Compression and "The Dumbing Down of Audio"

[1kyle]

I recommend this little article to anybody interested in serious audio.

It's not technical and simple explains what a lot of people feels is hapenning in the Music Biz today.

http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials...ngDownAudio.php

Enjoy.

Cheers

-K

[dex Otaku]

Thanks for the link. Good article.

[danielbb90]

thats a good article thanks!

[pata2001]

"Hyper compression in CDs"

Agreed.

"iPOD & MP3 Players"

"MP3 compression will cause loss of soundstage and stereo separation and diminished dynamics"

Complete rubbish. The writer of the article is the "dumb" one. Try to ABX the latest Lame --preset fast standard + MP3gain with AudioCD, and then write the article. Yeah, 128kbps sounds like crap, but does that mean MP3 is bad? Lame's joint stereo has been proven to be lossless at hydrogenaudio. Don't blame MP3 if you only use Xing encoder.

The writer should have just stopped at the first point, which is the most important problem, since AudioCDs are often the source.

Edited March 18, 2006 by pata2001

[dex Otaku]

"MP3 compression will cause loss of soundstage and stereo separation and diminished dynamics"

Complete rubbish. The writer of the article is the "dumb" one.

My own assertion [this is opinion] would be that all forms of data reduction/lossy compression have effects on soundstage, stereo separation, and dynamics. Whether the majority of people can tell the difference is another story, of course.

Also, hydrogenaudio don't prove it to be lossless. Their results support the view that well-encoded MP3 is transparent compared to the original, which is not the same thing.

And yes, Xing is crap.

[1kyle]

I just posted the link as I thought the article was interesting. I never said whether I actually Agreed or Disagreed with it.

The article seems to make the point that ANY compression scheme has flaws (obvious enough) but whether to the casual listener it's discernable is another matter.

The article also makes the point that if the original SOURCE is hideous then nothing will rescue it and if people are used to listening to poorly encoded music in the first place then some CD makers have nothing to lose by maing CD's in the "Quality" that these listeners are used to.

It certainly makes a valid point about the near impossibility of being able to listen to Live "Unamplified" music.

It seems rather strange to me to have to go to a concert wearing Ear plugs. I really can't go to any more of these type gigs. At almost any concert you care to name the music is just TOO loud for me now.

Even the Cinema which used to be a pleasant night out is getting too much of a painful Audio experience these days where I have real trouble with the spoken dialog but cringe and have to stick my fingers in my ears when the background music / gunfire / effects nearly blast you out of your seat into the street.

Cheers

-K

[dex Otaku]

It seems rather strange to me to have to go to a concert wearing Ear plugs. I really can't go to any more of these type gigs. At almost any concert you care to name the music is just TOO loud for me now.

Totally agreed. I've been to enough concerts where the volume was high enough to make one feel as though their ears are about to start spouting blood.

As someone who used to run the sound board for small live shows, though .. Age breeds confidence with certain things.

I have something called hyperacusis. The end result of that is that my pain threshold of hearing is lower than average; I literally -have- to wear earplugs to most shows or the pain is unbearable.

The upside of this is that, knowing exactly where my threshold is, I can determine what is a relatively safe average volume for a room much better than most of the other techs I've met. The general rule with most of the FOH [front of house] engineers I've met [and the way I was taught to engineer] is basically to turn the amps on unattenuated, then run the master output of the FOH board right at 0VU, i.e. running the amps at pretty near full power at all times.

Several years ago I was doing sound for a small show when I suddenly realised that hey - I have the power! When those odd people who always do came and asked me to turn it up, I simply said no. When the owner of the equipment came by late in the evening, he stood at my side and complimented me on the mix I was doing. About 5 minutes later he looked down at the board and seemed aghast with the fact that while my entire mix was being done "normally" on the board, the master output to the amps was sitting at below -10dB - yet the mix sounded great.. comfortably loud, but completely clean. The amps never once showed their warning lights that night [this was with a pretty small PA].. but people kept complimenting me on the mix and things like how great the bass sounded. This despite the fact that I was using less than half the amps' rated output power at any given time.

Since then I've actually avoided doing FOH for shows because most of the bands that come through town are punk, metal, &c. - where in small venues, the players set their guitar amps onstage louder than the small PAs typically found around here can even amplify vocals. I'm too old now to want to stand around arguing with 20 year-olds about how their guitar amps don't need to be cranked up so loud that people can't even hear the drums from 8 feet away.

Anyway. Yeah. There's no reason why pain should be part of the equation with listening.