In sound editors there is a Normalise option to maximise the peak volume. Does this destroy the music? I don't see this as loudness though as there is no compression involved to make the lower sounds louder, it's just like turning the volume up. Thoughts?
@vbrindle Normalizing is not as destructive as limiting & clipping etc because it does not alter the dynamics or crest factor of the music. I will state, though, that almost all digital processes add distortion. Exceptions to this are simple summing and increasing the level by exactly 6.02dB (assuming you're still not clipping the signal). Now, increasing the level by 6dB or 6.04dB will increase quantization error, but if you're using a good DAW, it shouldn't be enough to notice.
remasters can fix chirps a clicks and skips and overdrive distortion like on yes fragile, the remasterd cd was perfectly clear, i wish the would remaster foghats fool for the city because slowride has click and skip issues
@nibiru48 It's pretty simple actually. Any time a new source for copies is made, a new master is made and thus "remastered". That could mean taking a production copy and making a master copy off of it or it could mean months of research finding the original mix tapes & meticulously trying to recreate the sound the artists intended for a new medium. So yeah, it's pretty broad, but not dishonest either way you go.
@wado1942 Thanks. I know how the process works. I did not mean that it's dishonest. I mere pointed out that one should approcah the term "remastered" with caution and not expect the "latest" version to necessarily be better in all respects than an earlier edition. There are many factors at play. Quality of source materials, A/D conversion quality, competence and skill of the mastering engineer, catering for particular playback mediums etc.
The purpose of the loudness war is simple. People tend to listen to music while doing things. In the past it was assumed you'd sit down and listen to things. Now it isn't.
As you pointed out, you can only hear the difference if you have good speakers at a decent volume. You didn't mention no extra noise, but it's implied. Still, the point is that few people listen to music in this form anymore.
I will say one thing that bugs me: use compression, not clipping to change the average volume!
@trlkly You bring up an interesting point, but the "solution" is not valid. Transients have gone away, which give a sense of clarity and impact, but studies show that macrodynamics haven't changed much. Stuff still gets lost in background noise. If all songs were mastered to a standard level like movies were until a few years ago, everybody could just set the volume and leave it. With this stupid war, the levels are all over the place and there's no clarity so the problem is worse.
wow. Major loss of harmonics on the "remastered" version. Maybe a bad A-D conversion quality, but in this instance the original tape track had much more value sonically.
Another comparison is Rush's 1996 album 'Test for Echo'. The original master alone shows how fast the level race picked up as it is. But the sounds dynamic's are still there undeniably and the peaks aren't nearly as harsh even just listening to it. The remaster just shows how fast the loudness war progressed afterwards.
@wado1942 The more I thought about it I couldn't figure it out besides the reason of the Loudness War itself. If I could keep both the Remastered files and Original Master files on my computer w/o one changing the other, I'd do a comparison myself of the two files of something like... 'Time and Motion' where it becomes really notable.
@waterinawell Limiting/clipping harms the quality of the audio regardless of the medium. MP3s are actually much worse and the lower the bit rate, the more harm said treatment does. SACDs are somewhat exempt from the loudness war and in fact, limiting & clipping can't be done in a DSD domain. If they want to digitally slam the levels for SACD, it would first have to be converted to PCM, which degrades the sound, process it and convert back. It does happen though, just not often.
@waterinawell FLAC is perfect, you just have alot of idiots trying to remaster, and fuck it up by maxing out the signal strength which leads to distortion and all sorts of other problems. If its really badly remastered it might even help to reduce the signal strength in a wave editor, although once the damage is done... you can't really get the quality back.
Yeah, this loudness war is ridiculous. Make good songs sound like muffled shit. Sure they sound good on radio, with the crap sound you get from those places but behind a good set of speaker and amps, where you control the volume, the sound is weak, muffled and distorted at peaks.
@slask25 Actually, there was a study conducted a few years ago where different masters of the same song were sent through a common radio processor for a listening test. The input levels between masters varied as much as 10dB but the output was the same on all of them. The only difference was the pre-crushed mixes sounded even more distorted because of the phase rotation + clipping/limiting of the radio processor.
@wado1942 Yes, but my point was that while loudness sounds good on radio, it sounds crap on a hifi set. Hell, don't even need a hifi set, just a pair of ok'ish headphones and a mediocre stereo set.
love dynamics of original DireStraits. I heard "Children Of Sanchez" (excellent recording) in 'remastered' edition... Beauty dynamics from snares (really important, gives this tramatic effect) were flat as my table. Sick shit
Honestly this mastering doesn't seem that bad. I did notice that the drums didn't have the same punch compared to everything else in the 2006 version, but I really had to turn up my headset volume before I noticed.
Maybe a more stark or obvious example is in order?
@RandomConcepts you tried to write "David Gilmour"? actually I dont agree with you. Most remasters are done purely for commercial reasons, so they got something "new" to sell. Most of them are rubbish. you have to go by the label here, as some labels put emphasis on quality, others on money. Blue Note for example has remastered almost every Jazz artist I could think of, and amongst all of them there is only one that doesn't sound to good. Its a remaster of Elle Fitzgerald.. search the year on it
Wow I closed my eyes to make sure I cold actually her the difference for myself. It was so blatant. I could immediately tell the moments wen the song got weaker.
Also what you cant hear so much at this bitrate is the horendous distortion. cd is supposed to have huge dynamic ,range way more than vinyl but you'd never have guessed it listen to life and energy in older vinyl on older turntables,some modern turntables attempt to sound like cd and sound crap for it.Try this money for nothing on good turntable its like having 1000volts up youre arse,on the cd players i have heard its like grandma playing it. "cd dont got no balls" - Ray Charles
@whatchannelisthisnow That's a bit of an odd statement because "Money for Nothin'" was recorded to digital, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. The production was designed from the beginning for CD.
The funny thing is, music on the old Edison cylinders typically had about a 12-18dB dynamic range. With Vinyl, it was basically the same, but less noise on the medium. Then CD came and albums of the early 80s like this had about a 24dB range. Now on modern CDs (and MP3s), it's about 4dB!
The remastered seems to have more upper bass.not all remastered cds are bad.The Beatles white album,Rolling stones let it bleed and bob dylan in mono are much better just to name a few.
OK its not that bad i had lot of lps but thing was they were to low sound so i had to turn them up.... ???? so the remaster sounds louder wft so you don't have to turn it up
@metalforever50 I'm not sure what you're saying. You have vinyl LPs that are not as loud as your CDs? There's two things you have to keep in mind here. #1, you have to have a good turntable and phono preamp for your vinyl to sound good. #2, so what if you have to turn up the volume to listen to them? You could make the same argument, saying it's annoying that you have to keep turning DOWN the volume on new releases. If this stupid loudness war never started, nobody would be complaining.
I claim that one of the biggest reasons that CD sales has gone down, is because they're compressed and too loud. Like, why buy a stereo equipment and a CD when it no longer sounds better then in an ipod? They don't even know how it's supposed to sound any more.
I'd say to master anything pass 1992 is stupid, since all u'll do is add volume by killing dynamics, the clarity is already there as technology by then had become pretty much as good as it is right now.
@RandomConcepts - yes maybe some confusion what people mean - it's the mastering of recent CDs that can be really bad, not the medium which faithfully plays back digital information stamped onto foil. CD players are decent now.
CD's then are not intrinsically bad, given the great albums that have taken advantage of the medium. I love the way Dan Lanois masters some things and how they sound on CD. He'll sometimes make a generation through analog Dolby A tape for its musicality.
Yes the newer factory CDs are SHHEEEITE,way too loud and compressed and very harsh,most of them any ways,..The older CD players from the early 80s were said to sound harsh but the CDs from that era sounds better than the new ones..WTF
I thoguth the new Queen ones I bought sounded better than the original CD releases, I can certainly hear quite a difference in sound quality, however ther ehave been some remasters where they totally ruined the album, I have also come accross cases where the master from vinyl to cd and I honestly think...why did they do that? like phantasm original soundtrack from vinyl to cd one of the tracks developed this heave re-verb on the beats, but it disappeared in the remastered CD.
If your a true audiophile then the only format worth considering is Vinyl.
Your video makes a good point though. I've got quite an extensive collection of songs from the 80's and alot of them are on CD - but they are the original early/mid 80's pressings....not the early/mid/late 90's remastered versions.
Trust your ears. ALot of the music today is fatiguing, lacking in clarity.
@DIGITALSCREAMS Don't believe it. Since the mid-70s, most vinyl pressings have used digital delays to feed the actual cutter head while the direct signal feeds the computer to set the groove pitch (the printed signal must be behind the actual groove cutting). Vinyl is great if it's done as an all-analogue (and expensive) process, but even the best pressings are only optimal the first few times you play them. I prefer SACD because it lasts, but even then, most of the sources are PCM digital.
@wado1942 PCM 192KHz @ 24bits/sample is more than adequate. It provides a dynamic range of 144dB or so which is about 20dB more than the human ear. At 192KHz what little quantization noise there is will be ultrasonic and hence irrelevant. SACD is OK but lacks a dynamic treble response. DVDA is better.
@monty78pig I'd say you're correct in theory. However, even very high quality converters seldom show a dynamic range greater than 126dB, despite their claims. DSD is capable of 120dB dynamic range, which is, as you say, about what the human ear can hear. I had a DVD-A player and couldn't get any of my DVD-A disks to play properly. All my SACDs play fine and don't require a TV, so to me, it's better for practical reasons.
@wado1942 126 is enough for anyone, for a final master. CDs theoretical 96dB just doesn't cut it and is probably the main reason why along with the sample rate we have the vinyl heads preaching their playback system. Bring back 15IPS half track tape, I say. But you can't play SACDs with most DACs because they all use DSD, which sucks + having to listen to anything through a television is bad as they all use switch modes and are as noisy as hell. Still, it beats 128k MP3!
@monty78pig I agree, 1/4" @ 15 I/S is great, 1/2" tape @ 30 I/S is absolutely incredible! Add Dolby SR to that 1/2" tape and you get about the same dynamic range as any digital system but no pre-ringing from the PCM downconversion!
Isn't that funny though? Most ADCs won't do DSD even though the first stage of the conversion process IS DSD and most DACs won't do DSD even though the output is basically DSD also. It doesn't make much sense to me. BTW, I don't even listen to TV through my TV!
@wado1942 Yeah, tape is awesome! But 1/2" tape is really expensive, I just use 1/4" at 15 IPS (half track of course). I try not to use Dolby as it doesn't cope well with drop outs and you get a little IMD.
Why bother doing 48k @ 24bit though, surely it would be better to do 96k @ 16bit. Most home cinema setups use class D on the output stage so there's not much point in trying to improve the dynamic range. Wouldn't it be better to just work for decent stereo instead of quadro?
PCM starts/ends as a Delta slope anyway but is digitally manipulated into PCM for storage. Why not bypass all that filtering and just record the Delta slope? I know, newer converters are usually 2-bit 128fs-256fs, and that is A LOT of data, especially for 6-channel. It'd still be nice to capture that though. BTW, I've been pushing for 48KHz, 24-bit quadraphonic DVD-Vs with stills for the video on my future masters because ANYBODY with a DVD player can play them at full resolution.
@monty78pig The bandwidth limit for DVD is about 9mbps, so 4-channel 48K 24-bit is already 4.608mbps, plus you have to have video content of some kind. There just isn't enough bandwidth for 96KHz unless you want to go with stereo only. I don't hear much difference between 96KHz and 192KHz personally. My plan is to do 24-bit quad and interleave dithered 16-bit 48KHz stereo for those who don't have surround so that will cover my bases.
@DIGITALSCREAMS The sad thing about that is that CDs and the current digital formats are actually a better medium, but they are squashed to death in the studio. Digital songs are expected to be listened to on earbuds or in cars. Vinyl records are expected to be listened to in a quiet home by audiophiles. What is sad about that is that the people who care most about sound quality are forced to settle for the limits of 70s technology.
@RandomConcepts It just sounds better, that's the evidence. Sort of like how a person singing on key sounds better than a person farting, I'm not sure if there could be a scientific test to prove it but it's obvious. It's not my fault that you have no taste to distinguish such things.
@RandomConcepts Anything that was previously mastered that gets mastered to digital is "digitally remastered", whether it was from an analogue source or not. You're right though, you can't assume every time that the remaster is worse, but they almost always are. I've been disappointed by so many that I gave up on it unless I KNOW exactly how it was done and what source they used. Van Halen's hits album is a great example of bad remastering. No support, massive clipping etc.
@RandomConcepts No, not all remasters are bad, but most of them are. I know "remastering engineer" at Warner Bros. His job was to play digital U-Matic master tapes and hit "record" on a computer. Most of the tapes were pre-mastered for cassette or vinyl, which have different demands from CD. He was not allowed to make any changes to the audio, but you better bet the label said "digitally remastered". Then the artist gets a couple thousand $ docked from their royalties for that "service".
I hear the difference, alright... The "remastered" version sounds muddled. Too much quality is lost & it reminds me of those fools with "boom-cars" that over-emphasize the low-end bass, completely defeating the point of building such a high-end system & destroying the beauty of whatever work was put into the recording. This is what's called "progress"? Seems more like a back-step to me!
@HUFFMANOF4 If you can though, get the SACD of "Dark Side". It's never sounded better IMO. It was remixed off the 2" 16-track tape and all those layers of tape distortion from folding a quadraphonic mix down to stereo, mastered to stereo etc are gone.
Shit! I was like...i cant hear the difference but i replayed and was like oh SHIT there really is a difference! I'm actually really suprised! once i noticed the difference it seemed obvious after that! original is a lot clearer and more natural sounding! in remaster it even seems the guitar is slightly lost a lil. it jumps out more in the original and tone is clearer!
am i the only one thinking this is a joke? i'm not on the stereo right now, but i have a pair of shure earphones attached to my laptop (mac) and the both sound really the same..
btw the lossless version of the same song, played in itunes, to me, it seems better than the ones on this video!
@pega711 OK, you have to realize that this audio is 96kbps MP3 audio AT BEST, due to the limitations of You Tube. It's a very lossy format, but even at that, I can hear the difference in this video on my laptop speakers. Also, iTunes always alters the sound. There's no way to get a bit-for-bit output of what you put into it, which is why iTunes is a joke in the audio world.
We have been telling ppl this for years. Itunes is especially guilty of butchering the audio quality of great recordings. Our 25 year old cassettes sound better than itunes mp3's. it's not the gear that is the problem or technology but the untrained ears of the ppl doing the remaster. Also alot of remastering is done with exciters which can completely change the character of the original recording.
And this is why I haven't bought any music since the mid 90s. Unfortunately the masses think their ipod with crappy little speakers sounds really great. Is this really progress? The peak of fidelity to me was late 80s/early 90s when CD was mainstream and hi fi separates ruled. In those days engineers exploited the dynamic range of CDs to give great sound. now, we may as well be back on cassette tape - it would sound the same!
@dopiaza2006 The average dynamic range for rock/pop/country music is far lower than even the Edison cylinders of the 1800s. I actually have some cassettes that sound a lot better, as much as I dislike cassettes.
@wado1942 Just think of all those engineers developing things like Dolby B, C and HX Pro for consumer tape decks so we could get a nice dynamic range above the background hiss. Might as well have not bothered! Imagine if back then someone had said 'hey, let's not bother with all this noise reduction crap, let's just cram the entire track into the top few dBs then people can just turn the volume down to get rid of the hiss'. They'd have been laughed out of the room, and quite rightly too!
@dopiaza2006 I've switched my taste in music to stuff from small labels who might still have some dynamics... I dont care if nobody know what I'm listening to or not as long as it makes me happy :)
and this is why I buy vinyls lol, I'm always getting funny looks when a 20 year old goes in to a record store, but I kidd you not Pat Benatar sounds alot better on my vinyl player than on my cd player and iPod
I know a local band that utterly failed with attempts to compress their music. They only compressed the drums, and the drums got so overpowering that it makes every other instrument fade out whenever the drums hit, so when the guitar strums and lets a chord ring, the drums will cause it to have a wah wah effect that was unintentional. And they're ok with that terrible production!
@Bassbait That's from compressing the stereo mix, not just drums. The drums peak above everything else, so if you hyper-compress the mix, the drums will control the everything else. I get that a lot now. The sick thing is, a lot of guys insist on crushing the mix, DURING mixing, rather than letting a specialist (mastering engineer) handle it, who can do it much more transparently. When people send me crushed mixes, I just tell them there's nothing that can be done for it without a remix.
@wado1942 I'm not all that special, but with my band I think we successfully avoided (for the most part, as we are in the "demo" stage of production) all of the "loudness war" problems. If you want to check out my music, it's on the facebook page on my channel description.
But seriously, I know how to get stuff to sound good, but I don't know the technical stuff as much. My drummer knows technicals really well, which is ironic because he was the drummer whose drums were ruined by the band's mix
@wado1942 I love your video and i love your comments. Haven't watched anything else on your channel yet but judging from the owner it has to be good :]
Compression city! They just comperssed the hell out of it, The 86' master is prolly on 2' analog tape and age takes a toll on tape. So they "remaster" with digital software that you can obviously see is inferior to analog so they compress it way to much.
@Jerrysway The original recording was done on 1/2" 24-track digital tape. The master is U-Matic digital stereo cassette. The remaster used here may have been taken from the PCM mix tape or the master tape, but not the 1/2" DASH. That said, even if it was recorded on analogue, there wouldn't be that much degradation. I've remastered stuff from the 70s that was only -.5dB from original spec.
I find the difference between two Green Day albums, International Superhits and American Idiot. International Superhits has the crisp sound with more dynamic range. Don't get me wrong I like the songs on American Idiot but to play it loud gives me earache after a while. Apart from Give Me Novacaine, the album seems to be all continuous loud coarse guitar and singing with few breaks!
I have noticed some really ancient recordings have clipped sound and poor dynamics though.
@TimpBizkit Old 45 RPM singles are notoriously distorted, but that's the pressing, not the master tape. You're right though, lack of dynamics is nothing new and neither is clipping. Only now is it the rule rather than t he exception though.
I didn't notice too much difference in this example except the keyboards/vocals were louder compared to the drums. Did you play them at equal volume (comparing a normalised version 1 to version 2)?
@TimpBizkit You can't normalize them or they won't be equal loudness anymore. They are, however, within 0.2db of each other for this example. Since the drums are crushed, that will have a LITTLE effect on overall loudness, causing the other instruments to be increased very slightly in level.
@nohanjes I'm not talking about loudness... The reason I said I had skullcandy headphones is because the video said to use good headphones to notice the difference.
Anyway, I guess his voice sounds a little more "cloudy" in the remastered version, but it's really nothing that I'd get butthurt about. Sounds nice..
bands used to record reel to reel, they mainly do digital pro tools crap records, I HATE PRO TOOLS.....metallica's death magnetic is a perfect example of a shit recording of pro tools. Vinyl seems to be sounding crappier these days because bands don't record like they used to in the 70's and 80's..
@nigletgook I'm definitely not a fan of PT either, but most of the problem is with technique, not medium. Don't overlook the many open-reel digital media like Sony DASH or Mitsubishi Prodigi or the many PCM/video formats from the 80s that sound WAY worse than PT.
1). Depending on the total compilation on types sound sources & composition design (Synth-dance vs.acoustic-folk) one total method of recording is preferable over another.
2). The type of equipment used for playback is a big deal (DUH!) so one wonders how these Super-Audio CDs do at reproducing. I've heard good so-far, but that just reminds me of what Billy Joel said:
@nickelindimer SACD in of itself is superior to CD in every way. The problem is that most material is simply copied from traditional PCM formats like 1630 or 3402. That essentially means the SACD has no advantage over CD because its master was made from an inferior, often already mastered source. One such example is The Police Synchronicity album. Though the SACD was mastered off of the original mix, it was still an old 44.1K 16-bit format.
@nickelindimer No I just think that analog sourced recordings converted to digital sound better than purely digital recordings in all cases. I listen to a variety of genres and the old recordings are all better sonically.
@dubified89 I dig ya... The other day a lady-friend & I were flippin' through the channels, and we stumbled on the Lady Gaga Fame Monster concert. Now, my friend didn't care for the way Lady Gaga sounded in studio recordings or over the radio... But when she heard Gaga live & "unfiltered"on HBO, she fell in-love with her music. Mind you, this woman has ears that are so sensitive, I've relied on her to say when while setting-up & tuning speakers for her. If that don't say all....
It depends on who make the remastering job...I often hate the mainstream US remasters, but Mofi, Analogue production and the Japanese often make great job!
Music has become wallpaper to people. I see people standing around with ipods, completely bored yet addicted to noise in their ears. I'm sure music should knock us out, not send us to sleep.
@the81kid That's a very good point and I've felt the same way for a long time, though you put it more eloquently. One time when I had somebody in my isolation booth (which wasn't even complete), they said it was deafening without all the noise of the world!
Thanks, that idea had been going around my mind for a long time. Yes, isolation booths are a good example of a musical society we have completely forgotten. Can you imagine, way back at the beginning, maybe 400 years ago: the only music you would probably experience, was in church... after a life of no music, imagine the awe-inspiring harmony, rhythm and melody of choirs and booming, resonant church-organs as tall as a cathedral! Music was an event.
@the81kid Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era. A popular pastime was for neighbors to get together and sing/play songs. But they were MAKING the music in active participation. Now, it's just something to mask the ringing in our ears because it #1 demands no concentration and #2 is ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE! It's no longer special as the corporate world turned all art into means to sell products.
"Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era" that is generally true. I meant, and should have said, a music-free life compared to today. I suppose they did play music at times, but they were events. And yes, your 2 points are very correct. I still imagine that listening to church music would have been inspirational, it is no wonder people were so spiritual. I hate this generic, wallpaper music that depends on image instead of sound.
@xboyer3 it is true, it is a space saver, I did used to buy music from online and download it until I found out about compressed music and joint stereo...I now buy the CDs if they are available and upload them to Itunes in wav format which is the native format for CD's, so there is no loss in sound quality, but you can not have the artwork on the file but worth it to me if it sounds better.I can't get so much on my Ipod, but I would rather that than crappy compressed music.
@dickiewap The record companies have albums mastered at higher volume levels in fear that they will loose part of their fan base if they do not. They want the albums to "stand out" among the other albums. Bands do have a say in whether or not their albums are mastered "dynamically" or "dynamicless and crushed." Most bands do not really take the time to bother with it although. One major part that has dramatically made the "Loudness War" worse, is iPod's "shuffle" feature i.e.
@dickiewap The reason it made it worse is because the volume levels are wanted to be "matched." A good normalization feature would help dramatically but, its not improving and its not really budging which makes it just as bad...
Youtube audio does not do justice to the original master. It is startling in its clarity and detail. Why, why, why did they try to fix one of the most popular CD's of all time?
The main rationale behind digital was improved dynamics compared to LP's. But these days CD's do not even have the dynamics of old LP's. What a shame.
@movieking88 I really want to listen to large Klipsch tower speakers. I think that after listening to those kind of speakers one will no longer consider headphones as the first audiophile choice.
Everything remastered or reissued after 1999 is so terrible.
I bought one of the recent reissues of the Rolling Stones Exile album and you talk about SUPER LOUD. Like some dumbass is sitting in front on a computer and says "let's turn this up to 11". It sounds OK on an IPod or cheap stereo but in my expensive car cd player, it sounded like shit.
Same goes for the Megadeth remasters, and the Judas Priest ones. in fact the only remasters that are good, are ones before 2000 (Bowie, Ozzy)
Why do people keep saying they buy vinyl when available to avoid dynamic compression? When it comes to dynamic range it is the master and not the format that makes the difference. Do they routinely use a different master for the vinyl issue and the digital one for recently recorded music? I wouldn't think so. Seriously, I don't know because I don't have any recent music on both formats to compare.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Mastering is defined as assembling and optimizing an album for its destination format. So if they're doing it "the right way" then yes, they'll have two different masters. In reality though, I find it's not very common. Really, even MP3 downloads should come from yet a different master. It's really stupid because the kind of treatment CD masters routinely get really work against the potential quality of even CD, forget about any other format.
@wado1942 Thank-you for the reply. They could make the shiny little disc sound amazing if they wanted to. HDCD was a bust along with DVD Audio, and it would be mind blowing what they could do with a Blue Ray audio format. I have invested in my "last cd player" and listen to cd's and vinyl with a 1961 vintage tube amplifier that I restored. I am no snob, but people who don't care about quality audio help make sure it will disappear. Thanks for educating people. You are making a difference.
@IStoleYourPotatoes Thanks for the kind words. I started noticing the shortcomings of CD early, but they could definitely sound better than they do. I'm a fan of SACD and it's a shame the very few albums available in the format are often just converted from PCM sources. I could never get DVD-A disks to play in my DVD-A player. There's so many variations of the format, it's hard to maintain compatibility. Thing is, the consumers wanted to have 4,000 songs in their pocket more than quality.
Brothers in arms. Recently downloaded an original CD (1985) and it averaged -25 db! Quite interesting.
Most albums I've downloaded (stores tend to have remastered) average between -16 to -20 db. On a store, how can I know it's dynamics?
Kids (I'm 16) completely ignore this. Ordinary people notice it (fatigue, volume change between CDs) but unless they do an A-B comparison they won't reallyu notice the difference.
@wotajared I have the 2nd CD release of The Police "Synchronicity" (same as the 1st release but with an extra song) and it's the same way. It's an old digital master of an old digital mix. Though the converters were crap back then (still are to an extent), the sound is HUGE, especially on "Synchronicity I & II". Just amazing. Unlike "Brothers", it was recorded to analogue, but he intentionally recorded everything at really low levels so that they would sound as crisp as possible.
@wado1942 MOst Old CDs sound muddyto me but they keep the DR of the original.
Some remasters are what they should be. Keeping good DR and with a better sound.
Got '96 Clapton remasters of 461 and Slowhand and the sound is great. Not muddy and the instruments sound as they should, cymbals have more sparkle and drums have punch. Much better than the old CD.
Others improve sound but do raise a bit loudness, with ok DR.
And there's the re-re masters (every few years) which only increase loudness.
Just amazing how it gets worse and worse! Most people don't even pick up on it! I'm only 24 but I buy nothing but vinyl records, and try to pick up Mono's over Stereo records whenever I can...I still buy new released on record, but obviously they are not made the way records used to be made....however I still prefer newer material on vinyl over CD.
this one is audible, but it's funny that this is a particularly mild example, whereas the real problem is the brickwall filters being used.
If this was the extent of the loudness war (ie, a difference between RMS and peak of about 16-18 dB), I'd be fine with it. But Death Magnetic has a difference between RMS and peak of like 4 dB... That literally is getting close to static (which would have a difference of 0 dB)
@Obelisk2290 It's funny, CDs from their beginning to 1993 ranged anywhere from -24dBfs RMS to -10dBfs RMS. Then in 1994, most releases were -10dB, and by 1998, -8dB was becoming common. I remember the first -6dBfs RMS masters, thinking they were unlistenable, even when the music was great and thinking "it's can't possible get any worse than this". Now -4dB is common, though some are taking a stand like U2 and Guns & Roses.
Unfortunately , people perceive loud as "good". Albums are sounding worse and worse, but nobody is brave enough to release a softer sounding album in the name of quality. I'm victim to this. I master my stuff very loud so that people dont say its quiet :-/ . . . I think the 90's has the best mix of learning how to make things loud but not squashed. If you limit at the peaks just really slightly but still allow the dynamic range its still not as bad as squashing.
@KCJacksonMuz Steve Albini and Co do little to no compressing of the Shellac albums/CDs and Classical CDs are still natural sounding with highs and lows even when THEY are remastered!
Fucking loudness war is making music sound worse, more volume is not more quality, if you have a song with no dynamics you cant fell the song, we need MORE DYNAMICS
And I could hear it even on the mono speaker on a Thinkpad x61.
However, if something has been ripped from vinyl masters and sent ot We7 - compared to the same title on CD.. it sounds better off CD as yes - it is a *little* louder if an old recording initially.
I think this happened to me when I bought the CD The Essentials of Roy Orbison. Its sound sucks. I ripped a song from a friend's CD and it sounded awesome, with a great combination of bass and high-pitched sound.
On the high quality video, you'll notice the muffled drums in the new version, and one of the sharpest, clearest, punchiest guitar riffs being dulled.
Loudness war they call it. Tracks on new CD's (or remastered ones) are much louder so the mp3 player users think the tracks are better quality (oddly, for some people loudness = quality, especially for the headphones - so weird to me). So its pretty much what people want.
@perqqq Another thing about heavily compressed music is that where the peak is shorn off, the waveform becomes a square wave which is full of overtones and would be perceived as distortion. This distortion has a tendency to sort of 'mask' the digital noise and loss of clarity you might otherwise hear in encoded music (*.aac, *.mp3), especially at 192kbps or less. And since digital download sales recently surpassed CD sales, they've been a major point of focus. Trading one turd for another.
@perqqq People don't want loud, they want consistent. I don't know of anybody who likes the sound of crushed music. What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume and that's caused by the loudness war directly because in the early days of digital recording, -20dBfs was the reference point against 0VU on an analogue meter.
@wado1942 "People don't want loud... What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume"
This. Consistently loud, even at the expense of range, might be preferable in less-than-ideal listening environments (or else you turn up a quiet part to hear it over the background noise, and then your eardrums get blasted a second later), but if you're able to give your full aural attention to the music, range is great.
@Frungi Agreed, that's why most replay systems have some kind of compressor built into them. You can chose dynamic range if you want good sound or you can choose squashed if you want constant level. I'll maintain, though, that extreme transient limiting does not help in either case. Parallel compression or low threshold, low ratio compression is much more effective for that purpose.
@wado1942 I wouldn't say that nobody likes the sound of crushed music. I've talked to bands who, because of their selected genre I believe, favored the sound of music that was highly compressed over the same music with a lower level of compression or none at all (on the master). I would agree that MOST CONSUMERS want consistency but not all.
@zachabend Actually, I'm doing a project where some of the songs are to be squashed for effect and others not. My solution was to limit the snot out of those songs, but pull back the levels to match the rest of the material. Therefore, it's done PURELY for effect and not perceived loudness. Limiting & clipping 99.999% of the time is done merely for the sake of appearing louder than somebody else's material.
@wado1942 That's a nice statistic, but I simply don't buy it. I would say that bands like the sound of squashed material a lot more than .001% of the time, especially when the genre calls for it. Kids are listening to albums that have been squashed and many are under the impression that this "squashed" sound is desired or "commercial", and since that is what they listen to everyday many of them, even after understanding and listening to "unsquashed" music, they still like the previous.
Hey! Ever heard of 'Vapor Trails' by Rush? Well tomorrow I'm mastering a remix I've been working on for a song called 'Ghost Rider'. Go listen to the original master of the album and then come back and listen to my remaster...Its what I'm trying to do to counter act the loudness war. You'll hear a clarity difference like no other and a more dynamic sound due to lower volume levels. There are some good remasters though...I can show a few if you'd like.
Modern recording/mastering sucks... but then again, so does modern music.
Adrian5606 10 hours ago
Looks like Cool Edit Pro interface.
I use it. ;)
khaliamoon 1 day ago
I call them non transient track squasher
jimmyjamx1 1 day ago
I just want to punch people in the face when I see someone praise a remaster.
Use. Your. Fucking. Volume. Knob.
antonio610 3 days ago
In sound editors there is a Normalise option to maximise the peak volume. Does this destroy the music? I don't see this as loudness though as there is no compression involved to make the lower sounds louder, it's just like turning the volume up. Thoughts?
vbrindle 5 days ago
@vbrindle Normalizing is not as destructive as limiting & clipping etc because it does not alter the dynamics or crest factor of the music. I will state, though, that almost all digital processes add distortion. Exceptions to this are simple summing and increasing the level by exactly 6.02dB (assuming you're still not clipping the signal). Now, increasing the level by 6dB or 6.04dB will increase quantization error, but if you're using a good DAW, it shouldn't be enough to notice.
wado1942 4 days ago
FUCK LOUDNESS WAR.
Pippomone 1 week ago 2
Honestly, even casette tapes on a decent player sound better than modern cd's... and that is just sad.
JoeyDrunko 2 weeks ago
Horrible example... old Metallica vs. new Metallica
pacmanfan1214 2 weeks ago
@pacmanfan1214 True, but that has more to do with songwriting than with production. ;)
misterbilbotbaggins 2 weeks ago
remasters can fix chirps a clicks and skips and overdrive distortion like on yes fragile, the remasterd cd was perfectly clear, i wish the would remaster foghats fool for the city because slowride has click and skip issues
gurutimes2 2 weeks ago
Great demonstration.
voicedriven 3 weeks ago
"Remastered" is a very loosely used (and overused) term. You have to read between the lines and watch out for the marketing people.
nibiru48 3 weeks ago 3
@nibiru48 It's pretty simple actually. Any time a new source for copies is made, a new master is made and thus "remastered". That could mean taking a production copy and making a master copy off of it or it could mean months of research finding the original mix tapes & meticulously trying to recreate the sound the artists intended for a new medium. So yeah, it's pretty broad, but not dishonest either way you go.
wado1942 3 weeks ago
@wado1942 Thanks. I know how the process works. I did not mean that it's dishonest. I mere pointed out that one should approcah the term "remastered" with caution and not expect the "latest" version to necessarily be better in all respects than an earlier edition. There are many factors at play. Quality of source materials, A/D conversion quality, competence and skill of the mastering engineer, catering for particular playback mediums etc.
nibiru48 3 weeks ago
@nibiru48 Yeah, you're totally right.
wado1942 3 weeks ago
@nibiru48 Remastered = Maximized to the Max : : Emphasize on Max: :Straight up against the digital ceiling of 0dbfs (decibels full-scale)
TheeAldeen 2 weeks ago
I am against the loudness wars.
However, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Remasters are a thousand times better.
Just because they're louder, doesn't mean they're clipping.
1SZP 1 month ago
@1SZP wow you're really stupid
Epistinimically 3 weeks ago
@Epistinimically I agree, he's a fucking idiot. He should die.
ArmandoSMetallica 2 weeks ago
great video
MrHENNYBLACK 1 month ago
The purpose of the loudness war is simple. People tend to listen to music while doing things. In the past it was assumed you'd sit down and listen to things. Now it isn't.
As you pointed out, you can only hear the difference if you have good speakers at a decent volume. You didn't mention no extra noise, but it's implied. Still, the point is that few people listen to music in this form anymore.
I will say one thing that bugs me: use compression, not clipping to change the average volume!
trlkly 1 month ago
@trlkly You bring up an interesting point, but the "solution" is not valid. Transients have gone away, which give a sense of clarity and impact, but studies show that macrodynamics haven't changed much. Stuff still gets lost in background noise. If all songs were mastered to a standard level like movies were until a few years ago, everybody could just set the volume and leave it. With this stupid war, the levels are all over the place and there's no clarity so the problem is worse.
wado1942 1 month ago 2
@wado1942 Oh, I agree the solution sucks.
trlkly 1 month ago
sorry, I hear no difference
dadelcz 1 month ago 2
wow. Major loss of harmonics on the "remastered" version. Maybe a bad A-D conversion quality, but in this instance the original tape track had much more value sonically.
deathandthelament 1 month ago
Render and convert all of your vinyl to FLAC while you can soon lol.
RiaRadioFMHD773 1 month ago
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I dunno about you but I was listening to my original Rammstein CD, then I heard the Re-mastered version and it sounded a lot more clear to me.
in fact to me the original sounded higher and more muddled, but that's just me.
legorocks3 1 month ago
Another comparison is Rush's 1996 album 'Test for Echo'. The original master alone shows how fast the level race picked up as it is. But the sounds dynamic's are still there undeniably and the peaks aren't nearly as harsh even just listening to it. The remaster just shows how fast the loudness war progressed afterwards.
RadeonZero 1 month ago
@RadeonZero Yeah, and I STILL can't figure out why something mastering in 1996 got remastered in 2004.
wado1942 1 month ago
@wado1942 The more I thought about it I couldn't figure it out besides the reason of the Loudness War itself. If I could keep both the Remastered files and Original Master files on my computer w/o one changing the other, I'd do a comparison myself of the two files of something like... 'Time and Motion' where it becomes really notable.
RadeonZero 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Nice video.
Professional Mixing and Mastering at: CRYSTAL MIXING
CrystalMixing 1 month ago
is this true for all mp3 files too?? Am i correct in saying that even the higher bit rate mp3's wont correct this flaw...what about SACD's?
waterinawell 1 month ago
@waterinawell Limiting/clipping harms the quality of the audio regardless of the medium. MP3s are actually much worse and the lower the bit rate, the more harm said treatment does. SACDs are somewhat exempt from the loudness war and in fact, limiting & clipping can't be done in a DSD domain. If they want to digitally slam the levels for SACD, it would first have to be converted to PCM, which degrades the sound, process it and convert back. It does happen though, just not often.
wado1942 1 month ago
@waterinawell FLAC is perfect, you just have alot of idiots trying to remaster, and fuck it up by maxing out the signal strength which leads to distortion and all sorts of other problems. If its really badly remastered it might even help to reduce the signal strength in a wave editor, although once the damage is done... you can't really get the quality back.
Corrupt5358 1 month ago
Yeah, this loudness war is ridiculous. Make good songs sound like muffled shit. Sure they sound good on radio, with the crap sound you get from those places but behind a good set of speaker and amps, where you control the volume, the sound is weak, muffled and distorted at peaks.
slask25 1 month ago
@slask25 Actually, there was a study conducted a few years ago where different masters of the same song were sent through a common radio processor for a listening test. The input levels between masters varied as much as 10dB but the output was the same on all of them. The only difference was the pre-crushed mixes sounded even more distorted because of the phase rotation + clipping/limiting of the radio processor.
wado1942 1 month ago
@wado1942 Yes, but my point was that while loudness sounds good on radio, it sounds crap on a hifi set. Hell, don't even need a hifi set, just a pair of ok'ish headphones and a mediocre stereo set.
slask25 1 month ago
@slask25 Oh, I understand. I'm just saying that loud masters sound even worse on the radio than at home.
wado1942 1 month ago
Great comparison, the first thing I noticed from the later remastered version is that it sound muffed and weak.
bwerx 2 months ago
love dynamics of original DireStraits. I heard "Children Of Sanchez" (excellent recording) in 'remastered' edition... Beauty dynamics from snares (really important, gives this tramatic effect) were flat as my table. Sick shit
MrCyssiek 2 months ago
Honestly this mastering doesn't seem that bad. I did notice that the drums didn't have the same punch compared to everything else in the 2006 version, but I really had to turn up my headset volume before I noticed.
Maybe a more stark or obvious example is in order?
MGlBlaze 2 months ago
@RandomConcepts you tried to write "David Gilmour"? actually I dont agree with you. Most remasters are done purely for commercial reasons, so they got something "new" to sell. Most of them are rubbish. you have to go by the label here, as some labels put emphasis on quality, others on money. Blue Note for example has remastered almost every Jazz artist I could think of, and amongst all of them there is only one that doesn't sound to good. Its a remaster of Elle Fitzgerald.. search the year on it
SoulcheckAudio 2 months ago in playlist More videos from wado1942
Wow I closed my eyes to make sure I cold actually her the difference for myself. It was so blatant. I could immediately tell the moments wen the song got weaker.
BringerOfTruth123 2 months ago
i dont hear it, but im not a sound whore so i dont care
msstaffo2010 2 months ago
@msstaffo2010
Because you already blew your eardrums lol
MrDemilord 1 month ago
Also what you cant hear so much at this bitrate is the horendous distortion. cd is supposed to have huge dynamic ,range way more than vinyl but you'd never have guessed it listen to life and energy in older vinyl on older turntables,some modern turntables attempt to sound like cd and sound crap for it.Try this money for nothing on good turntable its like having 1000volts up youre arse,on the cd players i have heard its like grandma playing it. "cd dont got no balls" - Ray Charles
whatchannelisthisnow 2 months ago
@whatchannelisthisnow That's a bit of an odd statement because "Money for Nothin'" was recorded to digital, mixed to digital and mastered to digital. The production was designed from the beginning for CD.
The funny thing is, music on the old Edison cylinders typically had about a 12-18dB dynamic range. With Vinyl, it was basically the same, but less noise on the medium. Then CD came and albums of the early 80s like this had about a 24dB range. Now on modern CDs (and MP3s), it's about 4dB!
wado1942 2 months ago
The remastered seems to have more upper bass.not all remastered cds are bad.The Beatles white album,Rolling stones let it bleed and bob dylan in mono are much better just to name a few.
2574mcu 2 months ago
OK its not that bad i had lot of lps but thing was they were to low sound so i had to turn them up.... ???? so the remaster sounds louder wft so you don't have to turn it up
metalforever50 2 months ago
@metalforever50 I'm not sure what you're saying. You have vinyl LPs that are not as loud as your CDs? There's two things you have to keep in mind here. #1, you have to have a good turntable and phono preamp for your vinyl to sound good. #2, so what if you have to turn up the volume to listen to them? You could make the same argument, saying it's annoying that you have to keep turning DOWN the volume on new releases. If this stupid loudness war never started, nobody would be complaining.
wado1942 2 months ago
listened to this on crappy laptop speakers and could tell the difference. the dynamic is gone on the remaster.
sillyboy2009 2 months ago
I claim that one of the biggest reasons that CD sales has gone down, is because they're compressed and too loud. Like, why buy a stereo equipment and a CD when it no longer sounds better then in an ipod? They don't even know how it's supposed to sound any more.
lostrom 3 months ago
@RandomConcepts No, they are mastered for CD, that's not the same as remastering.
lostrom 3 months ago
I'd say to master anything pass 1992 is stupid, since all u'll do is add volume by killing dynamics, the clarity is already there as technology by then had become pretty much as good as it is right now.
Alwaysbaggyjeans 3 months ago
@RandomConcepts - yes maybe some confusion what people mean - it's the mastering of recent CDs that can be really bad, not the medium which faithfully plays back digital information stamped onto foil. CD players are decent now.
CD's then are not intrinsically bad, given the great albums that have taken advantage of the medium. I love the way Dan Lanois masters some things and how they sound on CD. He'll sometimes make a generation through analog Dolby A tape for its musicality.
TubeFreakJonas 3 months ago
Yes the newer factory CDs are SHHEEEITE,way too loud and compressed and very harsh,most of them any ways,..The older CD players from the early 80s were said to sound harsh but the CDs from that era sounds better than the new ones..WTF
CrashMarket 3 months ago
I thoguth the new Queen ones I bought sounded better than the original CD releases, I can certainly hear quite a difference in sound quality, however ther ehave been some remasters where they totally ruined the album, I have also come accross cases where the master from vinyl to cd and I honestly think...why did they do that? like phantasm original soundtrack from vinyl to cd one of the tracks developed this heave re-verb on the beats, but it disappeared in the remastered CD.
heythanksbutnothanks 3 months ago
If your a true audiophile then the only format worth considering is Vinyl.
Your video makes a good point though. I've got quite an extensive collection of songs from the 80's and alot of them are on CD - but they are the original early/mid 80's pressings....not the early/mid/late 90's remastered versions.
Trust your ears. ALot of the music today is fatiguing, lacking in clarity.
DIGITALSCREAMS 3 months ago
@DIGITALSCREAMS Don't believe it. Since the mid-70s, most vinyl pressings have used digital delays to feed the actual cutter head while the direct signal feeds the computer to set the groove pitch (the printed signal must be behind the actual groove cutting). Vinyl is great if it's done as an all-analogue (and expensive) process, but even the best pressings are only optimal the first few times you play them. I prefer SACD because it lasts, but even then, most of the sources are PCM digital.
wado1942 3 months ago
@wado1942 PCM 192KHz @ 24bits/sample is more than adequate. It provides a dynamic range of 144dB or so which is about 20dB more than the human ear. At 192KHz what little quantization noise there is will be ultrasonic and hence irrelevant. SACD is OK but lacks a dynamic treble response. DVDA is better.
monty78pig 3 months ago
@monty78pig I'd say you're correct in theory. However, even very high quality converters seldom show a dynamic range greater than 126dB, despite their claims. DSD is capable of 120dB dynamic range, which is, as you say, about what the human ear can hear. I had a DVD-A player and couldn't get any of my DVD-A disks to play properly. All my SACDs play fine and don't require a TV, so to me, it's better for practical reasons.
continued
wado1942 3 months ago
@wado1942 126 is enough for anyone, for a final master. CDs theoretical 96dB just doesn't cut it and is probably the main reason why along with the sample rate we have the vinyl heads preaching their playback system. Bring back 15IPS half track tape, I say. But you can't play SACDs with most DACs because they all use DSD, which sucks + having to listen to anything through a television is bad as they all use switch modes and are as noisy as hell. Still, it beats 128k MP3!
monty78pig 3 months ago
@monty78pig I agree, 1/4" @ 15 I/S is great, 1/2" tape @ 30 I/S is absolutely incredible! Add Dolby SR to that 1/2" tape and you get about the same dynamic range as any digital system but no pre-ringing from the PCM downconversion!
Isn't that funny though? Most ADCs won't do DSD even though the first stage of the conversion process IS DSD and most DACs won't do DSD even though the output is basically DSD also. It doesn't make much sense to me. BTW, I don't even listen to TV through my TV!
wado1942 3 months ago
@wado1942 Yeah, tape is awesome! But 1/2" tape is really expensive, I just use 1/4" at 15 IPS (half track of course). I try not to use Dolby as it doesn't cope well with drop outs and you get a little IMD.
Why bother doing 48k @ 24bit though, surely it would be better to do 96k @ 16bit. Most home cinema setups use class D on the output stage so there's not much point in trying to improve the dynamic range. Wouldn't it be better to just work for decent stereo instead of quadro?
monty78pig 2 months ago
PCM starts/ends as a Delta slope anyway but is digitally manipulated into PCM for storage. Why not bypass all that filtering and just record the Delta slope? I know, newer converters are usually 2-bit 128fs-256fs, and that is A LOT of data, especially for 6-channel. It'd still be nice to capture that though. BTW, I've been pushing for 48KHz, 24-bit quadraphonic DVD-Vs with stills for the video on my future masters because ANYBODY with a DVD player can play them at full resolution.
wado1942 3 months ago
@wado1942 Why 48KHz, 44.1 simply isn't enough to get those high frequency transients, why not go for 96KHz, or 192KHz?
monty78pig 3 months ago
@monty78pig The bandwidth limit for DVD is about 9mbps, so 4-channel 48K 24-bit is already 4.608mbps, plus you have to have video content of some kind. There just isn't enough bandwidth for 96KHz unless you want to go with stereo only. I don't hear much difference between 96KHz and 192KHz personally. My plan is to do 24-bit quad and interleave dithered 16-bit 48KHz stereo for those who don't have surround so that will cover my bases.
wado1942 3 months ago
@monty78pig
P.S. the other reason to use 48KHz is many DVD players down-convert 96K/192K to 48K and you better believe they do a poor job of it too.
wado1942 3 months ago
@DIGITALSCREAMS The sad thing about that is that CDs and the current digital formats are actually a better medium, but they are squashed to death in the studio. Digital songs are expected to be listened to on earbuds or in cars. Vinyl records are expected to be listened to in a quiet home by audiophiles. What is sad about that is that the people who care most about sound quality are forced to settle for the limits of 70s technology.
JeffTheHokie 3 months ago
@RandomConcepts It just sounds better, that's the evidence. Sort of like how a person singing on key sounds better than a person farting, I'm not sure if there could be a scientific test to prove it but it's obvious. It's not my fault that you have no taste to distinguish such things.
dubified89 3 months ago
@RandomConcepts Anything that was previously mastered that gets mastered to digital is "digitally remastered", whether it was from an analogue source or not. You're right though, you can't assume every time that the remaster is worse, but they almost always are. I've been disappointed by so many that I gave up on it unless I KNOW exactly how it was done and what source they used. Van Halen's hits album is a great example of bad remastering. No support, massive clipping etc.
wado1942 4 months ago
@RandomConcepts No, not all remasters are bad, but most of them are. I know "remastering engineer" at Warner Bros. His job was to play digital U-Matic master tapes and hit "record" on a computer. Most of the tapes were pre-mastered for cassette or vinyl, which have different demands from CD. He was not allowed to make any changes to the audio, but you better bet the label said "digitally remastered". Then the artist gets a couple thousand $ docked from their royalties for that "service".
wado1942 4 months ago
Customers on my studio always want LOUDER!
MARAKUJAstudio 4 months ago
I hear the difference, alright... The "remastered" version sounds muddled. Too much quality is lost & it reminds me of those fools with "boom-cars" that over-emphasize the low-end bass, completely defeating the point of building such a high-end system & destroying the beauty of whatever work was put into the recording. This is what's called "progress"? Seems more like a back-step to me!
nickelindimer 4 months ago
Im glad I found this before I wasted 180.00 on the remastered Pink Floyd cd set I would have been quite Pissed if Its like that. Thanks for sharing
HUFFMANOF4 4 months ago
@HUFFMANOF4 If you can though, get the SACD of "Dark Side". It's never sounded better IMO. It was remixed off the 2" 16-track tape and all those layers of tape distortion from folding a quadraphonic mix down to stereo, mastered to stereo etc are gone.
wado1942 4 months ago
Neil Young's Time Fades Away cannot be remastered because the are no master tapes to that album.
MyVideoStop 4 months ago
@MyVideoStop Remasters are quite commonly done from later generations, even consumer copies.
wado1942 4 months ago
I don't think this is a great example of a brickwalled master, so many albums today the whole thing would just be green with no black.
dubified89 4 months ago
Sigh. I feel pretty dumb now, cause about a month ago I bought the remastered version of Brother in Arms thinking it was better :S
somefortytwo 4 months ago
I have PRO Sennheiser headphones and the difference (even at 360p) that I hear is enormous. Maximizing is ruining modern music!!!!
TheDardyProduction 4 months ago
Shit! I was like...i cant hear the difference but i replayed and was like oh SHIT there really is a difference! I'm actually really suprised! once i noticed the difference it seemed obvious after that! original is a lot clearer and more natural sounding! in remaster it even seems the guitar is slightly lost a lil. it jumps out more in the original and tone is clearer!
martyfriedman666 4 months ago
Amazing how noticeably worse it makes it and I'm no audiophile.
LtMercutio 4 months ago
am i the only one thinking this is a joke? i'm not on the stereo right now, but i have a pair of shure earphones attached to my laptop (mac) and the both sound really the same..
btw the lossless version of the same song, played in itunes, to me, it seems better than the ones on this video!
pega711 4 months ago
@pega711 OK, you have to realize that this audio is 96kbps MP3 audio AT BEST, due to the limitations of You Tube. It's a very lossy format, but even at that, I can hear the difference in this video on my laptop speakers. Also, iTunes always alters the sound. There's no way to get a bit-for-bit output of what you put into it, which is why iTunes is a joke in the audio world.
wado1942 4 months ago
@pega711 Well, my ears are not what they used to be.. but I can hear the difference: the originals ounds more 'open' while the remaster is muddy
Gooseberry51 4 months ago
@pega711 It's completely different. You may just not hear it.
yellowdogparty 4 months ago
@pega711
This is absolutely no joke :-(
I only wish it were...
c1ferrari 4 months ago
We have been telling ppl this for years. Itunes is especially guilty of butchering the audio quality of great recordings. Our 25 year old cassettes sound better than itunes mp3's. it's not the gear that is the problem or technology but the untrained ears of the ppl doing the remaster. Also alot of remastering is done with exciters which can completely change the character of the original recording.
nublackmusic 4 months ago
And this is why I haven't bought any music since the mid 90s. Unfortunately the masses think their ipod with crappy little speakers sounds really great. Is this really progress? The peak of fidelity to me was late 80s/early 90s when CD was mainstream and hi fi separates ruled. In those days engineers exploited the dynamic range of CDs to give great sound. now, we may as well be back on cassette tape - it would sound the same!
dopiaza2006 4 months ago
@dopiaza2006 The average dynamic range for rock/pop/country music is far lower than even the Edison cylinders of the 1800s. I actually have some cassettes that sound a lot better, as much as I dislike cassettes.
wado1942 4 months ago
@wado1942 Just think of all those engineers developing things like Dolby B, C and HX Pro for consumer tape decks so we could get a nice dynamic range above the background hiss. Might as well have not bothered! Imagine if back then someone had said 'hey, let's not bother with all this noise reduction crap, let's just cram the entire track into the top few dBs then people can just turn the volume down to get rid of the hiss'. They'd have been laughed out of the room, and quite rightly too!
dopiaza2006 4 months ago
@dopiaza2006 I've switched my taste in music to stuff from small labels who might still have some dynamics... I dont care if nobody know what I'm listening to or not as long as it makes me happy :)
svtcontour 4 months ago
and this is why I buy vinyls lol, I'm always getting funny looks when a 20 year old goes in to a record store, but I kidd you not Pat Benatar sounds alot better on my vinyl player than on my cd player and iPod
RPD64 4 months ago
I know a local band that utterly failed with attempts to compress their music. They only compressed the drums, and the drums got so overpowering that it makes every other instrument fade out whenever the drums hit, so when the guitar strums and lets a chord ring, the drums will cause it to have a wah wah effect that was unintentional. And they're ok with that terrible production!
Bassbait 4 months ago
@Bassbait That's from compressing the stereo mix, not just drums. The drums peak above everything else, so if you hyper-compress the mix, the drums will control the everything else. I get that a lot now. The sick thing is, a lot of guys insist on crushing the mix, DURING mixing, rather than letting a specialist (mastering engineer) handle it, who can do it much more transparently. When people send me crushed mixes, I just tell them there's nothing that can be done for it without a remix.
wado1942 4 months ago
@wado1942 I'm not all that special, but with my band I think we successfully avoided (for the most part, as we are in the "demo" stage of production) all of the "loudness war" problems. If you want to check out my music, it's on the facebook page on my channel description.
But seriously, I know how to get stuff to sound good, but I don't know the technical stuff as much. My drummer knows technicals really well, which is ironic because he was the drummer whose drums were ruined by the band's mix
Bassbait 4 months ago
@wado1942 I love your video and i love your comments. Haven't watched anything else on your channel yet but judging from the owner it has to be good :]
weetcka 4 months ago
Compression city! They just comperssed the hell out of it, The 86' master is prolly on 2' analog tape and age takes a toll on tape. So they "remaster" with digital software that you can obviously see is inferior to analog so they compress it way to much.
Jerrysway 5 months ago
@Jerrysway The original recording was done on 1/2" 24-track digital tape. The master is U-Matic digital stereo cassette. The remaster used here may have been taken from the PCM mix tape or the master tape, but not the 1/2" DASH. That said, even if it was recorded on analogue, there wouldn't be that much degradation. I've remastered stuff from the 70s that was only -.5dB from original spec.
wado1942 5 months ago
Make one better than both of these by normalizing 1986 to 99%.
TheBruceNet 5 months ago
@TheBruceNet Simply normalizing and making a new disk would just add distortion. The best option is to turn up the volume knob!
wado1942 5 months ago
Maybe I'm just having very good ears, but the sick thing is, I hear the difference loud and clearly even through the speakers of my Macbook.
dsmaster92 5 months ago
@dsmaster92 Yeah, it can be heared from almost anything..
jockeleu 5 months ago
Almost there.
Now play for us just the clipped part and we can really hear what's missing.
TheKingofBastards 5 months ago
I find the difference between two Green Day albums, International Superhits and American Idiot. International Superhits has the crisp sound with more dynamic range. Don't get me wrong I like the songs on American Idiot but to play it loud gives me earache after a while. Apart from Give Me Novacaine, the album seems to be all continuous loud coarse guitar and singing with few breaks!
I have noticed some really ancient recordings have clipped sound and poor dynamics though.
TimpBizkit 5 months ago
@TimpBizkit Old 45 RPM singles are notoriously distorted, but that's the pressing, not the master tape. You're right though, lack of dynamics is nothing new and neither is clipping. Only now is it the rule rather than t he exception though.
wado1942 5 months ago
I didn't notice too much difference in this example except the keyboards/vocals were louder compared to the drums. Did you play them at equal volume (comparing a normalised version 1 to version 2)?
TimpBizkit 5 months ago
@TimpBizkit You can't normalize them or they won't be equal loudness anymore. They are, however, within 0.2db of each other for this example. Since the drums are crushed, that will have a LITTLE effect on overall loudness, causing the other instruments to be increased very slightly in level.
wado1942 5 months ago
@nohanjes I'm not talking about loudness... The reason I said I had skullcandy headphones is because the video said to use good headphones to notice the difference.
Anyway, I guess his voice sounds a little more "cloudy" in the remastered version, but it's really nothing that I'd get butthurt about. Sounds nice..
DaFawky 5 months ago
The lack clarity in the remastered version is obvious.
jstarret 5 months ago
it sounds the same to me and i have good skullcandy headphones
DaFawky 5 months ago
what guitar, on what MTV? :(
deadKEnterprises 5 months ago
bands used to record reel to reel, they mainly do digital pro tools crap records, I HATE PRO TOOLS.....metallica's death magnetic is a perfect example of a shit recording of pro tools. Vinyl seems to be sounding crappier these days because bands don't record like they used to in the 70's and 80's..
nigletgook 5 months ago
@nigletgook I'm definitely not a fan of PT either, but most of the problem is with technique, not medium. Don't overlook the many open-reel digital media like Sony DASH or Mitsubishi Prodigi or the many PCM/video formats from the 80s that sound WAY worse than PT.
wado1942 5 months ago 2
@wado1942 The sound of digital recordings suck without the music first being recorded to analog. That's another part of why old cds sound better.
dubified89 4 months ago
@dubified89 In light of that, two things:
1). Depending on the total compilation on types sound sources & composition design (Synth-dance vs.acoustic-folk) one total method of recording is preferable over another.
2). The type of equipment used for playback is a big deal (DUH!) so one wonders how these Super-Audio CDs do at reproducing. I've heard good so-far, but that just reminds me of what Billy Joel said:
There's a new band in-town,
but you can't get the sound
From a story in a magazine
nickelindimer 4 months ago
@nickelindimer SACD in of itself is superior to CD in every way. The problem is that most material is simply copied from traditional PCM formats like 1630 or 3402. That essentially means the SACD has no advantage over CD because its master was made from an inferior, often already mastered source. One such example is The Police Synchronicity album. Though the SACD was mastered off of the original mix, it was still an old 44.1K 16-bit format.
wado1942 4 months ago
@nickelindimer No I just think that analog sourced recordings converted to digital sound better than purely digital recordings in all cases. I listen to a variety of genres and the old recordings are all better sonically.
dubified89 3 months ago
whether played on a boombox or an expensive stereo system
dubified89 3 months ago
@dubified89 I dig ya... The other day a lady-friend & I were flippin' through the channels, and we stumbled on the Lady Gaga Fame Monster concert. Now, my friend didn't care for the way Lady Gaga sounded in studio recordings or over the radio... But when she heard Gaga live & "unfiltered"on HBO, she fell in-love with her music. Mind you, this woman has ears that are so sensitive, I've relied on her to say when while setting-up & tuning speakers for her. If that don't say all....
nickelindimer 3 months ago
Why did they remaster it in the first place... It has been recorded digitally in 1986 for CD :banghead:
MrDemilord 5 months ago
It depends on who make the remastering job...I often hate the mainstream US remasters, but Mofi, Analogue production and the Japanese often make great job!
Jazzmaster11 5 months ago
Music has become wallpaper to people. I see people standing around with ipods, completely bored yet addicted to noise in their ears. I'm sure music should knock us out, not send us to sleep.
the81kid 6 months ago 2
@the81kid That's a very good point and I've felt the same way for a long time, though you put it more eloquently. One time when I had somebody in my isolation booth (which wasn't even complete), they said it was deafening without all the noise of the world!
wado1942 6 months ago
@wado1942
Thanks, that idea had been going around my mind for a long time. Yes, isolation booths are a good example of a musical society we have completely forgotten. Can you imagine, way back at the beginning, maybe 400 years ago: the only music you would probably experience, was in church... after a life of no music, imagine the awe-inspiring harmony, rhythm and melody of choirs and booming, resonant church-organs as tall as a cathedral! Music was an event.
Now, we have ipods, and wallpaper.
the81kid 6 months ago
@the81kid Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era. A popular pastime was for neighbors to get together and sing/play songs. But they were MAKING the music in active participation. Now, it's just something to mask the ringing in our ears because it #1 demands no concentration and #2 is ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE! It's no longer special as the corporate world turned all art into means to sell products.
wado1942 6 months ago
@wado1942
"Actually, music was an integral part of many people's lives through the Medieval era" that is generally true. I meant, and should have said, a music-free life compared to today. I suppose they did play music at times, but they were events. And yes, your 2 points are very correct. I still imagine that listening to church music would have been inspirational, it is no wonder people were so spiritual. I hate this generic, wallpaper music that depends on image instead of sound.
the81kid 6 months ago
@wado1942
@the81kid
Most people don't listen to music anymore, they hear it.
ChimchangTV 5 months ago
@ChimchangTV
People dont give a shit anymore about dynamics and detail in the music.. The want Noise noise and noise Ipod Zune.. Phones..
and they wonder why they get deaf
MrDemilord 5 months ago
People used to like quality, nowdays they want quantity...
xboyer3 6 months ago 4
@xboyer3 it is true, it is a space saver, I did used to buy music from online and download it until I found out about compressed music and joint stereo...I now buy the CDs if they are available and upload them to Itunes in wav format which is the native format for CD's, so there is no loss in sound quality, but you can not have the artwork on the file but worth it to me if it sounds better.I can't get so much on my Ipod, but I would rather that than crappy compressed music.
heythanksbutnothanks 3 months ago
It makes me cry why oh why do record companies ruin great music, thanks for the insight I am now very miserable
dickiewap 6 months ago
@dickiewap The record companies have albums mastered at higher volume levels in fear that they will loose part of their fan base if they do not. They want the albums to "stand out" among the other albums. Bands do have a say in whether or not their albums are mastered "dynamically" or "dynamicless and crushed." Most bands do not really take the time to bother with it although. One major part that has dramatically made the "Loudness War" worse, is iPod's "shuffle" feature i.e.
RadeonZero 6 months ago
@dickiewap The reason it made it worse is because the volume levels are wanted to be "matched." A good normalization feature would help dramatically but, its not improving and its not really budging which makes it just as bad...
RadeonZero 6 months ago
Youtube audio does not do justice to the original master. It is startling in its clarity and detail. Why, why, why did they try to fix one of the most popular CD's of all time?
The main rationale behind digital was improved dynamics compared to LP's. But these days CD's do not even have the dynamics of old LP's. What a shame.
JiveDadson 6 months ago
@movieking88 I really want to listen to large Klipsch tower speakers. I think that after listening to those kind of speakers one will no longer consider headphones as the first audiophile choice.
craneywatch 6 months ago
Everything remastered or reissued after 1999 is so terrible.
I bought one of the recent reissues of the Rolling Stones Exile album and you talk about SUPER LOUD. Like some dumbass is sitting in front on a computer and says "let's turn this up to 11". It sounds OK on an IPod or cheap stereo but in my expensive car cd player, it sounded like shit.
Same goes for the Megadeth remasters, and the Judas Priest ones. in fact the only remasters that are good, are ones before 2000 (Bowie, Ozzy)
LivinWorstNightmare 6 months ago
@movieking88 Only with large JBL speakers I found significant difference between LP and CD records. LP are the best!!
craneywatch 6 months ago
Why do people keep saying they buy vinyl when available to avoid dynamic compression? When it comes to dynamic range it is the master and not the format that makes the difference. Do they routinely use a different master for the vinyl issue and the digital one for recently recorded music? I wouldn't think so. Seriously, I don't know because I don't have any recent music on both formats to compare.
IStoleYourPotatoes 6 months ago
@IStoleYourPotatoes Mastering is defined as assembling and optimizing an album for its destination format. So if they're doing it "the right way" then yes, they'll have two different masters. In reality though, I find it's not very common. Really, even MP3 downloads should come from yet a different master. It's really stupid because the kind of treatment CD masters routinely get really work against the potential quality of even CD, forget about any other format.
wado1942 6 months ago
@wado1942 Thank-you for the reply. They could make the shiny little disc sound amazing if they wanted to. HDCD was a bust along with DVD Audio, and it would be mind blowing what they could do with a Blue Ray audio format. I have invested in my "last cd player" and listen to cd's and vinyl with a 1961 vintage tube amplifier that I restored. I am no snob, but people who don't care about quality audio help make sure it will disappear. Thanks for educating people. You are making a difference.
IStoleYourPotatoes 6 months ago
@IStoleYourPotatoes Thanks for the kind words. I started noticing the shortcomings of CD early, but they could definitely sound better than they do. I'm a fan of SACD and it's a shame the very few albums available in the format are often just converted from PCM sources. I could never get DVD-A disks to play in my DVD-A player. There's so many variations of the format, it's hard to maintain compatibility. Thing is, the consumers wanted to have 4,000 songs in their pocket more than quality.
wado1942 6 months ago
The 1986 version definitely sounds better.
slimshady0297 6 months ago
Brothers in arms. Recently downloaded an original CD (1985) and it averaged -25 db! Quite interesting.
Most albums I've downloaded (stores tend to have remastered) average between -16 to -20 db. On a store, how can I know it's dynamics?
Kids (I'm 16) completely ignore this. Ordinary people notice it (fatigue, volume change between CDs) but unless they do an A-B comparison they won't reallyu notice the difference.
wotajared 7 months ago
@wotajared I have the 2nd CD release of The Police "Synchronicity" (same as the 1st release but with an extra song) and it's the same way. It's an old digital master of an old digital mix. Though the converters were crap back then (still are to an extent), the sound is HUGE, especially on "Synchronicity I & II". Just amazing. Unlike "Brothers", it was recorded to analogue, but he intentionally recorded everything at really low levels so that they would sound as crisp as possible.
wado1942 7 months ago
@wado1942 MOst Old CDs sound muddyto me but they keep the DR of the original.
Some remasters are what they should be. Keeping good DR and with a better sound.
Got '96 Clapton remasters of 461 and Slowhand and the sound is great. Not muddy and the instruments sound as they should, cymbals have more sparkle and drums have punch. Much better than the old CD.
Others improve sound but do raise a bit loudness, with ok DR.
And there's the re-re masters (every few years) which only increase loudness.
wotajared 6 months ago
I was a sucker once for this scam. I am, thanks to videos like this and "Another Loudness War Example", BORN AGAIN musically!
Zickcermacity 7 months ago
anything remastered is a waste of money. the difference between a remastered album and the original is too subtle to re-purchase the album
BoredWithSorcery 7 months ago
Just amazing how it gets worse and worse! Most people don't even pick up on it! I'm only 24 but I buy nothing but vinyl records, and try to pick up Mono's over Stereo records whenever I can...I still buy new released on record, but obviously they are not made the way records used to be made....however I still prefer newer material on vinyl over CD.
TRJ22487ISDEAD 7 months ago
No one in the industry realizes that remastering is not the same as amplifying...
MrMario2011 7 months ago
this one is audible, but it's funny that this is a particularly mild example, whereas the real problem is the brickwall filters being used.
If this was the extent of the loudness war (ie, a difference between RMS and peak of about 16-18 dB), I'd be fine with it. But Death Magnetic has a difference between RMS and peak of like 4 dB... That literally is getting close to static (which would have a difference of 0 dB)
Username93611 7 months ago
Today there is no dynamics thats why i miss records that dont have anything near the dynamic range of cd'sthey went downhill since 2000
Obelisk2290 8 months ago
@Obelisk2290 It's funny, CDs from their beginning to 1993 ranged anywhere from -24dBfs RMS to -10dBfs RMS. Then in 1994, most releases were -10dB, and by 1998, -8dB was becoming common. I remember the first -6dBfs RMS masters, thinking they were unlistenable, even when the music was great and thinking "it's can't possible get any worse than this". Now -4dB is common, though some are taking a stand like U2 and Guns & Roses.
wado1942 8 months ago
Unfortunately , people perceive loud as "good". Albums are sounding worse and worse, but nobody is brave enough to release a softer sounding album in the name of quality. I'm victim to this. I master my stuff very loud so that people dont say its quiet :-/ . . . I think the 90's has the best mix of learning how to make things loud but not squashed. If you limit at the peaks just really slightly but still allow the dynamic range its still not as bad as squashing.
KCJacksonMuz 8 months ago
@KCJacksonMuz Steve Albini and Co do little to no compressing of the Shellac albums/CDs and Classical CDs are still natural sounding with highs and lows even when THEY are remastered!
Warstub 8 months ago
Fucking loudness war is making music sound worse, more volume is not more quality, if you have a song with no dynamics you cant fell the song, we need MORE DYNAMICS
cmatute69 8 months ago
@cmatute69 music business died 5 years ago
Obelisk2290 8 months ago
And I could hear it even on the mono speaker on a Thinkpad x61.
However, if something has been ripped from vinyl masters and sent ot We7 - compared to the same title on CD.. it sounds better off CD as yes - it is a *little* louder if an old recording initially.
alcockell 8 months ago
I think this happened to me when I bought the CD The Essentials of Roy Orbison. Its sound sucks. I ripped a song from a friend's CD and it sounded awesome, with a great combination of bass and high-pitched sound.
tbcpuebla 8 months ago
On the high quality video, you'll notice the muffled drums in the new version, and one of the sharpest, clearest, punchiest guitar riffs being dulled.
Cds56 8 months ago
Loudness war they call it. Tracks on new CD's (or remastered ones) are much louder so the mp3 player users think the tracks are better quality (oddly, for some people loudness = quality, especially for the headphones - so weird to me). So its pretty much what people want.
perqqq 8 months ago
@perqqq Another thing about heavily compressed music is that where the peak is shorn off, the waveform becomes a square wave which is full of overtones and would be perceived as distortion. This distortion has a tendency to sort of 'mask' the digital noise and loss of clarity you might otherwise hear in encoded music (*.aac, *.mp3), especially at 192kbps or less. And since digital download sales recently surpassed CD sales, they've been a major point of focus. Trading one turd for another.
brandavies 8 months ago
@perqqq People don't want loud, they want consistent. I don't know of anybody who likes the sound of crushed music. What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume and that's caused by the loudness war directly because in the early days of digital recording, -20dBfs was the reference point against 0VU on an analogue meter.
wado1942 8 months ago 8
@wado1942 "People don't want loud... What they hate is constantly having to adjust the volume"
This. Consistently loud, even at the expense of range, might be preferable in less-than-ideal listening environments (or else you turn up a quiet part to hear it over the background noise, and then your eardrums get blasted a second later), but if you're able to give your full aural attention to the music, range is great.
Frungi 7 months ago
@Frungi Agreed, that's why most replay systems have some kind of compressor built into them. You can chose dynamic range if you want good sound or you can choose squashed if you want constant level. I'll maintain, though, that extreme transient limiting does not help in either case. Parallel compression or low threshold, low ratio compression is much more effective for that purpose.
wado1942 7 months ago
@wado1942 I wouldn't say that nobody likes the sound of crushed music. I've talked to bands who, because of their selected genre I believe, favored the sound of music that was highly compressed over the same music with a lower level of compression or none at all (on the master). I would agree that MOST CONSUMERS want consistency but not all.
zachabend 7 months ago
@zachabend Actually, I'm doing a project where some of the songs are to be squashed for effect and others not. My solution was to limit the snot out of those songs, but pull back the levels to match the rest of the material. Therefore, it's done PURELY for effect and not perceived loudness. Limiting & clipping 99.999% of the time is done merely for the sake of appearing louder than somebody else's material.
wado1942 7 months ago
@wado1942 That's a nice statistic, but I simply don't buy it. I would say that bands like the sound of squashed material a lot more than .001% of the time, especially when the genre calls for it. Kids are listening to albums that have been squashed and many are under the impression that this "squashed" sound is desired or "commercial", and since that is what they listen to everyday many of them, even after understanding and listening to "unsquashed" music, they still like the previous.
zachabend 7 months ago
Hey! Ever heard of 'Vapor Trails' by Rush? Well tomorrow I'm mastering a remix I've been working on for a song called 'Ghost Rider'. Go listen to the original master of the album and then come back and listen to my remaster...Its what I'm trying to do to counter act the loudness war. You'll hear a clarity difference like no other and a more dynamic sound due to lower volume levels. There are some good remasters though...I can show a few if you'd like.