Mastering recordings on CDs

[Erogen]

This is an old CD, over 27 years old. Is this good mastering?
The album sold an estimated 15 million copies, so it's likely that people liked this mastering.
Many, many albums have this final mastering. Is this good mastering?

 

[Emulator II]

This album is almost legendary for its poor mastering and is considered one of the releases that significantly fueled the so-called "loudness war." The fact that it sold so well is due solely to its musical quality.
Consequently, audiophiles have been hoping for a properly mastered reissue for decades. A few years ago, pre-mastering tapes reportedly surfaced online, offering significantly higher dynamic range; however, the versions of the songs involved were not always the ones that actually made it onto the final record.

 

[Auditory Cortex]

No, it's horrible mastering. Thank god the vinyl mastering exists, and that's only because they can't push the levels so hard in this format due to the technical limitations of the Vinyl medium.

Indeed, most of the Masterings on digital media have an extremely high level of loudness because they all are afraid of "losing to the competence" so they all believe that in order to be "competitive" you have to play their game too: how loud and compressed can I make this sh*t?

Vinyl, on the other hand, has technical limitations as I said, this forces engineers to decrease the limiter levels of their masterings. This is also another reason of why people wrongly feels that "Vinyl sounds better", thinking that the medium is "more musical", but most of them ignore the reality: it's simply because Vinyl has the best Masterings. CD's and digital streaming platforms could have these masterings too if they just decided to use the same vinyl mastering.....

 

[Matt S]

This is an old CD, over 27 years old. Is this good mastering?
The album sold an estimated 15 million copies, so it's likely that people liked this mastering.
Many, many albums have this final mastering. Is this good mastering?

View attachment 555953

Great album. Always so disappointing to listen to thanks to the mastering.

I free as though things have improved more recently though. I don't listen to typical chat music thankfully where I'd assume the loudness wars continue to some degree.

People are literally tired of it. The fatigue!

 

[Erogen]

This is probably already standard, this kind of mastering.

 

[Erogen]

When did this even start?

It was 1997.

 

[Mart68]

CD's and digital streaming platforms could have these masterings too if they just decided to use the

Vinyl mastering is also compromised just in a different way. What's actually required is a mastering that makes use of the high DR of digital. Like they did in the '80s and early '90s. The only reason that doesn't happen is the market for it isn't large enough for them to bother doing a 'good' remaster.

Or at least it is not perceived as being large enough. Whether it really is or not I don't know.

I don't find 'Californication' unlistenable due to the mastering but I'd buy a better master if it were available. Getting the vinyl version is just trading one set of issues for another.

 

[Erogen]

Blood Sugar Sex Magik. 1991
Different mastering

 

[RexrothPigeon]

The album sold an estimated 15 million copies, so it's likely that people liked this mastering.

We meet again old friend...

 

[Emulator II]

Blood Sugar Sex Magik. 1991
Different masteringView attachment 555960

Much better mastering. Unfortunately if you listen to this at for instance Tidal you'll get this:

 

[Erogen]

RHCP - Californication
Minor correction:
-5.5 dB RMS
High-pass filter 20 Hz/-36 dB

 

[somebodyelse]

This album is almost legendary for its poor mastering and is considered one of the releases that significantly fueled the so-called "loudness war." The fact that it sold so well is due solely to its musical quality.
Consequently, audiophiles have been hoping for a properly mastered reissue for decades. A few years ago, pre-mastering tapes reportedly surfaced online, offering significantly higher dynamic range; however, the versions of the songs involved were not always the ones that actually made it onto the final record.

See also Metallica's Death Magnetic with audible clipping as well as huge compression, which did eventually get a better release after fans started doing remixes with the less compressed versions from Guitar Hero.

 

[Erogen]

Yello - Flag
1988 - DR14
2005 (Remastered) - DR9

There are many such examples.
Almost every remastered version has a lower DR rating.

 

[Chris A]

When did this even start?

See "Loudness War" and the Dynamic Range (DR) Database - some observations

DRAve = average dynamic range crest factor (in dB) of the albums released in the time interval mentioned in the database
SD = standard deviation of the population time slice in the Dynamic Range Database--as of the date of posting (i.e., 2013)

The album that you posted has a few versions extant:

The two versions at the top of this list were apparently not released versions. This indicates that the album's mixdown tracks were pretty heavily compressed before they were sent off to the mastering guy (to be further compressed and clipped). You can't do much about that situation--the tracks are permanently damaged on the master tape.

But you can improve some of the dynamics, if you start with an album version around 6-11 on this scale (crest factor):

DIY Dynamic Decompression of Music Tracks

Chris

 

[Erogen]

See "Loudness War" and the Dynamic Range (DR) Database - some observations

View attachment 555977

DRAve = average dynamic range crest factor (in dB) of the albums released in the time interval mentioned in the database
SD = standard deviation of the population time slice in the Dynamic Range Database--as of the date of posting (i.e., 2013)

The album that you posted has a few versions extant:

View attachment 555979
The two versions at the top of this list were apparently not released versions. This indicates that the album's mixdown tracks were pretty heavily compressed before they were sent off to the mastering guy (to be further compressed and clipped). You can't do much about that situation--the tracks are permanently damaged on the master tape.

But you can improve some of the dynamics, if you start with an album version around 6-11 on this scale (crest factor):

DIY Dynamic Decompression of Music Tracks

Chris

Measuring the DR for a vinyl record is, to put it mildly, very questionable and usually unreliable. All it takes is one loud, high-amplitude crackle and the measurement result can be thrown in the trash.
Home-made de-mastering is also questionable.
If you don't have the original recording source, before the final, poor remastering, there's not much you can do.

 

[Tell]

No, it's horrible mastering. Thank god the vinyl mastering exists, and that's only because they can't push the levels so hard in this format due to the technical limitations of the Vinyl medium.
View attachment 555954

Indeed, most of the Masterings on digital media have an extremely high level of loudness because they all are afraid of "losing to the competence" so they all believe that in order to be "competitive" you have to play their game too: how loud and compressed can I make this sh*t?

Vinyl, on the other hand, has technical limitations as I said, this forces engineers to decrease the limiter levels of their masterings. This is also another reason of why people wrongly feels that "Vinyl sounds better", thinking that the medium is "more musical", but most of them ignore the reality: it's simply because Vinyl has the best Masterings. CD's and digital streaming platforms could have these masterings too if they just decided to use the same vinyl mastering.....

Do this have an actual better master though? Because measuring dynamic range on vinyls compared to say CDs doesn't work because of bandpass filtering, phase rotation etc during cutting, so even if the master and ultimately the audible dynamics is the same the DR measurements will be higher on a vinyl rip. Having that said the vinyl could actually have a better master, my point is though that the numbers ain't proof of it.

Ian Shepherd (a mastering engineer and a dynamic range advocate that's behind the "Dynamic Range Day") got a video about this where he shows one of his own masters that's been transferred onto vinyl:

 

[Erogen]

An older CD release, from the turn of the 1980s/1990s.
Of course, the DR factor also depends largely on the type of music. Of course, any type of music can be spoiled by poor final mastering.
Older CD releases usually sound more dynamic.
The problem of poor mastering began in the early 1990s, especially in the second half of the 1990s, with increasingly poor final mastering.
The early 21st century and beyond saw very poor mastering; very few discs have dynamic final mastering. All, or almost all, remastered releases have loud, bad, and flat mastering.
It wasn't meant to be.
We've reached a dead end.

 

[Chris A]

Measuring the DR for a vinyl record is, to put it mildly, very questionable and usually unreliable.

Yes... Ian Shepherd wrote a little on this subject years ago. Vinyl always measures higher on the dynamic range scale (crest factor) because the type of noise that plagues phonograph record playback is impulsive, which causes the crest factor measurements to read high.

Nevertheless, it has been shown that record mastering leaves more dynamic range due to the fact that the needle cannot track a heavily clipped recording--it will simply jump out of the groove. This is why vinyl mastering always requires checks after cutting the master to make sure that a real cartridge needle can track the entire album.

Home-made de-mastering is also questionable.

In what way? Better is better. If you haven't heard the difference personally after a good demastering, you can't really profess its usefulness in increasing listening pleasure.

If you don't have the original recording source, before the final, poor remastering, there's not much you can do.

Sometimes this is true for albums and tracks done since the advent of more invasive mastering operations (since 1991)--and/or have a great deal of compression and clipping (typically DR values less than ~6 or 7 are usually lost causes).

But declipping, removing droning HVAC and electric power noise, re-EQing to minimize the negative effects of mastering EQ for low cost/low fidelity loudspeakers (also euphemistically called "translation"), and the use of a multiband expander all combine to give you a tool chest of techniques available to address common recording and mastering damage to recordings due to poor mastering practices.

I've used these practices on over 30k music tracks since 2015. They work very well. But effectively using these practices does require a little expertise. Perhaps that's what is bothering you...? Simply practicing using the techniques is the solution to that issue, I've found,

Chris

 

[Erogen]

is the solution to that issue, I've found,

Chris

I read it briefly and it's very interesting. I'll have to read it in detail. Thanks

 

[Chris A]

The problem of poor mastering began in the early 1990s, especially in the second half of the 1990s, with increasingly poor final mastering.

Actually, the use of compression and EQ to decrease dynamic range (e.g., heavily attenuating bass below ~100 Hz, etc. and high frequencies above 5 kHz) has been used since the inception of phonograph records, before vinyl was even used, at least back to the 1940s or before. You can not only hear these issues, you can see them on spectrogram views using freeware tools--such as Audacity.

The further back in time you go, the lower the dynamic range in the recordings. Early recordings are plagued by noise, wow/flutter, and poor amplitude and phase response of the recording microphone(s) and tape recorders/phonograph lathes--so oftentimes, there is little that can be done to improve the subjective sound quality of these old recordings.

I've found that the "sweet spot" of recording and mastering techniques actually occurred in the mid-1980s. It takes very little effort to reverse the mastering EQ applied to these recordings to achieve "translation" and to lower the effective dynamic range. Multi-band compressors didn't hit the scene until 1991, and even those recordings can be improved rather dramatically using a multiband expander like FabFilter Pro-Q4 or Pro-MB. Really impressive difference. I typically leave my Pro-Q4 plugin in expansion mode on when playing back music tracks using foobar2000--and the added snap and downwards expansion (also called damping) on heavily mastered tracks really improves the listening engagement by regaining some of the dynamics lost during mastering.

Chris