Why many modern CDs sound so bad...

[Rudy]

The loudness wars are something we've complained about here occasionally at the Corner. Here is a YouTube clip that demonstrates the maximization and compression I've mentioned in the past that ruins many modern recordings and remasters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Most new "popular" CDs are mastered using a "brick wall" digital compression that sucks even more life out of the music, similar to the example in this clip.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

That clip is fantastic, Neil. It demonstrates the problems inherent in compression brilliantly.

I'll never understand how compression became so popular. The rule is that if it's too quiet for you, turn it up. LOL! Simple, no? I almost never use any compression when I master. I'll only use it if the sound is wildly uneven (it does happen but it's rare). Maximizing doesn't bother me so much. It enables the mastering engineer to even things out a bit. Compression, however, is the root of all audio evil.

Ed

 

[Dave]

Yes, from the way the "Sound Clip" even sounded Bad...

I really thought the "In Thing" was Expansion--and would ALWAYS be... Not so, with Digital Audio...!



Dave

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

I haven't heard much in the way of expansion but it absolutely does come in handy when you're dealing with those old '70's analog reels. The popular thing at that point was the "muddy" sound - you know: drums like cardboard, everything else practically mono-fied, etc. In order to spread that stuff out, you almost have no choice but to expand.

Ed

 

[Rudy]

That clip is fantastic, Neil. It demonstrates the problems inherent in compression brilliantly.

I'll never understand how compression became so popular. The rule is that if it's too quiet for you, turn it up. LOL! Simple, no? I almost never use any compression when I master. I'll only use it if the sound is wildly uneven (it does happen but it's rare). Maximizing doesn't bother me so much. It enables the mastering engineer to even things out a bit. Compression, however, is the root of all audio evil.

Ed

You've got it!

It is very common to use compression in multitrack recording of popular music--I'd say just about everything popular uses it, sometimes just to even out the volume level of a particular performer, or sometimes as a creative effect. (Would "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen or "Land of 1000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett be the same without all of that limiter splatter? Would "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles be the same without all that "pumping"? )

It's the "brick wall" digital filtering in CD mastering that really gets to me. One great example is David Benoit's CDs on GRP. Grab one of his earlier CDs and it's mastered nicely. As the years go on, and I rip tracks from CDs in chronological order, there's more and more brick-walling done, to the point where Fuzzy Logic has the top of the waveforms completely clipped off, and the music sounds all crammed up. When I made CD compilations, I had to drop the level of the two latest CDs by 5 to 6dB to get them to match the levels of the earlier tracks!

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

I only ever use compression if I'm recording vocals. As you say, it "evens out" the overall sound of the vocal and it makes it easier when you start mixing. If you don't compress, you end up gain riding during automation and it drives you nuts. As long as you're a "soft touch" with the compression, it doesn't hurt a thing.

Most R&B recordings made today fall victim to the "brick wall" filtering you mention. Cymbals are not supposed to be the same level as snare drums. Duh! LOL!! You also hear it in digital remasters. I hear compression all over Carpenters "The Singles" SACD. Take a listen. Right after the second round of "On the day that you were born...and starlight in your eyes of blue", listen to the dead space before the verse comes in. You'll hear that awful compression "pumping". It's extremely annoying to my engineer ears and, once I noticed it, I started hearing it in most of the other songs as well. At this point, I can no longer listen to the disc.

Ed

 

[Rudy]

I hear compression all over Carpenters "The Singles" SACD. Take a listen. Right after the second round of "On the day that you were born...and starlight in your eyes of blue", listen to the dead space before the verse comes in. You'll hear that awful compression "pumping". It's extremely annoying to my engineer ears and, once I noticed it, I started hearing it in most of the other songs as well. At this point, I can no longer listen to the disc.

I'll have to listen for that next time.

I know what you mean about the way some discs sound, which sort of taints the experience. Even on reissues. Plenty of examples, too. I have collected a few of Perez Prado's CDs. As I like his earlier recordings quite a bit, it was neat to find a small label, Tumbao Cuban Classics, that pretty much just transfered things as-is and they sounded decent. These recordings date back to about 1948-1952, so you can imagine the overall sound. RCA's Latin division released some titles as well (RCA Tropical Series). Most are pretty good, but one of the compilations of the same earlier material that Tumbao released sounds horrid--someone slapped a lot of EQ on it, and put (most likely) digital reverb on top of it. So, you not only have something that is overly bright and boomy, it has two mismatched reverbs working against each other! Even if the Tumbao CDs sound a little more distant, they're still easier on the ears.

And back to A&M: one of the worst-sounding CDs I own is the Brasil '66 "Fool On The Hill", on the Rebound label. Noise reduction? Oh yeah. It's bad. If I sent you a WAV of it, you'd hear it right away. In fact, it almost sounds like the old analog hiss reduction I've heard in the past--there's much pumping and breathing, noticeable in songs like "Festa" where you go from an uptempo section to a quiet passage--it's like the sound sort of closes in on itself. But, you know what I mean...

Just curious, Ed: what music do you engineer? I had a cousin in "the biz" in Nashville, but he's retired. The studio stuff always fascinated me.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

All of the Alan Parsons Project CDs are being remastered, bonus tracks added and artwork restored, and all being released starting in March. They're coming out in waves of 3, similar to the Alpert releases. If anyone can do a remaster right, it's Alan Parsons....I'm anxious to hear them.

 

[Rudy]

Mike--if you had a surround system, you should hear his quad mix of Dark Side Of The Moon. It got "unofficially" released as a DVD-Audio title after the SACD version was released, which also has Dolby Digital and DTS versions on the disc as well (so most DVD players can play it).

 

[Mike]

I’m about to spend a few bucks on some classical music that is a TELARC product. Their claim to fame is their recording techniques and their natural sound. Do any of you guys have an opinion on TELARC’s sound engineering and the quality of their CDs?

Regards,
Mike

 

[Captain Bacardi]

A couple of years ago a buddy of mine had a copy of Mix magazine, and there was an article called "Why The New Rush Album Sucks". They compared the sound waves from an earlier Rush album that had all of the peaks and valleys, then showed the new album where the waves looked like a brick wall.

It just bores my ears to hear these new CDs. I had bought some new stuff by JJ Cale & Eric Clapton, KT Tunstall and Neko Case. The first thing I noticed was that I had to turn the volume knob way, way down to listen to these. It's too bad, since some of these songs are actually pretty good but the recordings sound awful. Add insult to injury when radio stations run these CDs through their compressors as well.




Capt. Bacardi

 

[Dave]

...Back to A&M: One of the worst-sounding CDs I own is the Brasil '66 Fool On The Hill, on the Rebound label...

Second should be the Wes Montgomery A&M releases on CD; especially the Rebound-reissued Down Here On The Ground... They sound so Overly-Compressed, it's as though "Wes Montgomery" and "on CD" are a "Worst Combination"... The sound really seems to be so "Stuffed-In"...!

You really hear a bit of a difference when you listen to the cuts that made it to the "Expanded Edition" of Wes Montgomery's Greatest Hits; --Backlot Series...



Dave

 

[Rudy]

I’m about to spend a few bucks on some classical music that is a TELARC product. Their claim to fame is their recording techniques and their natural sound. Do any of you guys have an opinion on TELARC’s sound engineering and the quality of their CDs?

Telarc classical? I only have one recent disc--the hybrid SACD with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "American In Paris", and Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture", the infamous recording with the cannons. (Jeez...even at medium volume, my power amp is stressed out! ) Most of my Telarc classical discs are from the mid 90s or earlier, and they all sound fine. I don't think you could go wrong!

Actually, if you want some well-recorded classical, I can also recommend the old RCA Living Stereo titles which are available on hybrid SACD. You can still play them on your standard CD player, of course, but since you can often find them under $10, there are some classic performances there that have been around for 40-50 years or more. You wouldn't know it from listening! They're nicely mastered, and the ones I own sound very good. There are about 40 titles out now, IIRC--I have most (or all) of them listed here:

http://astore.amazon.com/nipperstore-20/104-1818565-0247945?_encoding=UTF8&node=9

I think the only nitpicking I could do about a couple of my classical CDs is the interpretation. But that's a whole different topic.

 

[Rudy]

It just bores my ears to hear these new CDs. I had bought some new stuff by JJ Cale & Eric Clapton, KT Tunstall and Neko Case. The first thing I noticed was that I had to turn the volume knob way, way down to listen to these. It's too bad, since some of these songs are actually pretty good but the recordings sound awful. Add insult to injury when radio stations run these CDs through their compressors as well.

I hear ya. And I'd heard the same about that Rush CD too. I think the Donald Fagen CD/DVD-A combo sounds a little different between discs: the CD seems to be a bit "smashed", but the DVD-A sounds less restricted and more open. The LP is supposed to be quite good--if it weren't $35, I'd have had it by now. Pretty sad when you sometimes have to go backward to an older format (vinyl) to hear what the music sounds like! *sigh*

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I saw a thing in the newspaper a week or so ago about a turntable with a USB connector on it that plugs into a PC for LP needle drops. I wonder if it's any good.

Amazon has a page about it. The thing is only $149 so it's probably no great shakes as a turntable...but the USB connectivity would be great.

 

[Rudy]

I'd worry more about it tearing up my vinyl. Then again, how good can it sound when one unit has a turntable, a phono preamp AND an analog-to-digital converter all in one unit? Convenient, but I don't think I'd play anything valuable on it.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I have a very nice old Technics turntable that I use for needledrops. It's a 70s relic, a direct drive with the heavy metal platter. It works well, except the variable speed controls are starting to give out...it's got the strobe so it's easy to tell when it's going the right speed, but it's VERY touchy. I need to find a new cartridge for it - the one I have is getting a lot of miles on it.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

I know what you mean about the way some discs sound, which sort of taints the experience. Even on reissues. Plenty of examples, too. I have collected a few of Perez Prado's CDs. As I like his earlier recordings quite a bit, it was neat to find a small label, Tumbao Cuban Classics, that pretty much just transfered things as-is and they sounded decent. These recordings date back to about 1948-1952, so you can imagine the overall sound. RCA's Latin division released some titles as well (RCA Tropical Series). Most are pretty good, but one of the compilations of the same earlier material that Tumbao released sounds horrid--someone slapped a lot of EQ on it, and put (most likely) digital reverb on top of it. So, you not only have something that is overly bright and boomy, it has two mismatched reverbs working against each other! Even if the Tumbao CDs sound a little more distant, they're still easier on the ears.

Adding reverb in the remaster? Who on Earth would do that? A remastering engineer should never call attention to himself. If he's done his job, you shouldn't even notice him. Adding reverb calls attention to the remastering process and that's a big no-no.

And back to A&M: one of the worst-sounding CDs I own is the Brasil '66 "Fool On The Hill", on the Rebound label. Noise reduction? Oh yeah. It's bad. If I sent you a WAV of it, you'd hear it right away. In fact, it almost sounds like the old analog hiss reduction I've heard in the past--there's much pumping and breathing, noticeable in songs like "Festa" where you go from an uptempo section to a quiet passage--it's like the sound sort of closes in on itself. But, you know what I mean...

I have a Chuck Mangione album on Rebound ("Fun & Games") that's just as bad. Hiss reduction is bad. It renders the finished product utterly cold and lifeless. I'd much rather have hiss and full frequency response than no hiss.

Just curious, Ed: what music do you engineer? I had a cousin in "the biz" in Nashville, but he's retired. The studio stuff always fascinated me.

To be honest, I haven't done any engineering in about 3 months. I've mostly stuck to just restoring and remastering old 2-inch and 1/2 inch. When I was doing it, I really only did Jazz and things of that sort. Maybe I'll get back to doing that at some point but I'm really enjoying the restoration process.

Ed

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

I'd worry more about it tearing up my vinyl. Then again, how good can it sound when one unit has a turntable, a phono preamp AND an analog-to-digital converter all in one unit? Convenient, but I don't think I'd play anything valuable on it.

Amen to that. I would never go down this road. I always avoid anything that says "all-in-one". Yeah, it might be easier but it's likely to destroy anything played on it. I also have to wonder how good the preamp and the converters would be.

Ed

 

[Rudy]

I have a very nice old Technics turntable that I use for needledrops. It's a 70s relic, a direct drive with the heavy metal platter. It works well, except the variable speed controls are starting to give out...it's got the strobe so it's easy to tell when it's going the right speed, but it's VERY touchy. I need to find a new cartridge for it - the one I have is getting a lot of miles on it.

I would bet that the controls are oxidized. If you are up for disassembling the unit, a can of Caig "DeoxIt" (a deoxidizing cleaner spray) would help clean up those controls, along with anything else that has gotten noisy (volume and balance controls in particular).

Cartridge? My favorite has been discontinued, as have the replacement stylii for it. (Once the eBayers found out, they hoarded Shure and pretty much bought out everything, and now sell them for far more than the list price.) If you want a great budget cart that should track just about anything you throw at it, hunt down an Audio-Technica AT440MLa. The ML (MicroLine) stylus will really cut down on that inner-groove distortion, and you'll just about eliminate the silibance (the splattered cymbals and "S" vocal sounds). It lists for $219, but it is heavily discounted to around $80-$90 online. (The "a" is a model revision--it is not as bright as past A-T cartridges are.) Shure's M97XE is decent, but is only an elliptical stylus, so it won't track as well. I think you can find these for around $60 online.

My Shure V15VMR is still working well, but I'm at a loss to find a replacement down the line. A-T's AT150MLX might be an option, or I might even try the AT-OC9ML/II, which is a moving coil cart...but I'd need to find the step-up amplifier kit for my preamp since its output is about 1/10th that of a standard moving magnet cartridge (like all the others listed).

 

[Dave]

Well, with the discontinuation of certain Cartridges (or at least an increase in price for most needles) even for fairly common Technics turntables, such as mine, I guess I will mostly have my Amp. set on "CD", as opposed to "Phono", in that case...

It's a wonder after paying $20+-dollars for a new needle each year, I can take my latest one, which I've had for the past 5-to-6-years in to be "annually cleaned" and it still plays decent and, most of all, be safe for playing my records on...



Dave

 

[Andrew T.]

Even when I was just starting to get into music seven years ago and knew nothing of the issues at hand, I noticed that the newest CD releases tended to sound needlessly louder and less dynamic than titles from just a few years earlier. It's a shame that so much recent popular music has never been issued in any form that isn't an ear-bleeder.

Here are some sample waveforms from CDs released in 1983, 1993, and 2004:

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

If you want non-compressed versions of current albums, hunt down the vinyl.

Ed

 

[Rudy]

If you want non-compressed versions of current albums, hunt down the vinyl.

I guess I'm lucky I don't care for most "modern" albums. And there are few that chart that have vinyl versions available. Some non-mainstream albums I like did come out on vinyl, like Donald Fagen's "Morph The Cat." Still need to grab that one. Many CD reissues seem to get everything down OK, but others are like what Andrew posted, especially if they are pop/rock recordings. I think Sony Legacy knows better than to "smash" a Miles Davis album. Then again...

Even when I was just starting to get into music seven years ago and knew nothing of the issues at hand, I noticed that the newest CD releases tended to sound needlessly louder and less dynamic than titles from just a few years earlier. It's a shame that so much recent popular music has never been issued in any form that isn't an ear-bleeder.

I noticed around 1992 that some recordings were coming out that had a "forced' sound to them. As I owned a DAT deck, I watched the meters during a digital transfer from CD to DAT, and noticed the meters "slamming" into 0dB, unlike the earlier CDs, and my own analog transfers, where the levels just "teased" the 0dB mark. I did mention this in a Compuserve forum I was in, and a mastering engineer (Glenn Meadows, who was with Masterfonics in Nashville back then) confirmed that this was a new (and disturbing!) trend that was getting worse as time went on. He didn't like it either, but his decisions came from the artists, managers or producers...they weren't his choices. This "smashing" has gotten far worse than what I saw in 1992. *sigh*

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I got the upgrade versions of Santana's third album and the Elton John "Captain Fantastic" album. Both sound really good to me, but then that Santana has always sounded pretty good, even in its initial Cd release from way back when.

I still hold hope for the new Alan Parsons remasters coming out starting in the spring....they're bound to sound great!