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Am I getting too old for this?

R

richard.vanderveen

I might be kicking in an open door but... I am under the impression recent music is no longer just heavilly clipped during mastering, but on top of that the individual tracks are now getting clipped as well???
I allready knew this to be true for basstracks, but man, it gets worse and worse. :-\

So now the broadcasters (who invented loudness and clipping in the first place) are turning to devices that undo clipping (as good as possible) caused by the 'producers' that turned to using broadcast techniques....
 
It is a mess, Richard.

I am also PD of two stations in addition to my IT duties...

One is CHR, the other is Urban.

My .wav files are flatlined on almost all the urban stuff and the chr is getting closer and closer to that.

Apparently, no one cares about sound quality anymore.
 
I sat in on a recording session at Ardent studios in Memphis a few weeks ago. The engineer actually was paying attention to levels and using very tasteful processing. The group being recorded was young, rock, and in their first pro scenario. I was impressed and pleased, but you'll never hear it on a radio station near you.
 
As a pure guess, I suspect that many artists (and mixing engineers) have damaged their hearing due to high sound pressure levels.
They probably can't hear the distortion.
Of course, that's no excuse. They should be able to clearly see the clipping on their computer screens.
Back in the days of analog recording, it was necessary to keep the levels as high as possible without excessive distortion. Tape hiss was always an issue.
With digital technology, that is no longer a factor.
 
It is an industry edict now that everything be mastered as loud as possible.

Some engineers can do it without killing the file, others can't.

It all started when people wanted to master things so 'that it sounds like its on the radio', not realizing that it would make it sound worse on the radio.

Give a good, modern processor some properly mastered older material from our early digital days and it sounds beautiful on the air.
 
I was reminded of the flat-topping yesterday when I was exporting a song from a TM Century CD to Adobe Audition. I am constantly reminded of it when I compare the sound from many of the older hits to the current day stuff.
 
Unfortunately even the older songs form 80s and 90s that sound great, get to be "re-mastered", meaning squashed and unsophisticatedly clipped :mad:

It's sometimes very hard to find the original master. All you get are these overly processed versions that lost the impact and dynamics of the original.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
I am convinced that whoever produces this &*$^ is eeeffin deef and/or can't afford a proper pair of headphones.
I'm 50 and still hear when an FM is in mono.
 
It's just a new breed of audio engineer, Tom.

They have been taught loud/clip=better. The louder the better, right?

I guess we played a part in some of that mentality with our FM loudness wars.

It is standard in my station to work with 10 db of headroom in the digital studios.

It will never get better, only worse.
 
chriscollins said:
It's just a new breed of audio engineer, Tom.

They have been taught loud/clip=better. The louder the better, right?

I guess we played a part in some of that mentality with our FM loudness wars.

It is standard in my station to work with 10 db of headroom in the digital studios.

It will never get better, only worse.
Click to expand...

Because no one cares anymore! They're all listening to three inch powered speakers off their laptops, and all the music is is distorted trash anyway. I know very few people (myself NOT included) that have the ability to listen critically to audio. It makes noise while you're texting your bud about boinking his cousins sister. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! Not only have the big studios sold their soul to the devil, but they have to compete with the $1200 128 channel digital systems and a bank of $9 Guitar Center mics operating in the attic with everything turned balls to the wall. The studios can't be allowed to be out louded by amateurs with gigabites, dammit.

I have a right to this rant. I turned 60 today and I'm officially a grumpy old bastard, that can STILL HEAR!
 
RadeoEngineer said:
chriscollins said:
It's just a new breed of audio engineer, Tom.

They have been taught loud/clip=better. The louder the better, right?

I guess we played a part in some of that mentality with our FM loudness wars.

It is standard in my station to work with 10 db of headroom in the digital studios.

It will never get better, only worse.
Click to expand...

Because no one cares anymore! They're all listening to three inch powered speakers off their laptops, and all the music is is distorted trash anyway. I know very few people (myself NOT included) that have the ability to listen critically to audio. It makes noise while you're texting your bud about boinking his cousins sister. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! Not only have the big studios sold their soul to the devil, but they have to compete with the $1200 128 channel digital systems and a bank of $9 Guitar Center mics operating in the attic with everything turned balls to the wall. The studios can't be allowed to be out louded by amateurs with gigabites, dammit.

I have a right to this rant. I turned 60 today and I'm officially a grumpy old bastard, that can STILL HEAR!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the rant and chuckle... Happy birthday.
 
Audio today does sound like $hit-and the big problem is that equipment today is decent enough to accurately reproduce the crap! Back in the day, the average transistor radio WAS $hit, so it didn't matter how bad the audio coming in was. Today EVERYTHING is clipped and 'processed' so it's a case of 'garbage in, garbage out'. Unfortunately, you can't fix the garbage when it comes into your plant sounding bad to begin with.

What I can't understand is that with digital mastering, you have 80+ db of dynamic range-so why not allow 10 db or so for peaks. It's not like analog tape where you had hiss 60 db down to worry about. Yet, everyone pushes right up to the digital clip point.
 
RadeoEngineer said:
chriscollins said:
It's just a new breed of audio engineer, Tom.

They have been taught loud/clip=better. The louder the better, right?

I guess we played a part in some of that mentality with our FM loudness wars.

It is standard in my station to work with 10 db of headroom in the digital studios.

It will never get better, only worse.
Click to expand...

Because no one cares anymore! They're all listening to three inch powered speakers off their laptops, and all the music is is distorted trash anyway. I know very few people (myself NOT included) that have the ability to listen critically to audio. It makes noise while you're texting your bud about boinking his cousins sister. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! Not only have the big studios sold their soul to the devil, but they have to compete with the $1200 128 channel digital systems and a bank of $9 Guitar Center mics operating in the attic with everything turned balls to the wall. The studios can't be allowed to be out louded by amateurs with gigabites, dammit.

I have a right to this rant. I turned 60 today and I'm officially a grumpy old bastard, that can STILL HEAR!
Click to expand...

i`ve been 60 since jan.31.welcome to the grumpy old bastard club.
 
Goran Tomas said:
Unfortunately even the older songs form 80s and 90s that sound great, get to be "re-mastered", meaning squashed and unsophisticatedly clipped :mad:
It's sometimes very hard to find the original master. All you get are these overly processed versions that lost the impact and dynamics of the original.

Regards,
Goran Tomas
Click to expand...

I've spent over 10 years hunting down 'original' versions of songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s (mainly). They are still out there to be found, but as you say, a lot of this stuff gets 're-mastered' - and it's just not the same. My first reaction when I hear a 're-mastered' track is "Good gawd, that's AWFUL!"
Thing is, I grew up listening to these songs, so I know what they are 'supposed' to sound like.

Granted, all we had then was AM - but when FM stereo arrived in 1982, they were still playing music off vinyl - so it wasn't too bad.

The most recent shock I had while listening to the radio was Lily Allen's 'Smile'. Who the hell mastered that? If the engineer couldn't hear the distortion then he or she should find a different day job.
 
LA_Guy said:
Unfortunately, you can't fix the garbage when it comes into your plant sounding bad to begin with.
Click to expand...
Actually... you can. ;) But Leif's "Undo" isn't in an ingest-specific product that's out yet.

---

There actually are some mainstream remasters happening in the last 5+ years that are actually better (more transparent and detailed transfer) with more dynamics than the original. Often on stuff from after 1993 (when Waves unleashed the original L1 into selective mastering houses). Often from Japan. 8)

Plus... there's MFSL. They've been doing amazing work for decades now. So yeah, not all remasters are doodoo. Just 99%.
 
Holy tweeters right next to the ceiling, batman. I would lower those PMCs about 3 feet, cos it hurts the bass definition a lot less than it improves the treble's single-point-sourcedness. :p Not to mention the improvement in imaging.

Yeah, go figure, right?
 
RadeoEngineer said:
Because no one cares anymore! They're all listening to three inch powered speakers off their laptops, and all the music is is distorted trash anyway. I know very few people (myself NOT included) that have the ability to listen critically to audio. It makes noise while you're texting your bud about boinking his cousins sister. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! Not only have the big studios sold their soul to the devil, but they have to compete with the $1200 128 channel digital systems and a bank of $9 Guitar Center mics operating in the attic with everything turned balls to the wall. The studios can't be allowed to be out louded by amateurs with gigabites, dammit.

I have a right to this rant. I turned 60 today and I'm officially a grumpy old bastard, that can STILL HEAR!
Click to expand...

Peeps who believe they can still hear tend to holler..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Radeo!!
 
I have sucessfully de-smashed some tracks by a band called the Black Angels recently.

I used a dynamic processor in Nero wave editor and instead of a reguilar knee curve that would be used to fatten a "thin" recording, to the upper 20 %, I apply an inverse knee, (an expansion curve).

It comes out as a much "smaller" waveform, but has the "supposed" peaks elevated and then the body of the music
can breathe better.

Add 5-7 db gain and it's done. It's not automatic like Leif's Undo.
 
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