Stop dynamic range compression

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  • Brandon B
    Super Senior Member
    • Jun 2001
    • 2193

    Stop dynamic range compression

    As most here are probably aware, there is a developing tendency in the music production industry to make the average level of a recording on a CD louder, especially on pop titles.

    Essentially, this means they are decreasing the dynamic range of the medium, and, in fact, even clipping the music signal in many, many cases.

    For those who don't know the consequences of this, they are putting the music on the CD at a louder level, so that the quietest moment in the music is louder and the upper limit (which cannot really inncrease) often is exceeded resulting in lost information and plain bad sound.

    Some folks over on another forum were discussing this in the following thread.



    They got worked up enough to actually attempt to make some noise about it, and have begun constructing a website to be able to point people to to illustrate what this means and why it's bad.



    It's set to "go live" sometime next month (June), and they are looking for supporting data (i.e. samples of waveforms where this has occurred, or other technical input to illustrate the problems it causes) to add to the site. The contact info for the guy putting the effort into it is on the second page of the thread listed above.

    Don't know if this will amount to anything in the age of the MP3, but worth mentioning.

    BB
  • JonMarsh
    Mad Max Moderator
    • Aug 2000
    • 15259

    #2
    This is a problem even with some so-called high fidelity disk; the CD layer of the Dark Side of the Moon Hybrid SACD suffers from this problem, compared with the better CD releases.

    Then, there's the poster child for this phenomena; Santanna "Supernatural". Here we're in the strange situation where the DD track on the DVD version of this actually has wider dynamic range and more impact than the PCM CD. Not a good thing at all!

    ~Jon




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    • Bruce
      Senior Member
      • Aug 2000
      • 156

      #3
      Just like Fat Chuck's list of protected CDs, I hope they produce a list of which CDs are actually overcooked like Santana (what a shame).




      Bruce
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      Bruce

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      • David Meek
        Moderator Emeritus
        • Aug 2000
        • 8938

        #4
        This came up in one of the Editorial columns in the latest edition of Stereophile. And Jon, they specifically mentioned Supernatural, also. This is really unacceptable in my opinion. I want to hear what the artist intended, not what some corporate schmuck THINKS I want to hear. Compressing the bandwidth and then upping the "loudness" is the exact opposite of what I, and any other person concerned with good quality music, want. This isn't a complex problem - for louder replays, let the listener turn up the volume. D'oh!
        :bash:

        (slides soap box back under bed)




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        Comment

        • John Holmes
          Moderator Emeritus
          • Aug 2000
          • 2703

          #5
          What is interesting to me, this would have been a non-issue to me in my younger days. It all sounded about the same to me. It wasn't until I became educated that there was a level of quality in recordings and this was only realized through proper setup (and a little better equipment) that this became important.

          So my question would be, Are enough of us that care about sound quality buying more cd's than those that do not hear a difference? If the younger group is the target group of the indusrty, and the sales by genre reflects such, we that do not support this move may just be SOL.




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          Comment

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