Dan Lavry, design guru new white paper on the Optimal Sampling Rate for Audio!

[mlsstl]

Phil is techie.. he just took a difference between the tracks and amplified it to the desired level... until he began hearing speech
It is not a noise, I remember it was something around -60db.. you can search this forum..

You can blame recording engineers, marketing campaigns.
Some say that since 24-bit recordings are targeted for audiophiles, the recording process is if higher quality.

Some guys play here with numbers but refuse (are you afraid? ) to do something practically.
Buy some music, do a blind test!

I guess your argument is that if 24/192 is what it takes to get the recording industry to do a proper job in mixing and mastering music, then great!

Unfortunately, that is ultimately unlikely to be any more prevalent than those CDs that take full advantage of the full potential of that medium. I have some incredibly well recorded CDs in my collection. They make full use of the format's 90+ dB dynamic range, leaving plenty of room for true dynamic peaks without the application of compression. Run down a copy of The Great American Main Street Band's "Silks and Rags" from 1991, for example.

Now, compare that to your typical CD release these days with limiting and compression on full tilt in order to produce the maximum possible average volume. The difference is not the format -- both are CDs.

As someone who, over a 10 year period, converted approximately 2,000 LPs in my collection to digital, I've done a lot of direct comparison between formats. My experience tells me that most of the difference that people hear between LP, CD quality and hi-rez has little to do with the format. The differences I hear are based in the choices made during the production process. Unfortunately, the fads & fashions in the recording industry right now are not now very favorable to those who like their music natural sounding.

It would be wishful thinking to believe the same thing won't happen to 24/192 recordings as they become more common.

[cliveb]

Phil is techie.. he just took a difference between the tracks and amplified it to the desired level... until he began hearing speech

If you want to determine whether there is a perceptually audible difference between two versions of a recording, listening to an amplified difference signal is NOT the way to go about it. And knowing Phil from his posts here, I seriously doubt that was his intention.

Take a lossless version of a file and a 320kbps MP3 of it, and generate the difference. You'd hear stacks of signal in that difference file. It would be so obvious that, by your reasoning, you'd conclude that 320kbps MP3 must be dreadful. But if you were to ABX the lossless and MP3 versions, it is almost 99.999% certain that you'd be unable to perceive any difference.

[cliveb]

Unfortunately, the fads & fashions in the recording industry right now are not now very favorable to those who like their music natural sounding.

Using the word "fashion" hits the nail on the head. Extreme compression and peak limiting is the currently fashionable way to master recordings. But as we all know, fashions come and go.

I think that the current fashion in mastering is akin to the insanely flared trousers and stack heels that we used wear in the 1970's. Back in those days, it was *unthinkable* for people of my generation to wear straight trousers - they would have zero street-cred.

And so it is with mastering these days. The herd mentality requires that they compress the hell out of everything - not to do so would result in other people pointing and laughing. The goal is no longer to make things as loud as possible - the characteristic sound you get from extreme compression is what they're aiming for. Extra loudness is a secondary "benefit".

Those of us who long for the days of sensible mastering practices are like the older generation who back in the 1970's used to tell me I looked ridiculous and to get a haircut. And of course in retrospect they were right.

[Archimago]

Using the word "fashion" hits the nail on the head. Extreme compression and peak limiting is the currently fashionable way to master recordings. But as we all know, fashions come and go.

Alas, this "fashion" has been going on now since ~1995! I was shocked recently that the "Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack has been affected... Unbelievable that a soundtrack score would be compressed so severely ;-( Utterly insane...

[trott3r]

Lo,

At 04:35 31/07/2012, Archimago wrote:

>cliveb wrote:
> > Using the word "fashion" hits the nail on the head. Extreme compression
> > and peak limiting is the currently fashionable way to master recordings.
> > But as we all know, fashions come and go.
> >
>
>Alas, this "fashion" has been going on now since ~1995! I was shocked
>recently that the "Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack has been affected...
>Unbelievable that a soundtrack score would be compressed so severely ;-(
>Utterly insane...


AFAIK it started with GNRs appetite for destruction 87? 89?
Most recordings around 1995 onwards have been compressed in this terrible
way.

Martin

Running MorphOS v3.1 (July 2012) on a PowerPC Powerbook, Moderator of
MiniDisc,amithlonopen,bwfc Yahoogroups

[zano65]

Hello,
http://www.cimprecords.com/about/ cimp records make CDs without compression:
<<CIMP records are digitally recorded live to two tracks. Digital recording allows for a vanishingly low noise floor and tremendous dynamic range. There is no compression, homogenization, eq-ing, post-recording splicing, mixing, or electronic fiddling with CIMP performances. Compressing the dynamic range is what limits the "air" and life of many recordings. Our recordings capture the full dynamic range one would experience in a live concert; many of them have a dynamic swing of over 85dB.>>

I have a few and the sound is very good, the average level is lower than on most CDs.

Jean

[bakker_be]

Lo,

At 04:35 31/07/2012, Archimago wrote:

>cliveb wrote:
> > Using the word "fashion" hits the nail on the head. Extreme compression
> > and peak limiting is the currently fashionable way to master recordings.
> > But as we all know, fashions come and go.
> >
>
>Alas, this "fashion" has been going on now since ~1995! I was shocked
>recently that the "Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack has been affected...
>Unbelievable that a soundtrack score would be compressed so severely ;-(
>Utterly insane...


AFAIK it started with GNRs appetite for destruction 87? 89?
Most recordings around 1995 onwards have been compressed in this terrible
way.

Martin

Running MorphOS v3.1 (July 2012) on a PowerPC Powerbook, Moderator of
MiniDisc,amithlonopen,bwfc Yahoogroups

Interestingly, that same bands latest effort, Chinese Democracy, is actually an album with decent dynamics ...

[congole]

Using the word "fashion" hits the nail on the head. Extreme compression and peak limiting is the currently fashionable way to master recordings. But as we all know, fashions come and go.

...
And so it is with mastering these days. The herd mentality requires that they compress the hell out of everything - not to do so would result in other people pointing and laughing. The goal is no longer to make things as loud as possible - the characteristic sound you get from extreme compression is what they're aiming for. Extra loudness is a secondary "benefit".

Those of us who long for the days of sensible mastering practices are like the older generation who back in the 1970's used to tell me I looked ridiculous and to get a haircut. And of course in retrospect they were right.

I believe that we can thank the MP3 wave for the changes (not to better!) in music production and mastering... for the loss of music information in lssy (I know there should be an 'o' there!) compression had to be somehow "outsmarted".
The remastering part proved to be mostly just another way to take the money out of your pockets with false pretext not communicated - so called "enrichment" of the recording. E.g: I had the ooportunity to listen the original CD edition 'We Get Requests' by OSCAR PETERSON and the relatively recently released remastered version - the latter definitely not making for long its stay in my collection.
I keep seeing the efforts led mostly by the ideas of commercial and/or convinience results - rarely by quality; being not so young but not so old as well, I remember it being different.

... And speaking of 16 bits or more ... it certainly is not all in the bits or kHz, but how you use what you "have at hand". I still use an old VTL DAC with a (well, Lavry-concieved) UtraAnalog module inside that supports "up to 20 bits /48kHz"; people 'round me (and myself included) have yet to hear more many that outperfom its reproduction of digitally encoded music.