Lord Hasenpfeffer wrote:

What I wanna know is how kin a li'l ol' guy like me without no edukashun
in such teknickl affars take on such a highly respected giant like
*Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab" with nothing more than a $300 slingshot
(monitor not included) and a pebble named "normalize" ... using as my
test example their own stupidly priced "ORIGINAL MASTER RECORDING" of
*PINK FLOYD, "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" and end up spanking their butt like
a newborn baby?

What's wrong with this picture?????

That it's only your own assessment of your remastering.
Mastering professionals and their clients have ears that
appreciate the nuances that dynamics give to music. Your
removal of them is not generally acknowledged as
improvement. Quite the contrary. It is the growing
consensus among such professionals that dynamics removal for
the sake of broadcast loudness has gone over the top in
recent years and there is a growing movement to stop that
nonsense. You seem to be the lone voice in the wilderness
saying that we haven't yet begun to sufficiently homogenize
and distort it.

Where do you do the most of your listening?


What you see in that screenshot isn't a "mustagot lucky" one-time
accident either. This is yet another high-profile example of what I
experience on a daily basis with nearly every single one of my "older",
unremastered CDs.

Looking at sound is like dancing about architecture.

BTW, is rec.audio a real group? It's in the headers of
these messages from you but bounces from my news server
which is a pretty complete one.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Bob Cain wrote:

That it's only your own assessment of your remastering.

And obviously Capitol's assessment of their remastering as well.

Mastering professionals and their clients have ears that
appreciate the nuances that dynamics give to music. Your
removal of them is not generally acknowledged as
improvement. Quite the contrary.

Have you seen the screenshot? It's painfully obvious to see whose
version of "Dark Side" has *less dynamic range*. And I'll give you a
hint: it isn't *mine*

It is the growing consensus among such professionals that
dynamics removal for the sake of broadcast loudness has gone
over the top in recent years and there is a growing movement to
stop that nonsense.

Good! I'm in agreement with them. Why you're choosing to inform *me*
of this is where you're losing me. Your response implies that you
believe I've somehow "removed dynamics" from MFSL's original WAV.
Please tell me how you are able to arrive sensibly at this conclusion
after having viewed the following screenshot:

http://www.mykec.com/mykec/images/20...ey_Smoking.png

You seem to be the lone voice in the wilderness saying that we
haven't yet begun to sufficiently homogenize and distort it.

I believe I am on record (upthread) as having said when I looked and saw
how severely *clipped* were the peaks during the loudest passages of
"Long View" from Green Day's "Dookie" CD, I nearly puked. And from that
you infer that I am a lone voice in the wilderness? Hmmm... scratches
head and moves on to the next point

Where do you do the most of your listening?

Wherever I happen to be at nearly any given moment. I carry my music
with me nearly everywhere I go.

Looking at sound is like dancing about architecture.

I like that, however, looking at my screenshot reveals that it is MFSL's
original WAV and not Lord Hasenpfeffer's digital remastered edition that
possesses the *least* dynamic range.

BTW, is rec.audio a real group?

No.

It's in the headers of these messages from you

Yes, it has been. But I don't think it's there anymore.

but bounces from my news server

Yes, it should have.

which is a pretty complete one.

cheers and applause

Myke

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Windows...It's rebootylicious!!!
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Bob Cain wrote:

I agree. There is no change whatsoever to the dynamics
between those two track pairs, only a change in the level.

I take it then that your use of the term "dynamics" and my use of the
term "dynamic range" are not the same. sigh

You can do the same thing with the volume knob.

If I'm only trying to play original CDs with my stereo system then most,
likely, yes.

I'm not sure what you think you are accomplishing doing that?

I'm creating over time an incredible number of MP3s from the now over
2,100 CDs in my personal music library. By normalizing the older CDs so
that they are relatively just as loud as my newer remastered CDs, my
entire collection will have a sweeter, natural balance of amplitudes
across the board than it ever otherwise would.

Meanwhile, this activity of mine which I promise you is a "good thing"
for my purpose has led to all these other generally unrelated
discussions involving terms with which I am not as intimately and
mentally familiar as most others here in this forum. And everything's
pretty much snowballed from there.

All you did was turn it up.

Well, then, if that's really all I did, you can add me to the list of
people out there who swear by the "louder is better" philosophy.

What am I missing here that you are crowing about on that
link?

I do believe my crowing has everything to do with defending myself
against all the stupid accusations that have been lobbed in my direction
by more knowledgeable but less experienced people regarding how this
process of "normalization" as I've called it is supposedly doing
*damage* to my original WAVs by either clipping it or limiting it or
compressing it or reducing its dynamic range - all of which are totally
bogus accusations! And my previously less than stellar understanding of
the terminology didn't help matters much once the full-blown melee' was
underway.

BTW, did you rip the original track by DAE from a CD in your
CDROM

Yes. I used "cdparanoia" to rip all tracks.

or did you record it via some input channel, analog or
digital.

No. Not at all.

It's very unusual to see a track mastered at that
low a level on a CD.

Um, well, actually, however, it *isn't* as unusual as you might think -
and that's what I've been trying to say all along. Nearly 100% of my
older, unremastered CDs "suffer" from dramatically under-amplified peak
levels!

If I rip and encode my MP3s from these immediately as they are, they
sound just fine until you switch over to playing an MP3 encoded from
another, "digitally remastered" CD.

My use of "normalize" is an attempt to compensate for these differences
as I go about ripping and encoding MP3s of my entire CD collection over
a long period of time - which, btw, has kept me busy off-and-on for more
than the past two years now.

If you are actually doing limiting or compression on some
things that can explain why you like it better. Based on
that example I'm not sure what you are doing any more.

To my knowledge, the *only* time any limiting and/or compressing occurs
when "normalize" is being used is when I attempt to push the suggested
target amplitude required to normalize the thing by a higher than
sensible amount... but as far as I'm aware, I *never* do that.

Here is a screenshot of a close-up zoom of the same region of the same
track (1) after it's been "normalized" +4.5dB to my usual, personally
preferred target amplitude of -10dBFS and (2) again (from scratch) after
having being "normalized" (or more than likely in this case "limitized")
by a *rude amount* of +10dB to a target level of -5.33dBFS.

http://www.mykec.com/mykec/images/20..._MFSL_Zoom.png

The reason I asked is that if you are listening in the
presence of a lot of background sound then squashing the
dynamics by what we yesterday called "limitizing" can in
fact improve the listening experience by bringing quieter
stuff up to where it would be hard to hear in the presence
of the background without making the louder dynamics any
louder. This is mainly why mastering has come to be
compromised for the sake of broadcast. Listening to
broadcast is usualy in a noisy environment.

Hmmm... I wasn't aware that that's what most broadcasting engineers
believed. Interesting.

Usually whenever I listen to music, I'm working with my computer either
at home or in an office with my face "up to the monitor" and my ears
directly between the two speakers located on each side of said monitor.
My proximity is often close. The background noise is often minimal.
My soundcard is a surprisingly nice, strong, and clean-sounding Yamaha,
and my speakers are either by KLH or a set of Creative "Inspire 5.1"
5300s - although my soundcard is not a 5.1. I'm very happy with all of
these too. Of all the people I personally know who listen to music
regularly with their computers, I've yet to find a better sounding
system than mine. (However, compared to many others' in the world, what
I have is probably **** compared to their caviar.)

Myke

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Windows...It's rebootylicious!!!
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