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Audio processing on a budget

You've actually nailed two of the major driving qualities that some (not all) favor in analog recordings. The noise/cracle is simply nostalgic, or pseudo-nostalgic if the user isn't old enough to have that actual memory. It's a signal degradation though. Digital methods replicate the input signal perfectly, no analog method does that. SO if the goal was accurate reproduction of a signal, it's been digital for almost the entire time.

The physical touchy-feely aspect of handling analog media is undeniable, as is the view of physical playback. It is perhaps the main attraction for many. 20-somethings are buying vinyl for display only, though. They can't and don't play it.

All valid, though. You just have to clearly understand the goals that drive it.

Fortunately, DRM is pretty much a thing of the past.
 
True, but DRM no longer impedes the virtual DVR function. Tivo, etc., work fine. But as related to audio, DRM is over, artists that adopt the new distribution models don't need DRM at all. I don't have the figures at hand, but streaming passed music purchasing several years ago, and physical media is long dead. Even vinyl sales don't make up much of the total. People don't need to own music, they just want to hear it.
 
dc2bluelight said:
True, but DRM no longer impedes the virtual DVR function. Tivo, etc., work fine. But as related to audio, DRM is over, artists that adopt the new distribution models don't need DRM at all. I don't have the figures at hand, but streaming passed music purchasing several years ago, and physical media is long dead. Even vinyl sales don't make up much of the total. People don't need to own music, they just want to hear it.
Click to expand...
The physical sales of music, etc are going up now. Many younger people are investing in vintage audio and physical media because it just sounds better. Although there is a few service with high quality streams there is still a lot of stuff that never made it over like rare recordings, etc.
 
dc2bluelight said:
True, but DRM no longer impedes the virtual DVR function. Tivo, etc., work fine. But as related to audio, DRM is over, artists that adopt the new distribution models don't need DRM at all. I don't have the figures at hand, but streaming passed music purchasing several years ago, and physical media is long dead. Even vinyl sales don't make up much of the total. People don't need to own music, they just want to hear it.
Click to expand...
The major record labels are still using DRM copyright watermarking (similar to PPM on radio) even if the vast majority of content delivery is now by streaming rather than downloading. The effect is audible as a warbling, chattering sound in the midrange, especially on Classical, Jazz, and other forms of mostly acoustic music.

Universal's Audible Watermark

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on this page are mine alone. Update, April 8, 2013: Can you hear it? Take the watermark listening test. Update, January 14, 2015: Check out the results of the listening test. A while ago, I wrote about my confusion regarding Weird Spotify Compressio
www.mattmontag.com www.mattmontag.com

In fact, this is what helped drive me away from downloads, as lots of tracks on iTunes are afflicted by it, and thus sound much worse than ripping them from CD.
 
Negin said:
The physical sales of music, etc are going up now. Many younger people are investing in vintage audio and physical media because it just sounds better. Although there is a few service with high quality streams there is still a lot of stuff that never made it over like rare recordings, etc.
Click to expand...
Physical sales going up, yes, but they're going up from practically zero, so the percent of increase looks huge, but the real percent of total market is extremely low. Physical media players are limited. No new cassettes, for example. There are a few turntables of course, but again, the growth figures distort the perception of real market size.
 
kevtronics said:
The major record labels are still using DRM copyright watermarking (similar to PPM on radio) even if the vast majority of content delivery is now by streaming rather than downloading. The effect is audible as a warbling, chattering sound in the midrange, especially on Classical, Jazz, and other forms of mostly acoustic music.

Universal's Audible Watermark

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on this page are mine alone. Update, April 8, 2013: Can you hear it? Take the watermark listening test. Update, January 14, 2015: Check out the results of the listening test. A while ago, I wrote about my confusion regarding Weird Spotify Compressio
www.mattmontag.com www.mattmontag.com

In fact, this is what helped drive me away from downloads, as lots of tracks on iTunes are afflicted by it, and thus sound much worse than ripping them from CD.
Click to expand...
From: Intro to the iTunes Store in Music on Mac

"All songs offered by the iTunes Store come without Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection. These DRM-free songs, called iTunes Plus, have no usage restrictions and feature high-quality, 256 kbps AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) encoding."

The process of DRM removal is well known and simple, for those tunes purchased before the current non-DRM policy.

RE: ripping vs iTunes Store purchase...that's what I do too, unless the need is instant. Used CDs are very cheap, and I get to pick the rip codec and bitrate. There is now an increasing amount of new music not released on CD. Fortunately (for me) most new music is horrible, so no big deal. But I've also had no DRM issues with purchased files from iTunes or Amazon in several years.
 
kevtronics said:
The major record labels are still using DRM copyright watermarking (similar to PPM on radio) even if the vast majority of content delivery is now by streaming rather than downloading. The effect is audible as a warbling, chattering sound in the midrange, especially on Classical, Jazz, and other forms of mostly acoustic music.
Click to expand...
Hmm! I think I've heard this on some Amazon Music recordings. I call it "The Amazon Sound."

I find that it's hit or miss, though, in that I'll come across a track that has it (Garden Party by Rick Nelson, for example), and given that the track has multiple entries because it appears on several Rick Nelson compilations, I simply play through a few seconds of each one, and I almost always find one that isn't affected and sounds normal. I suspect someone who did the transfers into Amazon's systems didn't properly vet their sources for such problems.

kevtronics said:
In fact, this is what helped drive me away from downloads, as lots of tracks on iTunes are afflicted by it, and thus sound much worse than ripping them from CD.
Click to expand...
I generally find modern Youtube videos to have decent audio quality (unlike the days of yore when everything on the Internet was encoded using the same, lousy 128k MP3 codec). Amazon Music not affected by "The Sound" is quite good too, aside from obviously sloppy transfers that sound as though they came from worn out vinyl records and cassettes, of course.

That said, I have actual, physical copies of some of those same tracks, and I find that when I transfer them, they sound far superior to AM's versions, probably because I have decent equipment (Pioneer PL-510A turntable with a nice Audio-Technica cartridge whose model number I forget) and I try to keep my records clean (I use Nitty Gritty record cleaning fluid to deep clean the grooves), and it really doesn't take much effort once it's set up, so why is Amazon Music being so lazy? I've found the same tracks on Youtube, and even those sound better!

I can't speak to the other streaming services, as I don't subscribe to them (I only do Amazon Music incidentally because it came with our Prime subscription; I didn't explicitly seek it out, and relied exclusively on Youtube before I discovered it about 4 years ago.)

dc2bluelight said:
RE: ripping vs iTunes Store purchase...that's what I do too, unless the need is instant. Used CDs are very cheap, and I get to pick the rip codec and bitrate. There is now an increasing amount of new music not released on CD. Fortunately (for me) most new music is horrible, so no big deal. But I've also had no DRM issues with purchased files from iTunes or Amazon in several years.
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Agreed! The lack of new releases on CD doesn't bother me a bit, since most new material is noise to me. I'm a little curious about Taylor Swift, though. I've never knowingly listened to any of her music (except once I heard her big hit "Shake It Up" or some such while exercising at a gym), so I don't really know what makes her music so appealing to so many people. I've thought about checking her out, but there's so much older material out there that I like a lot more (and tons more I haven't discovered yet), that I usually don't bother with music younger than I am.

I wonder, for a file whose sound quality is ruined by this DRM watermarking, is there a way of reversing the damage by somehow removing the watermark? I would think not, since it wouldn't be a problem, but with all these advanced new processing tools out there nowadays, maybe someone somewhere found a solution that doesn't involve re-recording every bad track using unadulterated sources?

c
 
DRM and Watermarking are actually two different things. DRM is a type of encryption that prevents all playback without the proper "rights". Example: In the DRM days, songs purchased from the iTunes store were authorized to be playable within an individual's iTune's account and associated devices. If attempted to play outside of that world an error message would appear on some devices that said the song was not authorized on that device. Other devices simply wouldn't play the file. There were several work-arounds, the easiest of which was built right into iTunes: export the file to a .aif or .wav file, then re-import it. The DRM would be stripped in the export to a non-compressed file, and entire albums could be exported in a few clicks.

DRM is not audible, and the result of removal is an audibly identical file, but without DRM.

Watermarking is something entirely different. Methods as far back as 1999 were intentionally simple because processor overhead was a factor. "Simple" also could mean "audible", as they involved some very simple processing, like fixed notch filters, etc. But enter modern watermarking in the mid 2000s to 2010s, notably from Universal Music Group and all of their sub-labels. The technology involved inserting a spread-spectrum signal. Here's one explanation I found (excerpt from Universal's Audible Watermark):

"The (UMG) watermark scheme modulates the total energy in two different bands, 1khz to 2.3 khz and 2.3 to 3.6 khz. The energy is concentrated in the most perceptually sensitive frequencies because that makes it more difficult to attack or remove without significant audible distortion.

The energy is increased or reduced in 0.04 second blocks. The result can be characterized as a fluttering, tremolo sound. Listen closely to the original vs. watermarked audio samples and try to focus on the 1 khz to 3.6 khz noise range. It helps to wear headphones in a quiet environment."
However, since the result is fairly easily audible, the entire concept has been quite controversial. The link above includes one individual's efforts to remove the UMG watermark.

Yes, watermarking is a problem that would limit the usefulness of the file. DRM is not.

DRM has fallen into disuse. Watermarking is still in use. CDs contain neither, though a CD can have its "copy bit" thrown to prevent a "digital copy", which is something that really hardly anyone ever did, and is not the same as ripping the CD. The CD copy bit is pretty much useless today.
 
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dc2bluelight said:
From: Intro to the iTunes Store in Music on Mac

"All songs offered by the iTunes Store come without Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection. These DRM-free songs, called iTunes Plus, have no usage restrictions and feature high-quality, 256 kbps AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) encoding."

The process of DRM removal is well known and simple, for those tunes purchased before the current non-DRM policy.
Click to expand...
That has nothing to do with the audible copyright watermarking. In fact, it may have been the compromise necessary for the major record labels to agree to iTunes removing DRM: people can have DRM-free downloads, but if you copy and distribute their music without permission, they can use the watermarking to catch you.
 
kevtronics said:
That has nothing to do with the audible copyright watermarking. In fact, it may have been the compromise necessary for the major record labels to agree to iTunes removing DRM: people can have DRM-free downloads, but if you copy and distribute their music without permission, they can use the watermarking to catch you.
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So far it has been reported that iTunes Plus songs are mostly (all?) watermark-free, but that streaming services like Spotify and Tidal are watermarked.

To be clear, watermarking does not permit "them" to "catch you", because it only idenfies the owner of the copyright. There's no means to send useage information back to the label. The watermark is passed on with each copy. So if someone's library is checked, and watermarked songs are there, it doesn't idenfiy how they got the song, or what generation of copy it is, or who originated the distribution, it only identifies the rights owner. The point is to limit mass distribution and mass file sharing by identifying the owner, similar to the copyright notice or character on a printed document.

Enforcement is a very different issue.
 
secondchoice said:
Since the word "Budget" is in the title I looked and found a tread Stereo tool vs Breakaway but it is closed. Does anyone have recent experiences with PC based audio chains?
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Yes! I use Omnia .9 PTN, sounds exactly like the Omnia .9 just in software format uses same presets, same everything.
 


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