Why modern recordings sound crap

[mosfet]

A look at the increasing use of compression and hence the steadily decreasing dynamic range of Rush recordings from Grace Under Pressure (1984) to Vapor Trails (2002).

Vapor Trails also having clipping (recorded distortion).

FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

[T.white]

My God, RUSH, :shock:there's a band I have'nt heard for bloody ages. What sort of stuff are they churning out nowadays?

I thought Grace under Pressure was a crock, mind, didn't give it much of a fair crack of the whip I guess.

Memories of the signals tour coming back to me great times those, (Christ I'm an old bastard)Neil Peart - now there's a drummer. If I hadn't seen him myself I'd have said that guy had ten arms

 

[Guest]

Ahem!!!!

Snapper thought they were shit after signals(actually ahead of their time) now he can't stop listening to later Rush stuff, ultimate band, fookin amazing

 

[T.white]

I've heard bugger all of em since Signals - Grace under Pressure (that came straight after Signals didn it?)

What a band and a sound for a three piece. They were completely incredible live, saw them quite a few times from about age 15 - 19.

good times.

 

[mosfet]

As you’re the resident Rush aficionado of the tent AK, have you noticed a general downward trend of recording quality in the Rush recordings mentioned?

Notably the dynamic range of the recordings - or in other words everything sounding as loud as everything else with little difference between the quiet bits, the loud bits and all the rest in-between?

This is what the author of the article (who describes himself as a “big rush fanâ€) has to say:

So you can guess that it was with much anticipation that I awaited my first real listen to the band’s newest CD, “Vapor Trailsâ€. Reviews heralded this album as one of the hardest-rocking Rush albums in some time, with a strong focus on guitars, powerful drumming, excellent bass work, and some of the best songwriting to come from the band in years. And, in listening to the CD, I found all of these things to be true. This is easily my favorite collection of Rush songs in years, maybe decades. It’s incredible work and I earnestly hope it reflects a new and sustainable direction for this great band.

However there was one fact that the reviewers had all left out: this CD sounds like dogshit.

…

What you are looking at is a serious square wave ... If there was one or two places on the CD that had been tortured like this [clipping] , it would be one thing. But that's not the case. Every peak on the whole album is wrecked. In fact I didn't have to try to find an ugly picture to illustrate the damage: the question was "which one do I choose?"

 

[Guest]

yes the new ones are louder, but not as bad as author makes out, some of the extra congestion in waves is down to heavier sound from vapor trails, more like older rush, but all still eminately listenable, mind some of the earlier albums also lack a bit fo volume at top, not making most of dynamic range, at the end of the day I'm either air drumming or siging alone, so I don't notice. I also find that cds that sounded compressed and dull on my earlier systems (eg McAlmont and Butlers debut album) all sound better now, think kit helps wether it's noticable or not.

Worst ever overcompressed cd I own is Go Teams, thuinder lightning strike or whatever it;s called, unlistenable even in car, trooly fookin awful, shame as music has merit

 

[T.white]

analoguekid wrote:

yes the new ones are louder, but not as bad as author makes out, some of the extra congestion in waves is down to heavier sound from vapor trails, more like older rush, but all still eminately listenable, mind some of the earlier albums also lack a bit fo volume at top, not making most of dynamic range, at the end of the day I'm either air drumming or siging alone, so I don't notice. I also find that cds that sounded compressed and dull on my earlier systems (eg McAlmont and Butlers debut album) all sound better now, think kit helps wether it's noticable or not.Worst ever overcompressed cd I own is Go Teams, thuinder lightning strike or whatever it;s called, unlistenable even in car, trooly fookin awful, shame as music has merit

I can feel a Rush rediscovery coming on here, more inspection needed I think

Will I be wasting my money chaps? opinions?

 

[T.white]

"Analoguekid" = Rush fan =Analoguekid, ah now I see it all becomes clear

. Took me a while though eh?

What a thick twat I am

 

[mosfet]

yes the new ones are louder, but not as bad as author makes out, some of the extra congestion in waves is down to heavier sound from vapor trails

Maybe not one to use as a demo disc if you’ve got the latest pair of ART loudspeakers on home loan tho’ AK!

The guy who’s looked at these recordings appears to know his subject well so I’ve no reason to doubt his findings. If the recording of Vapor Trails is as clipped as he says it is it's not going to be too tweeter friendly (just as thrashing the danglies of an amp so the amplifier output clips can also damage tweeters).

The earlier recordings Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Roll the Bones and Counterparts having no or hardly any recorded clipping.

 

[Guest]

I know what the wave files show and I'm familaier with them mossy, but what I'm saying is it isn't that audible, in fact some of the earlier ones i'd say never made the most of the dynamic range, Rush were very fussy about recording, and allways tried to keep an album side below 21 mins, some of the earlier recordings are a bit lacking in dynamic range, as for damging the tweeter, given theres no distortion i doubt theres any damage, (but then I don't have pro monitors.)

Also given the fact that I listen to music and not hifi, I never usually pay heed to the analysis, if it sounds good, it is!!!

Just for the record, made a demo disc, snapper insisted we all do, it's got good tunes, not one of them was picked for recording quality, all were picked because I liked them, and recording quality goes from fair to middlin to excellent, a good system will get to the music, and goods music will allways out.

 

[T.white]

analoguekid wrote:

I know what the wave files show and I'm familaier with them mossy, but what I'm saying is it isn't that audible, in fact some of the earlier ones i'd say never made the most of the dynamic range, Rush were very fussy about recording, and allways tried to keep an album side below 21 mins, some of the earlier recordings are a bit lacking in dynamic range, as for damging the tweeter, given theres no distortion i doubt theres any damage, (but then I don't have pro monitors.)Also given the fact that I listen to music and not hifi, I never usually pay heed to the analysis, if it sounds good, it is!!!

Just for the record, made a demo disc, snapper insisted we all do, it's got good tunes, not one of them was picked for recording quality, all were picked because I liked them, and recording quality goes from fair to middlin to excellent, a good system will get to the music, and goods music will allways out.

What's that about a demo disc?

 

[mosfet]

I’m not looking for an argument AK and I didn’t mean to be patronising. Most of the time it’s difficult to know what level of technical understanding someone else has when you’re trying to communicate something so usually I don’t get overly technical by referring to (as would be the case here) peak amplitudes exceeding full scale 0dB FS and so on when posting about something.

What was said was meant in good spirit and for the sake of discussion, for sharing something that may be of interest to you or others. If however you think a clipped recording is not a distorted recording (and a clipped recording does not have the potential to damage a tweeter) then I won’t try to say otherwise.

And yes, you are right, it is about the music.

 

[Guest]

Just spent two and half hours with Ant at my house. The reason is Ant wants to invest in cd replay but nothing he's heard floats his boat so rather than it being a format war i just wanted him to hear the merit in the cd format. Ant brought along some of what he considered Bastard cd's that would shred wallpaper. The upshot is the better your system the more the failings of the master tape will be exposed. Point being that a 1956 recording of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong pissed over recordings made fifty years later. This point has been made by many learned peeps on this forum and others but it needs to be said again cos it rings so true. Many a great piece of music was lost between the studio floor and the engineering booth

 

[Jezzer]

Someone mentioned Paul Weller earlier.

I think 'Wild Wood' is a great album but the production is very warm. Bass seems a bit bloomy and treble is rolled-off. A bit puffy. Only ever sounded good with theMA GR60's (which made all the good recordings sound too bright).

Jamiroquai's albums are also very wooly-sounding. All those decent session musicians wasted!

Yup, in terms of sound quality, most modern recordings arepants and lack dynamic range. As someone said earlier, 'relentless'. Having said that, someof the electronic stuff I have is crisp as you like: Kraftwerk, Yello,Crazy Penis, Aphex Twin, LTJ Bukem and so on.

I have a couple of cd's on Mosfet's list: Ilike Donald Fagen's 'Nightfly' but the recording's a bit 'light' isn't it? The bass seems to lack depth...

 

[Jezzer]

Duvet wrote:

Point being that a 1956 recording of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong pissed over recordings made fifty years later. This point has been made by many learned peeps on this forum and others but it needs to be said again cos it rings so true. Many a great piece of music was lost between the studio floor and the engineering booth

Ihave a couple of Ella and Louis cd's (on the verve label). Wonderful....

It's amazing how some of these early recordings are so damn clear. When you listen to Brubeck or Miles Davis, it's amazing how 'in the room' the music seems to be.

 

[mosfet]

Duvet wrote:

The upshot is the better your system the more the failings of the master tape will be exposed. Point being that a 1956 recording of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong pissed over recordings made fifty years later. .. Many a great piece of music was lost between the studio floor and the engineering booth

Yes, I’d go with this Duvet. The more accurate a pair of loudspeakers are for instance (read those with a flat frequency response rather than loudspeakers designed to sound appealing to the consumer in some way) will reveal more of the recording.

Conversely no system irrespective of specification, performance, price or design can put back something that’s not there on the recording. If a recording lacks dynamic range because of the way it has been recorded it will sound unrealistic whatever you play it on.

If you go and see real people playing real instruments in a real venue then you’ll hear plenty of dynamic range because that’s how real music is played, heard and experienced. Now listen to an overly compressed CD recording that has bugger all recorded dynamic range and your ears will immediately spot the difference. The shame with CD as a format is it doesn’t have to be this way.

(but not quite all doom and gloom there’s still some good one’s out there.. etc etc

)

 

[Guest]

mosfet wrote:

I’m not looking for an argument AK and I didn’t mean to be patronising. Most of the time it’s difficult to know what level of technical understanding someone else has when you’re trying to communicate something so usually I don’t get overly technical by referring to (as would be the case here) peak amplitudes exceeding full scale 0dB FS and so on when posting about something. What was said was meant in good spirit and for the sake of discussion, for sharing something that may be of interest to you or others. If however you think a clipped recording is not a distorted recording (and a clipped recording does not have the potential to damage a tweeter) then I won’t try to say otherwise.

And yes, you are right, it is about the music.

sorry if it came accross that way, i wasn't arguing. I do understand the waves I have used sound forge in the past, i also understand that if you were to look closer at the wave clips he has shown they will show a bigger dynamic range, look at one of those congested waves at 1600% see how the peaks are near instantanious, perhaps, what sound is it thats clipped etc, what tracks did he rip, lots of rocking heavy guitar on vapour trails, wheras P/G sounds bass light and brighter, waves don't tell all is all I'm saying, but I do understand and I do get your point.

 

[mosfet]

Who’da thought it - AK the sceptic!

It’s good to be questioning or sceptical of someone else’s evidence if you think it’s wrong. As you say AK it could be wrong because of some oversight. I don’t think it is. The guy who’s written the article - Rip Rowan – is the editor of an online pro-recording site so he should know how to use an audio editor without making what would be very basic mistakes.

Also this site that describes a process to "remove the digital distortion/clipping or "crackle" adversely affected the louder sections of VT" using the Clip Restoration function of Cool Edit Pro. (Cool Edit Pro was bought up by Adobe and is now Adobe Audition).

Includes examples of MP3 tracks that can be downloaded for comparison.

Feedback includes:

“RE: Vapor Trails Remastering Info

I applied your mods to the entire album last night, and I cannot thank you 2 enough. It literally is like hearing the album for the first time. Absolutely AMAZING. I have a P4 1.7Ghz with 256 RAM, and the entire process from burn to burn was about 2 hours. The longest process was finding and downloading the 3 pieces of software I needed.â€

There’s also some talk of a re-mastered version of Vapor Trails. Don’t know if this has come to fruition or not.

The big news, however, lies with the remastering of a two year old album - the magnificent Vapor Trails. Like with Presto the album contains some of the best music Rush has created, but it is presented in one of the worst mixes I've heard on a modern, high-budget release. Muddy, distorted, overloud, there's no end to the problems presented by the sound of Vapor Trails. This flat, lifeless soundstage makes the listening experience painful and tiring, which is a shame since the quality of the songs ranks up there with their best work. The band had no shortage of issues when putting the album together, as reported here. Bassist Geddy Lee mixed the album and wound up hating the resulting product because he couldn't get a good sound out of it, but guitarist Alex Lifeson, pumped up by the music he heard on it, convinced him to leave it along and release it so they could get out on the road again. But fans and critics alike agreed with Lee - the sound was seriously flawed, and there was talk of a petition to have it remixed/remastered. Well, here you go, fans - Vapor Trails is remastered.

link

 

[Guest]

Hi Mossy

a sceptic, never, never , never.

I ain't saying he doesn't have a point re the waves, but in practice it doesn;t sound as bad as they make out, in my humble system there seems to be plenty dynamic range, and no muddle, perhaps I'm just used to the recording, it is grungier than other rush stuff, but some of that seems down to the arrangement, could it be better, perhaps, may try the decompression thing and report back, perhaps I'm just blind to rush and like A lifeson get pump[ed with the music, I dunno.

All I'll say is no matter what the wave files show, it doesn't sound as bad as the description they offer in real mlige to these ears.

 

[Guest]

ok mossy, tried this now, will do whole album and see what the guys think.

ripped wav as a 44khz 16bit track, opened in Adobe audition 1.5

coverted to 32bit

applied clip restoration, when I used +2.6db track seemed to get more congested, so tried again with -2.6db, each track takes around 30m secs to process, am I doiung it correctly?

FWIW although the album looks very congested when you look at wave, upon expanding track the clips are less than 1% of total file, recorded doesn't sound muffled on myu system, and the clipping is inaudible as distortion, as I said I'll process the album as the opther chap, and will give the guys a listen on sunday.

If it sounds better so be it, but my point was it doesn't sound as bad as made out to these ears, perhaps some bedromm internet excitement creeping in from some of his followers?