Digital vs analog

[seti]

The nice thing is if you get drunk and pass out it doesn't keep running the stylus in the end of the record, like my non automatic turntable does.

You mean that I'm not the only one that this happens to?

The QUP : ) End of record lifter.

http://www.needledoctor.com/The-QUP

[Boxx]

The nice thing is if you get drunk and pass out it doesn't keep running the stylus in the end of the record, like my non automatic turntable does.

You mean that I'm not the only one that this happens to?

The QUP : ) End of record lifter.

http://www.needledoctor.com/The-QUP

Great idea... I will check this one out... Thanks. []

[The Dude]

Why limit yourself to analog or digital? Each format has its strengths. When I am out looking for music I am looking for music regardless of format. Ok perhaps I don't go through the 8 track tapes... But I will gladly flip through a stack of records or cds.

That's what I am saying, except I do have my dad's 8 track of Kiss live.

[garyrc]

As long as they can, they will sell what they can sell regardless of SQ (I'm thinking the mp3 marketplace now).

... e.g., Amazon's shameless, continuing promotion of mp3s, to the degree that they have a special section for nothing but them.

I think that recording industry giants--RIAA-member companies--really aren't nice guys ...

They may be ignorant, as well (there was a time, in the '70s when several of the executives of the movie industry knew less about film than students just out of a Film Appreciation course).

Or ... perhaps recording executives neither listen to, nor like, music.

[Don Richard]

I think that recording industry giants--RIAA-member companies--really aren't nice guys, and that they really don't care about SQ--rather only profit.

That has been the problem with audio since the beginning. Starting with records you have a mechanical reproduction system, and a rather poor mechanical reproduction system at that. Edison cylinders were technically better than discs but were expensive to manufacture. So the industry devised a method where flat discs with grooves could be stamped out cheaply and quickly which led to greater profits for the record companies. Magnetic tape has been around since post WWII days and has technical advantages over records regarding surface noise and distortion but could not be produced as inexpensively as discs. Even so cassette tapes were outselling records at the time CDs were introduced. Convenience and portability were additional benefits of the casette format but mechanical issues with damage to the tape or the housing were rather prevalent.

Compact discs were the first commercially successful format that brought digital audio to mainstream consumers. This format offered higher performance with regard to noise, dynamic range, damage resistance, and portability than its predecessors and it lent itself to high volume manufacturing. Some of the earliest CD players weren't very good and the recording engineers didn't have experience with digital recording which resulted in many of the earliest CDs using master tapes that were compressed and EQed for vinyl records, for CD production. As a result these early CDs didn't sound too good but there were many decent CDs recorded in the late 80s and in the 90s. Afterwards the producers and the record companies discovered that the CDs could be made louder and louder which resulted in the "loudness wars" that resulted in a poor quality product that sounded bad on good equipment but "better" on car stereos and other portable players.

With the introduction of Ipod type players using MP3 encoding sound quality really took a dive. The ability to store and play thousands of songs from a device half the size of a cassette tape was all that mattered. But the target market didn't care about the low quality and the record companies didn't even have to produce a physical product, just have the downloadable music files for sale on the internet. Even worse a musician could buy $1500 or less worth of gear from Guitar Center, produce his own music downloads and avoid sharing the profits with the record company. Some of these indie releases are truly horrible, as you might expect.

Now we have high resolution digital formats that can bring studio quality to the home listener. A well engineered album played on a good reproduction system can offer stunning realism. But the record companies don't see high sales volumes for these formats because the modern consumer can't tell the difference and couldn't care less. And all the record companies care about is making money, which is about all they ever cared about.

[Quiet_Hollow]

But the target market didn't care about the low quality...

Define target market.

If you're referring to "kids", then don't blame them for simply not knowing any better. Rest assured, they can physically hear better than us. Takes a bit for tastes to develop.

Portable music players and the audience is not the quality problem. Leaning exclusively on lossy formats is.

And all the record companies care about is making money, which is about all they ever cared about.

If that's been business for a over a hundred years now, then we're probably looking for a solution in the wrong spot, right?

If it's a technical issue, then lambasting the financiers is simply moot.

[Don Richard]

Portable music players and the audience is not the quality problem. Leaning exclusively on lossy formats is.

The lossy formats are necessary to store thousands of songs in a small physical space. Having a lot of songs in their Ipods is all the users are interested in, it sure isn't audio quality.

And all the record companies care about is making money, which is about all they ever cared about.

So we can stop trying to get a solution from them now, right?

If it's a technical issue, then lambasting the financiers is simply moot.

It's a money issue and therein lies the solution. If, when, enough people - including the producers and musicians - demand higher quality the record companies will have to change. It's a sad fact that the music business is more about business than music and if they see a loss of revenue, that will lead to a higher quality product. The technology exists, it just needs to be used and mass marketed.

[Chris A]

If that's been business for a over a hundred years now, then we're probably looking for a solution in the wrong spot, right?

I'm curious - what do you think the driving issue is that's responsible for poor recording quality? Do you believe that it is a format issue?

I don't believe that it is related to just young people, or just people that are ignorant of the difference.

Chris

[garyrc]

It's a sad fact that the music business is more about business than music and if they see a loss of revenue, that will lead to a higher quality product. The technology exists, it just needs to be used and mass marketed.

It's also sad that they bypass the opportunity to take pride in their work.

Too many of my friends -- particularly the young ones -- seem to be so deceived by the spatiality of ear buds that they fail to notice the distortion, poor detail & texture, and limited frequency response of the lossy recordings -- with poor engineering to boot -- that they hear on portable devices, even when the tech is as low as on an overcrowded mp3.

If the majority of classical or jazz consumers stopped buying, it might not impress the business people -- too small a part of the market share.

Perhaps if there is enough criticism of SQ on the forums, and enough emails to equipment manufactures, asking them to put pressure on recording companies, and enough emails to artists, there might be an effect. In another, closely related, industry it may have worked; the makers of the original Blu-ray of Patton were excoriated on the two major forums for the horrible, pasty faced PQ of a 70mm movie that was wire sharp in the theater. They finally transferred the film to disk all over again, with a considerable improvement.

[Quiet_Hollow]

what do you think the driving issue is that's responsible for poor recording quality?

Entire books have been written on that one alone. I'm not about to paraphrase any of them.

Do you believe that it is a format issue?

As it relates to poor recording quality, no.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Although audio is not specifically addressed in this particular discussion, IMHO, Dave does a pretty damn good job summing up the state of affairs involving the "art", which at anytime one could easily substitute into context "music" or simply "good sound"...political interjections and anecdotes aside.

He brings to light the extremely differential nature of appreciation and inception of the "art". Which is what I believe to be the fundamental issue here....a complex exchange of personal preferences of all involved parties. Clear as mud.

Skip to 6:22 to begin :

Hope that helps Chris.

[Chris A]

I believe that this web site will answer a lot of questions on this subject:

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Just put in your favorite artist and/or album into the fields on the right side of the screen about 2 1/2 inches down from the top of the window.

I think this clears up a lot of questions for me. I systematically went through my Amazon music purchases over the last couple of years and found few if any surprises. I wish that I knew about this site earlier: I would've saved more than a few $s. I think that if the other members of the forum used this site before rating or buying their music, most would be much happier with the outcome. I know that I'm bookmarking it as a final check before I buy anything.

CDs produced earlier (even in the 80s) uniformly have much more dynamic range than those produced/remastered in the last 10 years, particularly in the last 5 years. I know that there are stories of some CDs put out in the 80s that had a RIAA curve applied to them, but I can only identify (possibly) one of these: Tears for Fears--Songs from the Big Chair, 1985. I've not been disappointed with most of my 80s-vintage CDs but I've been very disappointed with CDs from the 2000s, especially "remasters". Now I don't have to guess as much using the web site above (not all recordings are represented in the database, but quite a few are).

I've been reading up on the subject of "loudness wars" and the (sordid) history of pop music, i.e., the record giants. If anything, the story is much worse than you might otherwise think once you look beneath the smoke screens. All the corporate leaders of these major firms--with perhaps one notable exception that didn't last into the 90s--have really not cared about much other than the height of their stack of green. This is as bad a story as I've read short of notable dictators and despots in political/military history. As I finish reading these, I'll try to relate a brief synopsis of each book (assuming anyone cares).

Chris

[tromprof]

I believe that this web site will answer a lot of questions on this subject:

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Very interesting. Thanks

[juniper8]

Cask05 what an awesome site thanks for posting!!! Confirms a weird notion I have had... I always look for older cd's, most of the new ones I have bought, I cant listen to..I have up to four copies of some cd's, just looking for good sound, and when I see remastered it isn't worth the chance..

[Quiet_Hollow]

Cask05 what an awesome site thanks for posting!!!

+1 [Y]

I will definitely be contributing to that list as time permits.

I downloaded the offline analyzer. Very nice...much faster than running a sonogram.

Excellent for sniffing out clipped tracks in advance. [&] Loudness wars aside, there's simply no excuse what-so-ever for clipping at the source, which really sounds like ***...especially with an all digital system. [8o|]

[Islander]

I believe that this web site will answer a lot of questions on this subject:

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Just put in your favorite artist and/or album into the fields on the right side of the screen about 2 1/2 inches down from the top of the window.

For me, some of it seemed right and some didn't. Most of the Flaming Lips recordings don't sound right.

However, last summer I bought Joe Walsh's new CD Analog Man the same day I bought the new Garbage CD Not Your Kind of People. From the first plays, I was disappointed with Joe's recording, and happy with Garbage's one.

Not Your Kind of People had the full sound you expect with a rock recording (nearly all of Garbage's songs I've ever heard sound great, even on YouTube), but Analog Man was thin and lacking in bottom. I blame Jeff Lynne, who engineered the recording. Joe's music usually sounds much better. In interviews, Joe mentioned that Jeff took the recording in a direction that Joe would not have thought of. I don't know if he meant it was more creative or more crappy than Joe would have liked. It seemed like he was being diplomatic.

On the Dynamic Range Database, ''Not Your Kind of People was scored 5-4-6, while 'Analog Man' got 7-6-9. Am I looking at this in the wrong way? Is it checking only dynamic range and not overall sound?

Garbage's 1998 CD 'Version 2.0' sounds great to me, but got a score of 6-5-7, which also puts it in the "bad" category. Did you also find discrepancies like that?

Strange. The italic option stopped working in the last few paragraphs of this post. That never happened before.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Is it checking only dynamic range and not overall sound?

Correct. It's a single metric...an important one at that (re: loudness wars), but certainly not the only metric that defines technical quality.

Lot's of good songs recorded in the 8-10dB range. Doesn't mean they're trash just because. It's scenario driven.

Clipped on the other hand? [N] [N]

[Chris A]

Correct. It's a single metric...an important one at that (re: loudness wars), but certainly not the only metric that defines technical quality.

After ripping a few of my favorite disks to WAV and running the offline DR application, it is interesting to me that the most highly used disks for auditioning speakers (Roy, et al.) also have extremely high scores on the DR database scale, i.e., 20+ max, 14-19 ave.:

James Newton Howard & Friends (19,10,21)
Flim & the BB's -- Big Notes (19,14,22), Tricycle (18,13,23)
Best of Chesky Jazz Vol., 2 (15,4,34)
Sara K - Play on Words (14, 13, 16)
Babatunde Olatunji - Circle of Drums (16, 16, 17)

etc., etc.

Note that three of the above disks were recorded and released in the mid-early 1980s, and they are typically the ones that Roy uses for auditioning (esp. James Newton Howard).

More Observations:

I personally correlated fatiguing music with lower scores in all cases, e.g., Hiromi's Sonicbloom - Time Control: 10, 8, 13, which is mostly jazz trio with her on acoustic piano. I have not yet found any recordings that were fatiguing and had high scores. I have found at least one disk that is difficult to listen to, but has very high scores, but I wouldn't call it fatiguing: Paquito D'Rivera - Portraits of Cuba (Chesky Records) (15,11,20) which won a Grammy award, but which I find to be difficult to listen to due to the instrumentation (modern big band jazz - latin).

Also, I note a correlation to "red" color scores (i.e., below a score of 8-9) as extremely fatiguing to my ears, categorically. There are some types of music that seem to have intermediate scores and don't seem to have as much issues in this area, but I find that these seem to be a bit rare. All-acoustic groups always seem to score high.

I also note that there are some vinyl scores that are higher than their respective CD scores but this seems to be a hit-or-miss proposition.

It's nice to have the database to check out. I will be using this database a lot in the future--you can bet.

Just observations... [H]

Chris

[Marvel]

I checked Brothers in Arms, since it was recorded on 48 track digital and released on vinyl, cd, sacd, etc. All over the map depending on the release and dates of release. I only have the vinyl pressing and it is superb.

Bruce

[Don Richard]

I've got two CD releases of Brothers In Arms, one bought right after the album was released and the other a recent remaster. The earlier CD has more dynamic range. It's interesting to see numbers that confirm listening impressions.