Audio Quality in Streaming media

[Cote Dazur]

This video about Streaming media, but not only, is so well made, it is worth listening to if you are streaming audio. Put a fresh perspective I have never seen before.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Put a fresh perspective I have never seen before.

As of September 2013.

 

[AudiOhm]

Almost 10 years old, some don't get out enough...

Ohms

 

[Deleted member 46664]

This is the same discussion from a different perspective...

 

[Cote Dazur]

As of September 2013.

So what as changed then, are you saying part or all of what is presented is not accurate anymore?
All streaming is lossless and there is no changes on original encoding anymore?

 

[AudiOhm]

We have all seen this video for the last 10 years.

"Put a fresh perspective I have never seen before."

Why not post your analysis of the video...

Ohms

 

[Jmudrick]

So what as changed then, are you saying part or all of what is presented is not accurate anymore?
All streaming is lossless and there is no changes on original encoding anymore?

Well Tidal, Apple, Amazon, Qobuz , Deezer all offer lossless, AFAIK Spotify and SoundCloud are the holdouts.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

So what as changed then, are you saying part or all of what is presented is not accurate anymore?

I don't know but it certainly ain't "fresh" any more.

 

[Cote Dazur]

I don't know but it certainly ain't "fresh" any more.

You are right, not fresh in the fact that it is from some time ago, but fresh to me, and possibly to other, who like me had never seen it before, never seen that way of describing what happen when going lossy and the relation to emotion and possible fatigue when listening.
I believe most is still relevant even though lossless streaming is more broadly available, for a fee. But with lossy streaming, still hugely popular, if will help some, like it did for me, understand why we are hearing what we are hearing. The bit on the challenge and necessary choices for music producer to have something sounding good on the different digital media is also enlightening. Some comments on what happens to stereo image with different encoding was also quite captivating.

 

[pseudoid]

Ain't nothing wrong with a historical perspective, no matter how recent or old it is.
Not many say old about Floyd Toole's book!

 

[BeerBear]

I stopped watching at some point, because I didn't hear anything interesting and he exaggerates and speculates too much. Missing letters, fuzzy stairsteps... please.
Look, I'm all for lossless music, but lossy at a decent rate is not that bad and it's not what's stopping most people from enjoying music.

And it's ironic that Andrew Scheps would whine about audio quality, when he's one of the two guys responsible for making Death Magnetic so unbearably compressed/loud (it's either him or Greg Fidelman, or both). Does he at any point in the video apologize for that?
Crappy music production is a way bigger problem than lossy compression.

 

[Cote Dazur]

This is the same discussion from a different perspective...

That was excellent, thank you for sharing, there is a lot going on, makes me think we are sometime looking for solutions to issue we can hear at the wrong place.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

That was excellent, thank you for sharing,

You're welcome ....

there is a lot going on, makes me think we are sometime looking for solutions to issue we can hear at the wrong place.

We are all slaves to our source recordings ...
I don't care how much your system is worth, how resolving it is, how carefully EQed it is... a crap source is going to sound like a crap source.

A Musical Dark Age

Look what they've done to my song

dbpages.ca

 

[Cote Dazur]

We are all slaves to our source recordings ...

Yes, the recordings and where (“the room”) we listen to our speakers has always been the main differentiator, everything else very distant possible influencers, but this whole lossy business compounded on the streaming business is a real mess, from what I can see, yet seems to go under the radar of so many.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Yes, the recordings and where (“the room”) we listen to our speakers has always been the main differentiator, everything else very distant possible influencers, but this whole lossy business compounded on the streaming business is a real mess, from what I can see, yet seems to go under the radar of so many.

Of course it goes unnoticed by the average Joe ... he doesn't care crap about it, he just wants some distraction.

So much of today's music is just garbage ...

 

[Cote Dazur]

So much of today's music is just garbage ...

It is something I often wonder about, my lack of interest for most, if not all, 'new" music.
I somehow concluded that my lack of feeling was most likely due to me being a boomer, that somehow talent and inspiration was not what it has been or just a lack of interest in music from the younger generations leading to a very uninteresting music.
But, I am starting to think that the biggest cause might be because of the way music is produced/distributed.
It has nothing to do with the digital side of it, it is because of the way it is fed to us. As mentioned in the my OP video, so much is removed by what happens to the file on its way to our speakers/ears, that at best it is exhausting just trying to make sense of it and at worst, all the emotion is gone leaving us with nothing, as what is music if not the language of emotion?

 

[Deleted member 46664]

As is said in my article ...
"But, the truth is that when I listen to today's popular music, I don't get it. I can't connect with it. In fact, it doesn't really sound like music to me at all. It lacks the range and feeling, the humanity, of older music. It strikes me as aggressive and over produced. It comes off as mechanical and stilted. It drills itself into my ears and usually the session ends with a headache."

These are largely artifacts of quantization, auto-tune, excessive compression and limiting. Every note is precisely on the beat, every note is precisely on pitch then it is compressed so that every note is equally loud and it is limited so that every note is as loud as possible. That is the stuff of machines not people. The humanity is being totally stripped away from music (and not a few other things, for that matter).

My music collection currently spans 1960 to 1990 ... before that, bad sound quality... after that even worse production quality.

And I find it totally ironic that the first medium with more dynamic range than actual music is being used to deliver the least.

 

[pseudoid]

So much of today's music is just garbage ...

This attitude has not changed in the half-century! imo
Like food, foraging for music has its rewards.
Categorically dismissing 'new music' as garbage is demeaning to the to the chain of artist who attempt to deliver it to my conscience!
Heaven forbid, I choose not to be force-fed thru an algorithm that is willing to do the 'foraging" on my behalf.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

This attitude has not changed in the half-century! imo
Like food, foraging for music has its rewards.
Categorically dismissing 'new music' as garbage is demeaning to the to the chain of artist who attempt to deliver it to my conscience!
Heaven forbid, I choose not to be force-fed thru an algorithm that is willing to do the 'foraging" on my behalf.

Read this... watch the videos... then get back to me...

A Musical Dark Age

Look what they've done to my song

dbpages.ca

 

[Doodski]

This is the same discussion from a different perspective...

@ the beginning he states that YouTube is using auto volume levelling. I don't hear that happening when I play the 2847 YouTube bookmarked music files I have. It's ridiculous how some of the tracks are reallly loud and others pretty low level.