Hi-Rez Download Reviews - Comments About Music You've Purchased (or want to purchase) *Only*, Please

So if music is limited and EQ'd (ie, actually mastered), it shouldn't sound excellent? OK....

 

No, but it can be overdone. And I was saying that in contrast with the s/t download, which is a flat transfer.
And there is more to "actual mastering" than EQ and limiting.

 

Yeah, OK. I see what you mean. I think it's curious for sure. I wouldn't necessarily call "clipping" the same as "limiting." I would think that "limiting peaks" would cause them to be squashed down (compressed) rather than "clipped" (lopped off entirely because the signal was too hot and exceeded the dynamic range of the recording system).

Given that the source material is rock and roll, I wonder if Audacity is prone to some interpretive error. In others words, anything less than a rounded waveform around 0db is interpreted as clipping, when in fact it might be an accurate reproduction of a distorted waveform and a high volume level. Just thinking out loud, not saying you're wrong.

 

There are two different versions if Rumours on HDTracks. The standard (which I believe to be from the DVD A) and the Super Deluxe which I believe is a new mastering.

 

Ah yes, forgot about this one. The Super Deluxe is inferior IMO. It has less limiting but the EQ choices aren't as good.

 

Don't get me wrong the peak limiting/compression on the Eagles HD Tracks albums isn't bad, just not sure why it was done at all? The Long Run is the worst in terms of being less dynamic than the original CD.

 

I thought that show clipping showed where 3 or more samples are at 0db (peak level limiting), not where a single sample for the track or album hit zero.

 

That's not clipping per se. Clipping is when you have intersample overs that create audible distortion.

 

The HDTracks does sound fine on it's own, but by comparison the Target just seems more 'musical' to me... perhaps I prefer the EQ on it.

 

Well, compression does have the ability to push softer sounds up in the mix. That's why guitarists and bassists use it. So perhaps the mastering engineer felt that it enhanced detail. I'm just guessing. Not all compression is evil. It is merely a tool. I do find that, for whatever reason, these Eagles albums in hi-res sound superb, by far the best of any versions I've listened to. I don't know which CDs I previously ripped. I ripped them before I started keep meticulous metadata. But to my ears they sounded dull. I love detail. So any mastering that provides an enhanced stereo field and detail is fine by me, as long as the results sound musical. Over-amped EQ, ham-fisted noise reduction and brick wall compression are not OK, and I'm pretty sensitive to those sorts of things. If judicious application of compression achieves more musical detail, while still maintaining respectable DR, then more power to them.

 

I'll try that Target.

 

A couple of days ago, I bought Livin' The Blues by Canned Heat by HDTracks. I've already had three versions of that album on CD: a French remaster (Magic Records), an Italian edition (Akarma) and a British one (BGO), none of them satisfactory enough. This digital version sounds great!

 

Thanks, I'll wait for your appreciation before pulling the trigger!

 

Yes I thought it was curious too. And no clipping is not limiting.

A question: is clipping something that we should just ignore because it can be taken care of with something like ReplayGain? Is this really what one wants to see for an audiophile quality hi-res file?

 

ReplayGain cannot remove clipping. Once a waveform has been clipped, there's no going back. The music now contains distortion. ReplayGain merely controls the overall playback volume of an audio file. I use it religiously and (hopefully) judiciously.

If Audacity is merely showing a normalized sound file (i.e., the existing dynamic range is intact, no information has been clipped, all that happened is that the loudest peaks now approximate 0db, rather than say -1db), then I don't see the problem with that.

I'm not an audio engineer. I am a musician. I do have an electronics background. I do write technical manuals for a living. So I have some limited understanding of some of this, but I don't consider myself an expert in any sense of the word.

 

That is my understanding as well but I just thought I'd throw the idea out there rather than run around yelling that the sky is falling!

 

I can tell you from first hand knowledge of Audacity that when it shows "clipping" it doesn't mean that the audio has clipping. I have normalized tracks before to 0db with Audacity that were maybe -6 or -9 db to begin with with no clipping, I normalized it to 0db and now every peak that hits 0db shows that it is clipping. It isn't clipped it had just hit 0db.

 

In the interest of discovering truth, it seems to me that this general assumption that greater dynamic range is always better may not be quite the universal truth that some imagine it to be.

That certainly might be true in the case of an ideal live recording with perfect microphone placement (e.g., a symphony orchestra). This is because the material is mixed close to ideally. The DR is what the DR is.

However, in the case of a studio multitrack recording, whomever does the mix can make it as dynamic as they wish (within certain limitations). The mixing engineer can literally bury tiny sounds down in the mix to make the overall mix more dynamic. However, that might not be very musical. I suspect that there is an optimal musical dynamic range, beyond which you actually hear less detail.

Also, it is well known that DR analysis of vinyl source can be skewed higher by a single transient such as a loud pop or click. That's certainly not musical detail in any sense. So in those cases, greater dynamic range might be a bad thing.

So back to (re)mastering. My understanding is that the mastering engineer is presented with a stereo mix down of some source material. Their job is to make that sound as good as they can. They do not in most cases have the ability to remix the material from multitrack masters. It therefore seems perfectly reasonable to me that, in the quest for maximum music detail, a mastering engineer might judiciously apply a small amount of compression in order to balance softer sounds with larger ones. If that results in a more musical playback experience, I'm all for it.

 

I agree 100%. I think the 192/24 sounds awesome.

 

And that makes perfect sense.

 

What's it called when the peak limiting is so extreme that the sine waves are turned into square waves, yet don't actually distort? As here (left channel):



That's from the new HDtracks download of James Brown's 20 All-Time Greatest Hits. It's not a pretty sight, as you can see:

 

I don't know for sure, but an awful lot of music from that era is very poorly recorded and often has very audible distortion. Garbage in, garbage out. It's hard to imagine any mastering engineer worthy of the title intentionally doing this. Also, you'd have to squash a waveform pretty drastically to actually clip the top off. Limiting would tend to push the top down, not clip it off.

 

I have this HDTracks album and it compares sound wise (loudness wise that is) to the CD which was released before they really started doing digital limiting. That album sounds fine to my ears. I don't care what the graphs show.

 

That clipping might be analog. You could saturate analog tape, too...

But yeah, the best way to tell if something has been compressed to hell is to open the waveform and just look at it, especially zooming in on the peaks. If they're flattop mountains, there's clipping, and the signal will sound distorted. The more of 'em, the more distorted it'll sound.

Of course, the original recordings might have had those already, so if you're looking at some remaster, it might pay to look at an "original" too from the pre-loudness wars days.

And records can be compressed to hell without any clipping - indeed, without ever reaching 100%. You could set the peak to 95% and then compress the signal to death, dramatically reducing the dynamic range and introducing tons of distortion without ever actually digitally clipping (although effectively you'd still be getting a slew of flattops, just not at 100%).

 

Picked up London Calling and Sabbath "Rules of Hell" the other day. "London" is a no brainer. I've always been a casual fan of The Clash but this album in hi-rez has renewed my interest in hearing more stuff. That's one of the beautiful things about sites like HDTracks. I find that if I really like the hi-res version of an album by an artist (s) I was only mildly interested in, I'll become more into hearing their whole catalog. Happened for me with Rod Stewart because of the HDTracks stuff. As for "Rules of Hell", I kind of have the same opinion I had with the 96/24 Ozzy era stuff. It's definitely an improvement over the original Warner cds of, say "Heaven and Hell" or "Mob Rules". More detail. Definitely more crankable. Dio's voice doesn't start to break up when you go to "11". Drums and bass lines sound tighter. But not sure it's a big enough improvement to warrant the cost unless you really plan to sit down and listen through an entire album. Don't get me wrong, I love Sabbath but I tend to play them while driving or at home doing other things and not sure I needed to get this. Although I did use the crutchfield 15 percent discount someone mentioned above (or was it on the HDTracks news thread?) so thanks for that!