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Topic: Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin? (Read 4079 times) previous topic - next topic
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Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

This is snapshot of one of the tracks of accurately ripped original CD with Eac (LOG 100%):



If I'm right this is 1st album mastered from lossy source.


..more snapshots:


Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #1
The lowpass at ~20.5 kHz doesn't necessarily mean that this track was lossily compressed.

Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #2
I don't see anything in those spectral graphs to conclude with any degree of certainty whatsoever that the album was mastered from a lossy source.

Regarding whether this is the first album mastered from a lossy source, there have been reports in the past.

Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #3
I don't get however why the hard cutoff. Never seen that on CD audio.


Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #5
I don't see any good reason for doing this on lossless audio format. Curious what's the point of doing this when the space requirements are exactly same.

Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #6
As you may know, low-pass filtering is a required part of digitizing (to prevent alaising).    And, there are other reasons for filtering during the recording/production process.    It's fairly common practice to filter-out the lower frequencies from everything except the bass and kick drum, and to completely filter-out subsonic frequencies.  I assume some producers/engineers also like to filter-out supersonic frequencies. 

There are no perfect  filters so there are trade-offs in filter design.  No one can say why a particular filter was used, or why the filter was designed a certain way.    The recording/mastering engineer may not know anything about the filters in his ADC or downsampler...  He just knows it sounds good or that it has a good reputation.

Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #7
I don't get however why the hard cutoff. Never seen that on CD audio.

Check any CD from the 80s. I don't recall any which does not have this 20-kHz lowpass.

Which in the 80s was due to a conservative lowpass during A/D conversion. In Alicia's album I'd guess it's because they used some analog processing during mixing or mastering (and then some conservative A/D converter for some reason). What scares me are the lines going to 22 kHz. This is solid gold digital waveform clipping.

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

Alicia Keys: did the era of lossy mastering just begin?

Reply #8
What scares me are the lines going to 22 kHz. This is solid gold digital waveform clipping.

I've found clipping on Third (Portishead album). It's obvious and shocking.