Excellent article on a very bad trend in CD recordings...

[kexodusc]

For anyone that's ever heard a CD ruined by that weird, smeared, wishy warbley sound that just doesn't sound right, but didn't know what's going on, here's a good read -
I stumbled across this today looking to find if Rush had remastered the brutal "Vapor Trails" cd. That album has some excellent songs, which are killer live, but that CD sound just so flat, lifeless and 1 dimensional that it sucks the fun out of the music. When I first listened to it I thought someone's nephew at the record company got the job engineering this album...it sounded so bad.

Sure enough, my ears were right and someone did massacre this recording...the article discusses an all too common trend in recordings these days.

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Good diagrams and explanations of clipping and what happens during the recording process...a good read for newbies and people like me who don't work with this stuff every day!!!

FWIW, I understand Rush has remastered Vapor Trails, though I'm getting conflicting reports on the release date (some say it's already out, but I can't verify that).

[Feanor]

For anyone that's ever heard a CD ruined by that weird, smeared, wishy warbley sound that just doesn't sound right, but didn't know what's going on, here's a good read -
...

It seems to me that products are often cheapen in the interest of market differentiation. In this typical scenario, a cheaper, lower grade product is produced to sell to the less critical or poorer consumer who will only respond to a relatively low price. In order to suck more cash from the the critical or flusher buyer, a much higher priced but better quality is introduced at the same time -- or a bit later maybe, once the latter group has realized how bad the base product actual is.

So my question is, where is the high quality product? Vinyl, SACD, DVD-A?? If so, why is there so little selection? Are there really so few people who appreciate good sound?

[noddin0ff]

Thanks, Kex!

[markw]

OTOH, it looks like a candidate for a Mo Fi type reissue for those that care. Doug Sax has to make a living, ya know.

[jocko_nc]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Very informative. I always figured this was going on, just never saw the evidence or knew how it worked. Great article.

jocko

[superpanavision70mm]

Very very interesting article. However, I am amazed that the musicians themselves could let something like this slip through as well. Obviously they know what it sounded like in the studio and would have had to give the final mastering a green light before it was put into production....why would they let something like this slip through? More amazing is that a band like RUSH would allow this since they are perfectionists.

[Fergymunster]

For anyone that's ever heard a CD ruined by that weird, smeared, wishy warbley sound that just doesn't sound right, but didn't know what's going on, here's a good read -
I stumbled across this today looking to find if Rush had remastered the brutal "Vapor Trails" cd. That album has some excellent songs, which are killer live, but that CD sound just so flat, lifeless and 1 dimensional that it sucks the fun out of the music. When I first listened to it I thought someone's nephew at the record company got the job engineering this album...it sounded so bad.

Sure enough, my ears were right and someone did massacre this recording...the article discusses an all too common trend in recordings these days.

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Good diagrams and explanations of clipping and what happens during the recording process...a good read for newbies and people like me who don't work with this stuff every day!!!

FWIW, I understand Rush has remastered Vapor Trails, though I'm getting conflicting reports on the release date (some say it's already out, but I can't verify that).
I noticed poorer quality CD's on most of the old time music (70's-80's)However,With the newer music out i've noticed it having much better sound quality.Also the junk songs of the 70's and 80's are more expensive at least where I live they are.

[topspeed]

Terrific article, Kex. All this time, whenever I heard that warbling, under-water sound I thought it was due to compression such as when listening to a 128 MP3. I mistakenly thought that you wouldn't hear such nonsense on rbcd's. Well, now I know why Hoobastank's "The Reason" sounds so freakin' aweful! That thing is clipped like a summuna*****, so much so that I can't bare to listen to it on my main system. Now, it's relagated to the car only.

The sad thing is I have to agree with Mark. The vast majority of today's consumers are so used to crappy downloaded music, they won't even hear the difference...nor will they care. It would be nice to hear what Sax could do with it tho! I dunno about you guys, but when I get a rbcd that is extremely well recorded, such as John Mayer's "Room for Squares," it makes a huge impact in my ability to really enjoy the music. This is not say I can't enjoy it playing back through a boom box, just that ultra-clean discs are such a rarity these days it's almost like recieving a gift!

[kexodusc]

I don't think the artists have anywhere near as much power as we'd like to think. Often they sign long-term contracts with "reasonable creative control" clauses. These are ambiguous and leave the artist's intentions vulnerable to changes in the industry over time. What's reasonable today might not be reasonable tomorrow, or may have been unreasonable 10 years ago. They quickly find out that fighting Warner or Sony or whoever isn't nearly as easy as they thought it would be. Then their fans start turning on them when the album is delayed. For a lot of musicians, you have 18 months or so to put out a follow-up album to stay "on the scene"...that's not a lot of time to take your label to court.

And then there's the fact many artists know music, but don't know studio engineering as well as they'd like us to think. In the case of Rush, it appears as though the recording and master tapes are up to Rush's standards, but that the dial got cranked up on them in the burn-to-cd process. By then it was probably too late for Rush, with a tour scheduled, promised dates, and all that going on. Maybe they took for granted it would sound as good as the master. Maybe they didn't realize the damage that was going to be done?
Maybe they knew and just wanted to get the album out. Whatever.

The good news is at least one record company knows now that fans will reject a bad mixing job. I'm a little worried that people are paying twice for this CD in many cases, and that the label might misinterpret that, but what can you do.

A lot of today's music is that pop-beat driven rock/dance crap or hard rock that doesn't have too much in the way of dynamic range...there's the vocals, and then a strong kick drum or bass line that anchors the song. What works for Kelly Clarkson probably won't work for Josh Groban. Different musical demands. Think of all those rock bands like Nickelback or Matchbox 20 that really have just a few speeds in most of their music. High recording volumes probably work alright there.

I thought Norah Jones first album had a few questionable parts, but her style of music doesn't really have much in the way of sharp, powerful transients, so I can understand the desire to crank up her voice. For most people, listening on an i-pod, in the car, or on a boombox/computer system, that's all that's needed.

I guess this abuse had to peak somewhere. Hopefully things get better in the future (or at least stop getting worse). A lot of my favorite musicians aren't really radio-friendly or mainstream enough and typically put out decent sounding albums still.

'Cept I thought Rush fell in that category

[Feanor]

Terrific article, Kex. All this time, whenever I heard that warbling, under-water sound I thought it was due to compression such as when listening to a 128 MP3.
...
The sad thing is I have to agree with Mark. The vast majority of today's consumers are so used to crappy downloaded music, they won't even hear the difference...nor will they care.
...

I recently converted a WAV file to MP3 at 192 bps and to Apple Lossless. Personnally I heard no noticeable difference between WAV and Lossless, but the inferiority of the MP3 was obvious -- all air and transparency had vanished.

Fortunately for me, I listen mainy to classical where compression seems to be much less used.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Kex,
This is really not new information. About 3 years ago it was discussed in GREAT detail on this website, and the topic was introduced by a butthole named Chris or something like that. He mentioned that he found two clipped signals on a CD produced by Telarc. He wrote a email to Michael Bishop from Telarc, of which Michael was gratious enough to respond to. The response from Michael (which was not to be posted on this website) was posted for all to see. This prompted a debate between Chris and I the lasted about 10 pages with Chris trying to blame the audio engineer for the problem, and me setting him straight that it was the record companies marketing departments that have the final say so. This same post ventured into bit depths and sample rates as well. So good information in there if you can still find the thread.

I have done CD's where I was overruled and asked to raise the overall level of a particular artist CD I was working on. In fact, it has happen several times to me. Just like everyone else, I have to follow the wishes of those who sign my invoices. I Personally hate this practice because it ruins my good mixes, but these are not my products to govern. I just make sure it sounds good, deliver the tapes to the mastering house if I am not mastering myself. As much as we engineers have complained about the practice, I do not think it is going away until a threshold of financial loss has been acheived. With the constant slide in sales of CD's, this ought to give them a heads up that the music, and the mixes are not appreciated by the consumer.

[kexodusc]

Well, I didn't post this as new info...the article itself is almost 4 years old!
Just thought it was a good read with some visual cues that I haven't seen presented so neatly before, that's all
.
Some of us need to see exactly what we're listening too :D

Thanks Sir T.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Well, I didn't post this as new info...the article itself is almost 4 years old!
Just thought it was a good read with some visual cues that I haven't seen presented so neatly before, that's all
.
Some of us need to see exactly what we're listening too :D

Thanks Sir T.

I am sorry you missed the early post. It also had tons of visual stuff to see. We also discussed whether certain types of clipping (short term vs long term etc) is really audible on most equipment. Quite an interesting read if you can get around the insults LOL

[Woochifer]

As Terrence mentioned, the topic of CD compression has been discussed before, and the general trend that I've observed as well seems to be that music CDs are getting louder and louder. Does not surprise me at all to hear reports of clipping and audible compression. Also discussed in that thread was the limitations of the CD format necessitating the use of dynamic range compression if a high res master is used. It also discussed the more real world problem with needing the CDs to sound more "radio friendly" and work with the limitations posed by CDs getting played on car audio systems, computers, iPods, and mini systems.

Those are the market compromises necessitated by how people intend to play their music. But, I don't think this is any different than 40 years ago when LPs used dynamic range compression in order to avoid tracking problems with the ubiquitous low end record changers, or 20 years ago when the majority of music was purchased on prerecorded cassettes (for anyone complaining about how MP3s sound, just try spending a day listening to prerecorded cassettes and you'll hear how the good ole days sounded!).

I remembered with Rush's first gen CDs, I much preferred the LP versions. That was a case where many of the original LPs were mastered by Bob Ludwig, one of the best disc cutters in the business, while the original CD transfers from what I understand did not have Ludwig involved. I never bought any of the remastered CDs because I still have the LP copies, but I did pick up the Spirit of Radio compilation which was mastered by Bob Ludwig. It definitely improved upon the first gen CD versions (among the ones I've heard) yet still fell short of the LPs in some respects.

Some other good articles about compression and differences in format transfers are linked below. The first three articles post spectral analyses of Diana Krall's The Look of Love, while the last two articles have spectral plots of other CDs and music DVDs that visualize the clipping and compression present on those discs.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/index.html
http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part2.html
http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part3.html
http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part4.html
http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/dvdmusic/index.html

[kexodusc]

Excellent links, guys.

No wonder a lot of vinyl junkies give RBCD a bad name, eh...My Rush LP's actually do sound better than the original CD versions, but the remasters are a good improvement

[Geoffcin]

For anyone that's ever heard a CD ruined by that weird, smeared, wishy warbley sound that just doesn't sound right, but didn't know what's going on, here's a good read -
I stumbled across this today looking to find if Rush had remastered the brutal "Vapor Trails" cd. That album has some excellent songs, which are killer live, but that CD sound just so flat, lifeless and 1 dimensional that it sucks the fun out of the music. When I first listened to it I thought someone's nephew at the record company got the job engineering this album...it sounded so bad.

Sure enough, my ears were right and someone did massacre this recording...the article discusses an all too common trend in recordings these days.

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Good diagrams and explanations of clipping and what happens during the recording process...a good read for newbies and people like me who don't work with this stuff every day!!!

FWIW, I understand Rush has remastered Vapor Trails, though I'm getting conflicting reports on the release date (some say it's already out, but I can't verify that).

Now if we could just beat that article over the head of some record execs it would make my day.

[Resident Loser]

...an editorial I read some time ago in "Pro Audio Review"...

http://www.proaudioreview.com/publishers_page/april04.shtml

...and a response I posted in reply (at another site) to a posters lament on the loss of dynamic range:

...in modern music, generally speaking...there is no subtlety, no nuance...classical, jazz, maybe the artsy-type of rock and show tunes, but certainly not in contemporary pop...

IMHO most popular music isn't written with the same attention to emotion and the power that proper music can convey...chord structures don't resolve anything because there is nothing provided to resolve...no suspense, no drama, no tension, just a mindless mechanical attention to the beat...a great deal of it 4/4 within the confines of a pentatonic scale in a major key (if you're lucky enough to have a melody) and it sounds like it...It starts, it stops and something happens in the middle...Piano, pianissimo, forte, fortissimo...what do they mean? About as much as a rest...

Composers (and I use that term loosely) don't know how to craft a tune and the few who can come up with a melody (of sorts) haven't the first idea re: vamps, chorus and verse, coda, reprise or a bridge...no place for a transition, no place to insert that tension/resolution...It's all of a limited range melodically, so it starts to simply meld one into the other, just an audible, gray mass...On the other side there are those singers (?) who think running scales instead of holding a pure tone is something to strive for, when in reality it's nothing but a market-driven commodity and affectation.

So if all this is basic structure missing or wanting, what chance does dynamic range really have?

Some may see these things only marginally related to the subject at hand, however I see them all working in concert toward the gradual demise of audio as we all know and love it...

jimHJJ(...but then again, that's just me...)

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

...an editorial I read some time ago in "Pro Audio Review"...

http://www.proaudioreview.com/publishers_page/april04.shtml

...and a response I posted in reply (at another site) to a posters lament on the loss of dynamic range:

...in modern music, generally speaking...there is no subtlety, no nuance...classical, jazz, maybe the artsy-type of rock and show tunes, but certainly not in contemporary pop...

IMHO most popular music isn't written with the same attention to emotion and the power that proper music can convey...chord structures don't resolve anything because there is nothing provided to resolve...no suspense, no drama, no tension, just a mindless mechanical attention to the beat...a great deal of it 4/4 within the confines of a pentatonic scale in a major key (if you're lucky enough to have a melody) and it sounds like it...It starts, it stops and something happens in the middle...Piano, pianissimo, forte, fortissimo...what do they mean? About as much as a rest...

Composers (and I use that term loosely) don't know how to craft a tune and the few who can come up with a melody (of sorts) haven't the first idea re: vamps, chorus and verse, coda, reprise or a bridge...no place for a transition, no place to insert that tension/resolution...It's all of a limited range melodically, so it starts to simply meld one into the other, just an audible, gray mass...On the other side there are those singers (?) who think running scales instead of holding a pure tone is something to strive for, when in reality it's nothing but a market-driven commodity and affectation.

So if all this is basic structure missing or wanting, what chance does dynamic range really have?

Some may see these things only marginally related to the subject at hand, however I see them all working in concert toward the gradual demise of audio as we all know and love it...

jimHJJ(...but then again, that's just me...)

Good stuff Jim We can mostly thank computers for this onslaught of crap. You don't need to know music, you just need to know how to point and click.

I cannot even remember how many times a wav. file was brought to me with all kinds of clipping and digital hash from these amatuerish audio engineers. A few were bought to me without a single actual musician being used. All programs, samples and stuff, no live cuts at all. The music industry is hella sick and needs a talent/producer/and studio executive transfusion.