The Death of High Fidelity.

[Spectral Morn]

Hi Guys


Spotted a link to this elsewhere...interesting article so I post a link to it here, so you can all have a read.


http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/1




Regards D S D L

[anthonyTD]

Hi Guys


Spotted a link to this elsewhere...interesting article so I post a link to it here, so you can all have a read.


http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/1




Regards D S D L
hi neil,
i have known about this for some time, i have a friend who used to be a recording engineer and has worked with some of the greats, [David bowie etc] and this technique was the final straw that broke the camels back for him at least, he is now a reviewer for a guitarist magazine!
this is not a new technique either, jukebox's have used compresion and limiting to gain the same effect for decades.:)
A...

[Spectral Morn]

hi neil,
i have known about this for some time, i have a friend who used to be a recording engineer and has worked with some of the greats, [David bowie etc] and this technique was the final straw that broke the camels back for him at least, he is now a reviewer for a guitarist magazine!
this is not a new technique either, jukebox's have used compresion and limiting to gain the same effect for decades.:)
A...

Hi Anthony


Yes I too knew about it, and it has been discussed here (on AOS) before. My reason for posting the link was to show the encouraging fact that a mainstream music magazine is writing about and taking "The Loudness Wars" subject seriously. Hopefully this may start a back lash against this practice....we live in hope anyway.


Regards D S D L

[anthonyTD]

hi neil,
i understand, well,,,i am look forward to some healthy debate on the subject!:)
regards,anthony,TD...

[Alex Nikitin]

Personally I just do not listen to the modern music, and in general do not listen to CDs at all for last year and half. On the other hand I now listen to the music much more then before - from old analogue records. Today there is almost no understanding of sound quality in the music industry, IMHO. The quality is bad and everybody just got used to it.

Alex

[anthonyTD]

hi all,
with older recordings you do seem to get a proper definition between the low passages in the musical content and the high [loud] parts, these days it seems the recording engineer is constantly bullied by the powers that be,,, to record at as higher level as is physicaly posible to win the level war, and quality it would seem is second on the priority list to most.:(
i too have been listening more to older recordings lately, and they definately give me a better listening experience than most modern recordings!
that said, there have been some terrible recordings from all decades,,,full stop!
A...

[Spectral Morn]

I think while its probably fair to say that modern music suffers from bad sound its also the case that older recordings also did... however I suspect there are more bad modern ones. I am guessing of course. Has anyone ever done a survey on this ?


Regards D S D L

[Alex Nikitin]

I think while its probably fair to say that modern music suffers from bad sound its also the case that older recordings also did... however I suspect there are more bad modern ones. I am guessing of course. Has anyone ever done a survey on this ?


Regards D S D L

I am sure that there always were bad recordings. However, nowadays that is all you get. Many older recordings were very good to excellent, even from 1950-s or earlier. There are none now - that is the problem.

Alex

[Hypnotoad]

That's the reason so many on here love vinyl, it came from an age when engineers cared about how it sounded. Of course there are many "duds" but compared to Cd's vinyl is king.

[Beechwoods]

The seventies was the decade of hi-fi, when a lot of ordinary folk aspired to have a decent hi-fi, when build-quality was king, gatefolds, double-albums and incredible care in recording and production was paramount. It was also the decade of prog and excess, but prog, a love of good gear and good production, tended to go hand in hand.

These days ordinary folk seem to aspire to miniaturisation, MP3 and music on mobile phones. It does seem a bit backward. I'm just grateful that all that kit and all that music from the 60's and 70's is still around today, and there are some great labels like Sundazed, Simply Vinyl and Sunbeam that are releasing really nice reissues that do the sound justice. Sundazed in particular seem to be masters at licensing great, often unreleased, stuff for 180g audiophile vinyl release...

[DSJR]

It may interest you to know that your average vinyl LP from the last forty years or so has tons of compression on it when compared to the master recording. The act of cutting those grooves often dictated compromises - bass monoing and limiting to stop granny's old BSR groove-grinder from jumping, for example. The upper mid was often boosted in level (one that I'm playing currently is an original cut of The Fixx - Phantoms - the mid and top are so compressed and loud it hurts, even on the BC2's and the record is very difficult to track cleanly (the M3D doesn't want to know at ANY weight...)).

One very old CD I really like is the original mastering of Trilogy, by ELP. The Island cut vinyl is great, but the CD opens this out to an incredible degree IMO. I think the Cat Stevens Island recordings sound pretty good on CD as well, without the surface noise in between the quieter bits...


Back to the topic. While the likes of us are around, quality sound won't die out, especially as increased download speeds and larger ss storage will negate the need for severe compression MP3 style. I also believe that one day, there will be a backlash to the intense screaming sounds on many mid-noughties recordings (I'm hoping the original sound files are ok). As it is, people are complaining about "deafening" commercial breaks every eight minutes or so on the ITV channels..


P.S. I liked the rawness of many punk LP's from the late seventies. They went in, laid the tracks down nice and crisp and bright and cut what came out......

[Alan Sircom]

Back to the topic. While the likes of us are around, quality sound won't die out, especially as increased download speeds and larger ss storage will negate the need for severe compression MP3 style. I also believe that one day, there will be a backlash to the intense screaming sounds on many mid-noughties recordings (I'm hoping the original sound files are ok). As it is, people are complaining about "deafening" commercial breaks every eight minutes or so on the ITV channels..

Unfortunately, there's more than one kind of compression. The compression this article is discussing has nothing to do with compressing the signal to make a smaller file. There's a powerful move to push the recording to the limits of the format and squish the music. Californication by RHCP is a perfect example of this, it's all at one (loud) volume level. The idea is exactly the same as the ITV commercial breaks - one advert gets noticed because it's louder than the rest, people complain and because 'all publicity is good publicity', and pretty soon, every commercial is louder than every other commercial.

Whether it's an ad exec or an A&R man, the same dumb mind-set is endemic; a band has a hit record so close to 0dB that the engineer had to compress the signal to prevent the peaks distorting, A&R men think the key to success is 'loudness'. No-one dare blink and pull back from 0dBFS, because you are only as good as your last hit record.

[Joe]

Oi! Sircom! Where's the HMHB review we were promised? Bloody Jefferson bloody Airplane's 'Bless Its Pointed Little Head' was reviewed not that long agp in Plus, so didn't need a second go.