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Topic: Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars (Read 9069 times) previous topic - next topic
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Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Does anyone know if hi res audio might be released without the loundness cranked up and the range compressed?

Heck, if they did that with standad FLACs at CD Quality, there would be a huge increase in the quality of music right there.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #1
Does anyone know if hi res audio might be released without the loundness cranked up and the range compressed?


Yes, it might, but so far it doesn't really seem to be happening.

Quote
Heck, if they did that with standad FLACs at CD Quality, there would be a huge increase in the quality of music right there.


Dynamic range is only one parameter of music, and for many musicians and producers it is an "artistic choice" - that's what they have grown up with, and that is what they think it should sound like.  Do you think Daft Punk would sound much better with less compression?


Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #2
Does anyone know if hi res audio might be released without the loundness cranked up and the range compressed?


Yes, it might, but so far it doesn't really seem to be happening.

There once was a time in the 80s were we had this shiny new audio medium, which offered a lot more dynamic range and usable bandwidth than Vinyl. Mastering engineers were happy to use the new available advantages. Roughly in the early- to mid-nineties some engineers decided that the records were too quiet, so they cranked up the volume and compressed the signals.

I don't have high hopes that this will simply not happen again, just because we are not seeing it right now.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #3
If anything they can't wait to make everything louder with hi-res:

"According to Feist, the overall solution to the problem posed by the loudness war is changing the bit rates of final audio files to a higher format than 16 bit: “We have amazing digital technology to record the masters, using multi-track programs like Avid Pro-Tools, and record most of the finished product in 32 bit at 48k, yet because of the CD format, we dither our final master down to 16 bit. This is eliminating so much of the headroom, which would make compression cleaner and ultimately make the audio sound ever better and even louder. I’m all about pushing records to very loud sonic levels but without compression that destroys the depth, fidelity and width of the final mastered stereo file.”

http://iq.intel.com/when-will-the-loudness-war-end/


Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.


Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #4
Does anyone know if hi res audio might be released without the loundness cranked up and the range compressed?
Yes, in some specific instances "hi-res" releases are different mixes and/or intentionally different masterings which more dynamic range than the CD version.

Often they are not.

Ditto certain vinyl releases.

Cheers,
David.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #5
If anything they can't wait to make everything louder with hi-res:

"According to Feist, the overall solution to the problem posed by the loudness war is changing the bit rates of final audio files to a higher format than 16 bit: “We have amazing digital technology to record the masters, using multi-track programs like Avid Pro-Tools, and record most of the finished product in 32 bit at 48k, yet because of the CD format, we dither our final master down to 16 bit. This is eliminating so much of the headroom, which would make compression cleaner and ultimately make the audio sound ever better and even louder. I’m all about pushing records to very loud sonic levels but without compression that destroys the depth, fidelity and width of the final mastered stereo file.”

http://iq.intel.com/when-will-the-loudness-war-end/


Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.



What is amazing is all the false claims in the quote from Fiest. I've yet to see a real world recording whose dynamic range had to be squashed because 16 bits and modern best practices (perceptually shaped quantization randomizing) couldn't do the job well.  I know of no cases where headroom had to be reduced to make a recording fit into 16 bits if modern best practices are used. 

These facts are substantiated in a backhanded way by the hi rez advocates themselves when they avoid the use of these 20-30 year old best practices that cost nothing to implement, when they try to prove the inadequacy of 16 bits.

Example: This terribly misleadingly titled paper: "Audibility of Typical Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback System" Link to Formal Announcement of Paper

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #6
Does anyone know if hi res audio might be released without the loundness cranked up and the range compressed?


Well, yes, it *might* be, and has been, sometimes.  But it's never been a sure thing, and there are loudness cranked 'hi rez' releases.  The consumer pays his money and takes his chances.

I could say exactly the same tning of CD, too, of course.

So why exactly do we need hi rez, again??  ( <--rhetorical question)

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #7
I once had some optimism that hi-rez "had to" be audibly distinguishable from the "standard"  (iTunes & competition) releases, in order to induce demand, and one would therefore sell different masters.

Obviously I didn't hold my breath ...

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #8
Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.
I already found that to be the case with the official Death Magnetic recording, wanted to play it loud but the moment I did, needed to turn it down because it was just uncomfortable to listen to.


Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #9
Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.
I already found that to be the case with the official Death Magnetic recording, wanted to play it loud but the moment I did, needed to turn it down because it was just uncomfortable to listen to.
I found most contemporary metal releases to be almost comically bad. Some people picture metal as being "heavy", but there simply isn't any dynamic to anything, so you can decide to either listen to static with noisy guitars or nothing at all because you have to turn it down so much. Latest example I found is Lamb of God, with the CDs being probably the worst mastering I listened to this year. For a test I dithered down their track "Redneck" on their 2006  album "Sacrament" to 8bit and was not really able to tell a difference (though I didn't perform an ABX test).
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #10
I found most contemporary metal releases to be almost comically bad. Some people picture metal as being "heavy", but there simply isn't any dynamic to anything, so you can decide to either listen to static with noisy guitars or nothing at all because you have to turn it down so much. ...


Some people aren't happy about that... http://www.metal-fi.com/about-page/
Regards,
   Don Hills
"People hear what they see." - Doris Day

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #11
I found most contemporary metal releases to be almost comically bad. Some people picture metal as being "heavy", but there simply isn't any dynamic to anything, so you can decide to either listen to static with noisy guitars or nothing at all because you have to turn it down so much. ...


Some people aren't happy about that... http://www.metal-fi.com/about-page/
In my book, when the artists and/or producers themselves show that they're unhappy with the production, there can be actual change. Review pages and consumers are way too far down the chain to affect anything.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #12
In my book, when the artists and/or producers themselves show that they're unhappy with the production, there can be actual change. Review pages and consumers are way too far down the chain to affect anything.


Yep. "Sad but true."
Regards,
   Don Hills
"People hear what they see." - Doris Day

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #13
In my book, when the artists and/or producers themselves show that they're unhappy with the production, there can be actual change. Review pages and consumers are way too far down the chain to affect anything.

This is just propaganda.

Highly-compressed music is not a necessity. You can't easily forgo shelter, but you can live without highly-compressed music. If households are unhappy with the quality of a non-essential product, they reduce their purchases of it. (In case of music, there are substitutes--sometimes very close substitutes like older masterings--available to which consumers can switch.) Lower demand will work to decrease the market price and reduce the quantity produced and sold.

So please spare me this nonsense. Alternatives exist. However, the sales data supports the notion that relatively few people are interested in them.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #14
If anything they can't wait to make everything louder with hi-res:

"According to Feist, the overall solution to the problem posed by the loudness war is changing the bit rates of final audio files to a higher format than 16 bit: “We have amazing digital technology to record the masters, using multi-track programs like Avid Pro-Tools, and record most of the finished product in 32 bit at 48k, yet because of the CD format, we dither our final master down to 16 bit. This is eliminating so much of the headroom, which would make compression cleaner and ultimately make the audio sound ever better and even louder. I’m all about pushing records to very loud sonic levels but without compression that destroys the depth, fidelity and width of the final mastered stereo file.”

http://iq.intel.com/when-will-the-loudness-war-end/


Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.


Well, for what it's worth, I believe that is accurate, is it not? You could get higher volume levels with hi-rez and yet still have the same amount of dynamics that you would with a quieter recording recorded at 44.1/16. So in that sense, it provides an advantage even if it's for a misguided reason.

What I want to know is if they'll ever release remastered versions of recordings that were victims of the loudness wars that have better sound quality.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #15
Well, for what it's worth, I believe that is accurate, is it not?


No.

Quote
You could get higher volume levels with hi-rez and yet still have the same amount of dynamics that you would with a quieter recording recorded at 44.1/16. So in that sense, it provides an advantage even if it's for a misguided reason.


I am not sure I get your point. Full scale is full scale, and is the same peak volume independent of if we are using 24, 16 or 4 bits. Even 16 bits provide enough dynamic range to accommodate the quietest signal levels of any real world recording.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #16
Well, for what it's worth, I believe that is accurate, is it not? You could get higher volume levels with hi-rez and yet still have the same amount of dynamics that you would with a quieter recording recorded at 44.1/16. So in that sense, it provides an advantage even if it's for a misguided reason.


Given that the dynamic range provided by the CD is not being stretched by practical recordings in any way, there is nothing in the format that prevents mastering engineers from trading noise floor for headroom when they master a CD. The hi-rez formats provide more dynamic range because of their longer wordlength, but that doesn't change the situation in any significant way.

The hi-rez formats by themselves do not offer more headroom, btw. since the clipping level is the same amongst all those formats. The extra bits only lower the noise floor of the format. The loudness war, however, is fought over the clipping level, and not over the noise floor. The hi-rez formats fiddle with the wrong end.

Quote
What I want to know is if they'll ever release remastered versions of recordings that were victims of the loudness wars that have better sound quality.


If they wanted to do that, they could have done it with the CD already. The CD-format has nothing technical to do with the loudness war. The driving force behind the loudness war is in the market dynamics, and that's largely independent of the technical properties of the format. If there is a market force that drives the loudness war with the CD format, the same applies to the hi-rez formats.

The hi-rez formats have a chance of sounding better if they go into a market niche where good sound is valued. As soon as hi-rez becomes a mainstream format, and that's what a number of large companies have apparently set out to promote, the same market dynamics will take over, that ruined the sound quality of CDs, with the same eventual result. Problem is: If hi-rez isn't a mainstream format, it will not be commercially attractive. The very factor that drives hi-rez into the mainstream will destroy its promise.

Anyway, that's what happened to the CD itself in its younger years, and if you take SACD and DVD-Audio as another example, you can figure out which way this thing will go.

There's one technical thing that you could do to change the situation for the loudness war significantly: Provide a distribution format that removes the clipping "wall". None of the hi-rez formats address that. They instead change parameters that don't matter.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #17
If anything they can't wait to make everything louder with hi-res:

"According to Feist, the overall solution to the problem posed by the loudness war is changing the bit rates of final audio files to a higher format than 16 bit: “We have amazing digital technology to record the masters, using multi-track programs like Avid Pro-Tools, and record most of the finished product in 32 bit at 48k, yet because of the CD format, we dither our final master down to 16 bit. This is eliminating so much of the headroom, which would make compression cleaner and ultimately make the audio sound ever better and even louder. I’m all about pushing records to very loud sonic levels but without compression that destroys the depth, fidelity and width of the final mastered stereo file.”

http://iq.intel.com/when-will-the-loudness-war-end/


Its amazing. As if -10db music isn't already ear damaging. I cannot imagine something like -15 or -20. There would be no freeplay with the volume control , either too soft or too loud.


Well, for what it's worth, I believe that is accurate, is it not?


Not in the least, if we try to relate this to the real world of music and music listening.

The hidden agenda in any discussion of dynamic range is the music and the listening environment.

Furthermore, the dB numbers above seem to mean nothing, because any discussion of ear damage must be in the context of dB SPL, which are never negative in such a discussion.  Looks to me like someone is looking at a volume control on some piece of equipment which has no meaning at all unless it is reliable calibrated in dB SPL.

Quote
You could get higher volume levels with hi-rez and yet still have the same amount of dynamics that you would with a quieter recording recorded at 44.1/16.


Wrong. Hi Rez does absolutely nothing to increase volume levels with the same amount of dynamics.

Quote
What I want to know is if they'll ever release remastered versions of recordings that were victims of the loudness wars that have better sound quality.


IME the dynamics of mainstream recordings generally decreases as the recording ages and as it is remastered.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #18
... There's one technical thing that you could do to change the situation for the loudness war significantly: Provide a distribution format that removes the clipping "wall". None of the hi-rez formats address that. They instead change parameters that don't matter.


Removing the "wall" would result in an ever-escalating level war, until someone got electrocuted from touching the terminals on his headphone plug...
We need a format that doesn't sound good with highly compressed and over-loud material. Something like "vinyl"?
Regards,
   Don Hills
"People hear what they see." - Doris Day

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #19
... What I want to know is if they'll ever release remastered versions of recordings that were victims of the loudness wars that have better sound quality.


I'm not hopeful. In many cases, the only "master" available will be the compressed one. To make a less compressed version would mean going back to the original stems (multi-tracks) and remixing and remastering. It's only likely to be possible for some of the bigger artists where the multi-tracks were more likely to have been saved. And it's unlikely to happen unless enough people stop buying compressed versions (cause a significant drop in sales) and tell the record companies why they stopped.
Regards,
   Don Hills
"People hear what they see." - Doris Day

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #20
If they keep the pro tools session, or the pre-mastered mix, they have a less compressed version right there.

vinyl and SACD both have softer absolute limits than CD's 0dB FS, but it doesn't stop them being abused, or having CD-style masters written to them.

Cheers,
David.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #21
But something like this
affects as reduced dynamic range too. So if they just scale to max, it's not bad.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #22
So, if someone wanted to increase the dynamic range AND crank up the loudness, what format would allow you to do that?

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #23
So, if someone wanted to increase the dynamic range AND crank up the loudness, what format would allow you to do that?


Single precision floating point.

Hi-Res Audio and the loudness wars

Reply #24
So, if someone wanted to increase the dynamic range AND crank up the loudness, what format would allow you to do that?



Dynamic range is completely independent of loudness.

Think of dynamic range as being the difference between a car's top speed and its lowest speed (say the speed it goes in the bottom gear and the engine idling)

If you increase both the top speed and the lowest speed proportionately, then the car's dynamic range remains the same.

Maximum loudness is not an inherent property of a recording format. It is set by the gain and power capabilities of the playback system.

For example I can play an 8 bit file and a 16 bit file at the same loudness. At maximum recordng level, they could be equally loud no sweat.

Most DACs play FS at the same output level no matter how many bits (how much dynamic range) in the recording.

However the 16 bit file has the potential for about 48 dB more dynamic range.