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I often hear things  in songs that make me think something has suddenly become a problem. Tape hiss, high noise floors, hums in the recording etc. Just now it was while listening to ZZ Top - Eliminator at spirited levels. Halfway through track 2 - Got Me Under Pressure - I start to hear a horrendous static noise. I immediately dropped the volume and could still hear it. ****...

 

I'm pretty sure there are still supply chain issues with ESS and now isn't the time to be buying diaphragms anyways. I quickly switch over to a couple of albums with good vocals. Nothing sounds wrong. Then Alan Parsons.. gingerly crank the volume and everything sounds ok. Go back to ZZ Top and skip to where I was on the track... scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatchy static. Ok, so it's the source material, some sort of feedback or something in the recording.

 

Anyone else go through this from time to time?

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I don't check out the setup very often, since the sound of a bad recording is usually pretty distinctive to my ears.  Particularly distressing are the music tracks that have been released with really bad microphone capsule problems.  They sound like a blown loudspeaker diaphragm or cone.  I can probably remember a few tracks like this readily.  Jethro Tull's Aqualung album has a couple of places that are truly awful ("Locomotive Breath" at 3:37--ff in particular) --and the mastering guy tried to cover it up by dropping out the highs across the track. These are really bad problems: the tracks should have been re-recorded. Same thing for a James Taylor Christmas album--the whole album has some really bad microphone problems, to the point where the master guy clipped most of the tracks so bad that you are distracted from hearing the blown microphone diaphragm issues (EDIT: there are also issues with analog master tapes experiencing continued edge dropouts along a certain length of tape that also sound like this.) There are MANY other albums with severe problems.  Apparently there are a lot of screw-ups during recording that the musicians never really admit.  I guess the price of the studio time or the time it takes to queue everything up again is too much for them to reconsider rerecording.

 

I think part of the job of mastering guys is to cover up and "save" music tracks that have severe issues, including recording issues.  Mastering folks are actually credited as being "Mr. Fixit" people.  I think that's why they're still used by most record companies.  (AIX records--Mark Waldrep's label--doesn't use any mastering. They mix the tracks and release the downmix tracks.  That's why they sound so good.) 

 

I hear severe problems with released tracks during demastering, i.e., certain voices are too quiet or way too loud relative to others.  The way that the mastering guys fix those issues is to push the treble on the tracks way beyond a reasonable balance in order to bring up the treble levels on the most muffled voices.  Trust me, this isn't a good policy, and I spend some time reversing these fix-it's to bring the treble levels back to reasonable levels.  It happens a lot on popular music albums (rock, pop, and their sub-genres).

 

Chris

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2 hours ago, Thaddeus Smith said:

I often hear things  in songs that make me think something has suddenly become a problem. Tape hiss, high noise floors, hums in the recording etc. Just now it was while listening to ZZ Top - Eliminator at spirited levels. Halfway through track 2 - Got Me Under Pressure - I start to hear a horrendous static noise. I immediately dropped the volume and could still hear it. ****...

 

I'm pretty sure there are still supply chain issues with ESS and now isn't the time to be buying diaphragms anyways. I quickly switch over to a couple of albums with good vocals. Nothing sounds wrong. Then Alan Parsons.. gingerly crank the volume and everything sounds ok. Go back to ZZ Top and skip to where I was on the track... scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatchy static. Ok, so it's the source material, some sort of feedback or something in the recording.

 

Anyone else go through this from time to time?

 

I just listened to this streaming from Tidal via Windows 10 Chrome web browser using headphones (AKG K270 Studio) plugged into the headphone jack on Klipsch Pro Media 2.1

 

Tidal has two versions, Master and Deluxe Edition 2008 remaster.

 

The Master version is definitely better sound quality than the "remaster". The remaster is more compressed, balance and tonal balance among instruments & voice is much more vague, less clear.

 

Thad, I'm not sure what you are hearing, but, around 2:30 to 2:45 one of the guitars gets a little "crunchy". To me (and I'm speaking from a musicians point of view - since I've played this music live in bands) what I'm pretty sure you are hearing is the guitar amp "crunch". A lot of guys love to overdrive the amp input to get that kind of crunchy sound. It might come across as you described - horrendous static noise, depending on the speakers used, and of course room acoustics, both of which can exaggerate this kind of sound.

 

I'll be going down to the listening room in a little while. I'll take a listen to this on the Danley SH50.

 

What are you using as a source? CD, LP, streaming?

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I hear this all the time mike... In my catalog, I know the problem pieces by heart and do NOT play them in a 'spirited' manner. 

 

The 'technical' reasons this happens is interesting, but ultimately unimportant becuase there isnt much we can do about it... unless you want to manually get in there and manipulating each file at a mastering level. When I hear a new distortion candidate, I always make it a point to replay the section a time or two to confirm the crackles and artifacts sound exactly the same so I can assure myself it's not mechanical in nature.

 

I like ZZTop but I think much of their catalog just sounds terrible... just like ACDC. I don't own any of there music because it sounds terrible on my system.

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My copy of that same record from the year it came out doesn't have that there but it's in need of replacing anyhow.

That was from vinyl @Thaddeus Smith?

Could be groove damage, some styli inherently do that & unless you've investigated it... that might be unknown to many. 

Just made a deal on passing on my ultrasound cleaner that thing could eliminate some of that if it was debris in the grooves.

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2 hours ago, Chris A said:

I don't check out the setup very often, since the sound of a bad recording is usually pretty distinctive to my ears.  Particularly distressing are the music tracks that have been released with really bad microphone capsule problems.  They sound like a blown loudspeaker diaphragm or cone.  I can probably remember a few tracks like this readily.  Jethro Tull's Aqualung album has a couple of places that are truly awful ("Locomotive Breath" at 3:37--ff in particular) --and the mastering guy tried to cover it up by dropping out the highs across the track.

 

Chris

 

Chris, I just listened to Jethro Tull's Locomotive breath streaming from Tidal as described in my previous post.

 

Tidal has two versions, Master and 40th Anniversary Edition. Both of these are not original mix by Peter Mew. Unlike ZZ Top Got Me Under Pressure, I don’t hear much if any difference between the two, at least not with the little parts I just reviewed. I do have multiple copies of this including the original LP & MFSL release and CD and reissued 40th Anniversary CD/LP.

 

At the moment I’m going to assume the “sound” you are talking about actually occurs at about 3:10 to 3:15 and again at 3:48 to 3:53. There is no flute playing at 3:37.

 

At the times I mention there is a rather brash sound – something that someone might interpret, as you say, a bad mic capsule/blown diaphragm. That is not what I hear. To me it sounds like a moment of “noise” deliberately inserted. To me the “noise” sounds like a guitar/amp – cranked to the hilt, highly compressed, mixed in over the flute. It definitely doesn’t sound like a bad/blown mic capsule.

 

I’ve had to learn and play both Locomotive Breath and Got Me Under Pressure in bands I’ve played in as part of the repertoire, so I’ve listened to these recordings in detail over & over many times over the years.

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AND.............let's not forget - both of these recordings are 40 to 50 years old (yikes). And, as we all know, the "Rock Music" industry wasn't particularly interested in quality, sound or otherwise. To make matters worse, most of these guys were stoned out of their mind back then and how well are you going to hear after listening to this stuff at +100dB for 8-12 or more hours a day?

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1 hour ago, artto said:

 

Thad, I'm not sure what you are hearing, but, around 2:30 to 2:45 one of the guitars gets a little "crunchy". To me (and I'm speaking from a musicians point of view - since I've played this music live in bands) what I'm pretty sure you are hearing is the guitar amp "crunch". A lot of guys love to overdrive the amp input to get that kind of crunchy sound. It might come across as you described - horrendous static noise, depending on the speakers used, and of course room acoustics, both of which can exaggerate this kind of sound.

 

 

Yup, that's the time stamp I'm referring to. I haven't fried a driver in recent memory, but that crunchy sound is what I assumed these ESS drivers might sound like if over driven.

 

Source was a 16/44.1 CD rip.

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1 hour ago, JohnJ said:

My copy of that same record from the year it came out doesn't have that there but it's in need of replacing anyhow.

That was from vinyl @Thaddeus Smith?

Could be groove damage, some styli inherently do that & unless you've investigated it... that might be unknown to many. 

Just made a deal on passing on my ultrasound cleaner that thing could eliminate some of that if it was debris in the grooves.

 

My offline library is entirely digital, though I do have some hi-res vinyl 'rips'..

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15 hours ago, artto said:

At the times I mention there is a rather brash sound – something that someone might interpret, as you say, a bad mic capsule/blown diaphragm. That is not what I hear. To me it sounds like a moment of “noise” deliberately inserted. To me the “noise” sounds like a guitar/amp – cranked to the hilt, highly compressed, mixed in over the flute. It definitely doesn’t sound like a bad/blown mic capsule.

It's so bad for the remainder of the track that it's difficult to listen to: that's why I mentioned it as an example. And it's more than a moment--it carries on throughout the remainder of the track intermittently. Perhaps if you take some time to demaster the track, it would more clearly reveal itself to you.  It's not close. I'd have to work very hard to disguise it again after initially demastering the mastering EQ out of the track. The defect sticks out like a sore thumb once that's done.  I wasn't trying to make it stick out..in fact quite the opposite.

 

EDIT: Here's an excerpt of that track (less than 1 minute--which is definitely fair use) to let you hear what I hear:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cKIWYvoqNn947xRXqubf754dHggwzRwe/view?usp=sharing

 

On a related topic: could you have accelerated HF hearing loss from your time playing bass in rock bands?  I found that the temporary hearing loss that automatically kicks in by the ears at SPLs close to that which rock band performers incur takes days to recover from. That's why I gave up going to rock concerts while in college--I wanted to retain my hearing acuity. Normal presbycusis is bad enough as-is...

 

presbyacousie_en.gif

 

Chris

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19 hours ago, Chris A said:

It's so bad for the remainder of the track that it's difficult to listen to: that's why I mentioned it as an example. And it's more than a moment--it carries on throughout the remainder of the track intermittently. Perhaps if you take some time to demaster the track, it would more clearly reveal itself to you.  It's not close. I'd have to work very hard to disguise it again after initially demastering the mastering EQ out of the track. The defect sticks out like a sore thumb once that's done.  I wasn't trying to make it stick out..in fact quite the opposite.

 

EDIT: Here's an excerpt of that track (less than 1 minute--which is definitely fair use) to let you hear what I hear:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cKIWYvoqNn947xRXqubf754dHggwzRwe/view?usp=sharing

 

On a related topic: could you have accelerated HF hearing loss from your time playing bass in rock bands?  I found that the temporary hearing loss that automatically kicks in by the ears at SPLs close to that which rock band performers incur takes days to recover from. That's why I gave up going to rock concerts while in college--I wanted to retain my hearing acuity. Normal presbycusis is bad enough as-is...

 

 

 

Chris

 

I'll answer my potential hearing loss first.

My right ear was damaged in H.S. due to an explosion (silver salute) in an enclosed space. In my right ear I have a very. very narrow band of hearing loss around 7Khz if I remember correctly - I have a FR curve somewhere. It's very narrow and affects the consonants, particularly some female voices (like my wife). It hasn't affected what I hear with music much.

 

As far as playing in bands goes, I never liked going to live rock concerts much. I'd much rather be in the band on stage than in the audience. And as far playing in bands goes, it's the rehearsals that can get out of control. Playing live it's the audience that gets aurally abused. I'm not in the full sound field, and behind the main stage sound system, hearing mostly my amp as a stage monitor, and my back is to that as most of the time - I'm facing the audience. Most places that I've played won't let the bands play that loud anyway because it drives out the customers (a clue that you're playing too loud). It's much louder for the audience than what the musicians hear.

 

What was the source recording you used for the link you shared? I assume this is the de-mastered version that I'm supposed to hear the defect?

I played this using Sound Forge 12 Pro listening with AKG K270 Studio headphones.

 

The flute is slightly more on the left channel. I listened to this in stereo, and individually for both left & right channel independently. I'm afraid I don't hear anything unusual that you describe. In fact I would say even more now that I've listened to your excerpt that you are mistaking something that was intentionally recorded for being something else, that for some reason, you believe shouldn't be there.

 

 

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On 8/30/2020 at 6:07 PM, Schu said:

 

I like ZZTop but I think much of their catalog just sounds terrible... just like ACDC. I don't own any of there music because it sounds terrible on my system.

 

Then get a CD copy of ZZ Top "One foot in the blues"

Then Play "Fool for your stockings" & "Sure got cold after the rain fell" (but not all songs on this cd are mastered well) "Fool for your stockings" on this CD sounds AWESOME on my Chorus 1's cranked up to concert level 😎 (not sure if it's the same on Tidal)

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On the Fleetwood Mac album, the first one with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the sound seemed distorted, and it seemed to me that the recording level was too high.  I noticed this on the LP when I was recording it onto cassette, which is what I did with most LPs in the Seventies.  The low-end turntables and cartridges that I and most of my friends had would add noise to records with each play, so it made more sense to just play the records once, while copying them to cassette, and then playing only the cassette.  Anyway, the distortion could have been clipping.  I noticed the odd sound before I knew what clipping even was.  It did come out 45 years ago, after all.

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On 8/30/2020 at 6:59 PM, artto said:

To make matters worse, most of these guys were stoned out of their mind back then and how well are you going to hear after listening to this stuff at +100dB for 8-12 or more hours a day?

 

Well....I suspect the most accurate way to hear this stuff as intended....  is to LIGHT EM UP!!!

 

(I fear yes, that means you must inhale)

 

:huh:

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9 hours ago, Islander said:

“That’s close enough for rock ‘n roll.”

 

Exactly.  However, if the EQ on rock tracks is off by just a little bit, virtually anyone with good hearing can detect that something isn't right.  But many classical albums can be off quite a bit in terms of SPL response, and the listeners are unaware of it.  In fact, most stereo classical albums have a great deal of mastering EQ applied to attenuate their lows below 450 Hz--especially solo piano recordings.  I find that the denser the instrumentation in terms of the music's frequency content, the more audible are EQ problems in the recordings.

 

Almost all rock albums--including its subgenres and micro-genres are not really that demanding of hi-fi reproduction capabilities, but rather of loudspeakers that can play fairly well at loud SPL (such as Klipsch models can do).  In fact I believe that this is the chief reason why most people in "classic audiophile circles" have such disdain for Klipsch loudspeakers.  Historically, the kind of people that like Klipsch value them for how loud that they can play--and not necessarily as much for their hi-fi capabilities.  This capability is due to at least their horn-loaded high frequency drivers, i.e., hybrid horn-loaded/direct radiator models.  The loudspeakers' compression distortion and modulation distortion levels (...including harmonic distortion...) are low relative to direct radiating drivers playing at higher SPL.

 

Some people, however, eventually go on to value the hi-fi capabilities of Klipsch loudspeakers, even to the point of modifying them to fit third party acoustic components that could have better hi-fi properties, i.e., replacing the midrange horns and drivers, tweeters, and passive/active crossovers.

 

Chris

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Come on, Chris, Please answer my questions.

 

1) What are you using as a source, CD, LP, streaming? for this so-called "demastering" you're doing.

 

2) Is the link you provided your "demastered" version?

 

If this is the "demastered" version, please provide us with a clip of the original that you got this from so we can objectively compare.

 

After all, there are many different versions available, and they are not the same.

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Can you tell me why you're asking these questions, Art? 

 

Since we've already established that your hearing is not anywhere close to what I hear, and your propensity to argue (ref. the MQA fiasco from a couple of years ago) leads me to believe that you wish to continue to argue. 

 

I think it's best to let it go this time.

 

Chris

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Sounds like we're not the only ones hearing stuff on Locomotive Breath. I've always heard the sound but thought it was intentional, but now that I hear it good, it does sound like something that shouldn't be there. ???

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/question-about-jethro-tulls-locomotive-breath.31507/

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=165492

 

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