So what's your 4 current fave listens???

[Davey]

...and woulda level matched to 0 dB (but I never compress).

Just a bit of digital mastering trivia, although it is seldom done anymore, for best sound quality you need to reserve about 3dB for the peaks. CD should never be mastered at 0dB since the samples are usually not at the peaks of the waveform and the decoded signal will be distorted on most players that aren't designed to properly handle what is commonly known as intersample peaking.

Of course it doesn't matter much anymore since even many of the "audiophile" labels are compressing and maximizing their CDs and ignoring good mastering practices

PS: Thanks for the pity listen

[Slosh]

Just a bit of digital mastering trivia, although it is seldom done anymore, for best sound quality you need to reserve about 3dB for the peaks. CD should never be mastered at 0dB since the samples are usually not at the peaks of the waveform and the decoded signal will be distorted on most players...

That's exactly why I level match on my standalone (on a R/W) since 0 dB is actually 0 dB and is only the peak. I never use compression because my burner software doesn't do it very well, I guess. I have tried lowering heavily compressed songs by two or three dB (again, on the stand-alone) but if at all possible I've found it better to put a heavily compressed song next to the ones with more dynamic range only when the compressed song starts or ends with a longish fade. Of course, sometimes the flow is more important so that all goes out the window

BTW, I have been meaning to give your Half Gone comp some public comment but I've been working 60+ hour weeks for the last fifteen goddamned weeks with no light at the end of the Chunnel Perhaps that's not such a bad thing as your comps often take me dozens of spins to fully absorb and I only have five or so distracted listens under my belt.

NP: Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

[jasn]

I've been a complete lurker lately, but I will poke my head out to say I've been a bit obessed with the new releases by A. C. Newman and Ambulance Ltd.

Newman has been in constant rotation for over a week in my car. It's a total blast of great hooks circa 1970's. Each cut makes you forget how good the previous one was. Ambulance is down to earth guitar rock with excellent vocals. Reviews are pegging them as the next Interpol but I find them having even more depth.
I guess now I have to go and seek out the New Pornographers to find out more about Carl Newman. Any suggestions as to which one I should pick up first?

[tentoze]

I picked up the latest New Pornographers release, Electric Version, a couple of weeks before I got an eval copy of A. C. Newman's solo effort. Hard not to like anything that has Neko Case singing, but I'd give the nod to the solo effort- it has a fine dose of pop hooks, and jangles in the right places for me. The NP disc is good, but there's a.....hmmm...lack of commitment to the songs, somehow. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with NP's earlier catalog, so I can't speak to anything before Electric Version. BTW, jasn, good to see you poke yr head up.

I've been a complete lurker lately, but I will poke my head out to say I've been a bit obessed with the new releases by A. C. Newman and Ambulance Ltd.

Newman has been in constant rotation for over a week in my car. It's a total blast of great hooks circa 1970's. Each cut makes you forget how good the previous one was. Ambulance is down to earth guitar rock with excellent vocals. Reviews are pegging them as the next Interpol but I find them having even more depth.
I guess now I have to go and seek out the New Pornographers to find out more about Carl Newman. Any suggestions as to which one I should pick up first?

[kexodusc]

In no particular order:

1) Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence: Not their best album by any means but this band is something else...

2) Carl Orff - Carmina Burana - Deutsche Grammophon, Conducted by Eugen Jochum: Very dramatic, just finally looked at the insert and the lyrics are all translated to english. Cool!

3) B.B. King - Live at the Regal: Best live blues album EVER!!!

4) Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk: Less experimenting combined with her best song-writing in years makes this a very good listen.

[-Jar-]

2) Carl Orff - Carmina Burana - Deutsche Grammophon, Conducted by Eugen Jochum: Very dramatic, just finally looked at the insert and the lyrics are all translated to english. Cool!

Excellent! You definately have a winner there.. one of the best Carmina Buranas out there.. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is hands down my favorite baritone.. he's great here.. and the tenor Stoltze's roasted swan done in falsetto adds just the right feel. Man, if you haven't read along with the lyrics to this you aren't getting the full effect. The whole tavern section is amazing. Enjoy!

-jar

[MasterCylinder]

1) Dream Theater -- TRAIN OF THOUGHT
2) IQ -- DARK MATTER
3) IQ -- SEVENTH HOUSE
4) Porky Tree -- IN ABSENTIA

[whitese]

My current favs are:

Richard Thompson's Mock Tudor LP, and This Old Kit Bag...sensational stuff,,and great lyrics of course, but mostly I love his use of upright acoustic bass.

The Yes Album LP....Love the old Squire sound..

JVC XRCD of Mussorgsky's Pix at an Exhibition

Mercury Living Presence Wellington's Victory, Dorati rules that piece!

[Chip_B]

3) B.B. King - Live at the Regal: Best live blues album EVER!!!

I've been enjoying Live at the Regal for many, many years. I've seen critics refer to it as a 'must have' for any Blues fan and I have to agree that it's remarkable in every way. Though B.B. has become a bit too polished and far less interesting over the last 15 years or so, he was at his absolute peak when Regal was recorded. I don't think I've ever heard a performer so completely connected to his audience and few live albums in any genre are even close.

[kexodusc]

Got to agree, Chip_B, poor ol' B.B. is starting to slow down as he ages, but the man is still worth every penny. If you haven't seen any of his DVD concerts, I recommend you do. "The Jazz Channel Presents B.B. King" in particular is excellent. Had the fortune of seeing him live for the first time earlier last year.

BTW...cool avatar!!! Is there a story behind that?

[Davey]

That's exactly why I level match on my standalone (on a R/W) since 0 dB is actually 0 dB and is only the peak.

I don't really understand the difference but probably not worth getting into big discussion over. My point was that if you wind up with a CD that has "digital peaks" that reach 0db (or 100% depending on software) then they will be distorted on most playback systems that use a digital filter (almost all players) because the reconstructed "analog peak" will be higher and the digital filter/DAC isn't designed to handle signals above 0dB. There are plug-ins for ProTools that allow you to properly set the level to avoid intersample peaking above 0dB, but I don't think most people use them.

I am curious about the standalone level adjustment - if set to 0dB does the copy have the exact same level as the source? Or can you make it louder? Because if you level match using your standalone I assume you are making some of the songs louder, which almost always means compression, yet you say you never use compression?

[Dusty Chalk]

...you are making some of the songs louder, which almost always means compression...

No it doesn't. Can't you just turn it up? Like the opposite of attenuate ("amplify"?). Just multiply all the amplitude values by some constant amount.

[Davey]

No it doesn't. Can't you just turn it up? Like the opposite of attenuate ("amplify"?). Just multiply all the amplitude values by some constant amount.

Well, you can in the analog world until you run out of headroom by saturating the tape or clipping the amp or whatever, but like we were talking about, most CDs are already mastered with the peak digital level maximized, and more often than not these days this is done after the application of lots of compression. But even "old" CDs were often mastered with the peaks set at or near digital max (0dB) so how can you make it louder without compression. And if working with an analog input, on the A/D side each bit level can be viewed as having a set threshold (ignoring for the moment that nearly all A/D convertors are oversampling delta-sigma designs nowadays using only a few bits) and so you have a maximum input level before compression would need to be applied.

[Slosh]

My standalone allows you to increase/decrease digital sources while still in digital domain in 1 dB steps. So I just watch the level meters and make sure no peaks go beyond digital full scale (or 0 dB if you like). So if I'm boosting a song by, say 3 dB, everything, noise floor and all gets a 3 dB boost.

But even "old" CDs were often mastered with the peaks set at or near digital max (0dB) so how can you make it louder without compression.

Yes, but often you'll find songs within an album with lower peaks so on a track by track basis you can have many songs which never even come close to peaking at DFS while some others do (most first edition Elvis Costello and Neil Young CDs come to mind.)

I pretty much only use the standalone for non-CD sources but sometimes it's nice to use when you want to fade, combine tracks, edit silence, and such. Sure, I can do all that on the PC but not all in one step and I can't monitor it on the fly. Maybe all those years of making cassette mixes made me stuck in my ways

NP: Spoon - A Series Of Sneaks

[Davey]

Yes, but often you'll find songs within an album with lower peaks so on a track by track basis you can have many songs which never even come close to peaking at DFS while some others do...

Ah, I see what you mean. Seems the ones I choose are just about always there already so I have to crank the compression way up to get em any louder. But that's true, they used to master whole albums, not just the individual songs, so there is sometimes room to bump up the level of a song.

I remember a recent example of that was the La's CD from the early 90s. They released a remaster a couple years ago that I picked up and it sounded significantly better overall even though it was a little louder. But there didn't seem to be the usual telltale signs of compression like the annoying punchiness and edginess of much modern music and remasters, so I checked out the original and it was like you said, only a couple of the songs had peaks that hit the max and most were well below that, so to make it louder they only had to compress those couple songs. Still, it would've been nice if the market didn't force them to do even that minimal amount of compression, but I guess there isn't much incentive now to do a remaster unless it's made to sound "modern". I pretty much quit buying any CD remasters since they're almost always disappointing to me sonically. Lots of those early CDs that people so often malign actually sound pretty good to me when compared to the remasters

So when's the last time you used Elvis Costello or Neil Young on a comp? I'm gonna have to pay more attention. Hmmmm, I guess you do often sneak one or two old oldies on your comps, now that I think about it......