aalloca said:

I never really realized the thing about 3121, but the first time I heard "Lolita" it was SO loud. I actually went into a recording program and took the Db's down a couple notches....

Vinyl is by far the best medium for recording and listening to music, but most music fans have traded fidelity for mobility and convenience. Let's face it; vinyl, CD's, SACD's and DVD audio required special equipment that only real audiophiles would get excited over, while the masses just wanted to be able to take their music wherever they wanted to go. And to most people, the real importance of music is not its crisp sound and layered production but as the soundtrack of their lives. Most people appreciate music because it represents their first dance, their first kiss or sexual experience, their fun times in college, etc. And all things considered, most popular music since the days of punk isn't worth of hi-fidelity anyway because it was recorded with distorted sounds and crackly samples.

Volitan said:

Yeah Prince has shocked me with his engineering of albums, well just his choices of who he uses, he really hasnt been getting good sounding records recently. 3121 has alot of issues, and Musicology does too, the intro on "On the couch" is distorted as are some of his guitar parts on "a million days"

Last Dec,

As soon as I hear distortion I am done with the recording since what it says to me is the artist paid no attention to detail. Besides 3121, there are few other. On the other side there are a few that need to be re-mastered like Jamiroquai's Space Cowboy compressed to hell and low overall output.

On the 2nd Norah Jones I was one of the lucky (unlucky) few who got a poorly post mastered disc with excess sibiliance and distortion on 2 tracks, I think it was the first printing. Sunrise the single was one. I have not purchased another copy, but I will say that I love the album but I won't listen to something with clipping.

I am very glad that this is getting press, but I don't think it will change much.

I have made my peace that high fidelity is dead...

I have superb recordings in SACD and DVD-audio of the 1st 6 Elton's, Beck, Steely Dan, REM, and Talking Heads catalogs mixed in stereo and 5.1.

And as much as friends say wow that is unbelievable, not one has bought a sacd or dvd-audio player, but they do go on itunes every Tues and purchase "albums" for $11.99 for 1/5 of the actual information that should be included as data.
lossless is about 800-1000kbs per track . Itunes 128 AAC at best is 224kbps.

Most people don't care about quality period.

There is a small movement on becausesoundmatters.com from WB for high quality transfers but its mostly vinyl, which I don't own a player for.

By the way I bought Ryan Adams Easy Tiger and I love it except for track #1. The rest is superb. I will be picking up a few more cd's.









T

aalloca said:

If people that do care, keep making noise and informing others, I think there is a possibility it will make a difference.

I know first hand that many top mastering engineers are unhappy with the work they are being forced to do by the labels. But for them it's a case of comply or lose the work. The mentality of the label execs is "make this record as loud as such & such's record, then take it up a notch!". It's a combination of a dick measuring contest and a fast food consume and dispose mentality. It's not about quality. It's about who can grab the attention of someone by shouting the loudest. I've even heard of recordings being mastered to a point where the mastering engineer and the artist are happy with it and think it sounds awesome, then when the album is reviewed in the label offices they discover that it's not as loud as so & so's latest release so they send it back to be remastered louder. Against the mastering engineers recommendation they request for him/her to limit it past the point where the quality degrades and distortion kicks in (not the good distortion).

Like I've said before the only devices that could use a slightly more limited master are devices such as laptops, little ipod dock speaker things and TV's. In other words cheap small speakers that are listened to at low volumes and can't reproduce all the frequencies properly. I myself listen to music mostly in the car or on the stereo system in my dining room. Less limited masters always sound better on them. More punchy, breathing, moving, living, touching. Less like an advertisement.

A solution that wouldn't be hard to implement would be (in combination with turnmeup.org making a dent) a software limiter on the output of ipods, laptops and TVs. The engineers could get back to making the decisions that you would think they're hired to do. The executives could then piss off and go back to doing the accounts and the other boring stuff that they don't completely suck at! Hooray!

I know someone involved in the turnitup.org they mentioned in the article.
This is from their homepage:
"Turn Me Up!™ is a non-profit music industry organization campaigning to give artists back the choice to release more dynamic records. To be clear, it's not our goal to discourage loud records; they are, of course, a valid choice for many artists. We simply want to make the choice for a more dynamic record an option for artists."

Check it out if you're interested! www.turnmeup.org

_

nd33 said:

Thanks for posting - I've been meaning to check out this site since I read the article... and it's easier when someone posts a link