Vinyl

But it's not physical!

Simply by pasting samples of preserved wave on the top of clipped ones you will get the result. Of course, it would be necessary to do all the possible permutations to get an acceptable result. If an average song contains 500000 amplitudes, the combination are a factorial of 500000, a fast processor should do it in less than several trillion year...okay, nevermind. Back to my cup of coffee.


I came up with a good idea, and it turned out the universe is too small for it. Damn.

Oh come on.  Give me a yes!

You can't revert a cake back to the ingredients (chocolate , fruits, sugar etc) but if we're dealing with virtual reality, we should be able to re-synthesize it!!



By looking at the clipped one, it's obvious* it should be smooth in original shape - and it should be no big deal for a piece software to do an actual calculation - it's just math. Of course, the original might had had dozens of tiny spikes on the top of the hill, but even if it's true, the calculated estimation is better than a clipping loss. And perhaps even that problem can be solved - by analyzing a  track and finding a similar curve (slope) that is preserved because it's below the clipping level and applying it to a clipped wave.


Hmmm...an idea worth of developing or utter nonsense


*okay, somewhat obvious. Since a clipping threshold is a constant horizontal value, it should be a good guess.

To de-brick wall audio is to defy physics, simply put

halabalushindigus wrote:  acdc7369- you know what you are talking about. Excellent information

Umm, no offense but he doesn't really.
He's rehashing that same "OMG MASTERING BAD" argument that people do after they read a few articles on the internet about how limiting is killing everything and everyone.
It's not true and it's a situation that's been blown out of proportion by everyone and their dog that feels the need to hop on the bandwagon of bashing modern day mastering to be "cool and trendy" and to feel better about themselves.
Proper, well done mastering with heavy limiting and compression actually helps to bring forward lots of little nuances and details in the sound that would otherwise be lost on the listener, so to say remastering is an atrocity is just absurd quite frankly,

It also remains a fact that many modern records, remastered, or just simply stuff that was produced recently and released recently as new music, still retain a lot of dynamic range.
It's a myth that today's music in general lacks dynamic, because it's not all like that.
And some music (some death metal for example) is inherently undynamic anyway in its volume levels, and being mastered loud serves to fit the aesthetic.
Some records, like Converge's "Jane Doe" for instance, in fact benefit from being severely smashed and clipping because it only heightens the artistic intent of the artist.
The whole loudness wars thing has just been blown out of proportion by people with little understanding of audio and people that just believe what they are told.
Listen with your ears rather than looking at waveforms.
I can name PLENTY of modern records with heaps of dynamics (the last two Katatonia albums, all Paramore's albums on the songs that were written specifically with a lot of volume dynamics).
There are also some records that went too far ("Planetary Duality" by The Faceless which pumps severely, or Hypocrisy's "Virus" album which is so severely smashed I can't get through more than about 2 songs without turning it out).
That being said, I find limiting, compression and clipping all hugely useful tools for when I'm mixing, because it can help open up headroom, cut down piercing transients, keep low frequencies under control and make a mix easier to work with in general.

Another myth is that it's always the record companies want the loudness. Wrong.
It's usually the clients that ask for it to be smashed.
Sometimes mastering engineers receive mixes that are smashed before mastering even occurs (Death Magnetic is a prime example, with well known mastering engineer Ted Jensen himself being embarrassed to have been involved with the album)

Anyway, most of the sound we hear lies in the actual tracking process, editing and mixing anyway.
The best job a mastering engineer can do is to keep things as transparent as possible (this assumes they have received a well tracked and mixed recording)

Also, eh, I don't find Steven Wilson's productions to be THAT amazing anyway.
They sound good, undeniably, but no one in their right mind could really say they line up to a mix from Chris Lord-Alge, Randy Staub, Daniel Bergstrand, Jens Bogren , Andy Wallace or James Paul Wisner.
There's only so much you can do with cheap Apogee converters and AFAIK little to no outboard gear and the fact unlike the aforementioned, he is also a musician and composer who doesn't quite have the time to learn as much about mixing as dedicated mix engineers.



Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - January 28 2010 at 08:52

This is the "loudness war" - and Mike is correct, it doesn't apply to all modern masters or remasters.

acdc7369 wrote: The problem is not with the digital format itself, it's that so many CDs that you purchase in the store are not mastered the same way the vinyl LP of the same album is mastered.  Every mastering engineer will make the final mix sound good on his system. The remastering process is the biggest atrocity to ever happen to music.  It is the record companies' attempts to give older recordings a more "modern" sound.  The "modern" sound is over-compression (which results in loss in dynamics) in an attempt to make the sound more LOUD.  It's an illusion, however: they really just make the originally loud dynamics as quiet as the rest of the music, and then turn the whole thing up.  In fact, they turn it up SO much that they go past the theoretical digital maximum, thus inducing clipping on the CD source itself! This creates a very static-y sound, depending on how much they actually clipped.  Clipped signals are also capable of damaging stereo equipment.  Remastered CDs are just one large bar of noise and static that gets extremely fatiguing to the ear.  It's happening on most modern recordings too, for at LEAST the past 20 years.  In these cases, there is no question that the vinyl format is definitely superior: it doesn't carry a clipped signal!  It astonishes me that clipping signals is actually considered acceptable by the record companies! In my opinion, most early CDs sound much better than their remastered counterparts.  But I still don't think (most of them) hold a candle to the vinyl format. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. I've heard people say that the reason people listen to vinyl is for nostalgia, and having clicks, pops, noise, etc. being a necessary part of the "vinyl experience".  That's complete nonsense.  Nothing drives me crazier than when I listen to a vinyl that has a bunch of noise and clicks and pops.  I listen to it because I think it's the general case that it's mastered much better than any official CD counterpart in existence, and therefore higher quality. Anyway, IMO vinyl rips are the way to go.  It eliminates all the disadvantages to the digital format that have been abused by modern mastering engineers, as well as eliminating all the disadvantages of the analog format (wearing down).  But it literally is case-by-case: some CDs sound better than the vinyl.  If the CD is mastered well (most of them aren't), then it should sound better than the vinyl.

acdc7369- you know what you are talking about. Excellent information

To prove that vinyl still rules I will play my old Led Zeppelin record Led Zeppelin III on my old Dual turntable. Then I will give it a new review. 

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Well, you are using MP3 for some purposes and enjoying listening to it ... most of the other audiophiles that I've met here despise compressed audio and CD is as far as they are willing to go.

Certif1ed wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: You've spoken fondly of MP3s (mostly) and turntables with USB connectors ... and I think you're knowledgeable when it comes to audio technology. Do you honestly believe that a pressing of Led Zeppelin II that you really like is so good because it's on vinyl - or because they simply nailed the mixing and (in this case) mastering? Just saying.   I'm not fond of mp3, except for the portability aspect - I've never heard a good one!   My turntable is a Project - a company that know a thing about record decks, even budget ones - I haven't heard the other USB turntables - who knows, maybe mystic fred is right about them, but he's dead wrong about the Project.   It sounds very good into a regular HiFi.   The other way it sounds pretty good is when you make a 24-bit WAV recording of a vinyl - I've done a test on an audiophile friend of mine at work - maybe you remember? In a "blind" test, he preferred the 24-bit WAV of the vinyl over the 16 bit version, which in turn he preferred to the CD.   I do not honestly know why vinyl sounds better to my ears and to those of other vinylholics (although there are some good arguments out there) - I can see that most scientific data says it should be otherwise and I understand the data. What I also understand is what my ears tell me, which is the opposite!     mystic fred wrote: ...steer well clear of those USB turntables, they are rubbish - a good quality vinyl system of used gear  could be easily put together  for around 400 GBP, and the results will astound you.  check out this site...     Actually, my turntable does not sound "rubbish" to me, and I consider my system to be of a good quality overall. The results often astound me.   Have you heard every USB turntable and done a side-by-side comparison with a non-USB version?   Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ But actually a lot of processing is done when mastering for vinyl ... dampening low frequencies and boosting them during playback, for example. I think that merely digitizing the mix is a lot less intrusive - and ultimately more audiophile in the true sense of the word.   halabalushindigus wrote: right but you still don't get the original audio boost from the pressing because the digital remaster is secondary, no?   Mastering for an analogue lathe in order to cut a vinyl disc is a completely different process to a fully digital system.   You have to be really careful with bass frequencies especially, or you can render the walls of the vinyl so thin that the needle goes through.   This is second-hand, vaguely remembered information - there's info on some of the better audiophile sites, like Steve Hoffman's, but I don't have time to trawl it right now!   A digital remaster is just that - a remaster of a source. If you're lucky, the source is the original master tape. If not, it could be a 2nd generation, in which case it'll definitely sound lacking, no matter how good the digital process, or worse, mastered from a vinyl copy.   No matter how accurate the digital process is, you can't put back stuff that isn't there, and to my ears, most digital remasters have too much gain to compensate for the additional compression. The sound is brittle and lacking in dynamic and tone...   But I'll freely admit that could just be me having a completely irrational bias for vinyl.

no irrational bias for vinyl, it just sounds better

right but you still don't get the original audio boost from the pressing because the digital remaster is secondary, no?

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Certif1ed wrote: WHATEVER.                     You've spoken fondly of MP3s (mostly) and turntables with USB connectors ... and I think you're knowledgeable when it comes to audio technology. Do you honestly believe that a pressing of Led Zeppelin II that you really like is so good because it's on vinyl - or because they simply nailed the mixing and (in this case) mastering? Just saying.