[Serge Auckland]

"Dave" wrote in message
oups.com...
Snipped

I have listened to plenty of CD (about 650), so I think I can tell a
good recording from a bad one. There may be problems of course with
quantative measurement, in that the recording could be done to get the
measurement
high, and it could just sound clinical.

The point was that if I thought a CD sounded poor quality I think
there should be a computer program to confirm this, instead of just
asking someone else.

That's like asking if there's a computer program to confirm a wine is of
poor quality, or a piece of art work is of poor quality. Quality is
subjective, is a composite of many individual factors and can't be reduced
to a number. A computer program (or manual instruments) can analyse the
performance of a piece of music, and give you numbers for dynamic range,
frequency range and by analysing the gaps between music, the background
noise level. It can't then tell you whether this is "good" or "bad" as these
are value judgements.

As to your OP, I think you are asking for a piece of (free) software that
will analyse for any "footprint" left behind by MP3 compression. I have
never come across any such software, free or otherwise, nor do I know of any
reliable way of telling subjectively that something has been (or even is)
MP3 processed, if the bit rate used is high enough.

Others have mentioned the infuriating habit today of removing any vestige of
dynamic range from modern mastered CDs, then clipping the result, all in an
attempt to get maximum loudness. I previously posted that the Daily Mail
even, ran an article a week or two ago highlighting this trend. However, it
is not all the fault of the producers foisting their ideas on the poor
artists, even some artists insist that their CDs are mastered as loud as
possible, as a part of their "sound". Lily Allen was mentioned by name.
This, I think, is much more likely to be the reason for dissatisfaction with
recently mastered CDs than any (unlikely) possibility that MP3 was involved.
As a consequence, I now don't buy any CD that was mastered (or remastered)
in the past 10-12 years.

S.

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