Blog Discussion Topic - October 21, 2008 - John E. Johnson, Jr. - Where is the dynamic range in modern recordings?
I have been reading reports in several magazines lately about the complaints from recording engineers that they are being forced to turn up the recording volume throughout entire albums because the louder the music, the more it sells.
You have probably noticed this in your latest rock music CDs. Everything is the same volume: loud.
It is easy to do. The recording itself has quiet sections and loud sections, but during the editing process, the engineers simply turn up the quiet sections so they are near 0 dBFS (the FS means Full Scale).
There must be a lot of music fans out there who like it, because they are not ones who seem to be complaining.
So, why should the recording engineers care, as long as the consumers are happy?
Well, the problem is that the recording has no dynamic range, so it does not even come close to sounding like live music.
Secondly, it is affecting recordings other than hard rock music. I listened to a Barbra Streisand album of popular music, and when she sang softly or was really belting it out, the volume was the same. In fact, this was my first experience noticing the lack of dynamic range in modern CDs.
Telarc - bless their hearts - doesn’t seem to have fallen into this deep hole. Their recordings from day one have so much dynamic range, they sometimes have to warn consumers on the cover that there is some really loud stuff on that album so be careful.
None of my SACDs seem to have dynamic range issues either. It is such a specialized market, I guess no one is pressuring the engineers to screw up the recordings by putting all the sound up near 0 dBFS.
So, my question here is, the readers who follow Secrets on a regular basis are probably a little different than those people out there who just put everything on their iPods, and just don’t really care about the sound quality (other than having it loud).
What do you, as Secrets readers, feel about all this? Are you content with the way modern rock CDs are recorded?
October 21st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
In a word, it sucks. I think that dynamic range is what gives emotion to music. There are no emotions to music if it is just “yelling” at you the entire time. What a shame.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I tend to read a review about a certain recording in CD or other media before buying it. I am also particular about the mastering engineer i.e. Doug Sax. Even, going as far as a particular mastering studio. I preferred recordings with wide dynamic range. I have some popular recordings with sound up near 0 dbFS, I used for demos or educating my friends on recordings dynamic range. So, my choices now a days are very few. Good recordings can still be found out there.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 am
These guys are trying to do something about it: http://www.turnmeup.org/about_us.shtml
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
The trend towards maximum compression comes from the industry’s attempt to have recordings jump out at the listener. It’s the same reason why TV commercials seem so much louder than normal programming. It’s kind of like an arm’s race. Everyone is trying to make their record “louder” than the last one. Musicians tend to hate it from an aesthetic perspective, but are overriden by the commercial implications. I blogged back in April about the mixdown of a recording project I participated in, with similar results. These days, the common playback system for rock music tends towards compact systems such as portable MP3 players and iPods; car stereos or computer speakers (regular SECRETS readers excepted, of course)! Generally, those systems do a poor job reproducing full dynamic range recordings; the quiet parts are lost. Jazz and classical labels cater to a more discerning audience, so the problem is not as acute as in the pop music field.
The sound degradation is more acute now that most everything is recorded digitally. In the analog days, running the input trim to redline was a necessity because of the limited available dynamic range. Plus, a little analog distortion added “warmth” to a recording. On the other hand, digital distortion is nasty, and chopping off the offending clipped signal with brick wall limiters makes for a brittle, harsh sound. My hope is that as the younger generation graduates from portable to high fidelity playback systems, that part of the market will demand better quality recordings.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Once upon a time one of the clear advantages of CDs over vinyl was dynamic range. Vinyl always seemed to have a warmer sound, but CDs were far quieter and had the potential for greater dynamic range. Today it’s the execption when you find a well recorded CD outside of SACD. Boosting volume might sell more CDs but it’s really frustrating to listen to.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Lately, I have become very careful when it comes to purchasing new CDs because of this insane situation caused by the marketing people at many record labels to make their product sound louder. I too, do not experience this problem with SACDs.
I really looked forward to the new Journey release “Revelation” because the band’s new lead singer does a great job of emulating Steve Perry. Imagine my disappointment when I first played the discs and found that the dynamic range had been so comprimised. This disc is just LOUD LOUD LOUD. It’s really too bad because the lead singer sounds great and the band has never played better. I will read the reviews first, before I purchase next time.
On the the other hand some remasters can sound so fantastic compared to their earlier releases on CD if they are done right: anything remasterd by Steve Hoffman, all The ABBA Remasters, Billy Joel’s “An Innocent Man” and Madonna’s Remasters are just a few where the engineers and the record label did it right.
Let’s hope that spreading the word on the evils of compression will someday reverse this trend.
It’s your duty as a “Secrets” reader to educate those around you.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I will never forget when my high school music director told us, “music is about silence”. We, of course, found this assertion to be incredibly hilarious for the first 24 hours or so until we figured out exactly what he meant. What could be more true? The best video displays produce the blackest black levels and the widest gamut of varying white levels. Not many home theater enthusiasts would tell you otherwise. It’s the way of life: you need evil to define good, the yin for the yang. That’s why I’m very enthused about my theater right now. When it produces silence, then that’s about all you hear. No ground loops, no buzzes, rattles or any other deleteroius noise, just silence. (OK, so there is a little fan noise from the HVAC system and projector. But that’s it.)
I do believe that I have found one modern SACD that is short in the dynamics department. It’s the Wallflowers “Red Letter Days”. The reason I say that the I “believe” it’s short on the dynamics front is that I’ve never listened past the second track. I really liked the Wallflowers and I still do. But this effort on SACD is very flat an lifeless. Flat and lifeless? A multi-channel disc? You betcha
I’ll try listening to some of the other songs tonight and wil post later if I feel that I need to retract this assessment.
Remember, “music is about silence and the blues are about being happy”!