Pearl Jam and the "Loudness war"
Interesting link I found. It charts the noise level in recordings. Not as in the music but the least dynamic so to speak. Where there is little quiet and the album seems "loud" due to how it is mixed.
Anyway here is Pearl Jams discography according to this site.
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.p ... rch_album=
Also you can search other artists as well. Not the differences in Ten reissues and the original.
Anyway here is Pearl Jams discography according to this site.
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.p ... rch_album=
Also you can search other artists as well. Not the differences in Ten reissues and the original.
* Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre Irvine - Jun 02, 2003
* Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - Jul 18, 2006
* Key Arena - Sep 21, 2009
* Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - Jul 18, 2006
* Key Arena - Sep 21, 2009
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I looked for Led Zeppelin..
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.p ... &order=asc
I have the 1994 remasters as well as Mothership. Mothership is even more compressed than the '94 remasters, but it sounds better to my ears. So the question is, should I really care? And the answer is No.
Alpine Valley 2011-09-03, 2011-09-04
I always thought RVM sounded pretty good, although I could tell it was "louder" Interesting that the scores are so low when I didn't think it was that bad at all.
I think Avo is harsh. It is good music but I crank it on my system and it sounds "staticky/fuzzy"
* Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - Jul 18, 2006
* Key Arena - Sep 21, 2009
Out of curiosity, I opened mp3 versions of the songs in a wave editor on the ol' computer and the original sounded much more clear to my untrained ears.
Neat link!
I do get that there should be standards in quality though. That is important.
NO Code was up and down in audio integrity for me but it was that album where they tried new things and moved instrumentally towards a new sound. Much of that made it's way to the mixes and production as well.
The greatest hits compilation was just pure audio amplification. You can tell that they wanted to just maintain a consistent line of sound among all of the tracks.
Riot Act could be used as a bit of an example of the audio wars regarding loudness and mixing techniques. Still a great album though.
Binaural was just what it was intended to be. It was a method of sound production they had not done before and it sounds stable for the most part. On par for me.
The self-titled album was a victim of the loudness war. It is chaotically too loud and compressed to hell and back. My opinion though.
Backspacer was taken down a notch from the self-titled album and a lot of new and improved technique and production with some of the good old production skill set was applied. It's bearable. Could be better.
Ten met standards but it's ambiance was lacking in the over abundant reverb/echo. Still better than the compressed reissue and redux as far as loudness goes.
The Ten reissues were better for clarity in instrumentation. That's about all I have to say on that. It fails every where else.
Vs. and Vitalogy were both mixed and produced well. Above standards and within conform of standards.
Vitalogy was an effort to give the live appeal to the listener and they did it well without compromise. The band should have stuck with that application of sound from there on in my view.
Yield sounds great but too much bass and muffled in certain aspects. Still quality but could be better.
The reissues of Vs. and Vitalogy were again products of compression and loudness. Still good quality as far as bringing out the instrumentation for the listener to hear though.
Agreed Vitalogy is audio perfection......why even mess with the formula? Every album should sound like that.
Self fulfilling prophecy?
Alpine Valley 2011-09-03, 2011-09-04
That only really matters if they did a special master for vinyl. All vinyl is quieter than CD, so it may "look" better if you examine the waveform. However, most LPs made today are NOT mastered for vinyl, they're just the CD masters, so the difference in actual audio quality is nominal.
I wonder what the point of Soundgarden doing this was?
This was for the Telephantasm is this an example where the Vinyl being made into an MP3 is better than an MP3 from the CD download? Marketing or is it actually a better sounding recording?
The 3-LP 12" Vinyl Edition includes all songs along with a one time use download key for all the songs in 320 kbps mp3 format taken directly from the vinyls.
* Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - Jul 18, 2006
* Key Arena - Sep 21, 2009
The only mainstream rock albums I know of that were mastered for vinyl recently were the new Foo Fighters record and anything put out by RHCP.
Soundgarden doing something like that is, quite frankly, idiotic and bullshit. If they're giving people lossy MP3s taken from a CD master that was put on vinyl, then they're giving them a version that sounds worse than the CD version. Marketing BS at its finest.
All it really confirms for me is that THE DISSIDENT SINGLE(S) WAS AND IS EPIC.
Atlanta '94 for the win.
PS -
this site is describing differences in *volume* compression? or *frequency* compression?
i'm confused.
?
If I opened it now would you not understand?
... and ...
Jane's Addiction = greater than PJ.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Volume compression, i.e. making the quiet parts louder so everything is the same volume.
Here is a simple explanation.
* Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - Jul 18, 2006
* Key Arena - Sep 21, 2009
The original Atlanta broadcast which I recorded onto cassette tape, was actually far superior to the CD/Single version they released with Dissident, in my humble opinion. When it was "professionally" mixed, it completely lost its rawness.
The other poster further up/back had it completely right about Vitalogy too. Audio perfection.
this right here needs to be sent to every record label and artist.
what i find funny a decade ago the record labels were crying about mp3s ruining cd sales, and the next thing they do is make even good music less listenable. there has been some reasons for this loudness stuff, driving in cars and ipods. if you have a good constant background noise it will drown out the quieter parts of songs. but what about the people that listen to music at home or dont listen to their ipods in shopping malls?
what i think is mp3s/itunes could use this loudness stuff, people listen to their ipods in the car anyways. and cds should try to get the most dynamic range as possible, and if its cost effective release a loud and dr version of the cd. real soon there wont be any need to spend more that $10 on headphones if music is just gonna sound like crap.
i cant remember what artist it is but they dont buy into this loudness gimmick and have put stickers or something on their albums saying something like the cd may sound quiet but that is why your stereo has a volume knob.
Ok.
I'd like to get in to a technical argument here, and anyone with ACTUAL recording experience (members of bands with studio time? audio engineers, producers?) feel free to tell me i'm an idiot ... but, FOR ARGUMENTS SAKE, having done "some" recording with friends (none that you would EVER want to listen to) i feel like there is a VALID REASON for compression \ audio manipulation \ clipping etc ...
again, tell me i'm wrong if there is a real world work around to this but ...
baring the notion that all this is being done by countless bands for the sole sake of loudness,
is it not possible that this compression and\or amplification \ equilization \ limiting \ clipping of the sound is being done for the sake of NORMALIZATION ... ie ... TO MAKE THE RECORD CONSISTENT ON THE WHOLE?
Obviously such an effort would be EXTRA APPARENT on *compilation* album (like Rearviewmirror) since the tracks included are not even from the same recording session, era, necessarily from the same equipment\technology, producer\engineer, etc ...
but, EVEN ASSUMING these are all songs from the exact same session, studio, producer\engineer, etc ... unless there is a deliberate ethos (like on Binaural) put in to the recording process (one that would necessarily be LIMITING) to baseline all recordings in the first place, you are NECESSARILY going to have discrepancies in sound volume that REQUIRE some form of normalization.
IS THIS NOT THE CASE?
For example, to illustrate the NEED for some sort of sound normalization,
there are some sounds that can ONLY be achieved at certain volumes on certain instruments.
Say you want a certain distortion sound ... maybe you only get it out of your amp at volume 8.5 with the knobs on your guitar all the way up. Now say another song is recorded at 3.5 with your knobs turned half way down. Those two tracks are necessarily largely different in their minimum and maximum volumes. How are you going to fix this?
Is not even the simplest fix (and arguably nothte best practice) of raising or lowering the master volume on the mixer going to cause SOME form of audio "distortion" or alteration?
Even still, different songs require different levels for different instruments, and there is very complicated decision tree to be made for each individual volume in a song. Again, i'm no audio engineer, but i've monkeyed around with audio enough to know there isn't exactly a "science" (certainly a very clever art) behind getting volumes "right" on a recording.
At the end of the day, due to the nature of the variety of techniques, instruments, and mixes used to achieve certain tracks, there are invariably discrepancies in the total (and min & max) volumes of different tracks. It would seem (to a simpleton like me) that the only way to adjust for this is the process which this website is accusing of being "evil", but to me seems like it would be necessary.
The only way i see "around" this, is to record everything on an album under the exact same circumstances, using a limited variety of tones & volumes in the first place. If you have a straightforward punk band, maybe this isn't an issue. Just plug in and play. Mix it down and woop woop woop. If you like to monkey around in the studio and come up with different weird sounds and be creative, it would become exceedingly hard to just have every track come out at the right de-facto-"normalized" volumes.
Am i way off the mark on this, or is this not sort of a "fact of life" in the recording process for any band that is screwing around with different sounds?
or is it just plain bad audio-engineering?
In which case, how are you SUPPOSED to adjust the sounds down to "correct" volume without frequency clipping\loss?
If I opened it now would you not understand?
the whole dynamic range, compression stuff is done post mixing. it basically takes all the work done to make a nice mix of the instruments and flushes it down the toilet.