordingly.

Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago

Wait, the audio in YouTube doesn't come from the CD? I never suspected that. I thought the article referred to that they took the audio, sourced from the CD, and lowered the volume if it was too loud (which obviously can't bring the dynamic range back).

rspeer 12y ago
That's what they're doing to the music that people upload, yes. Nobody's literally sticking a CD into a YouTube server, so what's on the CD is kind of beside the point. The parent poster's observation is that labels are uploading different, less-compressed mixes to YouTube now than the mix they release on CD, so that they sound better given YouTube's normalization.

discardorama 12y ago

Both of your links ([2] and [3]) are to YouTube; if they are normalizing the audio (as claimed by the author), then you shouldn't be able to hear a difference, right?

sigmar 12y ago
wrong. They are normalizing the perceived loudness. Which means [3] (which is the louder CD) will end up sounding squashed and equally as loud as [2].

IshKebab 12y ago

The second video you link is 240p which is always going to have awful quality. You can't really use that for a comparison (unless I guess you force the first one to 240p too).

pcl 12y ago
Are you suggesting that YouTube correlates audio quality to video resolution? If so, do you know what the correlations are?
- sigmar 12y ago
  Youtube does indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_formats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_formats (click the "show")
- vmarsy 12y ago
  yes it does, if you use a video extractor, and look at the different settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U .mp4 in 720p: AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 192.0 kbit/6.80% (ratio: 24000->352800) ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=192000 .mp4 in 360p: AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 96.0 kbit/3.40% (ratio: 12001->352800) ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=96008 (compared using : mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -identify videofile.mp4 http://superuser.com/questions/595177/how-to-retrieve-video-file-information-from-command-line-under-linux http://superuser.com/questions/595177/how-to-retrieve-video-... )
  - kbart 12y ago
    Wow, that's new for me, would never thought of that.