Why your audio is bad and why you can't do anything about it
Comments on this video
You can comment on this video at YouTube
You can comment on this video at YouTube
Tuesday May 2, 2023
David Mellor
David Mellor is CEO and Course Director of Audio Masterclass. David has designed courses in audio education and training since 1986 and is the publisher and principal writer of Adventures In Audio.
@CalumCarlyle: 9:12 - now the truth comes out! So this seems to fly in the face of your other videos where you tell us how inferior the sound quality of vinyl is. And yet here we are, hearing about how vinyl largely CANNOT succumb to the problems caused by the loudness wars.
Interesting.
@tyrsia: I noticed recently that older prog bands like from the 60s and 70s tend to play with dynamics, raising and lowering the volume with the mood of the song the way a classical piece would. Newer prog songs seem more likely to have everything at the same volume, even the "softer" bits of the song. Is that an intentional part of the mixing process or just a choice the musicians made?
@AudioMasterclass replies to @tyrsia: It's a fad. A bad one and I hope it goes away quickly.
@charlespell7762: Is anyone interested in buying my top of the range Hi Fi setup, as well as all my music collection as well. All of it sounds bad apparently, so I'll do a good deal. From now on, since I can't afford to hire live musicians, I think I going to opt for silence. Which....I bet sounds bad as well. It's all a bit depressing. And thankfully, it's total nonsense (or the conclusion he draws that better quality equipment won't improve sound quality). Unless I'm just imaging the superior sound quality of my HiFi to, say, my car radio.
@FatBaldTrucker: I thinking you've missed it my quite a bit. In the 70's our Mom's and Dad's told us to turn it down. In the 90's our kids told us to turn it down. So, there you go.
@ibuprofen303: Excellent video extolling the virtues of vinyl there at the end (or rather the way that vinyl is mastered). This is the argument I always make for vinyl. I choose medium depending on genre. For example, vinyl for techno and hard rock. CD (actually) for classical music. I use Spotify as well. What I say is - use all of it. It makes it fun!
Vinyl is a very quirky medium. Which is part of the reason I think people like it.
@Arsenal18862006: Spinal Tap would like a word.
@marcussvensor: He he, I do love making mixes as loud as possible, and yes I am a mastering engineer. Clipping the hell out of the kick and adding tonnes of ugly harmonics to the bass, each time my aim is to make the mix louder than the one I did before. And why not, it's what the kids want - the added bonus, it drives audiophiles mad. 🙃
@jefferysmith5921: Great video and very informative. I doubt we are going to see a change as this is a money thing.
@Crumbleofborg: You don't need to do a separate, less loud mix for vinyl. Just use the max loudness one, spread it over two 180 gram records and charge extra for this "Audiophile release".
Incidentally, I'm surprised you didn't mention pitch correction and gridding.
@brians7094: The best recordings that I've heard are always from 1956-62. At least my system can make most newer recordings sound great. But I don't know how anyone can listen to Taylor Swift, etc.; it has ultrasonic noise - it's garbage.
@msromike123: As Tony Soprano said, "Whatcha gonna do 'bout it." I learned something though, I thought it was primarily brickwalling and loudness wars. Interesting to find out they are adding clipping to add texture. My theory is that they master for the target playback device. It's almost a "which came first the chicken or the egg" kind of thing. When one is listening to music on a tiny BT streamer, or crappy BT earbuds, or a crappy soundbar, or worse of all the speakers behind your flatscreen TV bouncing off the wall, it makes mastering in this manner mandatory. It is simply a matter that the target audience and their preferred playback equipment they have evolved. My 2 cents.
@rayphenicie7344: Does your assertion hold true for classical (symphonic, chamber, and solo) recordings as well?
Well, it's good Wikipedia backs up what you're saying☺
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
@AudioMasterclass replies to @rayphenicie7344: No. Not yet...
@patthewoodboy: I always wondered why Oasis album sounded bad , tried so hard to make it sound good to no avail
@basbass429: That mixing of commercial music, is exactly why music in movies often sounds better. A CD/digital recording sale with recordings on it that are clipping should be banned by law. Every clip 10% of yearly revenue fine would stop this madness.
@geddylee501: MY AUDIO ISN'T BAD and I don't have to do anything about it you blithering "slightly paul mccartney" lookalike. Stop boring us with your constant moaning. Merry fkn Xmas.
@humphrey2108: I actually enjoy the cleanliness of a lot of that old music. It actually makes me want to listen to a song less if it is all distorted. I think I'm in the minority though.
@MarioSue: You didn’t mention that mixing and mastering engineers work in a dinamically almost limitless 32 bit floating point digital space, but then you have to mixdown the whole thing to 16 bit, in order to make it Red Book compliant (this applies to CD only), and that’s when the REALLY bad stuff happens, not to mention dithering.
In order to make more clear what you are talking about, it would suffice to compare the digital waveform of a pre 95 mixdown, with one produced today: in the former, you could see a very jagged waveform showing clearly peaks and "lows"; the latter would look like a concrete brick.
And, no, modern vinil records do not offer the best of both worlds, pretty much the other way round, if a specific mixing/mastering finalization (which costs good money) hasn't been performed.
If an audiophile spent an hour (and it would suffice) in a mastering room, he/she would trash his/her HiFi system rihgt away.
@MarioSue: You didn’t mention that mixing and mastering engineers work in a dinamically almost limitless 32 bit floating point digital space, but then you have to mixdown the whole thing to 16 bit, in order to make it Red Book compliant (this applies to CD only), and that’s when the REALLY bad stuff happens, not to mention dithering.
In order to make clear what you are talking about, it would suffice to compare the digital waveform of a pre 95 mixdown, with one produced today: in the former, you could see a very jagged waveform showing clearly peaks and "lows"; the latter would look like a concrete brick.
And, no, modern vinil records do not offer the best of both worlds, pretty much the other way round, if a specific mixing/mastering finalization (which costs good money) hasn't been performed.
If an audiophile spent an hour (and it would suffice) in a mastering room, he/she would trash his/her HiFi system rihgt away.
@DawnHub666: probs coz ur using NS10s
@na63fets: You are absolutely right. In some cases the spatial acoustic stage of a track has shrunk into a thin, sheet metal wall. You feel like you're constantly being yelled at.
@robertmarshall6638: I'll follow Paul McCartney's doppelganger . 🙂
@thomaswomack3888: Massive respect!!! You have nailed it in this video. Dynamic range compression is the enemy of life-like sound. And the fact that the music recording industry, at least for Pop and Rock & Roll is firmly entrenched in this war to reduce dynamic range at all cost, how will we ever get back to some sense of sanity in application of compressors and limiters in the mastering process? And what do the rest of us do who want to experience 'live' dynamics on their recorded music at home? Are there record labels that do an 'honest' mastering job now days? If so, thats where I want to spend my money if I am buying recorded media. I am unclear about stepping back into the Vinyl vs CD battle due to my view that the tradeoffs to live with Vinyl are based on my acute dislike for the 'fiddle factor' of dealing with Vinyl. Clean the record before you play it, go nowhere near the turntable while its playing and for God's sake walk carefully while its playing and then when you're done playing it, clean it again before putting it back in its plastic sleeve and then back in the cardboard cover. Sorry, way too much fiddle factor for me. I much prefer the convenience and durability of CDs to say nothing of the fact there is no background noise on a well recorded disc. That way if the engineers and record label execs did an honest job we have the possibility of a really good recording. I would love to see a video where you recognize the honest labels and call out the ones to avoid...ok skip calling out the bad ones. Just sharing some insiders knowledge about which labels have their focus on the quality of the recording over maintaining the status quo would be a useful contribution to the preservation of good music in your viewing audiences homes. I am in a rather unique position of replacing a boatload of media lost in a house fire and due to the size of the collection I had will be spending a considerable sum to replace some of what was lost...the question is, Vinyl or CD or both. I wont be replacing cassettes and VHS tapes, I consider them as a total write off.
@Douglas_Blake: There is a reason my pop music collection ends in 1990.
@brannonmcevers1854: Great insights, Thank You!
@MrSlipstreem: Although not technically related to the loudness war, I stopped buying 7" vinyl singles around a decade earlier because it was audibly very clear that many engineers were pushing the medium way beyond its limits causing chronic distortion due to limiting somewhere in the chain. The same singles on 12" were nearly always a vast improvement, so I can only assume that they were either using a different master, or the increased dynamic headroom on a 12" single gave them the required room to "breathe" without being crushed to death.
Moving over to CD in 1985 with the purchase of a Philips CD150 player was a revelation and a blessed relief from listening to music that had been deliberately murdered... until the loudness war came along and utterly ruined that too.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MrSlipstreem: My view is that singles were mastered with regard to the type of equipment they would be played on - portables and juke boxes for instance. They would probably also sound ‘good’ over AM radio.
@andiman45: 1995 was they year I aged to the point I was diagnosed with tinnitus. The music never sounded as good as before this. Rather than sound neutral I discovered the purpose for bass and treble controls....urg
@lepidoptera9337: My audio is bad because I have a strong Tinnitus tone in my left ear that keeps ringing constantly at 7.3kHz. From 8kHz to roughly 10kHz I am completely deaf in that ear and there is very little reception left up to like 13kHz, beyond which there is, again, nothing. The right ear is a bit more even but also won't go beyond 14kHz any longer. On the plus side... I don't need to spend big bucks on loudspeakers anymore. They would be a waste of money. ;-)
@ENZEEVIDS: there's exceptions to every rule.. you can do something about it and make your own music then listen to it straight off the daw. the quality is worse one you render it
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @ENZEEVIDS: So you will be listening to a bunch of amateur musicians who can't play well and if their lives depended on it. So what? So nothing. Steely Dan over YouTube codec is a million times more enjoyable. ;-)
@iansantiago6526: This video is quite old, but I do wonder if video game soundtracks face a similar problem to what the recording industry has. Usually they only have a single composer as the brainchild of a given OST, and since the goal of them is to be immersive, I'm not so sure they have the same pressure to "make it sound like *that*". Not like I'd know the difference, but it's worth exploring for any audio nerds out there....
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @iansantiago6526: Nobody can tell the difference. Having golden ears is like talking to Jesus. It's a scam. ;-)
@MarekWolski-q5d: I've been deaf since birth and I'm going to buy myself a Dcs Verdi with Sonus Faber Cremonese speakers, that's my moneyI can do whatever I want with them, and you have nothing to do with it.
@brians.4488: Say like pink floyd the wall? 😊
@Chrisspru: the first thing: get your ears & general health checked, eat healthy, keep fit, care for your mental health and, if necessary: get good quality professionaly set up hearing aids.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Chrisspru: I notice that the Phonak Audeo Infinio Sphere i70 sells for £3150 a pair, so I guess they must be audiophile. Don’t forget that people generally get hearing aids ten years after they need them.
@Chrisspru replies to @Chrisspru: @@AudioMasterclass its getting better ^^
i have customers who are just at the edge of hearing loss which qualifies for ensurance coverage, so with still pretty good hearing.
dynamic ranges of 70 db between earliest detected sound and the uncomfortable volume limit. ( 80-100 db comfortable dynamic range for average healthy ears. outliers with very good ears can manage 110 to 120 db).
hearing aid microtech is quite expensive due to the requirement of very loud , precise, low phase issue and low delay technology in a tiny package powered by small batteries. also requiring adjusrability to the precise need of each wearer.
entry models can be had with full ensurance coverage.
higher end models, with noise reduction, multiband compressors, soft limiters, etc. require paying extra.
widex partialy specialises on listening to music, and is one of the more expensive developers.
@pietermol8508: The loudness wars are also the reason why many people say 'digital/CD sucks'. No, CD doesn't suck, CD brings out every shitty little error made in music production in clear detail. That's why you hate CD. That's why I hate CD. When I buy a CD or digital tracks, the first thing I do is transfer it to cassette. I don't know how it works, but cassette, and to a larger extent vinyl, gets rid of some of the harsh artifacts caused by lousy music production practices.
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @pietermol8508: Your tape recorder produces a bit of noise that masks the recording problems at the low volume end. If you want to do better than CD, then listen to your favorite classical recordings in 24 bit on electrostatic earphones. You will be able to hear the conversation of the janitors outside of the concert hall during pianissimo. :-)
@jorencamhu: I agree, I miss the good old days of true HiFi. Now we are in the mad race to destroy our ears and our taste.
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @jorencamhu: Nah, what you are really missing is your youth. You have become your own father. You are bitter and can't enjoy life any longer. ;-)
@Ariel-x1x: I despise modern mastering. I try my best to undo it with a sound file editor. But it's not just the master peak-limiting process, it's also the simply ludicrous levels of compression being used to 'fatten' everything up (and destroy the dynamic-range and impact of the music). It's horrible, the open airiness of earlier music has been crushed by excessive heavy compression, used as a bass 'effect'. No! Instrumentalists and the mixer should control compression, not the mastering process to publish the recordings. So much music is being horribly degraded in this way. Music publishers are constantly killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @Ariel-x1x: That is complete bullshit. Most music gets better with heavy compression. "openness" simply means that you can't hear details because they are too quiet unless you keep turning on your volume knob all the time. The latter hand crank approach is simply emulating a compressor, by the way. ;-)
@guillermosanchez8784: In many cases, you can have access the first CD releases of certain records (in the used market of course), which were taken from the original (analog) masters, instead of purchasing the newer remastered versions. For example, I bought many of the AC/DC's original CDs by Atlantic, and they sound much much better than the 2003 remasters made by Sony/Epic, which are compressed to hell and almost unlistenable. Great video!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @guillermosanchez8784: You are correct up to a point. However it was widely rumoured that there was such a rush to release material on CD in the early days that many were not made from original masters but some generations down the line - whatever was handy. There might be a ‘golden age’ of CD and I might consider this in a future video.
@guillermosanchez8784 replies to @guillermosanchez8784: @@AudioMasterclass please make that video!!
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @guillermosanchez8784: There is no such thing as an "original" in recorded music. The signal on the master tape has NEVER existed as an acoustic sound field. It's a completely synthetic product. Neither was a master tape ever meant to be pressed "as is" on distribution media. It's simply an engineering intermediate that was then fed into the equalizer/compressor system that drove the stylus that cut the soft Lacquer from which the actual metal stamping tool was made. This electronic process would be repeated every time a new Lacquer was needed, i.e. the settings of the cutting processors might have been different from pressing to pressing. Moreover, the total excursion of the stylus (and with that the dynamic range/signal to noise ratio of a vinyl record) is dominated by the recording length on each side of the record. Longer play meant significantly smaller excursions and lower SNR. Whether you get a good individual record or a bad one depends on how many times the metal stamp was used before your particular copy was pressed. Everything amateurs are telling you about the music production process is essentially a lie. Analog recording was always dominated by a large number of hard engineering (and economics) choices. It was NEVER about musicality. Today you can do 24 bit or even 32 bit linear PCM and that takes all of this nonsense out of the chain. You are getting to hear exactly what was produced. No post-production equalizers, no dynamic compressors. And that is the actual reason why you don't like it. You are used to heavily post-processed versions of your favorite music that has NEVER existed the way it's on vinyl.
@SimonC-z8y: I tend to prefer mono recordings from the 1950's. Early 2 track stereos were also very good but you could hear the slight deterioration that 4 track recorders bought into the mix in the early 60's. Then it went further downhill with transistor equipment until in the 70's the sound was more electronic. By the 80's digital recordings were largely quite sterile lacking texture. There were exceptions but that's the way it's gone overall. Not that many people care, why should they care about such esoteric things so long as they enjoy their music.
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @SimonC-z8y: Nothing beats my broken gramophone. I can sit in front of it all day long and imagine how divine Caruso must have sounded. :-)
@SimonC-z8y replies to @SimonC-z8y: @lepidoptera9337 it's not broken, you just forgot to put the battery in 😊
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @SimonC-z8y: @@SimonC-z8y I actually lost the hand crank around 1924, I believe. ;-)
@SimonC-z8y replies to @SimonC-z8y: @@lepidoptera9337 I was talking about the hearing aid 😉
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @SimonC-z8y: @@SimonC-z8y I also forgot to take my anti-senility meds today. ;-)
@Richard-k5r3g: Once you go down the wrong path, you can never return. The world is blatantly misinformed and too lazy to learn new. I wished everyone watch this video. They won't. Cause they are minion's of the table company's. Great vid. Sir.
@lepidoptera9337 replies to @Richard-k5r3g: Yes, you are going down the wrong path as soon as you are listening to any audio guy. They are all full of it. ;-)
@hueinismo1: Now I know why I do not enjoy modern music.
@LoranFrank-b4u: I have a question ❓ in your professional view has the audio technology industry advanced enough to where one can restore audio quality or is like you said it has reached a peak
@AudioMasterclass replies to @LoranFrank-b4u: This is an interesting question. In terms of frequency response, distortion, noise and other similar parameters we are at a point where very few people can hear any issues. I have to say though that loudspeakers remain a problem. I'm tempted to comment that because there are fewer big studios where engineers and producers could learn their trade we are in an era of 'amateur' engineering. That's a bit harsh but I can't think of a better word. So we have all of the technology and what's limiting further advancement is human.
@LoranFrank-b4u replies to @LoranFrank-b4u: @@AudioMasterclass thank you for responding very insightful David I appreciate your input on this topic. You mentioned quite a bit in detail about how studios execs want the finished album to sound a certain way. From what I can interpret by whats been stated is that you can't sense the audio problems without a trained naked ear or with a system apparatus to gauge the lowest or highest quality of audio mastering mix that can be later used to make a finished mix.
David if we're up to you what you recommend to create a diamond standard for professional Audio engineering techniques, principles, practices, development kit systems etc.
@christopherward5065: Well said!
@AnthonyToth-t5v: I still have my amstrad and bush and crown and Philips great top quality rubbish
@VintageGearMan: This is so true. Crap in crap out. You can spend gobs of money on gear but if you have source/crap in it will always be crap out!
@marklutton8161: I don't believe this is true in the best classical recordings. Listen to the recent Shostakovich recordings by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for instance. Dynamic range is an important part of classical music. In Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, first movement, at the end of the exposition the dynamic marking is pppppp for the bassoon. Most conductors use a bass clarinet instead because it can play more softly. The next measure is the full orchestra, ff, loud enough to make you jump out of your chair. In Boston's Symphony Hall, the soft parts will be around 30 dB and the loud parts can reach as high as 120 dB. Classical record buyers want an experience similar to the concert hall. Now 90 dB of dynamic range may be too extreme for home listening, so there may be some compression going on, but if you listen to the most recent CD's the soft parts are truly soft and the loud parts are truly loud.
@arjan2777: I only listen to classical music and it seems that is mostly free of this nonsense.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @arjan2777: Let’s hope it stays so.
@MrAlb3rtazzo: My audio is bad 😭😭😭
@radiosi-su7271: Must be a Democrat. Word Salad.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @radiosi-su7271: Too bad you just didn't understand it.
@AnthonyToth-t5v: So no matter if my hifi is £1099 or £10999 it’s only as good as the source basically
@oliyb: Yeah but your forgetting that a vocoder makes everything sound better these days. 😂😢
@biggles5633: Thanks for this very interesting presentation.
After being a complete HiFi nut through the end of the 60s, the 70s, 80s and well into the 90s, with all those beautiful big reel to reels, Revox, TEAC, Akai, ... DBX, my Nakamichi tape deck, Luxman amps and a range of wonderful English speakers, .... for some completely unknown reason I seemed to lose interest in music. I found that as the mid 90s arrived, the music didn't have as much appeal. I never knew why but since then, I have been pretty much, just listening to my old music ... which of course is a huge problem. When you have listened to tracks thousands of times, they slowly lose their magic.
I have just started out on the journey to discovering streaming and perhaps rediscovering new music, hence finding your channel. I've finally ordered a streamer yet to be released ... and hope it will bring some musical joy.
As far as this great video, it really makes sense and explains a lot to me and my musical journey. Thank you.
Keep up the good work, I enjoy your content!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @biggles5633: Oddly, the near infinity of music on streaming services doesn’t seem to help discovery, not for me anyway. I don’t have an answer to this except to say that I have found myself flipping through a crate at a boot sale then looking up some of the albums I’ve seen when I’m back home. Thank you and good luck with your search.
@richardheumann1887: In my opinion, audio has never been clean... My best audio feeling/experiance has always been at a concert. With all the mishaps and distortion that comes with that. No recording can ever come close to that. Now I do love live albums to a point. One of the best for me is the U2 red rocks album "Under a Bloodred Sky" Or Marillion The Thieving Magpie, to name 2. Now I am no audiofile but just love music.
@Xogroroth666: I have a passionate hate for distortion, Lo-Fi music, interfering noises, or "half-volume" music (Too low in volume recordings, something that is quite frequently done on YouTube.).
But I see myself not as an "Audiophile" ... .
@Burnax: Thank you very much for this. I know this truth, but it is so good to hear it, told by a professional/expert.
@georgedoolittle7574: I bought a wireless "Bluetooth Speaker" decades ago and that has always been the best sound system I have ever owned. I do have a Sirius Satellite "boom box" and for audio quality given how simple it is truly amazing. I just downloaded the "Sling" app having had a sling TV system once that I loved and that app is actually pretty good. Sound systems in modern cars these days are truly amazing as well.
@xblur17: I have $2000 DCA E3 headphones, a JDS Element 3 Mk2, I exclusively use Qobuz for streaming, and I listen to a mix of modern masters and lot of highly dynamic music. I also have $10,000 ears. My audio isn't bad. For me, this title was just silly clickbait. It's weird seeing an old man yap about this while clickbaiting, and seeing everything with rose-tinted glasses. There is more dynamic music today in 2024 than there ever was. I also find highly limited and distorted music (which is a whole genre of music today) quite pleasing and fitting some specific genres. In my opinions, recordings from the 60's to the 90's didn't sound that great. Sure, it was more dynamic and without heavy limiters, but they sound mostly boring (with the exception of maybe Pink Floyd and few others who understood how to properly mix and master songs).
@schubertuk: Yes - Mastering has gone too far and it is a bit of a mess. The whole process has veered from being 'seen' as a quality protection process to a quality destruction process. It has now reached the point where there is no meaningful labelling that makes me trust one source over another. I would like to say the whole industry needs a set of published Mastering Standards 'kite' marks or something - but I don't know (as a mere amateur listener) what these would/could contain? [Guaranteed compression free? Unclipped? No digital reverb? Level mixed only? Dynamic range figure displayed? ---- I really have no idea - and I can already see ups and downs here]
@Ein-Stuck: Unfortunately, the mixes pre 1995 were from mixers that were mixing for vinyl (thin on the bottom end). However, I still like them better. The best chance for good audio again is -14 Lufs lossless 16 bit 96k resolution.
I purchased a steely dan cd (pre wars) and it was about -14 lufs and thin on the bottom but still sounded amazing!! I put it in my daw and made I few adjustments and it's the best sound I have ever experienced.
@VintageGearMan: One last comment. Zero American companies ever got close to the sound of British made mixing studio consoles in my opinion. They almost mix themselves they are so outstanding. I am not kidding.
@VintageGearMan: A huge thank you on this video upload! It is perfection!
@VintageGearMan: Personally, I have recently gone back to my 1950's jazz mono records. WOW! The sound stage is unbelievable. More than not it sounds like I am standing in front of the stage or in the same room while they are playing/recording. Words alone are not enough to describe how incredible jazz 10" and 12" mono records sound. Back then they had huge live session recording studio rooms and barely any microphones. It was magic to say the least! They planned extensively recording wise. No digital plug-in's needed! Ha!
@VintageGearMan: Do not even get me started on the same multiple years of a said popular artist/said same popular CD. Play an original Micheal Jackson CD then listen to the 3rd or 4th generation remasters of the same CD. It is so compressed and squashed it is a cardinal sin. I have been complaining about the digital degradation of music forever. Not a fan at all of 1's and 0's digital music in the first place. This is exactly why I will take my record collection to the grave. Finally someone speaking the PURE truth on this topic! God bless you for telling it like it is on this subject! Now I am super huge fan of this channel.
@VintageGearMan: I am me and way agree with everything he has said in this video period!
@VintageGearMan: 2" tape was king back in the day!
@VintageGearMan: I hate Mp3's!!!!! Horrible source. What's worse the general population "thinks that streaming net audio" is great! They have no clue. Buying expensive DAC converters. WHY? It is already horrible audio right out of the starting gate just saying. Waste of money. "Crap in crap out" no matter how much money you spend on audio gear.
@VintageGearMan: I have mixed on those Yamaha monitors behind him. They are still a great studio staple for many studios.
@voskresenie-: I've got a theory about why many people like 'loud' audio with clipping (other than having grown up with it, which wouldn't explain why people weren't bothered by it in 1995 when the loudness war began), and I'm curious your thoughts on this, @AudioMasterclass . Maybe this is obvious or maybe it's obviously incorrect, I don't have enough context. My theory is that people listening on bad audio systems have two issues with less loud mixes. The primary problem is that it's too quiet, but that's just the instigator — this 'problem' exists on high end systems, too. But on a high end (or even just decent) system, there's an easy solution: you can just turn the volume up to make it louder. On a cheap system, though, you have two issues: first, the audio will clip on the audio system itself, rather than in the mix, and clipping audio systems sounds worse (and is more concerning — you might blow out the system) than clipping in the mix. second, when you turn the volume up, the noise floor is raised, too, and in a cheap system that already has a lot of noise, it becomes distracting. By clipping in the mix, the listener can keep the volume knob of their system lower to achieve the same level of volume to the listener, avoiding these two problems.
(I'm not saying this is why it was mixed this way originally — I realize it was to stick out on the radio — just why it didn't bother enough people at the time to stop the loudness war.)
@OrbitalStereo: I know a young songwriter who is married to my niece. We had a conversation about the recording and engineering process and I tried to discuss the subject of dynamic range. He didn’t seem interested in it but he did say that they “sent it for loudness” like it was some sort of specific process that is now standard within the industry.
@manusudha4269: Absolutley spot on . Great commentary
@BobKaplan-j6t: Unfortunately I have to agree with you.
@RobertZackMountainBees: Life has a natural "Sound"... let us try to preserve all its shades.
@markthomas2436: Probably something that COULD be mentioned in a discussion of listening to modern audio, in all its forms, is that sometimes the people who master audio.... have to do what the people who pay for the advertising WANT it to be. That's why your TV commercials for upcoming movies are so loud that it's busted up with distortion. People who work in post production would relate BACK to the advertising agencies which pay for the commercial, "hey, your master tapes are totally distorted by the loud recording levels you used, and we can not do OUR jobs here beCAUSE of it." You would think, in a spirit of co-operation, that some middle ground could be found. But oh NO. The movie houses who MADE the movie trailer which was modified in the Post house WANTED it to be that loud! Oh yeah. They want you to hear the new James Bond movie trailer even though you walked down the hallway from your living room to the bathroom for a break. So everybody is screwed downstream of Paramount, or Disney, or who the pluck EVER made the dang commercial, and even though consumers complain bitterly? Nothing ever changes. The movie house told Leo Burnett Company in Chicago, or whoEVER the ad agency slash post house WAS, that they WANT it loud. Leo Burnett told DG Fast Channel, or whoEVER the post production house was, that THEY want the audio that loud. Even though the TV station reports back to DG Fast Channel that THEY do not want anymore commercials that loud sent to THEM.... because Quality Control is kicking the dubs out, or the file which was sent thru fiber optic lines TO the TV station. Everybody gets screwed. WHY? Because the damned Hollywood movie production companies WANTED it to be that loud, and since they were paying for it? It gets to be that loud.
@michaeldeforbes2401: The people who say "make it sound like that" aren't hired by audiophiles, they're hired to ensure the label continues to stay in business. I've met many skilled artisans, musicians, authors, even life coaches who are very good at what they do, but no one knows them because when falling in love with what they do, they didn't fall in love with how to stay alive in the business of it. In this capitalist economic society if all art forms were controlled by purists, there would be few financially thriving studios, labels, publishers, etc. But maybe they don't mind because it's what they want. In teaching my daughter to drive, I told her: Don't let anyone with their incessant beeping behind you get to you, and in doing so it causes an accident. Because if you did what they wanted, they won't pay for your bills.
@davewalker7126: Remember when the CD had AAD, ADD or DDD on the label and you'd be 'oooh a DDD, this will sound good' - in truth they all sounded good for the very reasons you talk about, this was pre 1995
@philippe7166: Make active digital speakers the sound will be far better and it don’t cost much money
@ghost500e: Luckily for me, most of my vinyls and cd:s was bought between 83-95 about 80% of them.
So yeah my audio is GREAT😜👌👌👌
Should also make for a very high second hand pricing on them.
@bpiorek: That's why I pretty much only listen to Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band CDs . They are amazing recordings recorded by Tommy Vicari. And Gordon wants clean recordings, he doesn't care about loudness, he cares about dynamics, and musicianship.
@jean-williamangel8394: Dear Sir, Why Arguing so long about what is clearly not art? Is there anything else than music with "real" instruments (the word acoustic is a nonsense) that must be worth of high fidelity? The music of pop groups (not to mention rock bands) should be left to where it belongs: mild entertainment (and too often only noise). I thought you were speaking about art: this is the second video of your channel that I watch, the first what about a clarinet concerto, hence my surprise. The voices of "pop stars" (I've heard there is also something called rap that some would label music) are already distorted. Why bothering? So please, let's talk about serious stuff, jazz trio, piano or flute, string quartet or symphonic orchestra etc. which require fidelity. Putting some distorsion in them would be a shame. Merci pour vos vidéos anyway : )
@AnthonyToth-t5v: No point having a good hifi system if the audio is bad whether it be cassette cd reel to reel or
vinyl may as well stick to my amstrad tower system from the 80’s lol or bush or crown 👑
@mwizachavura8399: To my ears modern songs sound better, it's just the songs are mostly wack..
@EmmanuelIstace: I agree, loudness war killed a lot of dynamic in the music industry, but wasn't the point of it to be as loud or feel louder than other artists once played on the radio/tv/etc and hit the broadcaster compressor as hard as possible ? I might be wrong, but I think that's what I remember from Andrew Scheps explanation of it.
@DROPTHEGRID: Does classical get this kind of treatment?
@DROPTHEGRID: Tastes can change so maybe we can go back but I fear one more downside of AI is making things 'sound like that'.
@Laz_RS: In the mid 2000's I used to get in arguments with the owner of a punk label I was working with. All he wanted was the music to be bone dry and as loud as possible, nothing else mattered. I want that piece of my soul back.
@splitprissm9339: Wonder if there is a connection between over-compressed recordings being popular is connected with portable stereo devices these days NOT being really loud due to regulation and need to conserve battery lifetime - 1990s portable stereos could be ear splittingly loud if provoked, so one could drown out loud road noise etc even with highly dynamic music. Possible ear damage is another kettle :). ---- Clipping distortion might sound great when applied to single instruments (electric guitar!), but who would in their right mind voluntarily introduce what will amount to an INTERMODULATION distortion source to a complete mix?! ---- When it comes to rock and metal productions in the 1980s, what stands out is that bass - as in, the instrument bass, basses and bass guitars, bass voices, oh my! - was given room and not integrated into a "wall of sound" aesthetic. And these old productions sound LOUD if you play them LOUD. Probably the pinnacle of that production style: Iron Maiden's "Powerslave". Not loud enough, WHAT? It's loud songs, written by loud people, the musicians played it loud, people listened to it loud, it's loud AF.
@audiononsense1611: I'll just say I'm glad most of my collection is from decades before 1980. It's down right greed and stupidly given the fact technology is at a point where one can enjoy great audio. There are few exceptions and then there are Indy and non-US labels... if you haven't heard of Octave Records (PS Audio) give them a listen as they master in PDM...
@veraluxmundi2032: My Rogers LS3/5As sound okay to me with Thorens TD150 mk2 and old quad amp. If it's bad, I don’t need better. .
@chuckyb_: 13:49 This is already the case in dance music and has been for many years. Nobody gets a trophy though sadly (I envision a Stanley Cup sized 'Death Magnetic' coffin with a sausage in it) but some people out there get their Izotope and Voxengo plugins out, meter the competition and brag about how much bigger their genitalia are on the dB LUFS scale. Although it can be helpful to be aware of loudness levels on releases you like (intended for streaming services) or that are in a comparable genre (especially with music intended for Clubs) IMHO it should probably not be a deciding factor in any step of the process up to and including mixing. Keeping track of your 'Crest factor' while mixing for example is usually not something I feel is necessarily conducive to enhancing the overall artistic intent or presentation of musical ideas. But as with anything in music production tools are just tools, there's no wrong or right, use your ears and if it sounds good it is good XD Anywhoooooooo
EDIT
14:30 This is the most coherent argument for why a vinyl master could potentially sound better than a streaming file or glass stamper. In dance music there are some processing holdovers that stem from the vinyl days that are still routine today like mid/side processing of the sub bass to play nice on subwoofer heavy club speakers that, originally, were meant to keep the needle from jumping out of the groove. But yeah, good point ;D
@jmos96: ❤️❤️❤️❤️
@staffordcrombie566: I have many different headphones, some for classical, rock, rap, EDM ,Jazz etc. select what ever please you that applies to speakers too.
@wesleyleigh4063: I personally am not fussed by excessive limiting/ clipping, having listened to it for most my life (i'm 30 now). Heck i'll even seek it out on occasion, because even though it's often a diabolical combination of a few compressors, or even a rather clean but now very common limiter like Pro L2 or Ozone (or one of the others, frankly the point isn't the sonic signature per se but the nature of the limiting comparted to oldschool hardware limiters) because I crave that almost expert or elaborate, gymnastic even flatness. Yes, there is a downside, and its so heavily source or genre dependent, but there's a reason for instance why Electric guitars or distorted 808s are so popular beside the historical precedence and colourful tonality - it's because they are a wall of sound. Something you didn't quite render is that when you compress or limit something, albeit excessively you bring out the timbre and frequencies, not to mention bombard the brain with the sound, absolutely again it's excessive to some or most, and it's essentially applying an unreal filter over things, but in certain cases it elevates the sound and overall makes it an experience over a casual or relaxed enjoyment.
@shroud1390: Good thing most of my music is from the 80s-90s. I think it’s because you are right about the loudness war.
@gtv4264: Very good😂😂😢👍
@rickmilam413: My God, you paint with a wide brush. There are plenty of good recordings being made today. Admittedly mostly not by the big record labels for the hip hop and pop happening but not only do you ignore those but you ignore what I consider the beginning of the drek, which is heavy compression. A good friend of mine is Joe Harley, the "Tone Poet" at Blue Note. If you think that Joe does what you're describing in his efforts with Kevin Grey or his own productions you're sadly mistaken. Nor do most of the reissues done by Chad Kassem. Admittedly I listen to a lot of classical and jazz plus blues and rock, most recorded before 1995. But listen to one of Diana Krall's pretty mainstream albums and tell me it sounds like what you're describing (not a huge Kiana Krall fan but that's irrelevant). I guess this kind of hyperbole works for Youtube views but I won't be back. I've been in the business for a long time myself. I'm 70. You either started very young or look fantastic for your age if you were doing it in the 60's.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @rickmilam413: I paint with a roller.
@AnthonyToth-t5v: So basically even if you have a £1000 hifi or £10000 hifi it’ll never be as good as the source at hand
@robertforrestmontreal7707: Ok get what your saying about pop and rock I assume Classical and jazz ( traditional ) are not using this? What's what I listen to post 1995.
@tbcblues: Good Discussion - All I know is that I have over 5000 CDs in my collection and maybe there are 100 or 200 of them that I consider to be superior recordings. And all my stereo gear is definitely pre-1995!
@antonioser183: Californication described 😓
@anythingbox: I've gone back to beautiful dynamics, less limiting, absolutely no clipping per track, etc. It takes the emotion away from the music. And I make electronic music, what might be the worst culprit in the loudness war casualties from 1994-Present Day. But I refuse to sound 'like that" as you put it. Brilliant take.
By the way. I get frustrated when people say vinyl 'sounds better than CDs' because as you said, this is largely due to the fact that one cannot push vinyl to be as loud as a CD. But dear God... If you leave the dynamics in a CD alone, and you pretend you are mastering a piece of vinyl instead? You can play that CD and turn up the volume on your stereo and blow windows out gloriously with the thump of a kick drum. Loudness should occur with the volume knob, not already as a square wave making one's ears bleed.
@alienationzone: I needed to hear this..