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The Loudness Wars has invaded the streaming services.

firedog

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I say this again (for the n'th time on all forums) a true audiophile streaming service would curate the good masters for us to enjoy .
But that entails manual work and research which costs money .
Do any streaming actually covering their costs these days ? at all ?
It may not matter. Most of them are partially owned by several record labels or other corporate giants. Their royalty payouts go mostly to the owners, who are happy to make gobs of money that way and have the losses show up on the books of the streaming service. It's worth it to them to keep the streaming service afloat.
 
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ThatM1key

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I have an update on the DA music on Tidal. I've been getting DA music ads on fb and other sites. Tidal is doing a bit of false advertising about DA music. I have a quote straight from the horses mouth:

"Dolby Atmos Music allows people to connect with their favorite music in a whole new way, pulling them into a song and revealing what was lost with stereo recordings. Listeners can discover hidden details and subtleties with unparalleled clarity. Whether it’s a complex harmony of instruments placed around a listener, a legendary guitar solo that fills a room, a massive bass drop that washes over the audience, or the subtle breath a singer takes, Dolby Atmos gives music more space and the freedom to unleash every detail and emotion as the artist intended." SRC

Yes DA music is more immersive than stereo but its not lossless. I know we talked about this before but my problem is that Tidal is still telling people that this is lossless. I do know that theres true lossless versions of DA out there but its pretty rare.
 

Dougey_Jones

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So it goes. Buy the newest MQA DAC based on “scientific“ SINAD wars and then use it to stream DR6 music :D

Such a bait post, taking a dig at SINAD being unscientific (it's not) when that's not even being discussed. Definitely pat yourself on the back for this one though.
 

puppet

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I started to notice this with Amazon as well so today I compared a CD with the stream on meters. 30% higher gain with Amazon vs CD.
Was bad enough that I thought it was the speakers ... till I checked. Norah Jones sounded almost blaring on some passages. Nothing like distorted digital files.

Amazon wasn't like this a year ago or even 6mo ago.
 

Dougey_Jones

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Reality check, why would any company optimize the experience for 1% of the population or less, when everyone else is listening to Norah Jones on an Alexa device?
 
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ThatM1key

ThatM1key

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Reality check, why would any company optimize the experience for 1% of the population or less, when everyone else is listening to Norah Jones on an Alexa device?
Nobody would care if it was mp3/ogg quality but since these services promise "High fidelity", I'm going to expect it to sound actually better.
 

Taketheflame

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Reality check, why would any company optimize the experience for 1% of the population or less, when everyone else is listening to Norah Jones on an Alexa device?
Not only that, but it's probably more fair to blame the record labels/rights owners than Amazon (or whichever streaming service being used) - they're the ones that provide the masters after all.

My experience has been that more popular releases are more likely to be a remaster of some sort, and more "obscure" music is more likely to use the original master/safer from loudness war BS.
 
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puppet

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Nobody would care if it was mp3/ogg quality but since these services promise "High fidelity", I'm going to expect it to sound actually better.
My thinking as well. Genre wise, I listen to almost anything but do try to avoid "remasters". With a few exceptions, they never really sound right to me. Which begs the question of "Why bother at all?" I can except a crappy recording for what it is. It's the delivery now that has me questioning a motivation as this issue doesn't seem to differentiate between remasters or original recordings.

After running digital "full up" for quite some time, seems now I have to lower input levels to regain audio quality from the service. I'm not certain how many recordings are being delivered this way now but it does seem to be more than less. Maybe I'm a bit more meticulous of system gain structure than average. When there is a change in source gain it's really apparent. 30% is quite a bit by any standard. We've all heard recordings that walk to the line and cross it. In general, they are clipped and distortion is manageable.

This is a delivery level issue now. If you've ever heard a trumpet player "overblowing" ... that is the condition.
 
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ThatM1key

ThatM1key

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My thinking as well. Genre wise, I listen to almost anything but do try to avoid "remasters". With a few exceptions, they never really sound right to me. Which begs the question of "Why bother at all?" I can except a crappy recording for what it is. It's the delivery now that has me questioning a motivation as this issue doesn't seem to differentiate between remasters or original recordings.

After running digital "full up" for quite some time, seems now I have to lower input levels to regain audio quality from the service. I'm not certain how many recordings are being delivered this way now but it does seem to be more than less. Maybe I'm a bit more meticulous of system gain structure than average. When there is a change in source gain it's really apparent. 30% is quite a bit by any standard. We've all heard recordings that walk to the line and cross it. In general, they are clipped and distortion is manageable.

This is a delivery level issue now. If you've ever heard a trumpet player "overblowing" ... that is the condition.

I only accept modern mainstream music having terrible DR because that's just how it is. Nobody would care about DR if you got the product or service for cheap, they just care about there music. Then there's people (my old self) that thought music on Tidal/Qobuz was better than Spotify and YouTube. The music sounded louder than it should be, looked at direct files and confirmed my thinking. These poor people, thinking there listening to loseless gold while actual listening to HD versions of dog shit. At that point, I would rather listen to that dog shit at a low bitrate on youtube for free. When it comes to Tidal for me. I mix my playlists directly. Sometimes the 1+ DR higher version sounds better and sometimes the Lower DR sounds better. For example 80s country is really affected by this. Same song, many versions. One has a DR of 7 while another has a DR of 12.
 

Dougey_Jones

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I never bought into the MQA hype because I’m technically competent and they never offered an actual explanation regarding where these new digital transfers actually came from. Someone else mentioned AI image enhancement, which I think is an ok analogy, but I honestly don’t even think the story behind MQA is that good, I think it’s just plain old classic bullshit/marketing.

I’m still quite happy with my Spotify Premium Family account (6 premium accounts for $16.99/mo) combined with the thousands of hours of FLAC that I can pull up if I feel like using Foobar. I’m also cautiously optimistic about Spotify HiFi.. all they have to do is deliver red book CD quality FLAC, but streaming, and I’ll gladly pay the premium.
 

levimax

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If DR is important to you, to me while secondary to FR it is one of the keys to the "hi-fi" listening experience, streaming is not really a great option on its own. New music is what it is and streaming is fine but for older dynamically mastered music the streaming services generally offer remastered versions which inevitably mean lower DR and sometime radically lower DR than the original versions. There is an easy and inexpensive solution at least for now which is older original CD's. You can pick up thousands of titles for next to nothing ($1 to $2) at thrifts and for a few dollars more pick up rarer titles for $10 or less on the auction sites. That way you can have the dynamic mastering of you favorite older music and not be beholden to the whims of the streaming services, record labels, MQA, etc.
 
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ThatM1key

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I think of MQA has a SuperMP3 only it has be decoded with hardware for some reason. I really doubt MQA needs hardware to decode.
 

Dougey_Jones

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I think of MQA has a SuperMP3 only it has be decoded with hardware for some reason. I really doubt MQA needs hardware to decode.

MQA is bologna, just ignore it. Levimax is right about buying CD's on the cheap. I've ripped all of mine to FLAC, and acquired those that I couldn't find using less scrupulous.. methods.
 
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brunitou

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The problem is that the vast majority of people listening to music in the environments they usually listen (earbuds outside, in the car, etc.) will actually prefer highly compressed music. The loudness wars are "lost" for those wanting to listen to popular high quality and dynamic recorded music. This was made very clear to me the other day when I was listening to a variety of my favorite music from the 1950's through the 1990's (from my collection of ripped older original CD's) and then put on Paul McCartney's new album. If was a jarring shock how loud is was (DR 7) .... after turning down the volume it sounded "OK" (clear, quiet, no distortion) but the lack of dynamics made it much less interesting to listen to than even recordings from the 1950's even though the music it's self was good. If Paul McCartney, who at this point in his career can have his music mastered any way he wants, choses to release a dynamically crushed DR7 album you know the loudness wars are over.... at least for pop / mainstream recorded music.
I could'nt agree more.
I subscribed here just to like your post ;)
 

somebodyelse

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I think of MQA has a SuperMP3 only it has be decoded with hardware for some reason. I really doubt MQA needs hardware to decode.
Most of (all?) the earlier DACs supporting MQA were decoding it with software running on the XMOS that also acted as the USB interface.
 

Sal1950

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Yes it's true that a lot of the 2ch streaming sources are very compressed. We had much the same thing going on during the heyday of AM and FM radio broadcasts where they were using there own compression techniques/units to squash things and make their stations the loudest on the dial. I can remember us enthusiasts making calls to the stations in the 70-80s begging them to turn down the compressors.
The saddest part today is that's the way the artists & labels want them to be presented. :( So hard to escape.
The only good news is the the current run of multich and Atmos recordings are being done by engineers who understand and respect the desires of todays enthusiasts and for the most part are releasing highly dynamic material both on hard and streamed media.
 

dasdoing

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today it's about "esthetic loudness", so I don't think the term "loudness war" is correct anymore. A EDM track at -18LUFS wont sound good for example. I don't agree with how drum transients are treated though; but again, for the general public natural drums don't sound good anymore either. So again its an esthetic choice. You could bring quiet stuff up without touching the transients too much (upward compression) and easily be above -14LUFS
 

Sal1950

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A EDM track at -18LUFS wont sound good for example.
What is this LUFS number you refer to and how does it relate to the normal DR numbers we've been using?
 

somebodyelse

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What is this LUFS number you refer to and how does it relate to the normal DR numbers we've been using?
'Loudness Units relative to Full Scale' as defined in EBU R128 which references ITU BS.1770 for the measurement method. It isn't measuring the same thing as DR and I don't see how it affects any genre.
 

Sal1950

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'Loudness Units relative to Full Scale' as defined in EBU R128 which references ITU BS.1770 for the measurement method. It isn't measuring the same thing as DR and I don't see how it affects any genre.
Ah, so basically similar to the THX reference level, a number + or - this reference loudness level.
Tanks.
 
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