Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
edit: compression as in dynamic range compression, not data compression like mp3 in audio
Compression is the best tool we have for accurately reproducing the musicality and emotion of a musical performance. Without compression, most recordings would be unlistenable.
Don't confuse the foolishness of the loudness wars for "compression is bad". That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.
Compression is a style. There is far more to musicality and emotion than compression. The problem compression solves is that the environments where industrialized cultures now listen in are not dedicated listening areas, but alternately loud and quiet places, so compression makes all parts of the music almost equally loud so there are no drop outs where the quieter parts would be. There is no need to compress music in headphones, for example, to the extent that it is currently compressed.
I find compression and other techniques such as removing vocal breath sounds, makes most recordings unlistenable. They don't sound like humans anymore, but synthetic puppets animated by humans with conflicting values. Take the Foo Fighters, for example. They're popular, sure, but all of their songs sounds like one continuous din. Between the compression induced by the guitar distortion settings and the compression added to the recording, then the compression added by the radio station, it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus.
Also their vocals have no dynamics. When he yells loud, the vocals don't get louder but the timbre changes. That changes it from cathartic to strained. The dynamics have all been flattened.
Why do you think the indie rock movement and bands and styles with wide dynamic range like the Pixies, Nirvana and dubstep got so popular? They eschewed the trend of hardline compression with alternating loud and quiet parts. They match the rhythm of human thought and motion which has fast and slow, detail and empty parts.
> That's like saying the internet is bad because there's porn on it.
Yes but on the internet you can go where there is no porn. Where can you find music with no compression?
One of these things is not like the others.
I can't tell if you're trolling here, or if you legitimately don't know much about audio engineering, because Dubstep (and electronic music in general) is probably the most aggressively compressed and limited genre of music out there.
If you actually do feel that Dubstep has a lot of dynamics, then you're misattributing the lack of dynamic range in a lot of modern music to audio engineering. What you're really bothered by is the songwriting and musicianship, not the engineering or compression.
it is extra-ironic, b/c yes dubstep uses compression a lot, but at the same time, a lot of the dubstep I've heard uses silence judiciously to create huge amounts of contrast - in between the speaker-shreddingly compressed passages.
Both house music and dnb IME tend to employ quiet as well to make the loud seem louder. It's mostly just rock and some americana these days on the radio that gets to me. Actually country is one of the most egregious genres, too. Sounds totally flat like AM radio.
That's a good way to put it. I hate over-compressed music. It sounds terrible and is no fun to listen to once you notice the issue.
But, are you an audio engineer? I ask because I work in the field, and all engineers I know accept that dynamic range compression is a necessary part of creating recorded music. The problem is when you abuse compression to create a wall of noise with no dynamic range.
It's like autotune: you can use it to correct one bad note, or you can abuse it create T-Pain.
The engineers behind The Pixies and Nirvana [1], and all dubstep producers use or have used compression at various stages of the creative process.
[1] I guarantee you that whoever mixed Smells Like Teen Spirit spent a lot of time doing the compression on that song.
What you are referring to is only one particular use-case for which a "compressor" is used during music production: Most often people apply dedicated plugins to the "master" mix (the final result to be put onto CD or sold as a file). These plugins will apply what's called a "multiband compressor" which can reduce dynamics individually on different parts of the frequency range, and often do quite a lot more magic than what I claim to understand. -- Done excessively the result is the mentioned "always one volume" result of the loudness wars.
The compressor as a tool isn't limited to this use-case, though. You will, for example, put it on individual instruments' track to shape the relative strength of the percussive and decaying content of an instrument, a drum or a plucked guitar for example: Typical compressor plugins have a attack-time which shape how fast the reduction of gain follows an input signal. If you have this slower than the duration of the percussive sound, the instrument will sound more "agressive", instead of being leveled down, as the "attack" sound is increased, relative to the resonating portion. -- The end result sounds just like the exact opposite of the excessive master compression people complain about.
Then you will invariably have unintended peaks in a real-world recordings, and if you don't want to level down the whole recording to account for those peaks, or manually level them down for every instance, you'll also employ a compressor plugin on problematic tracks.
Then there's the possibility to filter the part of the spectrum that will trigger the compressor (it's "sidechain") or to let a compressor be triggered by one instrument (or group of instruments) and act on the signal of another instrument (or vocals, or group of tracks): That way you increase the percieved separation of different voices in your mix, again increasing the perceived dynamics of a song.
So, if you really want to find music with no compression at all, you'll likely only find classical recordings made only with one single X/Y microphone pair... :-)
Problem #1 - Audio speakers are not the same as instruments! If you've ever had the pleasure of getting your hair blown back by a cranked guitar amp or a drum kit... well, you just can't reproduce that experience through a set of earbuds. You can't exactly reproduce the sound of an acoustic guitar in your lap, or a violin in a beautiful hall. Speakers just aren't up to it. A recording is a miniature of a sound. Like all miniatures, it exaggerates some details and obscures others.
Second, most modern music consists of many instruments of different volumes and dynamic ranges played together. Mixing the sounds so everything sounds clear and balanced is extremely difficult. Some of the most important instruments are the worst about it - acoustic guitars and drum kits in particular walk all over everything else, with wide dynamic and frequency ranges that compete with steadier sounds. And certain harmonically-dense sounds like female vocals and violins can easily distort the audio amps used in reproduction. Compression, and its close cousin equalization, help engineers "carve" spaces for each instrument to live in.
You have probably never heard a recording without extensive compression, unless you've mixed records. And if you've been actively involved in recording, you'll already know all this.
the pub?
That is your artistic choice, as it should be.
"The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice." -- Neil Young. [0]
Not every artist wants this to happen. They have no choice and listeners get a fraction of the sound recorded. This was not the case with vinyl.
@mborch, the exact compression method is of less importance than recognising that for all the compression being discussed, is a retrograde step from vinyl. Why?
[0] http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-young-and-the-sound-of-m...
Often digital plugins try to recreate the characteristics of such old tube monsters, because their sound is considered superior by some.
On the other hand, mastering plugins (including compressors and much more) nowadays are algorithmically that complicated that an analog version is not feasible.
EDIT: sorry, link is to an old limiter, not strictly a compressor, but one gets the idea
The source song, PSY's Gagnam Style, is the epitome of modern pop. I got a 3/10 on the listening test on a decent pair of Sennheiser headphones in a quiet room.
Some people are commenting that modern pop pairs well with 16-bit because of the heavy-handed mastering techniques and that older music thrives under 24-bits. Well, Audio Check offers the same 16 vs 8 test, using a Neil Young track from 1989... I couldn't fool myself into hearing any differences between the source WAVs at all and didn't even attempt to score the 10 soundbites.
I already knew that 24-bit vs 16-bit would be indistinguishable for pop music but I would not have expected that the same would go for 16-bit vs 8-bit. Or, well, I was kind of expecting it since otherwise the person who put this test together likely wouldn't have bothered.
However, I don't mind. I've never claimed to be "audiophile" -- a fact which is reflected by the inexpensive headphones I use :)
I'm impressed.
Yes, it has much more dynamic range, but it sounds wrong. Compression basically emulates what our ears naturally do when hearing very loud material, so compression gives one the feeling that the music is LOUD.
Yes, dynamic range compression is currently used/abused extensively in pop music productions, but if mixes weren't compressed they would have a much wider range for the sounds to play around in.
Not only is Justin Bieber's My World 2.0 louder than
Metallica's The Black Album, it's louder than The Sex
Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks.
with older songs, you can turn them up louder, then the dynamic parts really punch you.
with newer songs, it's just a steady fatigue.
Compression is an important part of both experiences. I like to think of it this way:
The soundscape has two axis, one is the overall perception of loudness, the other is the range of frequencies occupied by a given element, or track if you will, in a piece of music. In a stereo, or multi-track recording such as surround sound, there are more axis involving perception of placement, or "imaging" But the basics are all that are needed to consider this compression matter.
When you take one of those tracks, say the drum, or the bass guitar, in isolation a raw playback at volume on a reference system is going to largely reproduce what went in. So far so good.
Now, start adding the various bits and what happens?
That soundscape gets crowded! Little quiet bits you could appreciate are suddenly lost amidst all that is going on, so what to do?
Compress!
And that's a very good thing. First, few people actually have systems that can reproduce high dynamic range material in a quality way, and they don't have a listening environment that would make any sense if they did. So there is that. But more importantly, the details, subtle bits really are quiet! They will get lost, and so we compress the track overall to make sure those are present in the final mix, and pleasing to the ear too. Yes, there is a style and art to this, no doubt. But the compression really is necessary too.
A secondary reason for compression, and light processing by things like auto-tune, is to polish up a performance. Vocalist might be a little soft on part of an expression, or someone playing guitar might not deliver the same solid stroke every time. These things stand right out on a raw recording. If they get mixed in, they will get lost, or feel wrong, weak, etc... Compression can level this out and result in a solid, consistent sound. Again, the minds ear tends to want to hear this.
Ever listen to something a bit distorted and then play it back in your mind? Notice how your mind tosses out a lot of stuff, leaving you with that which you really craved? It's actually pretty difficult to recall something with high aural clarity for most people. Good production involves training the mind and the ear to actually pick this out so it can be managed into something people will really crave over and over.
One might also process things a bit too. This may be done to emphasize some characteristics of the sound with respect to the overall context of the mix. For a vocal, maybe it makes sense to punch the formant frequencies a bit, or dampen them to maximize the color and character in the vocalists vocalizations, for example. Our brain is an awesome audio machine, and it does a lot for us that recordings do not do. So we must bring those out and make them available to listeners of those recordings.
Now, comes more of the basics in the art!
What the minds ear hears is what we want to put on the record. Take that bass, compress it so that it occupies a smaller range in the loudness department (reduce it's overall dynamic range), and set it's LEVEL to one that's appropriate for it's overall contribution to the mix, which itself represents the overall perception of the music. Think two components here. The individual component of the mix, or track, has an overall dynamic range, but it also has a level at which it's present in the mix too. What makes sense here varies a lot and is highly subjective. Good production involves listening to the music and picking out what defines it as good, that which is resonant in terms of style, color, etc... A strong bass in one tune might make great sense, yet on another it might be pushed to the background more, etc... Depends.
A good producer will spread these things out in the soundscape so that the listener can hear them! Bringing up the little details, while bringing down the punch is needed to make room for it all to get in there and have an impact without fatigue or overloading the medium itself. A CD has it's limits, cassette other limits, radio still others, etc... An appropriate balance must be struck here, and that's not always optimal either.
This is what you are hearing when you listen to those older tunes, well produced. And it's damn good stuff too. You aren't wrong about it at all. Just blaming a good tool, when you should be blaming who ever is wielding it poorly.
(this is why remastered recordings exist Here's something fun. Go and get the DVD or Blu Ray of something you really like and compare it to what you might hear on the radio, or off a CD, or download. Often those are pushed out to the edges with the assumption the consumer has much better gear and or will pay for better production. Sometimes, shitty production on a CD can be avoided this way. Interestingly, some video game music gets remastered and I've heard more than a few wall of sound tracks sound great off my PS3...)
When this is done properly, the dynamic range is filled with a lot of things, each occupying their frequency range, sometimes overlapping, sometimes not, and each having an overall level that makes sense and that is aesthetically pleasing to the listener. This is why you can hear a great vocal right on top of that awesome guitar lick and drum set, despite the fact that they may be sharing a significant set of common frequency components.
Someone applied appropriate compression and some processing to make room for everything when it's mixed down into the final track. When they get it right, you don't even notice. It's just fucking good sound you crave. When they get it wrong, it's the tiring wall, or you find yourself straining to hear interesting bits that should just flow.
And I love this done well. To me, it's the most important thing I can say differentiates producers I love. Good production qualities in these areas are what makes a recording "pop" and you feel "there" No joke. This stuff, right here, is what makes a recording "immersive" for you. The sound goes right in, the audio engineers have made sure that's gonna happen, and it tickles your mind, taking you away from the fact that it's a recording.
Now, that brick wall... Take all that nice work, and listen to it on a great system, appropriate volume level, and the music will just stand out there, crisp, clear, every important part audible and enjoyable right?
Right.
A final processing layer can further crush this into a wall of sound, removing more and more of the dynamics to a point where it's all one intense thing, yet people can largely still differentiate the details! This can also be done, and likely and frequently is, in the mixing stage. But I'm mentioning it because commercial radio employs this processing extensively, due the limitations inherent in broadcast. FM, for example, has bandwidth and dynamic range / signal to noise limits that require this kind of processing to combat road and car noise.
newer digital radios are controversial, and a topic for another day, but they do not have those same limits, and can deliver the perception of a much better overall experience that many listeners will say is comparable to a CD. (it's not though, again another day)
It's the abuse that you don't like. Neither do I. Often the clowns even let it clip a little for "grit" or some other BS. That really sucks, because we don't even get the music, crushed as it is! But, let's set that ugly crime aside, and just stay with the brick wall for a moment longer.
It's all still there, LOUD, and that is tiring to you because it does not "breathe", "punch", etc... Graphically, it's a lot like cranking the gamma up on images. More subtle details stand out in more conditions, but the overall depth and feel are lost... and it's tiring to listen to, even at low volume. Our minds expectation of what things sound like can clash with this kind of excessive production, even though the first impression can be good. Producing for that initial, "wow" by maxing out the medium is, IMHO, always an ugly mistake, but the brutal truth is sales metrics select for LOUD over GREAT.
All that said, compression is good. We need it. Vocals, in particular, can very seriously benefit from appropriate compression and processing to really bring out the harmonics inherent in a great set of pipes owned by someone who knows who they are and how to express that well. But it all adds up, and it all needs that bit of compression love to make sure the good stuff isn't lost on the way into your head.
Maybe this helps a little to get at where some of the pain and fatigue really is.
Now, I'm not Gaga's recording engineer, and for all I know you're absolutely right and her & her team remastered each track without compression for the vinyl pressing. Considering how rare such a process is in industry recording, however, I doubt it. I assume that really the difference you're hearing is typical of all vinyl recordings: a type of distortion that comes from both pressing and playback through an RIAA preamplifier.
People use all sorts of terms to describe the difference between vinyl & digital sound, but mostly descriptors center around words like "warmer," or "more open" or "brighter." These are really just beneficial side-effects of the standards developed to overcome vinyl's limitations as a recording medium.
So, in reality quality and compression come in to play long before the pressing actually occurs, on the mastered track itself. I've come to realize that a poorly handled transfer to vinyl will often sound not nearly as clear or detailed as a high-res or even "Mastered for iTunes" track.
• The audio is subjected to low-pass or all-pass
filtering, which can result in broad peaks becoming
slanted ramps.
• The amount and stereo separation of deep bass content
is reduced for vinyl, to keep the stylus from being
thrown out of the groove.
http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-bet...
Hence the RIAA curve, which is an eq curve applied to the mastering before put to vinyl that reduces the lows and exaggerates the highs. It is reversed by the phono preamp during playback.
I was skeptical of this, so I sought out a copy on Youtube[0]. "Better" is subjective, and this is definitely lower quality overall (given the Youtube compression). But it is undeniably a very different song. I've listened to the CD version of this song countless times, and I don't think I ever remember hearing the male voice in the intro so prominently.
For someone hearing the song for the first time (or even the first few), it may not be as obvious, but as someone who's used to hearing that song on a regular basis, it definitely jumps out as having a crisper sound.
There's a major 60hz ground loop in there, too.
But yeah, it's obvious when I have my car stereo nearly on max to listen to classical or jazz, and then if I turn the radio and get a pop music station my ears are about to explode.
Also, how exactly does it sound when most of my recording is at -10dbRMS and a couple peaks are at -5dbRMS?
Are you using "normalize" in the audio production sense, as in adding or subtracting a constant gain to an entire track? I'm pretty sure that iTunes doesn't do this, at least not by default.
Anyone that has mixed 120+ tracks for a single "modern rock" song with a compressor at the end would tell you so.
The good thing about compression is that it allows you to save your hearing quite a bit. Some music have dramatic parts that get super loud, which can have awesome emotional response; but it does take a toll on your hearing, unless you are in a very silent environment or have fantastic headphone insulation (I have none) -- so compression actually allows me to hear everything the music has to offer. I also use compression tool on my soundcard to play most games, specially FPSes that have incredibly loud bangs and yet you need to hear footsteps and quiet environmental noises -- with a compressor that's possible without blowing up your ears.
This does degrade the quality, sometimes heavily. Nevertheless it is done by mastering engineers (they rarely enjoy it) as well as by radio and tv stations extensively because of the psycho-acoustic fact that a songs appears to be better if it is played louder. This gives them an advantage over the competition: On average, people searching for a radio station are more likely to listen to your radio station if it is louder than the competition.
The main issue lies in the fact that the current peak measurement of audio signals does only marginally correlate with the perceived loudness and heavy compression is used to trick this system. The broadcasting industry is aware of this. An open and quite effective loudness measurement algorithm [0] has been introduced a few years ago and it gets slowly adapted all over the world by new broadcasting laws: AGCOM 219/09/CSP (Italy), ARIB TR-B32 (Japan), ATSC A/85 PRSS CALM Act (US), EBU R128 (Europe) and OP-59 (Australia). iTunes Soundcheck is also based on [0] and since this year Youtube applies this to newly uploaded videos as well [1]. Even games use [0] to keep their audio at a consistent loudness.
So slowly, the over-usage of compression does not give music producers and broadcasters any advantage anymore and beautiful dynamic music will be competitive again.
I have collected some links [2] about this topic. Because of the lack of any affordable implementation at the time I created one myself [3] with some additional notes [4].
[0] ITU-R BS.1770, http://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.1770-4-2... [1] http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/ [2] https://www.klangfreund.com/lufsmeter/manual/#about_loudness [3] https://github.com/klangfreund/LUFSMeter [4] https://github.com/klangfreund/LUFSMeter/tree/master/docs/de...
Edit: Some useful educational material to read before moderating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war .
Maybe if you really mangled your audio by encoding at extremely low bit rates.
But in general, no.
mp3, for example, loves to save space by cutting away sounds just above the noise floor, and some less-noticeable frequencies.
Convert it to MP3 directly, use whatever settings you want
Watch as the mp3 rip is now clipping due to further compression of the dynamic range.