The Smiley Smile Message Board

...I played it yesterday, and it hurt my ears, even at a low level. Am I talking 'brickwalled', or 'strangely mastered', or 'wrong pressing' here? Was there ever a thread devoted to the matter? I seemed to detected a lot of apparent distortion. What are the available alternatives?

Tks in advance.

That sucks man.  You've trained your ears to the point where you can't listen to normal music anymore.  Sucks to be you!  I would hate that! I listen to that CD (did yesterday!) and it sounds great. 

I got the UK pressing on the day of release - unlistenable. I mean... unlistenable.

I got the US pressing a few weeks later - no problems. In the interim, partly in desperation I guess, I'd ripped my UK pressing to my iPod, where it suddenly became listenable. So, my only conclusion is that someone mistakenly sent the download master to the UK instead of the CD master.

And yes, it's hot mastered/brickwalled to the max.

Cheers Andrew. I have a strong hunch that we heard the same type of problem. And thanks for the hint - I will seek out a US version sometime. Because the music itself is great. There's all this detail, the fleeting thoughts on a warm afternoon, summery haze, the nice fragmented structure of some songs, well, that's my 2 cents anyway.

That's what I tell women: it sucks to be me. Is that why I am unmarried?

The vinyl pressing of TLOS is considerably better than the US cd for what it's worth.

Do you have the ability and time to make a vinyl rip? I'd be very interested in hearing that, as I would any other Beach Boys/BW vinyl rips anyone would care to share with this fanboy.

You'll have to wait some time, but I can surely rip some goodies for you eventually.

We discussed this back when TLOS came out.

You might recall I posted images of the waveform for two tracks (MAD and GH) from a ripped CD and sampled vinyl LP. The CD exhibited a certain amount of what they call "brickwalling" whereas the vinyl had none.

It is a *very* poorly mastered CD...at least the European version. The vinyl is acceptable but even that sucks for something which states it is "produced by Brian Wilson"

Producing is not the same as mastering.

No it's not, but his assessment of the record is correct.  The vinyl is the best, but it's the best of a bad bunch.  Unlike BWPS, which is stunning on vinyl, TLOS is just ok.  It's rather unfortunate that "just ok" happens to be the best option out there.

Sorry So cold, but although my system is great my soundcard is decidedly not.  One of these days I plan on getting a nice one to do some 24/96 rips of my collection.

Yeah, but it's not Brian's fault it sounds like sh*t. He doesn't master his own albums and ostensibly doesn't care to know how to do this either.

IT BURNS!!!
 >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D

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I wonder whether Brian even knows what his records sound like these days. The guy has one ear and his records are mixed in stereo. That alone speaks volumes. Block off one ear entirely and try to mix accurately in stereo.

What I want to know is - does Brian make a mono mix for himself? I would LOVE to get my hands on something like that. I believe that Brian was masterful at mixing in mono and it's a damn shame that he hasn't bothered with it for years.

Brian has said that he moves from one speaker to the other to get an idea of what it sounds like in stereo.

How much producing Brian actually did on TLOS is....debatable... Nothing about the way it sounds gives me the impression that he was interested after he'd laid down the tracks. Which is a shame as the music is *great* and the album really comes together as a whole. It just sounds like the aural equivalent of a bad hangover.

I agree that the CD is totally unlistenable. The vinyl is just about OK and the waveforms I posted back in 2008 to this very board prove beyond doubt that they went through different mastering processes.

SMiLE on the other hand is sublime on vinyl (the US pressing, the European was substandard). The CD even sounds pretty good.

I'm curious about the processing used on Brian's voice. Its rather minimal compared to most 'pop' records but there's something going on which I can't quite fathom.

Man, I'd love to get my hands on a vinyl copy of SMiLE or TLOS. Gerswhin too. No record player, unfortunately... And I can't find any vinyl rips of any of the albums, either.

I'm just glad i'm ignorant enough to think my version of the CD sounds fantastic. 

You're a snooty little fellow aren't you? It's just down to how each person hears the sound, man. To some people, it sounds fucking harsh and ugly and when it's turned loud it's uncomfortable to listen to.

What's snooty mean? 

I'm just saying, i'm not musically talented enough to hear anything wrong with the album.  IGORANCE IS BLISS, you know the saying.  The album sounds spectacular to me. 

Much of the reason why TLOS sounds horrible on CD is because of the compression used. Put simply, the 'quiet' bits are almost as loud as the 'loud' bits.

Take the CD and the vinyl of the same song and you find greater dynamic range on the vinyl.

The CD and vinyl both suffer from an engineer who thought the top end frequencies should be shoved at us with great force.

Mastering engineer.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/n_gulliver/vinyl.jpg)

The above image represents the ripped CD (top) and vinyl recorded using 96KHz sampling at 16 bits from a good quality turntable (ie not a USB thingymagig). The track is Midnight's Another Day.

Note how the two loudest sections on the CD exhibit clipping...the music should soar to a crescendo as Brian sings "All the people, make me feel so alone" and the cymbals come in. The CD just distorts whereas the vinyl still retains a valid waveform....no flat edges whatsoever. Note how the difference between the softest and loudest sections on the CD is LESS than the vinyl.

Note also that I 'normalised' the recorded track from the LP....ie it's been altered so the loudest moments are 0dB the same as the CD. So its not simply that I set the recording levels low or any trickery.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/n_gulliver/Going%20home%20with%20vinyl.jpg)

This second image represents Going Home....again ripped CD on the top with the LP below. The CD is practically brickwalled, no dynamic range at all. On the rocking section the edges are almost flat, up against the 0dB limit allowing no change in intensity and crucially allowing the moving parts in your ear no rest - THAT is why so much modern music actually hurts to listen to. That is why many people find the CD of TLOS painful....plane to see in blue and white.

Now look at the vinyl. Same song, but clearly a totally different mastering process. Again normalised to 0dB so the loudest part is just as 'loud' or intense as with the CD. But there's so much more going on, no brickwalling, a far greater difference between the rocking section and "at 25 I turned out the light".

The vinyl is going to be more pleasant to listen to, and its going to stirr more emotions because the music (to some extent) swoops and soars. It has quiet parts and loud parts, it expands and contracts. Its not like recording using an old cassette deck with the auto levels switched on (shudder).

Hopefully this reminder clears up a few questions about TLOS on CD and vinyl. And to be honest even the vinyl is not great.

SMiLE is another matter entirely. It is a beautiful recording.

Absolutely right.

How does the CD and vinyl compare here?

Also any chance you could indulge me with a little parental mocking in order to demonstrate to me how one or two ripped vinyl TLOS tracks may sound compared to CD?

I have no vinyl facilities unfortunately.

Cheers

Night and day.  I think the BWPS cd sounds much better than TLOS, but the vinyl is just incredible.  It's that good.

If vinyl could support this kind of compression/maximisation the bastards would do the same to it.

There's an unfortunate volume standard set with CDs to compete. But even so, this CD version isn't maximised as bad as a lot of other CDs out there. It's unfortunate that the whole thing is EQ'ed the way it is. There's so much going on in the high frequencies which is mainly what makes it uncomfortable to listen to.

Vinyl's support bass so much better than CDs ever can, producing that lovely warm quality.

I hope this current CD mastering fad of over-compression and high-end brittle-ness (high-end adding to the illusion of volume) ends soon. It's a terrible thing.

I think it's instructive to recall that when it was announced that Bob Ludwig mastered TLOS, you could hear the groans rippling through the BW fan community.

The US pressing of the vinyl is amongst the finest LPs I own....OK so I don't have thousands but lets say something like 600 LPs from the late 50's to the present day. SMiLE is perhaps in the top 10 for fidelity.

It really is that good.

TLOS on vinyl is far better than the CD but would be in my bottom 200 somewhere.

I'd love to hear vinyl versions some time

As an aside, the European pressing of SMiLE is not nearly as good. It comes from the same master but the whole product is inferior to the American one....from the less thick card used to make the gatefold sleeve to the smaller relief of the emobssing on said sleeve to the quality of the vinyl....but its still better than the CD.

I have to say that despite being an early digital recording using the Soundstream syste, Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" on vinyl is *to die for*...it is a sonic marvel....as is Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Anything by Deutcshe Grammophon is good, if you enjoy classical/orchestral music. Phillips put out some fantastic vinyl before they attempted to destroy the market with the CD...for example Duke Ellington's Nutcracker Suite from 1960.

In the 80's there were a fair number of 'important' albums put out as special audiophile editions mastered at half speed...and yes...you can tell the difference. For example Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells...on the half speed master you can hear subtlties that you simply can't hear on the regular LP...or on the CD.

I didn't break the bank with my turntable either. Back in 1991 I spent approximately 400 quid on a Systemdek IIx900 and it still serves me well. Similar is available today from Audionote though I think at 3x the price.

hmm.  i kinda wanna get smile on vinyl now. 

Gotta love the loudness wars. With they way everything is compressed these days, I don't see why artists and producers aren't just peaking into the red during recording...wouldn't sound that much different.

With digital recording, peaking in the read just sounds horrid. I first encountered this circa 1990 when a friend acquired a DAT recorder and we did some experimenting. I was familiar with pushing into the red with analogue tape but with digital you just don't do it....sounds horrible. The same is true with today's hard disc or flash memory digital recorders.

I'm no recording engineer by the way, just an enthusiast. I did mess with 4-track recording during my childhood and even thought I'd invented 'ping ponging' from 3 tracks to one In order to open up 3 more tracks when the 4 were full...little did I know!

Agreed: as opposed to a sometimes cool kind of distortion of tape, I've found you just get a pop-click kind of sound.

 
Newbie question:  Who decides the mastering engineer for each album?  Checked the BW solo CDs and Bob Ludwig is the one doing the mastering, more often than not.  Since Smile sounds great (unless I am mistaken), why the groans for this involvement with TLOS (and BWRG?)?  Just asking as I have many of the BW vinyls, just no turntable.  One of these days I hear how they sound.  Just wall decorations for now. 

PS How does the GIOMH coloured vinyl sound compared to the CD??  Anybody care?  Thanks.

Not sure why the groans, as Ludwig seems to be one of the few people *against* the loudness war these days.

GIOMH coloured vinyl, like most coloured vinyl, doesn't sound as good as the black wax....but it's still a very nice pressing....better than the CD but with a hint of surface noise from the vinyl.

Coloured vinyl does not change the sound quality, why would it? It's ostensibly simply a matter of adding dyes to the wax when it's pressed, and that wouldn't do anything positive or negative to a pressing. Picture discs are the ones to worry about, however.

Vinyl comes naturally clear (by which I mean colourless). It is coloured black to aid its properties in terms of reducing unwanted noise. Coloured discs are somewhat less optimal - though that does depend on the colouring agent used.

I don't own the recording in any format, but absinthe boy's screenshots lead me to wonder whether the European CD is HDCD encoded? HDCD, among one or two other tricks, boosts the output of the disc by 6dB (ie to twice the subjective volume.) When a HDCD disc is played back on a non-HDCD compatible CD player, the volume boost still happens but with crushed peaks (ie with an added layer of brickwall limiting.) iTunes, on the other hand, can accurately rip and decode HDCD, thus making Andrew's ripped copy sound better from his iPod than the original.

Of course, if Andrew has an HDCD player, all bets are off.

Also, it seems to be largely overlooked that one can hear some semblance of stereo with only one ear. Each ear is capable of decoding directional information on its own to some extent - this is the basis of Quad and other surround systems. I only found this out for myself when I suffered an inner ear infection which took much of my hearing in my left ear as a teenager. Thankfully, I got my full hearing back following an operation, but during my "deaf year" I could still easily detect from which speaker certain sounds came from, especially with wide, three-track style "trick" stereo recordings made in the 1960s.

Didn't make any difference what I played it on, it still sounded awful... and I don't recall seeing the HDCD icon on the readout. That would explain why my iPod rip sounds way better.

I've got a player that will play anything I care to throw at it from DVD-Audio (full resolution) down to regular CDs.

TLOS is *UNLISTENABLE* on CD...at least to my sensitive and somewhat trained ears.

I feel sorry for you that you have such sensitive ears. It must be a real burden to carry around in this day and age? Almost everything released today is loud and brickwalled. I hear on another forum that even our Beach Boys 2-fers are too loud and bright. I am so glad that I do not have Goldilock ears.

That's what I'M trying to say.  Hell TLOS sounds great to me.  I'm glad i'm not cursed like that.  I can tell when sh*t is in tune or not, and I can tell when things aren't clear, but TLOS sounds great, when I first got it I thought it was such a clean sounding, beautifully recorded cd. 

That would suck to not be able to stand any amount of compression on an album without hearing it, and making it 'unlistenable' as several people have called it on here. 

I have average ears (although as I prefer CD to vinyl, some would argue against that) but the European version of TLOS was the first truly unlistenable CD I've ever heard since I started buying them in 1985. The US pressing is fine, as is my iPod rip from the European disc.

Same here. I'm already looking for a different pressing of TLOS, or the LP thereof. The Euro CD is sheer torture, even at very low levels.

TLOS is one of the worst mastered, engineered, and mixed albums I have ever heard in my life. This, coming from a 25 year old with a fair bit of Tinnitus.

I have a slightly off topic question. Let's say you burn a cd-r of a vinyl album. During the process from vinyl to cd-r, is there any change in the sound quality? Is anything "digitized" along the way? As you can probably tell, I'm not an audiophile in the least.

It depends on the equipment used Jay.  I have a nice turntable, preamp, etc. but just a cheap 16 bit sound card.  I've experimented with making 'needledrops' of a few records and they came out sounding harsh and grainy, for lack of a better description.  But I've heard some terrific vinyl rips online from people with much better computer hardware than I have, including rips of the exact same pressing of a given record that I own, and I couldn't tell a difference between their copy and the actual record being played back on my table.  If you record with a nice 24/96 capable sound card and then dither it down to 16 bit to burn a cd-r then it can sound amazing.  Even better, my friend with a Squeezbox tells me 24 bit files sound incredible so I can imagine if you had a 24 bit rip of a nice record you'd really be in business.  Is there any change in sound quality along the way?  Technically, there probably is.  Is that difference going to be perceptible to the human ear?  I doubt it.  I'm very pro-vinyl but there is absolutely nothing wrong with digital audio.  It's great technology.  It just depends on how it's used and that's where the problem with most modern cds is.

I'm convinced that Andrew is correct.  I bought my copy of TLOS at a Best Buy in Wisconsin, and it sounds fine.  My ears are 54 years old, but I know a crappy sounding, unlistenable CD when I hear it (Bruce Springsteen's "Magic" for one).  Had to be a different mastering job on some of the TLOS CDs, and it sounds like Andrew has both versions.

Ha! Had exactly the same with 'Magic'. A distorted, and very flat soundscape. I compared it to 'The Rising', and that is much, much better. One gets pretty desperate about such things... with all that technology at our hands, all the formats available, and with all the fine budget hifi devices on the market (way better than 30 years ago)... with all of that, we get crappier sound than that of a very average pressing of a Motown 45 in 1964.

It stinks.

If you'd ever listened to Memory Almost Full by Macca, i find that much worse. That's the most horribly compressed CD i can think of.
 I haven't listened to TLOS on CD since i bought it, though -always been on the ipod, which sounds fine if perhaps a little over-cooked.... i have no idea how ripping it would somehow undistort the music!

Some of the tracks on my Rip Chords and Bruce & Terry cds sound awful on my mp3 yet fine on the cd so I guess some stuff is just incompatible with the mp3 format when converted?

Yeah.  That one, too. 


It does indeed.

I am glad that I can tell the difference between a sonic dog's breakfast like TLOS (or Memory Almost Full) and a sonic marvel like SMiLE - both mastered by Bob Ludwig by the way. I listened to SMiLE on vinyl last night and it is a joy to listen to, the subtelties in the way the instruments interact together,

I really don't know what to say to someone who says TLOS sounds great. It is actually painful to listen to at any volume level. The lack of dynamic range gives your ears and brain no rest. The CD genuinely gives me a headache...and I am not one prone to headaches. And the tendancy to over emphasise the high frequencies to simulate even more loudness just sounds so wrong to me...especially when people sing words with the letter 'k' in them....you can hear it on "lucky old sun"...a pronounced click on the 'k' that is totally artificial, you never hear it in real life. The experience of listening to TLOS on the European CD is akin to listening to 40 minutes of white noise at high levels. Even side 2 of Peter Hamill's LP 'in camera' (which some reviews describe as 20 minutes of white noise) is more comfy on the ears....and that is a record *designed* to be disturbing.

I can listen to 'bad' recordings....1920's phonograph cylinder jazz records for example....but they aren't painful to listen to. Modern brickwalled, brightened CDs are literally painful.

I've only heard Memory Almost Full on vinyl and it is such a shame...because I find the music engaging and very agreeable...but I've only listened to the entire LP once. Compare to Chaos & Creation which sounds quite good.

As for ripping to MP3, it depends very much on how its done...as well as the source material. As with all digital formats, the compression algorithm used and the bitrate selected. An MP3 will never sound as good as the source digital material, but it might well sound almost indistinguishable on a portable device and sound good on a hi-fi.

Digital recording is not bad per se. DVD-Audio uses (up to) 9.6Mbps, 192KHz sampling rate, 24-bit resoultion .. DVD-A discs played on the correct equipment (not a regular DVD-video player) sound simply stunning....I am honestly not sure whether vinyl is better. I can say with certainty that DVD-A is the only domestic format whcih rivals vinyl...sadly not enough people cared enough about the difference and DVD-A has not succeeded.

The CD format is old, out of date and was flawed to begin with. The basis for the format was achieving 60 minutes of playback on a disc roughly 5 inches wide. in domestic equipment. By the time the format was finalised (the cusp of the 1970's and 80's) that meant 1400kbps given the wavelength of laser practical at the time....44.1KHz sampling rate with 16 bit resolution. Dynamic range is theoretically higher than that of a vinyl LP but in practise the extra dynamic range has never been used on a commercially available CD. From the mid 1990's onwards things have got worse with the gradual move towards brickwalling.

I've got to admit I was completely unaware of the plight of you audiophiles.  My ignorant self can listen to cassette tapes and car speakers with blown cones, and still enjoy the music.  I love music, listen to it constantly every day... I don't know what I'd do if low quality recordings made them 'unlistenable' to me. 

Have you considered seeing a doctor about this?  You're really out of the norm here, something's got to be wrong with either your ears, or your brain.  I'm telling you flat out: this isn't a problem for most people.  I'd go see an ear specialist and see why it is you can't enjoy a lot of sounds. 

yeah i don't really pay attention to compression.  TLOS is fine to me.  BUT....memory almost full, i actually know what you guys mean.  It has this tinny sharp tone that actually makes for an unpleasant listen sometimes. 

Agreed about Chaos and Creation and Memory Almost Full. Electric Arguments doesn't suffer from the same brickwalling so it seems that McCartney learned his lesson - also, the deluxe version of EA included a DVD with high-resolution stereo mix of the album (24-bit 96khz) which sounds awesome.  Regarding MAF - since you enjoy the album, you will like the vinyl master, which is decently mastered, although it is pressed on thin vinyl.

I also have to agree that as much as I love the sound on vinyl, especially its unique bass response, high resolution digital is the best music format out there, whether is is DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD, or just high resolution FLAC/ALAC/OGG/et cetera. It is pure, with all the necessary headroom. I expect it to be pushed by the music industry in the next few years, especially considering that everything is recorded in 88.2 or 96khz nowadays. I would love to hear a high-res digital version of BWPS, for instance.

Can somebody explain to me just exactly what "brickwalling/brickwalled" means?

The images posted earlier in this thread are as good a description as you'll get. Basically, pumping volume on quieter parts as high as you can (so that they're as loud as loud parts) and often boosting certain frequencies, too. The idea is, you've boosted your tune to cut through the radio clutter. The reality is, everyone is turning it up, and up, and up.

Owen Morris takes credit for that when he produced Oasis' debut album Definitely Maybe.   he claims anyway.  and it sounds freaking awesome on that album.  his might just be everything at the same volume, not really frequencies though.

Thanks for the info. So, it basically means pushing up the high end to the point of distorting, or "warping" the sound?

If we're talking classical vinyls, just for reference, the Melodiya label from the former Soviet Union; Deutsche Harmonia Mundi had good vinyls as well - if you can find a 1982 pressing of Sequentia's first album of Hildegard of Bingen's music, Symphoniae, you've hit a jackpot. The Hungarian Hungaroton label had some great releases. Supraphon from the former Czechoslovakia was also a master.

Honestly, the best classical vinyl I've ever heard is the original Walt Disney 1958 release of the Fantasia soundtrack, on 3 LPs. Before the digital age and Disney ruined the soundtrack, not to mention the beautiful sounds, that stands to this day as the BEST way to hear those recordings. For recordings made in a VERY primitive stereo, they explode from speakers. My mother actually wondered if there was an earthquake nearby while I was playing the version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring ballet from that record. The dynamics are that stunning.

 :o this is a real eye opener for me. I distinctly recall that way back in 1993 or so, Oasis' songs (even on the radio) sounded different to me, although I had no clue why. Somewhat flat, not the full-blooded r 'n' r that I was used to. I remember thinking: well, perhaps it's made to sound that way to create an effect in a large dance hall, a stadium, car radio, whatever...

I honestly feel sorry for somebody who can listen to music via speakers with blown cones and not lose any enjoyment. You're missing SO MUCH of the sublties of the recorded music, so much detail and replacing it with horrible distortion.

I've been told about those Disney Fantasia discs but have never managed to hear a set myself.

My hearing's a bit low in the left ear so I think I'm missing the subtleties in a lot of the music I listen to.

i'll disagree there cause oasis had a full bodied sound for those first two albums imo.  before the not so slow fall into horribleness, and the slow climb back to good.

Even if the level wasn't bumping up against the level where SERIOUS distortion sets in, the lack of much (if any) difference between the passages that were intended to be the loudest and the passages that were intended to be softer deprives the music of much of its impact and essentially all of its subtlety. It makes it much less interesting when you deprive the listeners of the sound level cues.

Brickwalling simply stated means ALL the recorded sound is processed so it's all as loud as it can be without becoming SO distorted that it is near totally unlistenable.  But compression - the process that makes brickwalling possible by making all the sounds essentially the same volume/level - is a bad deal no matter what.

If you want to hear uncompressed recordings, I think the majority of classical music cds have no compression on them at all (Is that actually true? they certainly sound softer than rock cds).

Brian's deaf in one ear but I bet he can hear them...he certainly could in 1966 and he was just as deaf as he is now.

All commercially released CDs are compressed compared to the source material....but the available dynamic range of a red book CD is quite good. Classical CDs will be use minimal compression for sure.

In Greg Milner's book mentioned above, there are quotes from mastering engineers saying that they only compress and brickwall pop/rock releases because they know the classical audience cares more about the sound quality of the releases.

The thing is that pop/rock/jazz/folk....any music you care to name gains a lot of its emotional impact from the swoops and soars when the 'volume' gets louder and softer (crescendos, diminuendos, for the cognescenti). It really doesn't matter what type of music you are dealing with....you rip out the heart and soul if you compress the dynamic range.

It's my opinion that this topic always brings out the over-dramatic. Dynamics do not equal heart and soul, just one way of evoking it for listeners. All compression is not evil. Every technique is a viable option in an artist's bag. Yes, modern music is over-compressed and that causes ear fatigue. But record company execs aren't pissing in your beer and eating your children--they're trying to get their music noticed and sold. If the slightest exposure to modern recorded sound hurts your ears, that's a shame--just like if you can't tell the difference between well-recorded, well-mastered music and the opposite, that's a shame. My two cents, obviously previously (and possibly about to be again) disagreed with by people.

Brian's a musical genius, I alas am not.

Am I alone in finding that astonishingly arrogant ? Like the pop/rock audience, the classical one ranges through the spectrum from those who listen on a boom box in the kitchen to the geek who listens more to the equipment than the music. Anyone who thinks this isn't doing their job properly, rather they're thinking "ah, it's just this crappy pop stuff, faders up to 11, they won't notice the difference, all they want is volume". How would they like it if a mechanic said to himself while servicing their car, "hell, it's just a Toyota, I won't check the tracking, they won't notice" ?

I don't think they mean to be arrogant. Not really.

One large part of classical composition is dynamics. (A symphony orchestra is as big as it is for a reason -- it can play incredibly soft or incredibly loud.) And lots of classical listeners care about telling a pianissimo apart from a piano apart from mezzo-piano apart from a mezzo-forte and so on. And because of that, classical CDs tend to (not always, but tend to) be mastered so there is a really audible distinction between soft and loud.

Rock/pop music has seldom depended upon dynamics for quite the same purposes or effects as classical ensembles. I mean, a rock group already plays in a much more constrained dynamic range because amplification makes every instrument a potential equal (there's a reason you have dozens of violins and only a handful of horns in an orchestra, for instance).

So that has left engineers with a lot more freedom to decide how a pop/rock record should sound. The optimal symphonic record sounds like, in most cases, one thing: an accurate reproduction of a symphony orchestra playing in a hall with good acoustics. An optimal rock/pop record sounds like -- what? A band playing in a pub? A band playing in an arena? What about playing in your living room? How about some swirling mixture of treated tones that could never be reproduced outside a studio?

Rock records sound like all of the above. And then some. The Beatles, for instance, had quite compressed, punchy sounding records (for the time). And they were produced by someone why knew (and had produced) classical. So was George Martin condescending or arrogant to the Beatles and their listeners? Of course not. He knew that a different kind of music required a different kind of mix and mastering to present it best.

Now. This is all separate from what happens when you push the levels up so high that you begin to get actively distorted sound. I think if that's what a band wants, it's okay. But on something like Memory Almost Full (which I've heard firsthand and does audibly distort) or the European pressing of TLOS (which I have not), it's not particularly connected to what the records are trying to be.

If you really want to hear a good example of distortion as a result of a poor mastering job, find an original 1989 cd pressing of "Special" by The Temptations. 

Maybe that's not the intent, but that's how it comes across... and there are raucous classical pieces just as there as soft rock/pop pieces: would any capable engineer master, say, the first CSN album in the same way as Iron Butterfly ?  In its early days, yes, rock was all about noise, but that stopped being the prime factor by the late 50s (Buddy Holly springs to mind). If you're going to master any recording, you give it the attention it demands irrespective of genre. Radio these days isn't as aurally restricting as it once was, and I for one listen to my music mostly at home, not on the radio.

I'll try to dig out Milner's book later and find the exact quote but I got the impression that the engineers and record companies felt that since pop/rock is mostly listened to on MP3 players and in cars that fidelity isn't important. People generally do not turn down the lights, close the curtains and LISTEN to a record on a stereo system any more. At least that's not the way pop music is listened to....according to the record companies.

Sadly, a look at mainstream electrical retailers bears this out. It is hard to find a halfway decent stereo system in a major chain store these days....whereas MP3 players (and of course iPods) abound.

They reckon that classical buffs, on the other hand, do care and do tend to listen on a decent system without interfering sounds of traffic, kids, machinery or whatever.

Personally I am with AGD. The music deserves to be mastered well regardless of the target audience and genre of the material. Even heavy metal has dynamics.

As for heavy rock (as opposed to metal)....what would Queen's track 'Innuendo' be without dynamics?

Agreed on all points.

From what I recall [hopefully correctly] of Milner's book (got it from the library; returned it from whence it came), the engineers laid the blame for the fact that listeners of popular music don't care about dynamics on the radio. Pop listeners want their music to sound like it's being played on that, and radio itself is horribly compressed in the first place already! In other words: these albums or singles get mastered excessively loudly because people have taken the "radio sound" of excessive loudness -- and the idea that 'louder = more gripping and better sounding' without qualification -- to be entirely natural. It's just what you do and ostensibly most people are not familiar with any other way of recording/mixing/mastering things. This is, unsurprisingly, aided and abetted by record labels and other sundry players of the music industry. Engineers have made the claim that, if the consumer wants to hear something louder, recordings can be mastered to preserve dynamics and the consumer can turn their own volume up if they want it louder. Labels have, according to Miler, sh*t all over this suggestion because apparently consumers are too goshdarn stupid to manage the volume of a sound recording themselves. People who listen to classical music, ceteris paribus, do care about this sort of thing and are much more likely to notice excessively loudness and severe lacks of dynamic range for the reasons Wirestone stated.

Could be an explanation for my extreme sensitivity towards failed mastering. I listen to classical a lot. Dynamics are essential. Distortion is Satan himself. Even mediocre transfers from '60s recordings sound so much better than TLOS (e.g. Bernstein and the NYPhilharmonic with Beethoven).

Heck, the Naxos label have a fantastic recording of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier by Edwin Fischer, mono, 1933, and that is better than TLOS.

The whole thing reeks of musical snobbery to me. It's generalising that only the cultural elite listen to classical music, while the unwashed masses wish to have braindead pop blared to them at huge volumes. Where does a record such as Pet Sounds or Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin fit into that philosophy?

Pet Sounds in true mono sounds fantastic. My favourites: the 1971 U.S. edition, and my CDR made from the MFSL Gold edition. Fantastic, because well-balanced, dynamic, colourful, and in your face at the same time. BWRG I do not yet have.

Classically trained violinist here....though lapsed in terms of actual playing. As for my musical tastes, they range from baroque string quartets through classical, trad jazz, some modern jazz, good pop music, progressive rock, and good heavy rock and metal....plus some avant garde. For me, its not the genre but the emotional effect the music has on me. Good pop might just be toe-tapping fun...but that's an emotional response. Music which swoops and soars gets a different emotional engagement.

Brickwalled, autotuned music is certainly music....but it has zeoro emotional involvement for me as a listener. There's nothing to tap my feet or to drum my fingers to because the synths and voices are just as intense as the bass drum (if there even is one) and the bass. There's no soul in the vocals when they are over processed. There's just nothing to engage with.

Whereas a fine performance of a classical piece or a hot jazz session from 1935 recorded onto shellac can engage me. The tragedy of modern recording is that CDs are often mastered with LESS dynamic range than a 1930's shellac disc.

Interesting aside. Last night we had some friends over and watched the movie 'Moulin Rouge' in full 5.1 surround sound. The soundtrack has some fantastic dynamics and it really adds to the emotional feeling you get from the images and the storyline. This morning we were watching some kids show on Disney, and it included a fair amount of vocal music....the vocals were autotuned and the production of the music close to brickwalled. It interfered with the show rather than complementing the visuals. And its sad that today's kids might be growing up with that sound and looking back on it in their adult years as the sound of their childhood.

man i gotta admit i have no idea what the "sound quality" of my childhood is, and 99% probably dont' either.

You have an amazing "formation" in music.  I am badly "outgunned" even entering this discussion in terms of my lack of formal music education as you so luckily possess.  Mine is only about 24 credits, mostly piano to learn to play for my Kindergarten, and not my major, (fake book) method.  I could play for the kids (read - "have fun and get paid!")  [Anyone who starts with "quotes" goes to detention. That use comes from my very cautious legal education.]

At any rate, the whole CD (TLOS) thing is interesting.  When I first bought it, I gave it a listen through several times to get the "gist" of the theme of the music and could not put my finger on the "harshness" thing until I read this very interesting thread.  I blamed the car stereo of an older car and my complete ignorance of how to use the controls for fading, etc. 

When Brian came to town, I knew the music well enough to sing along and hold my breath till he got to Southern California, complete with all the "visuals" that were incorporated into the show. 

My kids have taught me a lot about how to convert the CD's into mp3 format and I (proudly) loaded a lot of what I have onto a Zune which is Microsoft's mp3 and an iphone ipod.   Today while on the treadmill, I just started out with TLOS, listening for the first time on the Zune, with Zune headphones, and was blown away by how much better it sounded.  [AGD was correct in saying that it was much better in that format.] Frankly, I need the Stones "edginess" to stay focused while I work out, but just could not bring myself to switch out of TLOS to Mick's "40 Licks"...It was surprising how much better it was on mp3, in a dynamic I had never thought about.  Does it "morph" when converted to mp3 from CD into something easier to listen to?

Those graphs were amazing showing the sound dynamic!  Bravo! Very cool!

I agree that there is nothing like the old vinyl but who can carry a turntable around?  And it is a nice thought of drawing the curtains and just having the old turntable move...I do think it has gone the way of high button shoes...despite the superior aesthetic.

The mp3 (either Zune or ipod) is awesome in another car with a better built-in speaker system .  Wow.  Is is possible that the CD is just a "convenience" because there is still a market that wants something "tangible" rather than the "download" process that the young kids use?   

p.s. I am a  kitchen boom-box hack!         

A few selection from Greg Milner's book "Perfecting Sound Forever"

Pages 267/268: "I don't blame mastering engineers for te level wars," Calbi flatly states. "Clients have pushed us to make it louder." He's not talking about the musicians so much as the record company excecs. THe real culprit is the "good ol' five-CD changer" they use to listen to music, Grey says. "They'll put four CDs in the changer, that they all know are loud, and the A&R guy wants to hear their band's latest CD, as it's mastered, up against those. And if it's not as loud, it's sent back to the mastering place for more compression." The engineers try to explain their less-hot versions will sound better, and just as fierce, if the consumer only increases the volume. But in an unstable music industry, this is a tough argument to make. "Knowing that the job of turning it up is on the onus of the listener is a hard concept to accept when you're trying to sell records," Katz says. Record companies sometimes even set up "shoot outs" among mastering engineers, giving several the same song to master and awarding the job to the loudest one.

There's also the story of the radio station which worked out how to keep the modulator needle at 99/100% all the time...thus being the 'loudest' on the airwaves (page 268 onwards).

On the use of Pro-Tools....page 340: "I hate to say it, but nowadays when I start a mix, if I turn on thebass drum and it's not as punchy and aggressive, rather than even trying to get it to sound that way, it's so much easier for me to retrigger it with a sample that I already have dialed in and ready to go."...."especially with bass drums. A lot of times I'll retrigger the bass drum and take all the dynamics out so that it hits at the same volume every time. It makes the song sound more aggressive. I generally don't replace a snare drum, I just add to it, so a sample will give it more attack or more tone. And sometimes the toms as well. They're tricky to record, or the guy doesn't hit them hard enough. So sometimes it's just easier to put a smaple in there."(Chris Lord-Alge).

Note that Chris is saying that engineers don't even bother to record a perfect performance any more....they just mask the imperfections (and the human elements) with samples and tricks in Pro-Tools. I absolutely ABHOR this concept. No matter how great a drummer is, he doesn't hit his skins exactly the same way twice. That's part of what makes music real, emotional, organic, human. The subtle ways that the 2nd verse were played differently to the 1st...or the 3rd bar played differently to the 1st.

Also read Bill Bruford's autobiography where he talks about how, in the early 90's, he began to be involved in recording sessions where he knew he'd given a sub-par performance...and the engineer said "don't worry, I'll fix it". That goes against everything a trained musician knows and believes in. It isl literally ripping the heart and soul from music.

The last quote is given on page 356 or Milner's book...and comes from Bob Dylan, who you probably know has taken to producing his own records (under an pseudonym) because he doesn't trust anyone else to make them sound good.

"THe records that I used to listen to and still love, you can't amke a record that sounds that way. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today. We all like recorts that are played on record players, but let's face it, those days are gon-n-n-e...I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really, You listen to these modern records, and they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of anything, no vocal, no nothing, just like - static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature in it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, 'Everybody's getting music for free.' I was like, 'Well why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

Wow - Is that why I love the "live - with all the banter and flaws" albums best? [Pet Sounds and a few other BB studio classics would be an exception.]  I did recently see a record player "looking" device which converted your LP's to CD, tape, and mp3...

Does this mean that you are better off converting your old LP's to mp3 via this process?  Just because we "can" - "fix" something
should we? It does seem remove the depth and humanity of the musician somehow...

It does sound like a pretty poor industry standard, making things "louder" rather than fidelity to the original. I can make it "louder" - I want them (the music industry) to make it "fuller."  Go Dylan!   

Does this also mean that "remastered" means "re-manipulated?" 

 

Studio tricks and compression and all sorts of such tomfoolery are part of what makes Brian's classic records sound great.

The Beach Boys never sounded as good live as they did on their records. Why? Because they were overdubbed a couple of times. And there was reverb added. And they sometimes recorded a few lines at a time. They were deceiving us as listeners. Yoko Ono couldn't sing on her solo records, so producers pasted together her vocal tracks word by word.

The place we are today is a natural extension of that.

I'll say it again -- there is no such thing as a "natural" sound for a pop group. The instant you introduce amplification, you are changing the fundamental way an instrument or voice sounds. Everything else follows out from that.

People like to gripe about technology, record companies, mastering engineers, etc., because it gives them an easy-to-identify villain. There is no villain. There are only matters of taste and aesthetics and how we relate to them. And those are complicated things, and there isn't universal agreement.

Amen, Wirestone.

I have always wanted to know what Steve Albini thought of Brian Wilson...

You are certainly correct.  No one is so naive so as to think there are not some "enhancements" done in the studio.  People who go to a live show don't expect studio perfection.  They would be foolish to expect it and gravely disappointed.  I think people expect performers to get out there and give their best.  And they expect them to be on a sort of "learning curve" if the material is new.

The Beach Boys are no exception.  People just want to "sing along" and have a good time, with songs they know the words to and which have become an important part of our culture.  We don't see the industry chicanery.  And, most really don't care about it.   They don't want the details only the finished product.   I think the Beach Boys - even from the first time I ever saw them live, were magnificent in concert.  If the audience wanted perfection, they could stay home and put on the LP.  The live event is a "social opportunity" no less than the Shakespearean productions put on, in public, centuries years ago; I am sure they were not letter perfect either.

This has been a great and eye-opening discussion for me...Thanks!  8)   
 

 

Yes Wirestone, but.....Yoko may not have actually sung the song from top to finish....but each and every phrase you hear *was* sung by Yoko. Brian might not have managed a completely perfect performance of Pet Sounds at the RFH in 2002, so they spliced together the best from each night. But you still get a performance. Yes, I fully accept that if a musician played a bum note or wasn't 100% happy with a couple of notes in a track then they'd overdub...but you still had that musician playing to his/her satisfaction.

Today you don't get that.

Today you get imperfect performances manipulated later by engineers, who use samples which might well not even be played by the musician in question. The musicians are not encouraged to lay down a perfect or even a good performance....it will must be fixed later.

Artists like Brian used the studio as an instrument. Brian knew what he wanted to hear and he would work for days to get the right performance from a musician....and yes, then he'd manipulate it in the studio. But crucially he did NOT do that beacuse the musician hadn't played the notes in the desired way....he did it because the musician had played *exactly* what Brian wanted, but Brian had in mind the studio trickery from the start.

To me, there is a crucial difference.

Spot on! Exactly right...

There indeed ARE villains - there are people involved in bringing a recording to market  that are not musicians, nor do they share the musician's agenda. They have a different set of priorities and the wherewithal to impose those priorities on others. "Studio trickery" by the artist is one thing - studio trickery by anyone else IMPOSED on the artist is another matter entirely.

If Brian wanted the recording of TLOS to be brickwalled that would entirely different than having it done to his recording either without his consent or with his consent achieved by applying pressure, i.e., "the CD won't get released unless you let us master it THIS way" and so on.

I love TLOS - but I never listen to the CD or the LP - I listen to the NPR live performance. The LP is bearable, the CD is simply unbearable. Neither approach what I heard Brian & his band do live though.

 

Recording industry bigwigs certainly never interfered with records and artists' musical decisions in the 60s or 70s.

There is no question that digital manipulation takes things to another level. Certainly, artists, engineers and whoever else are able to manipulate sound more easily than ever before.

But I'm not convinced that is de facto a bad thing. Can it be used in cheap ways? Sure. But it has ever been thus in the record industry. And the task of listeners is to point out when something goes over a line. And that line can shift depending on the circumstances.

Case in point -- Brian Wilson on Imagination and Brian Wilson on the Bacharach collaboration are both heavily auto-tuned. More people have problems with BW being auto-tuned on Imagination because it's in service of a record that has a very adult contemporary sound -- not the sound they like from him. But the Bacharach tune, which is produced in a much more "classic" style, more often gets a pass because Brian's tweaked vocal is in the service of a song that, to many fans, sounds better and more appropriate.

Even though people might talk about auto-tune in each case, that's not really the prime thing they're reacting to. They're reacting to an overall aesthetic. When they approve of the aesthetic, almost any effect in its service can be accepted.

Likewise, in Memory Almost Full, the loud-to-the-point of distortion mastering is not bad in and of itself. But when put in the service of a classic Wings-style record, it clearly conflicts with Paul's overall sound and ambition. That kind of mastering might be wholly appropriate for another band that wants a maxed-to-the-limit effect.

And I think fans' protests with stuff like that is right on. And if I had a brickwalled TLOS copy, I would be likewise unhappy.

I can think of numerous ways reocord execs screwed with the Beach Boys musical decisions off the top of my head.
What about something like the latest Metallica. Big loud distorted music mixed in such a way. That should fit the aesthetic correct? Not really, it sounds like sh*t and almost everyone agrees.

Saw an article a few weeks ago that stated - and proved, with waveform screen-caps - that every time "Something" by The Beatles was reissued on CD (and therefore, the CD it was on), the mastering was hotter and hotter until, on the last, recent reissue, it was seriously brickwalled. That is just plain wrong, however you slice it.

What you're saying is "Well, always been like that, nothing we can do about it", which is of course nonsense: had that kind of thinking been prevalent some 200 years ago, the slave trade would still be flourishing and, more recently, women would still be denied the vote.  Give the punter a choice between a brickwalled CD and one with dynamics - currently, they don't have that luxury, and there's a whole generation growing up that accepts this because they don't know better.

Two points.


That was my point. I was being ironic. The business side has always messed with recorded sound, and always will, as long as music is packaged and sold as a commercial commodity.


Threads like this -- and the outcry over the Metallica album released recently -- show that people do indeed know better, and are indeed fighting back against unneeded loudness. No one talked about this issue five years ago.

My ultimate point is not -- and has never been -- that folks should accept distorted sounding CDs. But I am reluctant to go on some giant blaming game about the evils of listeners or musicians or executives, or of digital technology, or of compression itself. Because recorded music itself is ultimately a distorted version of how anything sounds.

And really -- slavery?

Oh yes, also -- kids today! They don't know what's good for them!

The old days were better! Consarn it all!

The majority of people grow up listening to the music of their own generation. Today's kids will be tomorrow's writers, musicians, engineers, producers and record company execs. They may well grow up knowing nothing but horribly compressed, autotuned, soul-less music because it seems to pervade their lives everywhere from the incidental music in kids TV shows through to the CDs they tend to buy (chart music)....and the way they listen to it - cheap MP3 players and mobile phones for the most part.

That's not the fault of the kids.

I daresay, if most kids today bought chart music (in CD form, no less!), the record industry would be thrilled. It would also be doing a lot better.

and obviously kids who get into record producing would probably do their hw at some point.  it's not the kids who are compressing all the music right now. 

As a certified Young Person, i should probably weigh in a little more on this. I still think no-one really gives a toss in the greater public, or even the majority of the musically aware. It's more of a record geek thing, and I don't notice it that much on modern cds. As well as MAF, i can think that 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', American IV and Animal Collective CDs are too 'hot'. The rest I have no problem listening to. I'm sure on high quality equipment the difference is palpable (i touched on this in the Insignificant Questions thread about Endless Summer - me and my hand-me-down hi-fi can't make duophonic sound terrible.), but that's not how 90% of people listen to, and fall in love, with music.

And this whole 'the kidz musical memories will be overcompressed rubbish' is, frankly, a little bit overdramatic. My White Stripes cd i bought with my pocket money was probably compressed to hell - did i care? no. I also didn't care how 'bad' it sounded on a cheap portable cd player, or a bit later, my brothers iPod with the free earbuds that supposedly sound horrible. Or sticking one headphone in class. When you're that age, music is simply music. Did you care about the pops, skips and scratches on the no-doubt overplayed vinyl of your favourite record as you played it in your bedroom? Bet your dad claimed his old 78s sounded better than those 45s too. It's us obsessives (don't deny it) that care deeply and it's not a bad thing. Excessive compression does ruin music - but just for us, i suspect. The rest of the population really doesn't mind. They should mind, but thats the industries problem, not theirs. No-one except us is going to seek out TLOS vinyl rips, are they? People just buy the CD and get on with it. We're obsessing, and that's what we do.

Egh, a nice big rambling post. This will teach me to post after a couple of Guinness.

Hypehat, you can hear the difference between a well mastered CD and a brickwalled one on the cheapest of cheapo-crap shop's own value brand CD player. You can hear the difference on a portable TV. You can hear the difference on a 12 year old car stereo system....trust me, that's what we have in our car. You can even hear the difference on laptop speakers.

I've found a surprising number of youtube videos on the subject of brickwalling, compression and the loudness war. Here's one I found interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNJEC1G-fE&feature=related


As for your comments about people's musical upbringing...I find them quite arrogant. As I said, you can tell the difference between a well produced record and a poorly produced record on the most rudimentary equipment. If all that is available to today's kids is over compressed, autotuned, brickwalled rubbish....that is what they will become accumstomed to.

I suppose I am lucky (or unlucky) in that I took an interest in how recordings sounded very early. I had a record player and cassette recorder from the age of about 5 and would endlessly play around with both to change the sound. By the time I was 10 I had a 4 track tape recorder, the idea was that I'd be able to duet with myself on the violin. This I did, but I also used to lay down 3 tracks, then dump them to one. I thought I'd invented that (early 80's)...little did I know that this 'ping ponging' had been common from the late 60's. I used to mess with tape speeds, I didn't know the theory but I could hear that a faster tape speed produced better sound...especially bass and the highest frequencies. I played with recording levels, I messed with the EQ bias. I learned - with my ears - what could be done with a tape recording to make things sound worse or better. The boredom of an only child perhaps...but it left me with a lifelong appreciation of music and how it sounds.

Am I atypical. Sure, I know I am. But lots of people realise that there is something 'wrong' in modern pop music. Surely all forms of music deserve decent recording, producing and mastering?

 :-X

I have a rant coming up later  based upon my own studio experience, but I do have a question for those complaining about how today's music sounds...

do you listen to music via headphones predominately or through speakers?

Probably 90+ % of the time is through speakers in my case.

95% through speakers. I've never really been a fan of cocooning myself away in headphones.

i got a pair of nice headphones that i pull out when i wanna hear stuff reaaal nice.  but usually just speakers

Wonderful thread. Who started this thing of genius?

I bet it wouldn't appear on the Blueboard.

'Xactly - when I first started making cassettes for my Walkman (and yes, I am that old - I had one of the very first), I discovered that if you let the level peak at about +3dB, it sounded ... well, just better. Prior to that I religiously monitored to ensure it didn't go into the red ever. And I thought I was going where no man had gone before.

Lovely call. And I think a decently recorded Compact Cassette can sound wonderful. Well, the format has its obvious weak points, but if kept with care, they are fine things (still have a like-new Sony CC recorder, and use CCs every now and then - just like others use Polaroid cameras).

50/50. At home, speakers - not particularly advanced ones. But then i am always with my ipod when i'm out and about, and listen to music on headphones late at night anyway.

Absintheboy, i suppose i had to argue about this with the only 10 year old to have a 4 track  :lol but i can only speak as to my experience, as can you. And when i was a proper dumb pop loving yoof some 4 years ago, i couldn't even tell you what mastering was, let alone point out songs that had terrible mastering. I should probably state i'm 19, to give you some sort of timeframe. I think a lot of kids are the same, because i know a lot of them who still listen to dumb pop music and still don't care about mastering. Their musical memories listening to Gaga will be just as valid as ours listening to Pet Sounds. Mastering doesn't affect that. I sincerely believe that.

Or put it this way - if i gave a 14 year old a 'hot' Beatles remaster and he fell in love with Sgt. Pepper, how much of a fool would i sound telling him that 'it sounds terrible'?  it's their favourite record! They don't care!

I think my post came too far the other way. I sure do care about mastering. I'd be echoing others sentiments here. But a lot of people don't! I can't elaborate as i've got to move house, so there it is....

Ah compact cassettes.

Very much depended on the quality of the machine, especially its internal amp and heads, and the tape you were using. My first stereo machine was a Realistic (read Tandy/Radio Shack)...their bottom of the range deck from the 1981 catalogue. You couldn't go over 0dB because the circuits couldn't handle it. Later I got my hands on much better kit.

For type I, +3dB was often the best peak to go for with a decent deck. With my old Nakamichi (sadly deceased) and a good type IV I could push to +9dB. With type II you were wise to stay around +1dB as it couldn't handle much more....at least most formulations couldn't. I believe there are no more type IV tapes being produced these days :(

I have a Yahama cassette deck these days, not as nice as the Nak and definitely a piece of consumer gear which you can pick up cheaply...but it is capable of fine recordings and plays back my old Nak cassettes very well. Its not widely known that Nakamichi used slightly non-standard bias EQ so the play trim pot on the Yamaha comes in very handy.

The humble cassette may have started out as a voice recorder, but over the years technology allowed it to be on the cusp of true hi-fi. Sure, you'll never quite beat a quarter inch machine running at 15ips with a cassette....but note how reel to reel machines disappeared from shelves by 1990.

Perhaps I'm going off on a tangent here, as far as discussing TLOS sound quality, but the above comment that it is not widely known that Nakamichi cassette decks use non-standard EQ is important for anyone using an Nakamichi deck to be aware of. 

Basically, Nakamichi decks apply less high frequency (treble) boost than normal while recording, but apply more high frequency boost than normal in playback.  The result is that tapes recorded on a Nakamichi sound rather dull when played back on other cassette deck brands, while cassettes recorded on other brands sound brighter than normal when played back on a Nakamichi.  Nakamichi stated that they did this in order to help reduce high frequency overload during recording.  A much better solution to this issue was later developed by Dolby, called Dolby HX-Pro, which was found in a number of higher end decks.  Dolby HX-Pro was used only during recording and maintained compatibility between brands, except for Nakamichi. 

Another issue which plagues cassette deck recording and playback is that even slight tape head azimuth misalignment, which is very common between various decks, even of the same model and/or brand, can cause a tape recorded on one unit to sound dull when played back on another.  Add to that tape speed variations between decks, wow and flutter, and tapes getting eaten by a deck - let's just say that while I have some nostalgic memories of the cassette era, I don't at all miss using cassettes as my primary means of recording.

Oh yes I remember a friend who had two Aiwa ADF-460 decks (if memory serves) and tapes recorded on one didn't play well on the other. Tracked it down to azimuth issues, which were solved with judicious use of a screwdriver and oscilloscope.

As another aside, I once did back to back tests on C60, C90 and C120 tapes of the same type (Maxell UR) using a signal generator to record sine waves from 25Hz to 25KHz, and a 'scope to examine playback. No doubting the thinner (longer duration) tapes had a significantly poorer high end response, noticable even at 12KHz. Dolby helped the problem, never tried HX-Pro with that experiment.

I guess I am just a geek!

I just wish to go on the record and say that cassette Walkman's were a conspiracy cooked up by the music industry to force you to buy the same albums over and over! I don't think I ever owned one that didn't chew up at least one tape in every ten.

Glad you are an informed "geek" - you know what you are talking about!

Bravo~!

I learned a lot in this thread, especially about Dylan doing his own work, under an assumed name, just like a "revolutionary!" 

A smart person "knows the difference" in quality and strives for it regardless of the prevailing thought, and trends.

You know the difference.   
 

filledeplage wrote:


How did you get to know my life's motto?

Ditto for you!  8)

 :smokin Let's marry!

You two......get a room!

We did. It was so-so. A second time will be necessary.

Your boy, Columbo (your icon) would be so disappointed that you "took the bait!"

You two, are hilarious!   8)

 :lol thank you, ma'am. There's just one more thing that bothers me...

And the brilliant "closing lines" of his investigatory script...in his rumpled trench-coat...(and we so "off'-topic!")

I would never risk losing this enlightening musical discourse... ;)

...what bothers me, ma'am: how is it possible that with all the modern studio wizardry, all that equipment, and all those well-trained engineers, TLOS in its European incarnation sounds so absolutely terrible and off-putting?

Initially, as I said earlier, I blamed myself, clueless at the car stereo controls...and I found that for me,  it is a better listen via mp3, and extraordinary, "live" - I don't have the DVD...and probably won't buy it.  I saw the real thing, live...Magnificent! No complaints, here.  They could have videotaped what I saw in a funky old théâtre, and sold it, without to the 'to-do" of the pressured "by invitation only" production.  People do still like the spontaneous.  I found it well-done and emotionally riveting in this context. 

Like Gershwin, it is "on the menu" and for me, not a daily listen.

I wonder if Brian had the studio freedom that he commanded for Pet Sounds, but, this is not my area of expertise, I am just a "hack."

And, as such, would not venture my opinion.   I defer to the sound "experts."  It is completely out of my league, except for this;  It may have been "over influenced" by younger ears, whose tastes in tone, timbre, etc., are coming from hearing rap, hip-hop, etc., and not "contemporaneous" to stronger, earlier Beach Boys influences, whose genesis was in surf music, or even the Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Surf's Up creativity era, preferring a more mellow "bass speaker" sound, which 60's tastes gravitated toward.

It may also be "anachronistic" trying to "fit" his earlier (mid 60's) compositional style into a  more technologically advanced computer generation mode. 

Their instincts are coming from a different place whose very gifted skill sets, come from the classroom and not the "kitchen cabinet"
(sorry for the political term) and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but not the "roots" from whence one comes.  I can only liken it to going out to lunch with a girlfriend who, like me, strapped on "steel roller skates" from the age of seven and who instinctively "knows that place" which you just cannot teach in a classroom and who could probably not recognize what a "skate key" was.  Their roller blades/skates were integrated into a boot.

And I still cannot "connect" in any real sense to the early 60's car stuff, because I was about 8 years old at the time. I can sing along and enjoy it, but cannot really "connect" to it because I did not "live it," experiencing that "dynamic."   
 
It might be upsetting the old apple cart not to be working with "contemporaries" and not to be working with his former band (not to open up a can of worms) if the "creative work" is still excellent, and I think it still is, because of the perspective of the "production" of that work is not meshed into the "Brian sound" (which seems to be the complaint, here) "comfort zone" that our ears have come to expect with his fine work.  I don't know. 

It is an "observation," and not a "criticism."             

Initially, as I said earlier, I blamed myself, clueless at the car stereo controls...and I found that for me,  it is a better listen via mp3, and extraordinary, "live" - I don't have the DVD...and probably won't buy it.  I saw the real thing, live...Magnificent! No complaints, here.  They could have videotaped what I saw in a funky old théâtre, and sold it, without to the 'to-do" of the pressured "by invitation only" production.  People do still like the spontaneous.  I found it well-done and emotionally riveting in this context.  

Like Gershwin, it is "on the menu" and for me, not a daily listen.

I wonder if Brian had the studio freedom that he commanded for Pet Sounds, but, this is not my area of expertise, I am just a "hack."

And, as such, would not venture my opinion.   I defer to the sound "experts."  It is completely out of my league, except for this;  It may have been "over influenced" by younger ears, whose tastes in tone, timbre, etc., are coming from hearing rap, hip-hop, etc., and not "contemporaneous" to stronger, earlier Beach Boys influences, whose genesis was in surf music, or even the Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Surf's Up creativity era, preferring a more mellow "bass speaker" sound, which 60's tastes gravitated toward.

It may also be "anachronistic" trying to "fit" his earlier (mid 60's) compositional style into a  more technologically advanced computer generation mode.  

Their instincts are coming from a different place whose very gifted skill sets, come from the classroom and not the "kitchen cabinet"
(sorry for the political term) and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but not the "roots" from whence one comes.  I can only liken it to going out to lunch with a girlfriend who, like me, strapped on "steel roller skates" from the age of seven and who instinctively "knows that place" which you just cannot teach in a classroom and who could probably not recognize what a "skate key" was.  Their roller blades/skates were integrated into a boot.

And I still cannot "connect" in any real sense to the early 60's car stuff, because I was about 8 years old at the time. I can sing along and enjoy it, but cannot really "connect" to it because I did not "live it," experiencing that "dynamic."    
 
It might be upsetting the old apple cart not to be working with "contemporaries" and not to be working with his former band (not to open up a can of worms) if the "creative work" is still excellent, and I think it still is, because of the perspective of the "production" of that work is not meshed into the "Brian sound" (which seems to be the complaint, here) "comfort zone" that our ears have come to expect with his fine work.  I don't know.  

It is an "observation," and not a "criticism."              

Really bad echo in here...  ::)

 :police: yeah... Wall Of Sound or something. Self-plagiarism. Like John Fogerty. Allegedly.

OK not TLOS specifically but recording technology and sound quality relevant.

I've finally got hold of Telarc disc 5038, much mentioned in Greg Millner's book. Frederick Fennell's recording of the Cleveland Symphonic Winds made in 1978 using the Soundstream digital recording system and released onto audiophile vinyl. I have obtained a sealed, unopened copy  and just gave it a spin for the first time.

I have to say.....having many LPs by much vaunted classical labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Heliodor, Decca....well....this is something different. For the first time I have come across a signal so 'loud' that my system cannot accurately reproduce it at high levels (this is probably a speaker issue). But at "normal" levels.....it does exactly mimic being in a concert hall - an experience I have had several times.  It even comes with an insert warning the owner to be careful playing it the first time, due to the wide dynamic range.

Indeed my wife has banned me from playing this record when she is in the house.  My comment upon playing track 3 was "put that in your CD player and smoke it. I have my new demo disc"

I want to share part of the liner notes...in response to the anticipated question about parts seeming very quiet.

"The buyer should know that this disc was created especially for the audiophile. In doing so, we have recorded an overall dynamic range that I would estimate to be at least 20db more than you would find on a standard commercial disc of the same material. To a great extent, it's what we didn't do that is responsible for the lower level. We didn't compress it, equalize it, limit it or use any low frequency crossover. The overall level cut on this record was set up according to where the loudest sections were. In this particluar case, the looudest signal is created by the bass durm (specifically in the third movement of the Holst First Suite). Everything else falls into place and we let the conductor control the dynamics. If, for instance, we had wanted to raise the overall level of the disc, we would have had to reduce the natural impact of the bass drum as we had captured it.....had we cut it, say 2db hotter, which is barely noticable to the ear, it would have triggered the circuit breakers in the cutting room - and this remember is at half speed which is only 25% of realtime energy. "

THAT is how records should be cut. My god, the impact of the bass drum is actually quite shocking. It is like hearing a bass drum in real life. No exaggeration, that is what it sounds like listening to this record.

It is available on CD these days, and I imagine it is mastered correctly because that is the raison d'etre of Telarc. GO and buy it, rent it, or download a FLAC if you can find one.

I guess you own the book? Do you remember the part where he discusses Emory Cook -- whose catalogue is now owned and managed by Smithsonian Folkways -- and how one of his last albums is something people are unsure about regarding whether he was entirely serious about its audiophilia or whether he was sending up the obsession? If you could post that excerpt, I'd appreciate it since I found it pretty funny when I read it!

I'll dig out the book again tomorrow. I put it back in its home....which isn't in my main bookshelf.

Cool, thanks!

Sorry I didn't get around to it yet.....I did this instead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmBTA044jKA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmBTA044jKA)