Ah. That explains why I have to crank up my system when playing Atmos music. I did not know that. Good to know.
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Why do album mixers use limiters to crush dynamics?
- Thread starter tallbeardedone
- Start date
charleski
Major Contributor
This attitude sums up why I have so little respect for the so-called professionals who engineer most popular music. Do you think we should just shut up about the inept, lazy garbage they foist upon us?Well, there's one excuse:
"With sales of over 31 million copies worldwide, 21 is the best-selling album of the 21st century, and one of the best-selling albums of all time."
21 (Adele album) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Not sure he's going to live down being named and shamed in ASR though. No-one comes back from that.
charleski
Major Contributor
Most limiters are explicitly designed to avoid clipping, because they're created by people who have a clue about what they're doing. But there are still ways to circumvent the in-built safeguards. Here's how you mess up your track in Ozone 9:
Think this through: What part of 'follow the money' don't ASR disciples understand?
Do you expect that a record producer is working to sell you a file, LP, or CD when he's been told that his job depends on getting the record played on 10,000 pop music stations leading to 10,000,000 record sales? And 99.8% of those buyers will listen mostly on car radios, air pods, laptop speakers, and Beats headphones.
If someone started a record company to sell recordings to HiFi-only listeners, I would tell him to go back to business school as a freshman. Yeah, there are a few vanity producers out there who will pander to us, but they are, basically, charities. (PSAudio notwithstanding.)
Frankly, I don't know how Deutsche Grammophon does it.
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It's a bit like going into the 100% pure, distilled holy water business; For the great unwashed, Aquafina works just fine, or tap water.
Do you expect that a record producer is working to sell you a file, LP, or CD when he's been told that his job depends on getting the record played on 10,000 pop music stations leading to 10,000,000 record sales? And 99.8% of those buyers will listen mostly on car radios, air pods, laptop speakers, and Beats headphones.
If someone started a record company to sell recordings to HiFi-only listeners, I would tell him to go back to business school as a freshman. Yeah, there are a few vanity producers out there who will pander to us, but they are, basically, charities. (PSAudio notwithstanding.)
Frankly, I don't know how Deutsche Grammophon does it.
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It's a bit like going into the 100% pure, distilled holy water business; For the great unwashed, Aquafina works just fine, or tap water.
syn08
Senior Member
Amen to that!
Newman
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Exactly. @Beershaun to note. The tool used to get those DR numbers gives misleadingly high results for vinyl. Ignore all numbers it generated for vinyl, even when used for vinyl vs vinyl.I guess you've seen this video before?
Any website that uses that tool to compare vinyl vs digital deserves to be ignored, too.
cheers
dasdoing
Major Contributor
this band used to use limiters very lightly (yes, it's still limited). try to play this on a smart phone, or even a cheaper stereo like 99% of the world population has:
Frankly, most people these days haven't heard good fidelity. Where would they encounter it?
Just about any seat in a classical recital or concert hall? Any table in a jazz club? Standing on a corner on Paris' Left Bank where musicians play on a Sunday afternoon?
Reality is what you need for high fidelity, not ginormous loudspeakers. I often wonder how many concert tickets one could buy for the cost of one pair of big Martin Logans...
For the most part, so-called 'hifi' is just comparing one set of playback stuff to another set of stuff. Much like comparing a Rolex Mariner to a Santos de Cartier when you just need to know what time it is, or whether that church clock bell striking the hour is right.
Hmmm.. I won't argue those are places to hear actual undistorted music, but I wonder what percentage of people are affected.Just about any seat in a classical recital or concert hall? Any table in a jazz club? Standing on a corner on Paris' Left Bank where musicians play on a Sunday afternoon?
Reality is what you need for high fidelity, not ginormous loudspeakers. I often wonder how many concert tickets one could buy for the cost of one pair of big Martin Logans...
For the most part, so-called 'hifi' is just comparing one set of playback stuff to another set of stuff. Much like comparing a Rolex Mariner to a Santos de Cartier when you just need to know what time it is, or whether that church clock bell striking the hour is right.
What about comparing Atmos to digital stereo? Those are more relevant to me personally.
I can't answer that. But it is always eye-opening that, amongst home music playback stuff big spenders I know, few have ever attended a live acoustic performance, or haven't in a decade or more. Stadium concerts don't count, because you might think you're hearing the philharmonic or Jan Lisiecki, but you're really hearing stacks of JBLs, Crowns, Pulteks, etc.
Yet 'audiophiles' will endlessly type on their computer about the virtues of Revel vs. Wilson vs. PSAudio, et. al. Compared with what reality?
At least, quality, calibrated measurements are calibrated against reality. That's what brought me here in the first place.
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Tonight, I am attending a recital by a visiting Basque organist from Paris for example. Last week, I heard a concert by an artist from Hungary. In a career in recording, playback, engineering, and listening to music, I have never heard electronics reproduce what a skillfully played pipe organ sounds like, live. I never expect to.
Two weeks ago, I heard a concert performance of Beethoven's Eroica symphony. A great recording, played through great speakers, could never reproduce that sound. It can merely evoke my memory of that sound. For the price of a pair of PSAudio speakers alone, I could buy 615 such concert tickets -- a two-decade supply of real music. Those tickets could produce that sound, not just evoke it. And If I hadn't heard the concert live, $100,000 of stereo stuff couldn't even evoke a memory that I never experienced. Only memories of other speakers.
Is this what hifi is about? Comparing speakers to other speakers? Amplifiers against other amplifiers? DACs vs. other DACs?
[Rant mode to standby.]
I don't disagree. Vis-a-vis the thread subject, I suspect many people prefer their home systems to be more "civilized" than reality, with far less dynamic range for example.I can't answer that. But it is always eye-opening that, amongst home music playback stuff big spenders I know, few have ever attended a live acoustic performance, or haven't in a decade or more. Stadium concerts don't count, because you might think you're hearing the philharmonic or Jan Lisiecki, but you're really hearing stacks of JBLs, Crowns, Pulteks, etc.
Yet 'audiophiles' will endlessly type on their computer about the virtues of Revel vs. Wilson vs. PSAudio, et. al. Compared with what reality?
At least, quality, calibrated measurements are calibrated against reality. That's what brought me here in the first place.
.....
Tonight, I am attending a recital by a visiting Basque organist from Paris for example. Last week, I heard a concert by an artist from Hungary. In a career in recording, playback, engineering, and listening to music, I have never heard electronics reproduce what a skillfully played pipe organ sounds like, live. I never expect to.
Two weeks ago, I heard a concert performance of Beethoven's Eroica symphony. A great recording, played through great speakers, could never reproduce that sound. It can merely evoke my memory of that sound. For the price of a pair of PSAudio speakers alone, I could buy 615 such concert tickets -- a two-decade supply of real music. Those tickets could produce that sound, not just evoke it. And If I hadn't heard the concert live, $100,000 of stereo stuff couldn't even evoke a memory that I never experienced. Only memories of other speakers.
Is this what hifi is about? Comparing speakers to other speakers? Amplifiers against other amplifiers? DACs vs. other DACs?
[Rant mode to standby.]
Geert
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What percentage of music fans do you think is into classical music, to that extent that they regularly attend concerts? " I expect it to be less than 1%: "According to billboard/Nielsen, classical music had an overall 1% share of the market in 2019" (https://medium.com/@AmericanPublicU...ular-is-classical-music-part-ii-4040456752dbl.
25dB crest factor measured by dpMeter. Never seen anything else come close to that.
Don't know. But a number of record companies apparently find it worth the efforts to serve that market, as well as jazz and vocal. And serious music concert tickets still bring high prices and fill concert halls, even if their audience isn't 'high.'
I'm not speaking of classical and jazz as somehow more elite than other music forms. I'm suggesting that such concerts provide the best opportunity to hear acoustic music, against which one might judge the quality of hifi stuff -- not that it must be your musical preference. Just a part of your musical experience, and recent, too.
Having recorded pop music, as well as more serious forms, I do say that classical-style and jazz live performances provide a grounding of reality not offered by electric guitars, kick drums, synthesizers, and rap lyrics, never performed acoustically, and recorded with about every kink available.
I have no idea what Led Zeppelin sounds like live without the domination of kinks and tricks. Thus, I have no idea what a speaker should sound like trying to play those electronic instruments, kinks, and tricks. Does it sound nice? What is nice?
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Whenever I mention classical and jazz music around here, there is a landslide of vitriol and spitting. Instead, think of these as test tones of a very complex type. Test tones with some grounding in reality, not Phil Spector's unreality... for example.
Test and compare your stuff against your memory of a good acoustical source, not against music written, played, filtered, recorded, mastered, and offered for an intended market of iPhones, Airpods, stock car radios, laptop speakers and Beats headphones.
I rest my case.
Geert
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I understand, but as that was your answer to "most people these days haven't heard good fidelity" we need to put that in perspective I believe. In other words, most people never attend classical or jazz concerts. And if they do, they do necessarily pay close attention to the sound in the same way a critical audio enthousiast does.
Absolutely. I love different styles of acoustic music.
oleg87
Senior Member
If you think this is just about not having a superior frame of reference: the dynamic range of movie audio mixes is such a ubiquitous complaint on non-audiophile internet I reckon I have a pretty good idea of how well-received a similar approach would be with music.
I'll defend studio production as an art form in itself. I certainly enjoy the better examples. As for the purely acoustic instruments, I've heard some very good recordings of for example acoustic guitar, when guests turned their heads to stare at the speakers.
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