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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Prog rock and the loudness war
    Posted: January 12 2012 at 16:06
Originally posted by SandCastleVirtue SandCastleVirtue wrote:

Originally posted by Slartibartfast Slartibartfast wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by zumacraig zumacraig wrote:


i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
Looking at the new (2011) remaster of Wish You Were Here, Shine On (Parts I-V) returns a DR (Dynamic Range) value of 11 compared to 13 for the 1992 remastered version. Both figures can be regarded as "very good" and do not indicate over compression
 
Comparing the two waveforms side-by-side visually in Audacity the volume envelopes are near-identical, with no apparent clipping and a good differentiation between soft and loud passages, indicating that the difference between DR of 11 and a DR of 13 is simply down to the mix and not the compression.
 
Personally I think the 2011 version sounds "better", but that's a purely subjective assessment.

I'm thinking there's no need for me to engage in that exercise, but I'm glad you did even if it came to an non-conclusive evaluation.

Any DR value that's 8 and over is great and isn't over-compressed in my opinion. What I find ridiculous is when audiophiles get their panties in a bunch if a remaster loses one or two DR points and immediately call it "unlistenable." 
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Points: 13 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2012 at 14:52
Originally posted by Slartibartfast Slartibartfast wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by zumacraig zumacraig wrote:


i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
Looking at the new (2011) remaster of Wish You Were Here, Shine On (Parts I-V) returns a DR (Dynamic Range) value of 11 compared to 13 for the 1992 remastered version. Both figures can be regarded as "very good" and do not indicate over compression
 
Comparing the two waveforms side-by-side visually in Audacity the volume envelopes are near-identical, with no apparent clipping and a good differentiation between soft and loud passages, indicating that the difference between DR of 11 and a DR of 13 is simply down to the mix and not the compression.
 
Personally I think the 2011 version sounds "better", but that's a purely subjective assessment.

I'm thinking there's no need for me to engage in that exercise, but I'm glad you did even if it came to an non-conclusive evaluation.

Any DR value that's 8 and over is great and isn't over-compressed in my opinion. What I find ridiculous is when audiophiles get their panties in a bunch if a remaster loses one or two DR points and immediately call it "unlistenable." 
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Points: 1301 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2012 at 19:40
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by zumacraig zumacraig wrote:


i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
Looking at the new (2011) remaster of Wish You Were Here, Shine On (Parts I-V) returns a DR (Dynamic Range) value of 11 compared to 13 for the 1992 remastered version. Both figures can be regarded as "very good" and do not indicate over compression
 
Comparing the two waveforms side-by-side visually in Audacity the volume envelopes are near-identical, with no apparent clipping and a good differentiation between soft and loud passages, indicating that the difference between DR of 11 and a DR of 13 is simply down to the mix and not the compression.
 
Personally I think the 2011 version sounds "better", but that's a purely subjective assessment.

awesome response.  thanks so much.  just the info i was looking for.  gonna pick some of these up then.Tongue
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Points: 29630 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2012 at 15:32
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by zumacraig zumacraig wrote:


i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
Looking at the new (2011) remaster of Wish You Were Here, Shine On (Parts I-V) returns a DR (Dynamic Range) value of 11 compared to 13 for the 1992 remastered version. Both figures can be regarded as "very good" and do not indicate over compression
 
Comparing the two waveforms side-by-side visually in Audacity the volume envelopes are near-identical, with no apparent clipping and a good differentiation between soft and loud passages, indicating that the difference between DR of 11 and a DR of 13 is simply down to the mix and not the compression.
 
Personally I think the 2011 version sounds "better", but that's a purely subjective assessment.

I'm thinking there's no need for me to engage in that exercise, but I'm glad you did even if it came to an non-conclusive evaluation.
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2012 at 13:47
Originally posted by zumacraig zumacraig wrote:


i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
Looking at the new (2011) remaster of Wish You Were Here, Shine On (Parts I-V) returns a DR (Dynamic Range) value of 11 compared to 13 for the 1992 remastered version. Both figures can be regarded as "very good" and do not indicate over compression
 
Comparing the two waveforms side-by-side visually in Audacity the volume envelopes are near-identical, with no apparent clipping and a good differentiation between soft and loud passages, indicating that the difference between DR of 11 and a DR of 13 is simply down to the mix and not the compression.
 
Personally I think the 2011 version sounds "better", but that's a purely subjective assessment.
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Points: 1301 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2012 at 10:59
Originally posted by thehallway thehallway wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

I think it's got better over the past ten years or so (and by better I mean less compression and more dynamics) - the trend is changing and in part this is due to more artists doing their own mastering and self-releasing material. I think in time overcompression will go the way of the gated snare drum, and take autotune with it.

I would love for you to be right, but even if you are, it will be a slow process. I mean, how long will this anti-trend take to permeate into the music of [insert name of current pop singer we love to hate here]?? Probably half of all the albums that currently dominate the UK charts are written and produced by businessmen. Do they care about dynamic range? Only if it increases sales. Does it increase sales? Not at all. Even people looking for dynamic range will still by albums based on a whole load of other factors first.

Depressing, sorry!

i would have bought so much more music in the 80s if it wasn't for the dreaded 'gated snare'.  i'm concerned about the loudness war too.  Rush is a big concern.  even S&A was over compressed.  luckily most prog bands are putting stuff out on their own the masters don't into the wrong hands.  

roadrunner compresses their records.  not sure about inside/out.  weren't the new genesis remasters compressed to sh*t? how about the new floyd?
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Points: 10964 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 27 2011 at 22:37
Originally posted by Kashmir75 Kashmir75 wrote:

If the music is too loud, you're TOO OLD 


So if the music is too loud and your brand new surround sound sound system speakers starts buzzing and clipping, are they too old?
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Points: 13 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 27 2011 at 22:31
Originally posted by Kashmir75 Kashmir75 wrote:

If the music is too loud, you're TOO OLD 

Music should be produced to sound good, and it should be up to the end user if they want to turn the volume up or not. I'm in my 20's, and I like to listen to loud music. But over-compressed music just sounds terrible and headache-inducing.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 26 2011 at 16:09
Originally posted by Kashmir75 Kashmir75 wrote:

If the music is too loud, you're TOO OLD 
If you think loudness means LOUD, then Wheels On The Bus is your favourite song.
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Points: 1029 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 26 2011 at 15:53
If the music is too loud, you're TOO OLD 
Hello, mirror. So glad to see you, my friend. It's been a while...
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Points: 23104 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 25 2011 at 07:05
I think the only album I have that has gained anything from being turned up to the max - is The Stooges´ Raw Power. Iggy and the air-raid siren Bruce Dickinson remastered it to sound the way it was supposed to, and it truly feels brutal beyond anything I´ve ever heard before.
Vapor Trails sounds like it was recorded in a vacuum less airport, but hey that´s just me...  
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 25 2011 at 06:56
Originally posted by fuyuakiworld fuyuakiworld wrote:

You need better audio equipment. Not anything to break the bank but atleat to let you hear Vapor Trails the right way.
The best equipment in the world cannot correct distortion that is present in the recording,m if anything better equipment will make it more noticable.
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Points: 27 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 25 2011 at 04:37
You need better audio equipment. Not anything to break the bank but atleat to let you hear Vapor Trails the right way.
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Points: 727 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2011 at 05:25
There was a rumour on the net, a while ago, that Rush were due back in the studio to remix Vapor Trails to correct the damage from digital distortion. I am not sure about the damage as a result of over-compressed audio. 
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Points: 28427 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2011 at 15:18
I hate this trend. Some recent remasters even do it to old albums, effectively castrating them of their upper registers. Check out this review of Monk Alone for a typical example.
More recently, the latest Maiden album seriously suffers from this problem. Except in this case, there's no way to get the original non-cropped version.
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Points: 5154 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2011 at 15:04
Diagonal's only album up to date is very highly rated here and surely it's not bad but in my opinion it's one that suffers from it.
Anyone sharing this opinion?
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Points: 18005 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2011 at 14:52
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:

Although I understand where you are coming from but I think the OP was not thinking of loudness from a live performance perspective........My one question is your last statement. Fly To the Rainbow is one of my favorite Scorpions albums and songs, I am intrigued at your comparison. I don't own that AD2 album......but to me the lyrics Uli Jon Roth wrote for FTtR were about finding, looking for that pot of gold, the journey. Now there certainly was still some of that psychy/artsy/krautrocky feel to their 2nd album as in Lonesome Crow as the lyrics are kinda all over the place. Maybe some of that is just the Scorps still struggling early on to write, sing in english....not sure.
 
Is there some interview or article that compares Fly To the Rainbow and Apocalyptic Bore?
 
Only Guy Guden of Space Pirate Radio fame played these back to back more than once ... and of course I had the albums as this 2nd album by Scorpions is very good and not the stuff they went on to doing later. But the lyrics in the title song and the lyrics in AD2's song ... are quite a contrast ... like brother/sister nagging each other!
 
The loudness thing though has always come from the recording side of it ... and the digital allows for some more "loudness" that you could not do on tape before.
 
It is pretty clear, and visible in any EQ chart, or visual in a DAW that some frequencies go up higher than others ... and the idea is easy ... compress the one at the top and bring all the others up ... and yes, it's gonna be loud ... and has been like that for some time, and it's funny that it is thought of as something that only happened recently in the Wiki article, when it has been an issue for 40 years, even for reviewers and folks like us.
 
There was an article one time, and I wish I had kept it, but it made for good TP when I needed it badly, and I think it was NME and the discussion was about the loudness in some bands, and I think it was either Ozzie or Geezer that said ... oh no ... we like to make sure the other instruments are loud too! (something similar) and in the end, to my ears a lot of music that was getting "popular" was doing just that and one of the reasons why I did not think that Deep Purple was that progressive or original. But they were not the only ones.
 
Does it make an album, or music better? ... I don't think so ... but it does create some interesting images and often adds to the whole "sound" that one did not expect ... and as such it would be a valuable process to study and work with ... but I'm not sure that at 60 too many of us want to go visit the threshold of pain anywhere at 120 decibals because some band knows they can compress the sound of this or that and bring up the others ... which many metal bands are doing, and my neighbor (a recording artist) had the same issue with a metal band he asked me about ... what I thought. I was not about to say that the band did not have it, because they did, and obviously knew what they were doing ... but sadly, what they wanted to do with their material would ... actually hurt the obvious musicianship that was under it ... but it was not my call to decide on that and I would not decide against the band's views and desires for their music.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 26 2011 at 12:28
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:

 
Is there some interview or article that compares Fly To the Rainbow and Apocalyptic Bore?
Both tracks are available on You Tube, you can compare them for yourself.
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Points: 1601 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 26 2011 at 12:21
Loudness does not equal dynamic range.  Dynamic range is what is getting killed here, if it was only the maximum volume you'd simply change the volume.  Some people need to think before they post.  
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Points: 17958 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 26 2011 at 10:24
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Hi,
 
It has always been like that, and one of the greatest falacies in the old days was that there were too many bands that were simply loud, and they did not have the music to support it ... but stoned, or with a drink or two, you get some ear ringing off it, that makes you feel like you are totally stoned when you leave and that has always been a point/stipulation for a lot of rock bands whose music was questionable in the first place.
 
The loudest i have ever been to? ...
 
The Rolling Stones and I walked out! And htey were out of tune.
 
Others that were loud:
 
-- Hawkwind (Space 1999 tour), and we left before the conclusion ... the Hall was too small for that loudness.
-- Deep Purple/Leon Russell ... Long Beach Arena ... it was by far the worst concert I have ever seen and DP were ridiculous and lousy and not worth it. I still don't think they should ever be considered "progressive" ... they were also one of the bands that were about "loud" with lots of vaccuousness with it.
-- Black Sabbath ... Hollywood Paladium with Nazareth. So loud that Ozzie couldn't be heard ... and you know that is a real oxymoron!
 
In some ways, Robert Fripp predicted this and said something about it, and it is what "21st Century Schizoid Man" is all about and the guitar and saxophone parts out front are the outburts that bordered on senseless and simply noisy and attention getting ... with nothing behind it ... however, in the end, Robert did not foresee that what he and the album stood for, was a perfect picture of the time and place, and how some people were so confused that no one got or understood his album ... but the music was cool and everyone liked ... which is exactly on par with the loudness mentality in most popular bands.
 
Bands like Amon Duul 2 tried to make fun of the loudness and blow it out of town ... unffortunately they were never really able to blow out an audience, except on one album in London, which is more of a statement about the difficulty in their music, than it is about anything else. They never did "Mozambique" in concert, or "La Krautoma" so they would get a chance to blow out an audience out loud. And sadly, Scorpions made fun of AD2, with the song "Fly To The Rainbow" which was the complete reversal of "Apocaliptyc Bore".
 
 
 
moshkito,
Although I understand where you are coming from but I think the OP was not thinking of loudness from a live performance perspective........My one question is your last statement. Fly To the Rainbow is one of my favorite Scorpions albums and songs, I am intrigued at your comparison. I don't own that AD2 album......but to me the lyrics Uli Jon Roth wrote for FTtR were about finding, looking for that pot of gold, the journey. Now there certainly was still some of that psychy/artsy/krautrocky feel to their 2nd album as in Lonesome Crow as the lyrics are kinda all over the place. Maybe some of that is just the Scorps still struggling early on to write, sing in english....not sure.
 
Is there some interview or article that compares Fly To the Rainbow and Apocalyptic Bore?


Edited by Catcher10 - October 26 2011 at 10:26
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