OP
- Thread Starter
- #121
But wouldn't the phono preamp do the opposite, reversing RIAA, and the result would be the same as on the CD (if they used the same master)?
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They have murdered "Tears for Fears" ... digitally!
- Thread starter TheBatsEar
- Start date
MRC01
Major Contributor
True but that's a misleading answer. The question is whether the LP bass is attenuated after the RIAA emphasis curve is applied. It often is, especially compared to digital sources that are heavily compressed with strong bass content. But it isn't necessarily.
My point is that DR is a crude tool, just because the numbers are higher (or lower) doesn't necessarily mean the album is less (or more) compressed. The numbers are affected by other factors, and these factors are often differences in the digital vs LP versions of albums.
BTW, this morning I downloaded the first 2 tracks of that album to see what all the fuss is about. It's heavily dynamically compressed with soft limiting to avoid clipping. The louder parts aren't really louder, but just distorted because the compression is so heavy. I applied a simple bass attenuation EQ and the DR numbers shifted up +2. It still sounded like crap of course. If I were the musician I'd be angry at whoever squashed the life out of my music and made it sound so bad.
I dunno. too early to tell. I wonder how many on current top 100 billboard songs has atmo.I think you're underestimating how many people are using Atmos right now...
And I'm not talking about with an AVR.
This is well and truely already 'mass market'.
Apple Music’s Spatial Audio Strategy Is Paying Off With More Listeners, Major Releases
Apple Music's efforts to differentiate its music streaming service seems to be working with Spatial Audio rapidly growing.www.billboard.com
There's a 5.1 file on the BluRay he also mastered AFAIK
digitalfrost
Major Contributor
New post by Archimago is up comparing the CD to the Blu-Ray.
archimago.blogspot.com
DEMO: Tears For Fears - "No Small Thing" - Low-DR CD vs. Higher-DR Steven Wilson 5.1 Downmix to 2.0 (and the obvious importance of audio production quality)
A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.
archimago.blogspot.com
OP
- Thread Starter
- #126
I added the link to the first post, thanks.New post by Archimago is up comparing the CD to the Blu-Ray.
DEMO: Tears For Fears - "No Small Thing" - Low-DR CD vs. Higher-DR Steven Wilson 5.1 Downmix to 2.0 (and the obvious importance of audio production quality)
A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.
I have the sources Arch refers to in this post and he is spot on.New post by Archimago is up comparing the CD to the Blu-Ray.
DEMO: Tears For Fears - "No Small Thing" - Low-DR CD vs. Higher-DR Steven Wilson 5.1 Downmix to 2.0 (and the obvious importance of audio production quality)
A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.
In fact he measured the DR of the 2ch mix-down he did, the actual BluRay 5.1 is even a bit better with a DR13
Thank God for Steven Wilson and all the work he has put into his large numbers of remasters.
AMEN
OP
- Thread Starter
- #130
Even the naive downmix to 2ch is more enjoyable than the retail CD.
Same drama happened to Red Hot Chili Peppers latest album. Murdered as well.
The large labels don't care anymore. Us complaining doesn't even reach them.
JeremyFife
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Hum ... except now I can't play it!
There's no way I'd get a multichannel setup in my current room (even if I got planning permission!). Happy to take it on later, but it aint happening any time soon.
Not having a decent master available for us luddites is a pain and really (really) irks me.
Are there any tools that dumb down multichannel files into reasonable stereo, or is that either technically ill-advised or just too hard (I do realise that Archimago did it)?
Dolby Atmos music has the multichannel mixdown to stereo in their protocol. If you have Logic Pro X, you can listen to atmos mix and stereo mix of the same song demo.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #133
I play the BluRay iso (pirated, because limited 2000 pieces pressing) using VLC directly into my headphones:
@kongwee suggests the downmix is already in the data stream. I don't think it is:
It's a weak form of DRM. Once you become a pirate, those worldly barriers can't slow you.
The options for playing multichannel without a mch setup are limited right now, yeah.
1) Use headphone virtualization. Smyth Realiser, Bacch4Mac, etc. The Realiser works exceptionally well as far as I understand, like indistinguishable from speakers. But it's also $4000 and hard to buy. I don't know too much about the other options.
2) Use Apple headphones(airpods pro/max) w/Apple Music. I've tried this briefly in the Apple store and it seemed to work OK? There was a frontal soundstage at least, I didn't have a chance to test this on good demo tracks though. Also, the head tracking lagged noticeably, so it's definitely not as good as the Realiser. Apple does also have virtualization for "regular" headphones but no idea if it's any good.
3) Downmixing. Normally I'd say this is a bad idea, but in the case of multichannel releases with a lot more dynamic range, I agree it may be better. You can use open source tools like ffmpeg to do this with regular multichannel. For Atmos, it really depends on the type of release and the source. From streaming, it's challenging. From a BluRay source, you can definitely downmix the backwards compatibility 5.1 or 7.1 bed layer at least.
I found it surprising that Steven Wilson didn't include a 2ch mix on the BD, he usually does.
I figure he must have been restricted by some licensing agreement?
I figure he must have been restricted by some licensing agreement?
OP
- Thread Starter
- #136
Or it's in there, but VLC doesn't show it as such. The streams itself are 20MBit/s, a lot i guess. There could be all kinds of stuff in there.
Or the pirateur ripped only the multi channel tracks. I'm looking at a rip, not the real product.
MakeMKV shows nothing but the 5.1 DTS & Dolby files, and the Atmos file. ?
OP
- Thread Starter
- #138
We tried. No downmix found then.
I wonder if Tears for Fears could only afford to pay him for 2000 copies.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #140
Is this how it works? Because it seems to me the amount of work would be the same, no matter if it's 2k or 20k.
Also, i would think that T4F doesn't have much say in this, given that they are probably just employees at Concord records:
"The blu-ray is exclusive to the SDE shop and is a limited edition product. Only 2000 copies will be available. If you recall, we SOLD OUT of the same quantity of the SDE-exclusive deluxe CD of The Tipping Point in 24 hours, back in October, so secure your pre-order in at the earliest opportunity, to avoid any disappointment."
I guess it just never crossed their minds to simply order more copies, "to avoid disappointment". But that's not their real goal. Real goal is to extract as much money as they can from what is left of the fan base.
"I’d personally like to make it clear that this product was not planned from the very beginning and therefore hasn’t been ‘held back’ for any kind of strategic reasons. It came about after discussions between SDE and Concord towards the end of last year, following the success of the SDE-exclusive deluxe CD (Steven Wilson completed his mixes in December)."
