WildheartXXX said:

it is sad I myself never downloaded MP3s... I basically listen to CDs and buy from iTunes. But if recordings themselves are getting weaker, then what?

I read the article in RS and it filled me with a sense of loss. Are there enough audiophiles out there to keep the music from losing such quality in the days to come?

DiminutiveRocker said:

collectors.


and on that note why on earth would artists and record companies complain about people 'stealing' shit quality recordings other than to create an atmosphere?

I would say they have known this for a long time and its just an evolution before they offer us costly much more secured manner of allowing us to listen to quality.

When its the right time they will release it and we will demand it and pay the price. Just like all their charades with technological advances.

horatio said:

Because people who don't care about quality will download the mp3 and then not buy the BETTER recording. There is a whole new generation of people who do not get that the mp3 quality is shit.

DiminutiveRocker said:

But WE care about quality, WE are the generation who has/makes MONEY.
The children are the people who dont care about quality but do care about having the latest disposable shit music being produced.
They both have a place.
We will pay for the good stuff.
Its kind of like the different qualities of Mary Jane.

DiminutiveRocker said:

I dont think kids care about hi-fi and to be fair, kids never have. Article mentioned SACD's and DVD-audio didn't sell.

Different days when the cd first arrived. Promising better sound, clearer sound, digital sound blah blah blah. MP3's dont promise anything. As has been mentioned, quality has taken a step back, not forward, and as millions are happy with their compressed mp3's, then you cant blame todays engineers. They must think "why waste time, balancing out base, treble, mixing in and out various intruments, when everyone will just download it through mp3's and all my hard work will be lost onto a shitty compressed file anyway?"

horatio said:

You are very optimistic but if you read the RS article, I think "we" are getting smaller in number and that poses a problem. You are right, kids don't pay - that's the point. They get the shit quality for free and settle for it - and those kids will only get older and older. So the recordings are shit because no one is noticing the difference.

DiminutiveRocker said:

It doesn't take an audiophile to demand quality. I would advise anyone who purchases a recording that sounds harsh, overly compressed/limited and noticably displeasing to write a letter to the band or their manager expressing your disappointment. Even better, return the CD back to them!

For anyone that questions their own judgment on this, it's an easy comparison to do if you own older recordings of the particular artist (generally albums that were mastered pre 2000's are less overdriven).

What I would deem a good master (in regard to what we're talking about) would be a recording that I can crank up the volume more and more (on any half decent stereo) and it doesn't get harsher, it just sounds better!

Try it! Put on 3121 and start cranking it. Then put on "the hits" (I only have Prince's older albums on vinyl so I've only compared this one).
You will have to crank a few more notches up on your volume when you put "the hits" on to get a similar level.
IMO "the hits" sounds much more pleasing on the ears, it has depth and punch!
3121 sounds flat as a pancake, everythings right up front hammering your eardrums into numbness. Do I want to put 3121 album on repeat? No, (and it's nothing to do with not wanting to get to know the songs) it's more like, "I need a nap!".

The article mentions losing the power of the chorus, because it's not louder than the verses. This is not the biggest flaw of this mastering trend. When they use a very fast reacting brickwall limiter (FYI compressing and limiting are very similar and generally both will be used) to push the level, the peaks get flattened and in turn the brief audio between the peaks is boosted. This is unnatural and giving the listener fatigue when done to extremes.

The nature of percussion type instruments is that they have sharp peaks. These should stick out a bit from the body of the song.
The flatter music is squashed, the more closer in form it becomes to static. We all know how musically pleasing static is!

We, the consumer, the music lover, must demand quality or remain dissatisfied!

_

nd33 said:

DiminutiveRocker said:

Kids will pay when they get older because they will have aquired a taste for it, just like alcohol and foods cars art clothes. Are you still the same person you were when you were 5, 10, 14, 17, 20 etc.? -just saying.
There will be a market when they get things secured with laws and how they see fit.
It will be the NEW thing. Just like the evolutions in recording that proceeded to this day. The latest in sound
If anything this article could be a small little propaganda piece for their cause.
Oh, well it is a Rolling Stone article after all.

horatio said:

What you are not considering is that I PAID for all my music at 5, 10, 14, 17, and 20! The quality was good so I KNOW the difference. If the kids today don't know the difference and don't even care - - then to quote an old adage "why buy the cow if the milk is free?" and they don't care if it's homogenized or not!

I'm hoping this mastering trend subsides. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future a band looks back at their catalogue and realises "shit, our albums from the 90's sound miles better than our albums from the 2000's" and then gets all the later ones remastered using less limiting.

The only time heavy limiting can help is when you're listening on tiny, crappy speakers such as on a laptop or those little speaker systems you plug your ipod into when you go to the park. That's because these tiny speakers can't reproduce the frequencies of the music properly. I realise that alot of people do listen on these tiny, shitty speakers and some (god forbid!) probably even deem one recording better than another listening on these! But instead of fucking up the music for people that appreciate it, a software brickwall limiter could be easily slapped on the sound output of a laptop (or embedded in MP3 players) and music could once again be powerful and moving when played in a half decent stereo.

_

DiminutiveRocker said:

[Edited 1/9/08 21:04pm]

nd33 said:

Exactly. A crappy "mp3 conpressed like" modern album will sound fine on walkmans, ipods etc..., but the difference is huge when you blow it up on real speakers and hi-fi. As you said, lesser equipment cant handle all the complicated shit then say, "brothers in arms" by Dire straits has.

So as I said, why should engineers bother making albums sound good, when people dont give a fuck about good sound and are fine with compressed mp3's and compressed mp3 sounding albums anyway? Early cd's sounded shit some of the time aswell. Remember electronic Stereo in the 60's? This mp3 like quality of making and mastering albums is just a faze. We just gotta sit it out.

thesexofit said:

Didn't know Femi was a she- she did a great job on Stevie's last album

CoolTarik1 said:

I assume Femi is female LOL. Sounds female. Hmmmmm, you got me thinking now

horatio said:

same here...if they only released them the same time they came out. The thing is though..i HATE recording them on the computer.....unless they are songs I rather have on vinyl or are nowhere else. The sound is definitley top noch. I feel liek Im inside the snares and the bass.


And I thought Femi Jiya is a male. I met him in Minneapolis (i swore)

thesexofit said:

yeah fake stereo..singing in one speaker and the music in another speaker (Beatles..The Moments, tons more)


(((((Stereo)))))

paisleypark4 said:

Early stereo was horrible. Beatles realized this quite early I think? You can buy mono or stereo copies of most their albums, at least, I think you can?

Motown always fuck up remasters. Seriously, get the original Jackson 5 vinyls, not only is the sound better, the mixing is to. Motown do some weird stuff with their mixing. Vocals more in the back, drums more in the front. Seriously, motown are the worst for this.

I hate "ABC", where Jermaines part sounds like its been recorded down a phone line. Its funny, but annoying

thesexofit said:

But you have to be careful not to ruin early recordings by taking them forward in technology, this is what the Beatles are fighting now with letting their music go digital, among other things they are fighting about digital (another being breaking up their albums to sperate downloadable tracks) but there is a beauty to the way George Martin put alot of the beatles stuff together, talk about being creative.

lastdecember said:

Yeah, I think those early stereo albums are worth a mint now. Not sure how mono vs stereo went down in America, but in england, it was a major thing for a while I think. People would assume stereo was automatically better then mono. But all stereo is, is that you can get say a guitar in one ear, and a completely seperate keyboard in the other, at the same time of course That would never happen LOL, and stereo, in the music I listen to, is only really used when you get say, a bunch of voices going from one ear to the other. Mono cant do that, it just stays in the center of your head (this is assuming your wearing headphones of course)

You could argue the beatles were the first band to create proper albums, and not just one single with a bunch of filler (something Motown did to most their acts into the 70's even). It could be argued they were the first albums band. Their singles happened to be massively sucsessful aswell of course, but they were one of the first to do proper albums.

Funny that its Frank Sinatra who gave birth to the concept album (concept being love songs with a general theme of lonliness and feeling old sort of thing). I never would of guess he was the first.

thesexofit said:

Yeah i would have to say that the Beatles made "Albums" though i didnt live through their time, i got their music from my brothers and having it always around me, but thankfully i was surrounded by great albums from the Beatles Stones,Stevie,Bowie,Queen etc...and then when i started buying music on my own, albums were still great in the 80's. I think now when i find "great" albums its more of a personal thing, the times are not dictating great albums, it used to be the greatness was the mainstream, now its opposite.

lastdecember said:

Yeah, I grew up on the beatles, stones, led zep, Queen etc... But vast majority of stuff I buy is online is personal. Its not deliberate, Iam not trying to be elitist by probably being, at the time, the only 18 year old listening to Michael Bolton, but thats just because the internet has opened up a world of music to me. I dont think my music is better then todays, infact, the music I buy gets dreadful reviews, or would do by magazines probably, but I couldn't find anything I liked in todays music. At least you still dig girls aloud etc.., I got nothing LOL. Thank God for the internet, as second hand stores where I live are closing down, so even a surprise bargin is getting harder and harder to find.

thesexofit said:

Well i have just tried to carry what my brothers had around when i was younger, and that was varied tastes in music, this would be how i could listen to Alicia Keys, Girls Aloud, Ryan Adams and Elton John in the same hour, music is more personal to me than i fear it will be for the generation to come and this why i will put things down, especially when i see artists i respect lowering their standards and playing it safe to sell. I still can find new stuff, but like i said it usually was the mainstream that dictated the times to you, people think "mainstream" is a bad thing, but its not, when its not "mainstreamed" big difference, right now here in the USA we are "mainstreamed" which is why there is a lack of "albums" out there.

lastdecember said:

MTV use to play rap, rock, rnb, pop in the same hour. Its too segregated now. U dont get that anymore. The community of kids knowing a bit about rap, rock. pop, rnb, like we knew about, seems gone, at least in the US it does. And its the outlets fault, by trying to concentrate of shoving the same type of music down a kids throat. No progression, and this might be why rnb isn't moving forwards as the acts singing wont try anything new.

It's hard to describe, but kids are only listening to rock, and they dont hear anything else, some kids only hear todays hiphop, and they dont hear anything else. They are growing up only knowing a particular genre of music. Wheres the diversity in music tastes? I dont have much variety in my collection, but I do own a country record, rnb records, rock records, boybands, girlbands etc...and that was/is due to the fact everything is linked up. Also, you had genre bending artists like Beatles, stones, Queen, Prince, Jacko, Bowie, Springsteen, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Beastie boys etc.., which mixed it up, and meant as they were influenced by different genres that created their music, odds are you yourself would also like their inspirations.

You dont seem to find these "genre benders" so to speak anymore, and you wont, when US radio and MTV wont play them. Why wont they play them? Because they are genre specific only, and you must fit into either the rap box, rnb box (rap/hiphop/rnb is their a difference anymore commercially?), rock box, country etc...

Pop music was always about mixing genres. Thats can never be the case when you segregate everything with pesky labelling.

lastdecember said:

Although Ringo and Paul both commented how exciting it was to hear their songs (from LOVE)in 5.1 - mixed by George and Giles Martin, of course
[Edited 1/9/08 22:57pm]

thesexofit said:

This is so true. It's a strange corner we've turned in music appreciation. The development of a new artist is virtually gone.

Shit like this gives my generation a bad name. I LOVE vinyl. The whole 9. Not only is the sound better than Cd's (even on my shitty $100 turntable with 3" speakers) but also you're getting a tangible product. Artwork and everything full sized. I love it. Though I won't deny MP3's convenience (I have a shitload), I have them for just that. Convenience. I usually use my MP3's/computer when I'm doing other things, but when I'm in a musical mood, I put on the vinyl. Plus I have most albums on CD and not on vinyl.....

WildheartXXX said:

Hun, I think you toatlly missed the point of the article. You're the target audience exactly for why the age of the audiophile is over. You want louder over substance lol. Funny you missed that. Irony, such a cold bitch.

Bottom line in addition to shitty new music (artistically speaking) they now make it sound worse than the lack of melodies and structure already handicap it!

I enjoyed the article. Someone mentioned Prince's Musicology and 3121 and they are WAY LOUD>>>> Probably 3-10db's hot. There is no dynamics.

Now Prince being a control freak you think he would listen to this and say hey the bass is distorting everything but I guess not.

There are some good sounding disc's out there, few are far between.

Re: MP3's
I love my 160 gig ipod but I make sure to rip at 320 AAC and listen with Shure E2 in ear monitors which are fantastic. Mp3's are great for portablility but I always say, similiar to the article, if you cover up 50% of a Jean Michele Basquiat painting is it really the same thing??

I prefer SACD's and DVd-audio to cd's nowadays but that market is dead. Altough my Elton SACD's destroy today's cd's.

Again we suffer cause most of consumers don't care about taste, quality,they just want a formulamatic easy to digest middle of the road ideal.

SO now we not only have people buying 128AAC from Apple, but engineers producing and mastering the albums are mixing cd's improperly to be ripped into mp3's.

I still buy 99% of my music as tangible cd's and it is getting more frustrating to hear any new projects sounding like someone red lined all the eq's.

aalloca said:

You totally summed it up here.