On 11/07/07, Mew, Peter wrote:
> As this is a personal hobbyhorse of mine may I just chip in
>
> For the first 17 or 18 years of CD, mastering engineers were
> punctilious about not "exceeding" max level, an "overload" light meant
> you did the job again at a lower level
There is digital clipping on at least a couple of the Mercury reissues.
> This all seemed to change about
> 10 years ago when some engineers discovered that even if you pushed
> the level so the overload lights came on quite a lot the overall
> effect was that your CD was louder than the previous one that had been
> played, without too much obvious detriment to the sound quality.
> This then became a war, not between record companies so much, as
> between artists and producers, as to who could make the loudest
> record, in the mistaken belief that this would make their CD sound
> louder on the radio And as we all know louder is always better(NOT)
> Once the genii is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back, so
> now no one is willing to make their CD a bit quieter that the next
> bands, even accoustic guitar and vocal records are out of all
> proportion. The effects of all this "Loudness" are Very little, if any
> dynamic range Destruction of transients An annoying buzzing caused by
> the squaring off of sine waves into square waves
> An exaggeration of the distortion thus generated, when these CDs are
> turned into bit reduced files MP3 etc Odd "Pumping" effects caused by
> the loudest sounds pushing down the quieter sounds as they hit the
> brickwall limiter and then releasing them back as the limiter
> recovers, and so on There is even some evidence that these effects
> cause people to stop listening to such CDs as the brain rejects the
> distortions as annoying side effects
>
> The sales of CDs are down, the audiences for live music are up -
> probably just coincidence
>
It could be, because I gather the audiences for classical and other
non-pop styles are up too.
Regards
--
Don Cox
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