Review of the Dire Straits album Money For Nothing with comparison between CD, Cd remastered in 1996, streaming and vinyl of the new 2022 remastering

[Newman]

Better still just drop it altogether. I mean it literally: it would be an overall improvement.

As for the waveform plots, show them on a sample-by-sample scale. Show us the evidence of how many consecutive sample clips are needed for it to be an audible problem. Give us reason to think there is more to this than not liking the ‘look’, literally the appearance, of a whole-song waveform crushed into a few cm of screen width. Here is a well-informed analysis by an audio engineer, link.

 

[levimax]

Better still just drop it altogether. I mean it literally: it would be an overall improvement.

As for the waveform plots, show them on a sample-by-sample scale. Show us the evidence of how many consecutive sample clips are needed for it to be an audible problem. Give us reason to think there is more to this than not liking the ‘look’, literally the appearance, of a whole-song waveform crushed into a few cm of screen width.

I am not sure why you are so against the DR tool. It is not perfect but either is anything else including SINAD, THD, IMD, SNR or any other measurement for that matter. They all show "something" but no one single number can be reliably used as a simple "higher is better" type of analysis. To me it seems the problem you are objecting to is the way the way the tool is being used by some people to push an oversimplified analysis of sound quality, fair enough, but it doesn't seem to me that is a reason to completely dismiss it's value and the value of having a free database available. I play around a lot with different mastering's and analyze them with objective tools and try to corelate that to ABX listening. I find the DR tool as good as any other tool and there are certainly "edge cases" where it can be unreliable but for the majority of cases it correlates quite well with Lufs and is also fairly reliable at giving a general idea about the "style" of the recording and mastering. How that relates to sound quality and personal preference is the complicated part and no one number is going to be very useful.

 

[krabapple]

Also pretty useless as a tool for measuring 'dynamic range' of 5.1 audio releases. Of which I have many.

 

[Newman]

I am not sure why you are so against the DR tool. …

Please don’t be disingenuous. Read my posts in this thread, including links to my posts in other threads, which take the reader directly to extended to-and-fro between me and you where I expanded in great detail to you the many reasons why it’s a broken tool when used for this particular purpose, including links to evidence provided by others.

So don’t come and tell me that you are not sure why.

 

[BDWoody]

In the future, they will be the electric car version of the car boot sale- the 'frunk sale'.

You can find some good deals that way!

'Irreplaceable' vinyl records sold at Rowsley car boot by mistake

A relative was storing the records while Rohan Mellor moved house, but they got mixed up.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[levimax]

Please don’t be disingenuous. Read my posts in this thread, including links to my posts in other threads, which take the reader directly to extended to-and-fro between me and you where I expanded in great detail to you the many reasons why it’s a broken tool when used for this particular purpose, including links to evidence provided by others.

So don’t come and tell me that you are not sure why.

It was a genuine question. I guess in order to "settle" this question we would need a large amount of properly generated data showing correlations between the same music mastered to different DR Scores and Lufs scores against listener preference. Unfortunately I don't think this exists.

Would you agree that regardless of listener preference that a dynamically compressed versions of a song has discarded information as compared to an original uncompressed version?

 

[MajorMajorMajorMajor]

Hello,

Here's the comparison of album Money For Nothing between CD (1988), CD (1996), Qobuz 2022 remastered ( 24 bits 192 kHz) and Vinyl.

View attachment 213572

This album is an example of the impact that remastering can have on compression.
The compression increases with each new remastering as shown in the graph below:

View attachment 213571

To get an idea of the impact when listening, you can listen to the samples at 3 levels of compression and vinyl, and find all the measurements (DR, Spectrum, waveform...) here.

The original CD remains the best version despite the Qobuz streaming version in 24 bits 192 kHz.

that just looks like you cropped out the bottom and top. I'm suspicious.

 

[Jimbob54]

that just looks like you cropped out the bottom and top. I'm suspicious.

Why on earth would anyone do that?

 

[Robin L]

It was a genuine question. I guess in order to "settle" this question we would need a large amount of properly generated data showing correlations between the same music mastered to different DR Scores and Lufs scores against listener preference. Unfortunately I don't think this exists.

Would you agree that regardless of listener preference that a dynamically compressed versions of a song has discarded information as compared to an original uncompressed version?

Not if that difference is due to extra bass not found in previous iterations/masterings from the source tape. If there is more deep bass in a remaster one can expect less measured dynamic difference.

 

[levimax]

Not if that difference is due to extra bass not found in previous iterations of the source tape. If there is more deep bass in a remaster one can expect less measured dynamic difference.

Ok yes, but there is a lot more compression going on with the remasters mentioned in this thread .. it is not just extra bass. To me it seems like Lufs is a better way to measure loudness but my experience is there is a strong correlation with the free DR meter. While I agree graphs and DR and Lufs look much worse than audibility I am surprised about the push back on this site that a clearly measurable degradation of the original recording is "ok"?

 

[Robin L]

Ok yes, but there is a lot more compression going on with the remasters mentioned in this thread .. it is not just extra bass. To me it seems like Lufs is a better way to measure loudness but my experience is there is a strong correlation with the free DR meter. While I agree graphs and DR and Lufs look much worse than audibility I am surprised about the push back on this site that a clearly measurable degradation of the original recording is "ok"?

I'm fortunate in listening mostly to music that is intended to be recorded/reproduced with some dynamics. In the battle for sales that is pop music, I don't care. "Audiophiles" can fret about dynamic difference in the fifth remaster of something that hit the charts more than 30 years ago, but frankly, I don't give a damn,

 

[levimax]

I'm fortunate in listening mostly to music that is intended to be recorded/reproduced with some dynamics. In the battle for sales that is pop music, I don't care. "Audiophiles" can fret about dynamic difference in the fifth remaster of something that hit the charts more than 30 years ago, but frankly, I don't give a damn,

30 to 50 years ago a lot of pop music was also recorded and reproduced with some dynamics, Dire Straits being a good example. You better watch out. .. Kind of Blue or the 1812 overture might not sound so great with a DR of 4.

 

[Robin L]

30 to 50 years ago a lot of pop music was also recorded and reproduced with some dynamics, Dire Straits being a good example. You better watch out. .. Kind of Blue or the 1812 overture might not sound so great with a DR of 4.

Look, I've got recordings enough. There will be people who'll brickwall anything---call it operator error if you will. If the public wants it, the public wants it. What sells sells. This is a non-issue for me and I suspect most people aren't even aware of it anyway. And a LOT of music was compressed and limited to death 30 to 100 years ago. Why? Because people buy it.

 

[MajorMajorMajorMajor]

Why on earth would anyone do that?

I mean I know. I don’t know. I’m just saying would the “bricking” think people are talking about look that exact? I mean like is there NOT a BLIP above the line?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Look, I've got recordings enough. There will be people who brickwall anything---call it operator error if you will. If the public wants it, the public wants it. What sells sells. This is a non-issue for me and I suspect most people aren't aware of it anyway. And a LOT of music over has been compressed and limited to death 30 to 100 years ago. Why? Because people buy it.

Without an alternative you can't be sure what the public wants. It wants to hear Adele. If all of her albums are squashed that doesn't mean the public wants it squashed the main thing is it is Adele. If it weren't squashed they might like it better or not.

 

[Robin L]

Without an alternative you can't be sure what the public wants. It wants to hear Adele. If all of her albums are squashed that doesn't mean the public wants it squashed the main thing is it is Adele. If it weren't squashed they might like it better or not.

There might be Adele recordings with full dynamics in the future. But a lack of dynamics seems built into her formula. We're talking about a singer probably most heard over earbuds or in a car. Wanna rant over autotune? Tough luck. It is what it is.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Something just came to mind, when were general pop recordings out with the most DR or Lufs or whatever measure you prefer? I'd say it was late 1950's to late 1970's. Though I have not done any survey to see if that turns out to be so.

 

[Blumlein 88]

There might be Adele recordings with full dynamics in the future. But a lack of dynamics seems built into her formula. We're talking about a singer probably most heard over earbuds or in a car. Wanna rant over autotune? Tough luck. It is what it is.

I don't listen to auto-tune. So tough luck for anyone wanting me to hear their music if they make that mistake.

 

[Robin L]

Something just came to mind, when were general pop recordings out with the most DR or Lufs or whatever measure you prefer? I'd say it was late 1950's to late 1970's. Though I have not done any survey to see if that turns out to be so.

Nope. Pop hits in the 50's 70's are all over the place, the biggest hits often having the narrowest dynamic range. I listen to that stuff all the time. I also listen to [relatively] uncompressed classical recordings more of the time. There were some pop recordings back during the reign of AM radio with wide dynamic range. But wide dynamic range doesn't work all that well over AM radio, so the answer is "It depends". Mostly the answer is the engineers for radio hits during compressed the shit out of pop. A lot [most] pre-Dolby Classical recordings have compression via gain riding.

The mythical past is just that: a myth.

 

[Robin L]

I don't listen to auto-tune. So tough luck for anyone wanting me to hear their music if they make that mistake.

See what I'm saying? The rules of the game for pop music are: produce what the public wants to buy or stream. And autotune is hot right now.

You might as well rant about serialism in music.