Linn Forums

The Loudness War

I know the subject is done to death but Im sick to death of this idiotic practice ruining recordings, with DS and Studio Masters a possibility for a way forward will Engineers and record company suits stop doing it, I hope so, but somehow I doubt it..

Anyway a nice demo of the problem if you have not seen it before.

It looks like some recordings get turned up so much they get clipped too, trying to use more than the 16 bit range available to them.

Notice the horizontal line in the below picture.[attachment=29]

First time I've seen the demo, thanks for pointing it out.

I was aware of the fact that some of the modern music productions were pretty awful, I always wondered why this is with the advancements in technology... now I know why!

I am not hopeful either. DVD-A was a good chance to fix this, but in many cases they tried to use the extra bits to squeeze even more 'loudness' from the sound. However illogical that seems.

I came across a forum some time ago where people were posting waveforms of ripped 24/96 tracks from DVD-A discs and many of them looked every bit as clipped and compressed as your typical recent pop CD. In many of these discs however the 44.1 tracks in the DVD-V part of the disc had beautifully uncompressed sound!

Sean

The better system you have, the less you think of this.
On a decent Linn system, most if not all recordings are good.
On a GREAT Linn system, well...

Don't quite see what you mean - a bad recording is a bad recording. The better the system the worse an over-compressed recording will sound - to my ears, at least.

The better the system is the MORE it going to focus on the musicality, so you don't think of the limited dynamics.
Follow me?

A bad recording is a bad recording, correct - but still it produce music. On a good system this aspect is the one you notice.

Noticed a link to the following website on Elbow's latest LP - good to know there's a modern band that cares about how their music sounds!

http://www.turnmeup.org/

They're latest LP, 'The Seldom Seen Kid', is superb by the way - Have a listen on YouTube - here's the first track:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFBe75IhHI

they were at Glastonbury the other week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BG6tZFMkvQ

Does anyone know what software is used in the youtube video to see the 'profile' (peaks etc) of the music? Or any similar software?

Cheers!

Thats not the issue though!! The fact remains its a crap recording and could have been better...