Bitten by the loudness problem?

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Sat May 23, 2009 9:56 am

A while ago there was a thread on CD's being mastered too hot. I can't find it now so I thought I would start a new thread to report on my recent findings.

I recently bought Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid Live with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, its a two box set CD and DVD-Video. I was really looking forward to playing this as the studio album is a real gem. In fact I think it has won wards. Anyway, we listened to it on the main system and, to be honest, it sounded awful, it was a real struggle and eventually we gave up and went to bed! (I've been back to it several times since when I'm on my own and found it sounded distorted on the loud orchestral passages.)

Nevertheless, we wanted to actually watch the performance as well, so the next day we decided to watch the DVD. I didn't hold out much hope but the money had been spent and I wanted some value out of it. I have a Sony Playstation into a Cyrus One (circa 1987) and my previous floorstanders in another room, and an old telly, nothing special at all. Now, despite it being an inferior system both of us thoroughly enjoyed the performance revelling in the excellent BBC orchestra and choir backing Elbow.

What went wrong?

I began to think about that previous thread and hoped the CD was the issue and the reason the DVD sounded better was it wasn't mastered so hot.

Last night I ripped the audio off the DVD using mplayer and then played it back as a flac using an SB on the main system - it seemed to be lot better! Have I been bitten by the "loudness war"?

-- Andrew

andrew Ivimey · Post by **andrew Ivimey** » Sat May 23, 2009 10:18 am

andrew, what do you mean by mastered 'hot'?

I have long found DVDs have a more attractive; dynamic, punchy, clear audio playback than many (though not all) CDs. I believe DVD uses a standard called 'DSD' - dunno what it means, but audio on DVDs has a different mix quallity, frequency response, or something.

Ripping from a DVD seems to preserve this and I think you have found this too.

I am not at all clear why what I and you have found in terms of definitions and industry standards but it has also been found (from studies about this sort of thing that we, the people all prefer a little bass boost a little added clarity to teh top and we all like an 'edge' of increased SPL, too.

It is all to easy to get hooked on welly.

Now, some peeps might gather that I can come across, occasionally, as been a tad 'contrary'. It is the contrary in me that leads me to play music I do not enjoy - because there may be stuff in it that I can enjoy/learn from etc and I also deliberatley turn the SPL down because the musical presentation even of a much loved piece is suffucuently different that it can put a wholly different take on the music, harmony, the relationships between the instruments and even more detail, be it the bowing o fteh lower strings or creation of harmonics from the scrape of a plectrum on hugely amplified Ernie ball super slinky strings on a Fender Strat etc etc.

I recommend getting into the habit of listening to music quietly - there is so much more to be gleaned. I also recommend blowing the cobwebs away too as a dam'good blast is good for the primitive soul too!

But it seems to me thatthere is no point in listening to badly recorded music in mega or micro SPL terms; chuck it away!

Whether DVD audio or audio on DVD is actually better or not - I dunno.

Post by **Nick** » Sat May 23, 2009 10:23 am

andrew, what do you mean by mastered 'hot'?

What he means is that the audio on the CD is mastered louder and more compressed. Its nothing to do with the encoding (DSD or PCM), or if DVD is better or worst than CD, its down to what is done to the information stored on them.

This shows the problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Mike H · Post by **Mike H** » Sat May 23, 2009 11:58 am

Yes the source signal is deliberately compressed to make the 'quiet bits' as loud as the loud bits then it's also 'nomalized' to 100%, which means the peaks are pushed right out to the highest numbers the CD format can handle. Which are -32768 and +32767. Get that just slightly wrong and it clips.

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Sat May 23, 2009 4:32 pm

Is it me, or did a post about CD only containing 16 bit information disappear ?

What it so that the pedants/peasants (delete as applicable) didn't pick up on it ?

Chris

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Sat May 23, 2009 4:44 pm

Back to your original point Andrew, the CD has probably been mastered to sound as loud as possible, using heavy limiting and heavy compression.

Whether this is down to the bands' instruction or the record companys' instruction is anyone's guess - the mastering engineer will have acted on instructions from either party, more often than not the record company.

And it's a real shame, cos it doesn't do either party any favours.

Chris

pre65 · Post by **pre65** » Sat May 23, 2009 5:14 pm

The Stratmangler wrote:Is it me, or did a post about CD only containing 16 bit information disappear ?

What it so that the pedants/peasants (delete as applicable) didn't pick up on it ?

Chris

See the next topic in this section.

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Sat May 23, 2009 8:21 pm

pre65 wrote:
The Stratmangler wrote:Is it me, or did a post about CD only containing 16 bit information disappear ?

What it so that the pedants/peasants (delete as applicable) didn't pick up on it ?

Chris
See the next topic in this section.

Thanks Phil

It was me - early onset of senility !

Chris

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