ไม่สามารถเล่นวิดีโอนี้
ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก
Oddity Archive: Episode 148 - Loudness Wars
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 เม.ย. 2018
- Finally! An Archive episode with true A E S T H E T I C S!
Visit our website at www.oddityarchi...
Social Media:
Facebook: / oddityarchive
Twitter: @oddityarchive
Help out the Archive by making a monthly donation to our ongoing Patreon campaign. Visit the campaign at / oddityarchive
![ออกพรรษาน้ำตาหล่น - แอน อรดี [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PFZtOcY9ONA/mqdefault.jpg)
![เกิดใหม่ทั้งทีก็เป็นสไลม์ไปซะแล้ว ซีซั่น 3 - ตอนที่ 66 [ซับไทย]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qcaUguFlwdM/mqdefault.jpg)
“We are running head(room) first into TH-cam’s audio limits.”
Classic Benny-boy.
Another reason 60s 45s were pressed so hot is because a lot of kids who purchased them didn't have high end turntables (actually, usually pretty cheap, crappy ones) and so they wanted to make them "pop" more on these cheap record players. I've also heard some were mixed that way to sound better on AM radio
vinylstudsfavorites You're not wrong, Especially the AM radio aspect. No kid purchased EVERY tune, but all listened to the AM radio (before "pop" was "allowed" on FM,lol) AM broadcast radio being mono and narrow in bandwidth, It made perfect sense to "drive home" the middle and be LOUD!
I'm from Germany and here the sound with much use of level compression was called "American Sound"
Digital audio also distorts more than tape at low volume in terms of dithering and not utilizing the full bit-depth, so engineers have incentive to keep everything right up near 0dB. Excellent episode, thanks for doing the comparisons all us lazy audiophiles just talk about doing!
Zack Stewart Digital needs a bit of dithering or it really sounds weird.
Actually not really, digital audio will only run into quantization noise at the least significant bits, which at CD quality (44 kHz, 16 bit) sits way down near -96 dB, far too low to hear unless you cranked the volume up to deafening levels.
Problem is that once the master is converted into an MP3 or AAC file (BTW, contrast to popular belief, lossy audio file compression DOES NOT affect dynamic range or sound quality (unless you’re encoding at REALLY low bitrates)), the compressed file will have a higher peak level. Not anything that major, but enough to cause clipping if the peak level of the master is over -1db.
What are you smoking? What "engineers"?
Oh man, someone's gotta try and vaporwave your albums. That'l get them A E S T H E T I C
S I L E N C E I S G O L D E N
Two additional thoughts, brought up by the "curiosities" at the end:
- the first time I saw the "reversed polarity" issue was when XTC reissued their 1986 album Skylarking in 2010 (an amazing album, by the way). Andy Partridge noted that, during remastering, they found out the original recording had its polarity reversed at one point, and he claimed this made the sound be "projected towards the back", or something like that, and that fixing that problem made a lot of difference. That's a tricky statement to make, of course; we don't know at which point the polarity was corrected, so maybe the difference he noticed was due to other factors. Or it's just placebo effect.
- the wrong fade out on the Jackson Browne track brought to mind a really frustrating problem I had when I bought a vinyl issue of Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygène (an album you're probably familiar with). It's a Brazilian print from 1985, so it's not a remaster of anything. Each side of the record is supposed to run continuously, without breaks between tracks, yet in this issue, each track FADES OUT, and the next one just starts off abruptly, like the fade out never happened. I have no idea who was the shit-for-brains who decided to tamper with the original recordings, and what other prints are affected by this. It's the classic case of "You had ONE job".
Uau!
The older songs all sound better than the remastered ones
When Oasis brought out their second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, no pub jukebox was spared. The album was brickwalled to eternity. Everytime one of those tracks came on, you were hit by an avalanche of noise and snarl, and it just ruined a pleasant drink in an otherwise pleasant venue. Of course the Oasis fans in the pub were like: "OI OIIIII! F*CKING HAVE IT!"
Ray Murray there is a SACD version of the album which isn't brickwalled sounds very different and subjectively better :)
"(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" is basically the album everyone will point to as being the start of the Loudness War.
I clicked the like button as soon as I saw the description.
Hopefully the episode proper was satisfactory.
Is this comment really "19 hours" old?
Patreon supporters get the new videos one day early. And who wouldn't want it?
And yes, the video was very -aesthet- satisfactory.
OddityArchive it’s fantastic. I listened to it on my calibrated 5.1 system. I can definitely see your point. It’s a crapshoot!
7:16 And look what's on top of the graph, of course! I heard the 'Guitar Hero' remix of Death Magnetic recently, and wow, it's like night and day. So much better.
One thing I noticed right off about the remasters is besides the compression, they added "Smiley Face" EQ to them by boosting the high end and especially the bass. They are all trying to EQ for people who are used to Rap and EDM with heavy bass or for those listening on their phones or PC's with cheap earbuds.
It's been going on since the dawn of CD's. If you wanna hear really bad smiley-face EQ, hit up some of the Edsel label CD's from 1986-90 (their reissues of The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Yardbirds). Hardly any mid-range at all.
I remember reading a review with Bob Irwin who said some of the Byrds album masters were in very worn shape from all the times Columbia reused them. Some of the later CD remasters have ADD remixes done from the original multi-tracks. The Yardbirds material has been a huge mess for decades. Some of the LP's and CD's I bought from $5 budget labels sounded terrible with fake stereo and tinny sound. The best sounding versions I heard were the CD's made by Rhino, especially the "Yardbirds Ultimate" 2-CD set.
Seriously get the Steven Wilson remixes he has done for King Crimson. He did a great job of staying true to the original mixes but also opening the sound and dynamics up quite a bit in his remixes. They sound fantastic.
It's really hard to say 100% of something is great, but 100% of anything Steven Wilson has remixed is better than the original, especially the 5.1 mixes he's done for Tull, Yes, and XTC. I really hope he gets to keep doing what he's doing.
I watched some videos about it, but You, about this? I am impressed.
I HATE the loudness wars. At the FM radio station I volunteer at we just purchased and installed a device called an Omnia 11 Audio Processor. Guess what it does. 110% modulation at the limit of what the FCC allows. Makes vinyl sound like crap and tapes without Dolby confuse it completely but hey... we're louder!
Heh... "Business side of things". Telos Alliance released a new "loudness box" that's only 1U instead of 3U the week after we spent $10k on this thing.
I can't help but think there was a Silicon Valley-esque meeting where their team decided "We're gonna make a box... To make you LOUDER".
I remember listening to an FM station, and they were playing Faith by George Michael. Prior to the last chorus, there is that break, with the decay of the guitar, and George softly drawing a breath for the next line. On the radio, the guitar decay just grew and grew, and George's breath became a very audible yawn! That taught me that radio was now beyond listenable.
Yeah, FM music stations are just a continuous slab of noise now. I recently heard "Whole Lotta Love" being played on a small boombox at work and the compression was so ghastly powerful that it made John Bonham sound like Phil Collins. Maybe it's just always been that way on the radio and I'm conditioned away from that sound after sticking with resale physical/digital as a primary channel for music listening for so many years, but I don't recall it ever being that bad. Even the loudest CD mastering doesn't suck out dynamics like FM compressors do.
Before we installed the Omnia we were quieter than other stations but I could sit in my living room and enjoy music properly. When someone decided to spin vinyl it would sound like it was being played on my own turntable. Now it sounds terrible (but LOUDER) and I'm almost ashamed to be putting this shit out over 15,000 watts of FM juice.
I was a DJ in Wichita KS in 1987-8. During that time KEYN (then a big CHR station - now owned by Entercom and running classic hits) got new owners who decided to upgrade the processing equipment to the latest gear, or just cranked the compression up. They had the loudest signal on the dial. As soon as they did it, all the 100K FM stations in town did the same.
The content you cover makes me feel extremely unsafe and gives me anxiety yet I can’t stop watching
I hadn't heard much about dynamic range for a while, and was starting to worry that we'd all collectively buried it beneath the bricks of today's waveforms. Glad to see I was wrong.
That over mastered ending was hilarious. Also frightening.
Im extremely happy someone made this video on this topic, and equally happy it was you
P.s. youve released music!?
Excellent choice of "geezer" music, Ben!
Listening to this in "Night Mode"
A very interesting episode and most informative... Techmoan did a similar thing but yours goes on to more detail
That you always upload near midnight in my timezone should be annoying, but it always makes for a super comfy bed-watch
This is the kind of awesome, interesting, and educational content I've come to absolutely love from Ben.
I'm a mastering engineer. this is gonna be a fun one
Being a Detroiter, I'll never object to you playing the Supremes, or any Motown artist, for that matter!
Crow T. Robot i wouldn’t think anyone should tbh, you just can’t go wrong
Crow T. Robot MICHIGAN REPRESENT!
Hi Crow
I will back this up. I'm only 5 miles north of Detroit, and am a sucker for Motown.
He’s right about the loudness. I have the original Motown 45 of “I Want You Back”, and it’s super hot.
I really liked how this subject matter was handled, and I *particularly* liked the A/B comparisons with the visual aid. Excellent idea. I think the conclusion of the video is a very important one: *trust your ears*. It's very usual for people who are into the whole audio quality discussion to be very prescriptive about what's good and what's bad, as if you're not allowed to make your own personal judgement, and just accept what they say (and I myself have fallen victim to this, years ago). I have to be honest and say that I have a strong distaste for the dynamic compression trend on a matter of principle, because I really have never been able to actually hear the problem, and there are albums in my collection that I know are "brickwalled" but it never offended me. An example is the remixes of classic Genesis albums: I prefer the recent remixes a lot better, even though the dynamics are squashed in relation to the original issues. And if we're talking about really bad remasters, there was a specific batch of Frank Zappa reissues that sounded atrocious, not because of low dynamic range, but because of atrocious EQing. I'm usually not too sensitive about audio quality, but I felt physical discomfort with the old Rykodisc You Are What You Is. The 1998 reissue completely fixed that.
I also really dislike the approach of some videos about this issue, where they'll just show you an image of the soundform and use that as the sole evidence of how bad it sounds, and they'll just keep saying the brickwalled audio "doesn't breathe" or something like that, and won't allow you to hear it for yourself. I for one don't think audio needs to have those spikes that are 10 times louder than the rest; I don't think that's really "breathing", you know. Aaanyway, I just want to say I really like the job you've done here.
>An example is the remixes of classic Genesis albums: I prefer the recent remixes a lot better, even though the dynamics are squashed in relation to the original issues
I honestly can't understand how can stand the audible distortion in the those remixes (caused by clipping), but to each their own. However, what you omit (and Ben does as well) is that non-dynamic audio leads to ear fatigue, i.e. you get tired from listening to it because of actual physical pain. The human ear is not designed to listen to prolonged periods of ultra compressed audio. So even if you think it "sounds better", it won't stop the physical pain.
Furthermore, it is omitted that you can't undo compression, whereas you can make dynamic audio compression. In other words, the "preference" of compressed reduces the freedom of choice for the consumer.
I can tell most of them apart instantly without the visual aid, distortion and voices getting veiled are things that immediately stand out to me. And that is despite the youtube audio compression. But, the quality of your audio setup matters a lot.. or put differently, in many cases it won't matter.
@@Morality124 "However, what you omit (and Ben does as well) is that non-dynamic audio leads to ear fatigue, i.e. you get tired from listening to it because of actual physical pain."
It's not that I omitted that; it's more like I never felt that supposed "fatigue" I've read before. For me, particularly, any sufficiently loud music will make me tired after sufficient exposure, regardless of compression; but within tolerable levels, I'm fine with compressed music for as long as it goes. If you feel fatigued, well, that sucks, but don't use your personal, individual experience as the single measuring stick for everyone else.
Also, I don't hear the distortion in the Genesis remasters at all. I guess I'm just not sensitive to bad audio quality having grown up listening to the mixtapes I made dozens upon dozens of times over the same reused cassettes, and listening to 128kbps MP3 in the early era of file sharing. I hear the sound to listen to the music, while other people seem to hear the music to listen to the sound.
@@FernieCanto "but within tolerable levels, I'm fine with compressed music for as long as it goes. If you feel fatigued, well, that sucks, but don't use your personal, individual experience as the single measuring stick for everyone else."
The only person forcing a single measuring stick is you. You can always compress and distort a well-mastered/mixed/dynamic final recording release to your heart's content using any common audio player/editor, but you can never ever do the opposite for a crappy final audio product that's been brickwalled. My position advocates that company should respect the customers by producing a demonstrably quality product... yours results in everyone getting the lowest common denominator. And the point remains... *on average* the human ear does not tolerate uniformly loud audio for long period times and prefers dynamic audio. Full stop. Some people such as yourself aren't affected by this, and some people live healthy lives eating nothing but McDonalds.
"Also, I don't hear the distortion in the Genesis remasters at all. I guess I'm just not sensitive to bad audio quality having grown up listening to the mixtapes I made dozens upon dozens of times over the same reused cassettes, and listening to 128kbps MP3 in the early era of file sharing. I hear the sound to listen to the music, while other people seem to hear the music to listen to the sound."
Ok... I prefer quality final recordings. Just because some don't care about quality doesn't mean the companies should appeal to that lowest common denominator. Putting low bitrate MP3 level quality on expensive vinyl records, CD boxsets, etc. is inexcusable.
@@Morality124 "The only person forcing a single measuring stick is you."
Well, yes, because I'm using that measuring stick ON MYSELF, AND MYSELF ONLY. I'm talking exclusively about my own listening experience, and I never said anyone else should base their opinion or their experience on my perception.
"My position advocates that company should respect the customers by producing a demonstrably quality product... yours results in everyone getting the lowest common denominator."
Yeah, so you *completely missed* the part in my original part when I said I'm opposed to the "loudness war" on a matter of principle, even though I'm not bothered by the result.
"Putting low bitrate MP3 level quality on expensive vinyl records, CD boxsets, etc. is inexcusable."
It's amazing how some people on the Internet will respond to things that were never said. When did I ever advocate to using MP3 quality audio on vinyl and CDs? Are you out of your mind? You people should try *actually reading* what people write and *actually listening* to what people say, before going around moralising the Internet. Your whole reply would've been unnecessary if you had understood what I said.
I don't need to sleep.
I am expecting this to be a Rick Rubin documentary.
Thanks for introducing me to Jules and the Polar Bears, Benny Boy. I had somehow never heard of them. Thanks, bud.
I really rather enjoy Ben’s history lessons. I always learn something!
Benny-Boy discussing King Crimson at all makes my whole damn life.
DR score is useful. High rating doesn't say whether the quality is good or bad. Phase shift and EQ will necessarily raise some peaks. But a low DR8 is guaranteed poor quality. Along with peak levels, the DR can help identify nearly-identical masterings in advance.
The old version of Bette Davis Eyes sounds dull. The CP35-3018 with preemphasis is quiet but dynamic and open (with p/e compensated for). Old CDs are not all equal, for a given album there are typically around 3 masterings. Occasionally early CDs lack bass or have boosted treble. For example, Chicago or Jean-Michel Jarre CDs, in which case it is like choosing a lesser evil and compromise.
Another bad aspect of CD reissues is added value bonus tracks. The original album has a defined layout, side A, side B, an ending track, which mentions the word 'end' in the lyrics or has a 'final' message or character of some kind. On a reissue a reduced quality demo or song taken from another release would start playing.
I appreciate that there were almost no gaps or clicks between the samples. A comparison of the exact same fragment in both versions would have been useful.
LOVED this episode! Thanks, Ben!
Wow! Great episode, Ben!
As always, you manage to turn me on to some great music. Also, the Jackson Browne fade out/abrupt ending changes the whole album as a whole. It’s true about the going ons in regards to mastering. The vision of what a piece of music should sound. Sometimes those things never get realized/misinterpreted.Glad you touched on loud vinyl pressings. Are you familiar with the Led Zeppelin 2 Hot Mix? Anyway, keep up the good work.
How did you avoid a dozen copyright strikes on this video?
Benny Boy's got some contacts in the internet industry
By using short samples, even if he does get a claim on the video, Ben can dispute claiming fair use for demonstration or educational purposes.
See also: Rush - Vapor Trails
Original release 2002 heavily influenced by the LW.
Remixed release 2013 sounds significantly different.
Great show Ben !
The oldest two original releases I've come across on CD which are brickwall compressed (like most releases from the second half of the 90s to present) are both from 1992. These albums are Grave Dancers Union by Soul Asylum and Angel Dust by Faith No More (both of my copies are the original 1992 versions and not a remaster). Such compression was still very uncommon in 1992. I'd say it was used a little more on releases from 1993 before becoming quite widespread in about 1994, and by about 1996 nearly every release seemed to be using some form of loudness compression. It seems to have become worse since then.
I have an MP3 player with Rockbox firmware which I've set the EQ on to best handle old, pre-Loudness War recordings with a high dynamic range (I'd say it sounds very like a good quality Technics CD player from the late 1980s or early 1990s). While older CD releases sound very good on it, a lot of excessively compressed recordings from about the past 15 years have noticeable distortion.
This may or may not be related to the Loudness War, but I've found in your videos and others that the drums tend to sound more realistic and lively sounding on original 1960s vinyl releases than modern day reissues/remasters of the same 1960s recordings, where the drums usually have a quite a flat sound compared to recordings from the 1970s onwards.
3:50. Sponal Tap AND Fear of the Black Hat, it's "rap" child.
For a long time, I've avoided remastered re-releases (and won't consider buying vinyl re-releases - either I find a vintage used copy in good condition, or nothing) like the plague. My thinking is, the artist(s) were involved in the original mastering (though possibly interfered with by the business, etc. types); they probably weren't involved in a decades-later remaster probably commissioned by marketing/business types to make a buck. I want to listen to the original work, not a version reworked decades later by who-knows-who. Also, I was aware of the loudness wars in the CD era... I was not aware of that in the ~60s. I can see an argument for heavily compressing singles for jukeboxes in noisy environments, but that should ONLY be for jukeboxes in noisy environments, not for general release.
You had to make this video because unfortunately, many people don’t know anything about it and they are complaining about why music sounds like crap.
Just A Guy audio engineers, artists, and execs lost all artistic integrity
I'm the only one who have difficulty to find a difference on I've Seen That Movie Too (barely or slightly maybe on the snare & the EQ). However it's more noticeable on Innocence (more flat) & very obvious brickwall limiting on Desperados Under The Eaves (very flat sounding).
this episode brought to you by gorman's ear guards GUARD YOUR EARS!!!! with gorman's
As someone with bad hearing since I was around seven year old, I love remastered CDs and MP3s.
I was pressed poorly😢 ❤❤❤
Finally, the only good video about the loudness war.
While we’re at it, I wonder if you’ve ever seen this article from Sound on Sound, which is basically a more technical way to say what you said in the video, plus some interesting details about what can even be called “Dynamic Range” and some analysis of remasterers.
www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war
An Anthony Phillips reference? Nice touch.
I never saw the problem. If it doesn't sound loud enough, turn it up. If it's too loud, turn it down.
So the fact that they crush these tracks means they were solving a problem that didn't exist, and messed with the dynamics, lest anyone misunderstand me.
If I were your engineer and/or producer, I'd have to strongly suggest you cut out that pop before the end chord. I mean, unless you intended to keep that. Just a suggestion. It's your record.
this confirmes ben isnt real, he's just a program #OddityArchiveExposed
7:36 OK!
"Blastin' it."
Speaking of JB the fuse, I have a first pressing LP and the ending fades out just like thw one on the 1999 version. Methinks the older one has the mistake (you can tell by the added reverberation which sounds like a lexicon)
Lucafour I have a '77 copy and it has the "cold" end!, Hmm ??? could this be an "easter egg" ? Since it's not a "radio staple", we will just have to trust our own copies!
James Slick th-cam.com/video/xxgAfg45ekg/w-d-xo.html
I guess Amazon Kindle fire HD 10 can pick up audio differences. I hear them fine!
Rick Rubin is shaking
Those examples at 14 don't look crushed at all, just slightly raised in volume. You could tell if they were really compressed because you'd just see a flat brick. In fact, all of the ones you showed look only minimally altered. If all music were compressed _that_ much these days, I don't think anyone would be complaining.
i'm very interested in hearing ben's thoughts on the beatles abbey road 2019 mix. i thought they put a lot of care into the mix compared to the 2009 remaster.
i have an old 1969 pressing of abbey road and even though it crackles like crazy and pops and skips it still sounds WAY better than the 2009 mix.
god i hate the 2009 remaster
I checked out the "Beatles For Sale" remaster from the local library not too long after it came out--the extra frequency response was nice, but the buttload of compression killed it for me. I never did bother with any of the other Beatles remasters.
As for the "Abbey Road" remix, I haven't heard it, so I can't comment.
almost to 150!
Whoa! The engineer who mastered your song majorly screwed up that full-band entrance!
Re: Settling the Score, are the download files on Bandcamp your original, as-intended version? To my ear, the non-mastered version here sounds spot-on to what I'm very familiar with - the files from Bandcamp; the mastered version here sounds flattened to the point of sounding just plain wrong. If my ear is right, I just gained a new appreciation for Bandcamp, cutting out the mucking-things-up middleman.
The 2011 remix is on Bandcamp right now. The 2006 mix (mastered and unmastered) are "in the vault" right now.
The remastered versions really sound veiled :(
Andrei Andreev The ‘80s material, especially. They took out the melodic, crisp ‘80s sound, and made it mud! The Journey clip is atrocious.
I never understood why...
Radio stations compress the music already so it makes no difference if a recording is softer or louder. So why would a CD need to sound louder? Consumers don't switch from one CD to the next in a second so even if there's a difference in volume you can simply turn up your amplifier. It absolutely makes no sense.
Finally, an Oddity Archive video that's for once is not about some obscure infomercial stuff nobody cares about! THIS is the kind of stuff I subbed for, more like the old days of this channel!
CoolDudeClem I like an infomercial riff here and there. He hasn’t done a hardcore geek topic like this in a while.
My favourite is Ben's Junk but each to their own.
I have to admit, I'm not much of a fan of that 2004 remaster of In the Court of the Crimson King. Even if the original CD was muddy, I sort of feel like that snipit wasn't quite as dynamic as I'd like.
I sometimes find the same issues with vinyl.
I didn't know you did music
finally!!!
OptiMud.
I only normalize my recordings usually to 5.0.
Awesome topic as usual. Fun choices of music to play and show in pictures. Love it! Apparently while reading comments my TH-cam notifications are 19 hours late for you or, do you not make them public first?
Amber Lynn Martin he makes them patron only first
Oh okay! Thanks
Advertisement is placed in the middle of comparison
Thank Sony and/or Warner and/or EMI and/or Universal. All four have claims on this video. I have zero control over this one.
Can you please do a show on why tv 📺 commercials are loud and the show is low thanks 🙏
TV commercials have a DR of 3dB which makes the average volume much louder than the show or movie but have the same peak threshold
Well, Benny certainly knows his stuff! Oh, he recorded his own music! Let's have a listen... Oh, GOD! (projectively vomits)
turn on the automatic subtitles here please. nice video :)
I'm suitably impressed at your knowledge of the subject and your ability to explain it. What software were you using to demonstrate? It looked different from Audacity.
The proper tests were done in Pro Tools.
So is this why on my turntable all the old 45s sound like shit and to have a lisp?
Fixed the audio: th-cam.com/video/YoxNyr4HiHA/w-d-xo.html
There is 1
And then 0
That makes ... ?Pineapples?
31 views and 47 likes...wtf!
Illuminati confirmed.
Michael Jackson Bad CD 2012 version sucks too compressed. i luckily did get a first edition waayy better
Even with my cloth ears I could hear the difference between the originals and the remastered versions and the originals sound better; they're much more crisp and compared to the soft dullness of the originals. As others have said, if you want it louder, just turn the volume up. Problem solved.
The remastered version of Parvanned is only the second most overly remastered piece of music I've ever heard. The prize for the most goes to the Poeme Electronique remaster. Listening to only a minute or so of any track on it starts to give me a headache.
This is a typic example from the CD:
th-cam.com/video/0iiunPmb1D0/w-d-xo.html
King Crimson?
Are you a JoJo's Bizzare Adventure fan?
Anybody know what program was used for the demonstrations?
The A/B tests were done in Pro Tools.
Thanks, OA!
I hope you didn't pay $400 for that music software!
Audacity (blue waveforms) is free, but I don't know what other programs were shown this episode.
Jet Thompson he used ProTools for the A/B tests, I believe