Audio Science review of Music ... any options or standards?

[JeremyFife]

Totally subjective so maybe this forum is not the best place for it.

All that matters is how it sounds to you and if you enjoy it. No one can tell you what you hear or like. There is no measurement. There is no science. Yes, the loudness wars screwed up a lot of good music. So did the first generation 14 bit Sony mastering, so did a a lot of poor mixing engineers.

Source is what it is. A lot of the high bit rate downloads are just resamples and "fake" They sound no better. Some are well done from the original master tapes. Some are modern all digital. Read the label.

Not sure I agree with "source is what it is". Remastering effectively creates a new source, but it's difficult to know what the differences are, or if they are "resampled fakes" (as you put it). That's the point of my question

 

[ADU]

Although we may not have objective standards to evaluate recordings (dang, wouldn't that nice?), you *can* use a bit of the knowledge that ASR provides when doing your own evaluation.

One thing that comes to mind is level matching. This would particularly apply to different masterings of the same performance, but also has some application to different recordings of the same composition (classical music). Just knowing that louder sounds better (all other things being equal) can put you on the alert so that you aren't unduly swayed by the volume level.

If you are listening to a remastering of the same performance, you can try to level match before deciding whether the spiffy new version actually sounds better than the dusty old original. If you are listening to two different recordings of the same composition, you can't exactly level match, but you can try to get close, or at least play around with the volume control. Just being conscious of the fact that louder sounds better can help you avoid being fooled.

An interesting idea. I think there are some apps that will also attempt to "undo" the dynamic range compression and other loudness enhancement on some recordings as well. How well they may work, I can't say.

I'm not sure that it really makes sense though to level match two different recordings with different DRC and loudness though. Because the more compressed recordings are, I believe, intentionally designed more for use on inferior gear (think the speakers on a laptop or desktop system) with poorer peak and transient performance than the full range recordings. And a volume control is really about all you should generally need to compensate for this on your audiophile gear.

Full range recordings (with less DRC) will give you a more dynamic performance at or near reference volumes on your higher fidelity gear though. So those are generally preferred by most audiophiles. And when looking at the waveforms, it isn't usually that difficult to tell which ones have the greater dynamic range, and which do not (and have been "brick-walled" with DRC or other loudness enhancement).

I suppose it is possible though for full range recordings to be "faked" or reverse-engineered from an inferior compressed recording though. So would not discount that as being a possibility as well.

 

[ADU]

Here's the kind of thing I'm wrestling with: Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (chosen at random, widely available, feted as good to own on vinyl and clearly well suited to digital).

First off, I listen to it because I like it (also like rock, blues, folk, jazz, string quartets and full-blown baroque orchestras ... I just like music). I don't own this on vinyl, I had it on CD (gone now) and I now stream it on Amazon HD - sounds great.

#1 https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=&album=random+access+memories
Shows a huge variation between 24 different versions

#2 https://magicvinyldigital.net/2022/...access-memories-review-lp-qobuz-tidal-amazon/
Compares 5 versions and seems to say that the 4 digital sources compared have been compressed to the detriment of the music. Vinyl has the expected higher noise and attenuated high and bass frequencies, but not the compression. (I do *not* read this as saying vinyl is better)

I'm interested in how my equipment measures. I'm interested in how my room measures. I am learning more about measuring so that I can start correcting / adjusting / EQ ing ... all this in the name of my hobby of enjoying music.

Seems like there is a gap in the measurement of the audio file that I choose to play. Why go to the effort of choosing good gear and then play any old mince (Scottish term) on it!

I understand the process of choosing vinyl; researching the mastering engineer, the pressing plant, the (subjective) opinions of others. I have no clue how do do this for digital releases, or even how to tell what version is available for streaming or download. It's a new thing to learn, and that's exciting.

Is there any appetite for a dedicated forum on this site? I'm not qualified to run it but some of you guys may be?

Disclaimer: I make no comment on the "music", that's subjective and personal and I like it that way

You will get different opinions on the best approaches to equalizing your setups, depending on who you talk to. Some like using a mic and calibrating to a specific in-room response curve. And I think there can be times when an approach like this may be warranted.

As a general rule though, I tend to fall into the Floyd Toole camp, and think that the most useful application of EQ is to fix or improve the errors or imbalances in a speaker's direct or on-axis response. Which is something that you can generally get some ideas about from looking at the spinorama, and anechoic measurements of a speaker (rather than the in-room, in situ, or off-axis measurements).

People like to measure things for themselves though. So using the existing spinorama measurements and anechoic data from other reliable sources probably goes somewhat against most tweaker's general instincts or impulses. Which is understandable.