While many take issue with the amount of DRC on Californication, I suspect the true issue at hand is audible clipping.  There have been subsequent casualties of the loudness war, but all we hear about are the same tired examples. There are plenty of titles with lower RG and DR measurements people don't complain about. I suspect it is because the audible clipping isn't as pronounced.

A recent AES study quoted on this forum suggests this phobia may be overblown.

Then he goes on to talk about Phillips and how he has FACTS about the compromises made that make CDs inferior to hi-res music, but he doesn't back his "facts" up with any kind of references.  He does not provide the names of any Phillips enigneers he spoke with, nor does he provide quotes from any publications or even his own emails.

Quote from: RonaldDumsfeld on 2015-01-28 02:05:30

Pedram Abrari, EVP of Technology, Pono  explains the cause of the 'loudness' wars.

Quote

Since much of the nuance and detail of the the artist's creation is lost and never heard in a compressed format, this resulted in an apathy up the music creation and delivery chain, all the way back to the recoding studios. ...{snip}..... Music was further damaged due to the unnatural manipulation of its dynamic range to compensate for lack of audio quality. It was recognized long ago that people perceive loudness as quality and to make up for the poor audio quality due to lossy compression, the entire dynamic range of music tracks were made loud and this was the beginning of the "loudness wars".

His "theory" is so flawed, I wonder what lame explanation he'd come up with if challenged, to fit it in with the fact that an album like Californication, with its notoriously crappy dynamics, came out exactly at a time when MP3's popularity was still taking off.

While many take issue with the amount of DRC on Californication, I suspect the true issue at hand is audible clipping.  There have been subsequent casualties of the loudness war, but all we hear about are the same tired examples. There are plenty of titles with lower RG and DR measurements people don't complain about. I suspect it is because the audible clipping isn't as pronounced.

A recent AES study quoted on this forum suggests this phobia may be overblown.

I think it's time we have an honest discussion about the advancement of DRC over the last 15 years rather than this shallow, knee-jerk vitriol I keep reading.  This isn't the proper topic for such a discussion, however.

It seems you may agree that the post I followed didn't adequately characterize the album.  The DR may be bad, but today titles have half as much but with less clipping.

Regarding AES, someone is doing something to study the audibility of the phenomenon which is a lot more than what is going on around here. Ironic.

These poor souls are just casting about trying to come up with a plausable justification for a solution that is looking for a problem.

Well aware of DR only being the tip of the iceberg regarding the issues found on that particular album, the reason of my bringing it up was simply to point out its release date clearly discredits Abrari's theory that the loudness war is a by-product of engineers having to adapt to the limitations of compressed formats.
That is, how could it be if Californication came out before MP3 became really popular?

[AAC is] much better than the radically compressed MP3 files of 1998.

Clearly, if Pono’s testing involved a remastered, high-resolution audio file going head-to-head with an original, crummy MP3 of the same song, you’d hear a difference.

So I wrote to Pono — and heard back from Neil Young himself.

“Of approximately 100 top-seed artists who compared Pono to low resolution MP3s,” he wrote, “all of them heard and felt the Pono difference, rewarding to the human senses, and is what Pono thinks you deserve to hear.”

Aha — there’s a key phrase in there: low-resolution MP3s.

"Neil Young's PonoPlayer: The Emperor Has No Clothes"

In the wake of recent fairly-well written articles by the non-specialized press, this one by David Pogue IMO, clearly stands out. Even more so when you realize he's gone as far as conducting a double-blind test with (apparently) third parties that are real laymen, not self-promoted specialists and/or audiophools.

Were the blind tests level-matched?

Quote

So I wrote to Pono — and heard back from Neil Young himself.

“Of approximately 100 top-seed artists who compared Pono to low resolution MP3s,” he wrote, “all of them heard and felt the Pono difference, rewarding to the human senses, and is what Pono thinks you deserve to hear.”

Aha — there’s a key phrase in there: low-resolution MP3s.

So the reality of Neil's test was more like " ... all of them found first-class rail travel to be more comfortable than a bicycle?"

Did I miss something? Were the blind tests level-matched?

To be fair, it's possible to interpret the original quote as meaning the "obviously inferior" MP3. When you've taken the stance that your format is superior, that wouldn't be an unreasonable logic. Not that I'm suggesting much credence be placed on it, since without specifying exactly what was compared and how, the statement remains useless.

It seems you may agree that the post I followed didn't adequately characterize the album.  The DR may be bad, but today titles have half as much but with less clipping.

Regarding AES, someone is doing something to study the audibility of the phenomenon

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=350

To be fair, it's possible to interpret the original quote as meaning the "obviously inferior" MP3. When you've taken the stance that your format is superior, that wouldn't be an unreasonable logic. Not that I'm suggesting much credence be placed on it, since without specifying exactly what was compared and how, the statement remains useless.

Quote from: antz on 2015-01-30 15:01:36

To be fair, it's possible to interpret the original quote as meaning the "obviously inferior" MP3. When you've taken the stance that your format is superior, that wouldn't be an unreasonable logic. Not that I'm suggesting much credence be placed on it, since without specifying exactly what was compared and how, the statement remains useless.

Perhaps, but in the language of the industry, these days, hasn't "resolution" become synonymous with sample rate and bit depth? Isn't the sales pitch that it is sample rate and bit depth with determine resolution?