Please read it carefully - he's not really commenting on the style of music, but on modern production and mastering and the popularity of destructive compression formats used for distribution.
Oh, and pre-empting the inevitable... I like Neil's harp playing, it doesn't make me angry, it fits his style. Just my opinion of course.
Last Edited by on Jan 23, 2012 9:46 AM
I am on lunch and can't access the article and look forward to reading it later. Ever since recordings began getting radio play the race was on for the loudest records. They were the most valued simply because they were louder and caught the listeners attention. Compression and mastering tools today bring all this stuff to a new level in the ever going quest for a louder mix. Listen to an old blues lp, or anything from the 40's- today and you will hear the ever growing compression and volume quest evolution. They are doing it to remastered stuff so you will have to listen to an original recording. I record/master my stuff with compression/limiting to about the volume of the blues recordings of the 50's-60's. The problem with pumping the compression and mastering process is the stuff gets squashed and dynamics are lost. You hear this all the time with these terrible sounding youtube recording that plauge the net. Those handheld cameras compress to death. The quiet stuff gets pumped up closer to the loud stuff with compression and eventually you lose all dynamics and will get a very brittle sound. I am sure they will continue to figure this out and music will get louder and louder. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
that is a great example! I notice car stereos are bassed out and like young said, the highs are getting lost. Add to this most people listen to music on tiny headphones, mp3's and you have further degregation of sound. People seem to care more about visuals than sound today.
Put this on some nice speakers and you will hear what great music sound is all about. I use stuff like this as my goal for sonic quality. It is a never ending thing like playing an instrument. Walter
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Walter> could not agree more. The true audiophiles( I'm not one) seek out the vinyl's in order to listen to great unadulterated sound. ---------- HARPOLDIE’S YOUTUBE
A friend of mine recommended trying out some free sample tracks from - www.hdtracks.com
He loves giving demos to friends with the same music in different formats (sample rates, sample resolutions, various compression formats), and seeing their reactions. I have yet to get the demo on his equipment.
@Walter: "People seem to care more about visuals than sound today."
When was that not true? We've always loved visuals; they're just better now than ever before. Remember the food-color & salad oil in glass pie dishes on the transparency projectors during rock concerts? Modern live music has become musical theater. For recorded music most folks don't make sound quality a priority, and they never have, as evidenced by the popularity of MP3 players. Decades ago it was portable transistor radios. Then 8-tracks in the car, then the Walkman with crappy headphones. Was there anything worse sounding than a 45rpm single? We used to happily put our 45's or LPs on stacking turntables because it was a pain in the ass to change records and we'd rather listen to scratchy records than fuss with playback equipment. Pops, clicks, hiss, wow, and flutter were all part of listening to the songs we loved.
On the whole, we love music, we love songs, we love melodies, and we REALLY LOVE convenience, but we don't give damn about sound quality because it's expensive and inconvenient to obtain. We want music in our cars, but the signal to noise ratio makes high dynamic range impossible (compression actually helps us hear the music in noisy environments). Yet we listen happily, sometimes with the windows open and the kids yacking because we love the songs, and we're capable of loving them and respecting the music despite crappy sound quality.
I'm too practical to be an "audiophile" but great sound quality is a wonder to behold, and I love it. Given the funds I would spend more on my home audio system than I do on my automobiles. And I would have a great time listening to and appreciating my audio system. And I would be doing it ALONE, because my wife doesn't give a shit about it so long as she can hear the lyrics and the melody. That doesn't mean she can't tell it's better, she just doesn't care that much. She just wants to hear the songs.
