Jimi, Square Waves, response from EH

http://home.pacific.net.au/~spaceman/jimi/clipping.htm

Check the link for some examples of square waveforms on the EH Jimi releases. One of the waveforms didn't copy but you have enough in the articles to see all of the gross square waves that kill the dynamics in my beloved Jimi recordings The audiophile that sent these images to EH actually got a response from EH via George Marino and Eddie Kramer which is contained here. They completely misunderstand the point and brag about how this is the first time Jimi was mastered at full volume

Chris

 

It just makes no sense. I get listener fatigue real quick when I crank the EH Jimi stuff. The best guitar tone in the history of guitar tones with no dynamic range. What a shame..

Chris

 

Gee, after reading that I don't feel so well...

Steve, any chance S&P can make this emergency a priority?

 

How depressing/frustrating.

It's hard for me to believe that those guys would misunderstand, especially given the very obvious pictures.

Of course the fact that the CDs and LPs are clipped does not prove that the "archival" masters were; one can hope that the archival transfers are good, and that the clipping was done during a later stage of mastering

Working in radio I know a dirty little secret: broadcasters often clip their signal deliberately. Broadcast processors have "clip controls" that try to clip as painlessly as possible (it never is) to make the signal loud. Clipping as audio processing -- do you suppose this concept has now made its way to mastering studios? Let's hope not.

Worse yet, some program directors *like* the sound of the clipped signal. Maybe they are not alone.

(The BBC did a study many years ago that showed that clipping, if it is short enough in duration is "inaudible". I wonder...)

 

Re: Re: Jimi, Square Waves, response from EH

Well, I don't know if you're using the proper term for it. It is well known that radio uses compressors to boost signals in the belief that a louder signal will make a listener looking for a station with a strong signal stop surfing. A clip indicator is what tells the operator that the signal has gone over the full-scale decibal "0". A limiter prevents a signal from going past a predetermined setting. Some stations compress and EQ their signals too much. One local oldies station compresses so much there is loud, audiable noise pumping in the music. I have explained this to the station owner buy she doesn't care.

It is also true that a certain level and duration of digital clipping can be inaudiable.

 

Re: Re: Re: Jimi, Square Waves, response from EH

Steve did, indeed, explain clipping properly. Been there, done that, starting at a 1000w Top 40 AM station (KRIZ) in Phoenix in the late 60's. To the ear, AM radio is very forgiving with clipped audio, since most receivers - at least at the time - didn't reproduce high frequencies anyway. Clipping of the highs IS noticeable to many people, though they may not understand what they are hearing.

As manufacturers learned how to control music peaks more efficiently and intelligently, engineers found that certain clipping with FM audio can also be relatively harmless and make a station "stand out" from competitors.

Applied incorrectly, however, and listener fatigue, especially among women, sets in pretty fast. Lower ratings are the result.

Clipping isn't at all appropriate for classical music, but it seems to be a reasonable competitive tool for rock. As for station formats in between, most anything goes these days, unfortunately.

GM

 

Our local country music station once did little compression and was number one or two in this area. New management pulled the stereo exciter on their AM sister station and started the typical compression on their FM station. A year later they are number 7. They will never learn!!!!!

Richard.

 

Gary; I seem to notice that stations on your side of the border tend not to compress and limit as much as they do state side. Do you notice that trend as well?

 

Re: Re: Re: Jimi, Square Waves, response from EH

Very short, yes. I think these guys went for max volume and were in analog think mode when the meters popped into the red for a brief second, and figured it was OK, they could get away with it.
Unfortunately, the buzzing distortion usually occurs in either channel and you are often listening in between channels. Thus, you don't hear it when it happens. But on playback you sure can. This happens to me occasionally when recording to MD. You want max level but if there's a hidden peak you missed, your recording is ruined.

But usually it's simple. Find the loudest section and set your meters just below that. Everything else will fall under and you're safe. I find it odd that pros on a high profile project would have missed it. Especially the guy who knew the music inside out.

Assuming this is all true of course. I'm just speculating based on what I read.

 

Quoted from EH and Sterling Sound in response to Mats Shorling's plea to correct the digital clipping/distortion:

"As I mentioned previously, the Hendrix discs mastered at Sterling
Sound are done at full volume. We recognize fully that this is unlike any previous Hendrix release issued by either Polydor, Reprise, or pre-EH MCA. The mastering techniques utilized for such releases as Live At The Fillmore East and Woodstock are no different from other contemporary CD releases mastered at Sterling Sound. These artists range from Metallica to Led Zeppelin to Guns N Roses to even Whitney Houston"

Quoted from Mats Shorling's reply to the above:

"This triggered me to check a couple of other CD's in my collection mastered at Sterling Sound: R.E.M.: "Up" and the 1999 remix/remaster of Bob Dylan's 1978 release "Street Legal" and both have digital clippings! The 1989 (?) CD release of "Street Legal" (Mastered at CBS Recording Studios, N.Y.) has no clippings! I also checked several other CD's NOT mastered at Sterling Sound (f.i. the Stevie Ray Vaughan remasters, the The Beatles "Yellow Submarine Songtrack" remixes, C.S.N & Y: Looking Forward and Matthew Sweet: In Reverse) and none of them have clippings. From this I conclude that there is "something wrong, something not quite right" at Sterling Sound."

Thank you Mats. I, for one, intend to make sure that no recording from Sterling Sound will ever find its way onto my stereo system.

 

Roger Nichols has written an EQ column on how many mastering engineers permit brief "overs" (i.e., digital clipping) in the hopes that no one will hear them, and they can thus get away with even MORE volume maximization.

Amazingly, Roger admitted doing this to the latest Steely Dan CD! At least that CD has enough dynamic range that he's talking about overs on a few drum whacks, not on vocals or the like. But still, c'mon Roger!

Gardo

 

Why?

There are lots of great STERLING mastered records out there.

I don't see the point of flirting with disaster like this. Why not just stay in the safe zone?

 

Quoted from Beagle:
"Why? There are lots of great STERLING mastered records out there."

Why would I want to knowingly purchase cds produced by folks that I now know eagerly embrace the practice of intentionally adding distortion? Only if I'm assured that such distortion was not added would I consider such a purchase. This is not to say that I would avoid any cd that contains distortion, only those where digital distortion has been carelessly or intentionally added.

It may be that I'm learning too much on this forum, or even that my newfound knowledge is presently too limited to reach such conclusions, but I'm unwilling to knowingly acquire digitally distorted cds. And in its own words quoted above, Sterling Sound makes it a practice to add digital distortion.

 

I think the point is that Sterling has been around for a long time, since at least the 1970s, and there are a huge number of records and CDs that were mastered well there, regardless of what the present state of the place may be.

 

OK, point taken. I'll limit my avoidance to recently produced cds.

 

I'll post the URL as soon as I can and you can read what Roger said yourself. The gist of it, IIRC, is that to be competitive one has to have a loud CD. Roger found he could make the CD sound louder by raising the level 1 bit. The dynamic range was still fine, but the price was some "overs" that he and the band felt were inaudible because they were so brief and, I guess, not overly over.

By the way, I find it astonishing that the folks Mats was writing at EH don't seem to understand that "full volume" in their case doesn't mean raising peaks to zero by normalizing the file. Instead, it means heavy digital compression/limiting.

Or maybe they know and they don't care?

Gardo

 

I don't see how you come to this conclusion. I'm sure prior to reading this, nobody had a problem with these remasters. Now everyone suddenly has a problem. There are lots of remastered CD's out there that are flawed by digital distortion. Ozzy's recent "No More Tears" is full of it. AFAIK it was not done at Sterling.

If you are going to write off Sterling based on the Hendrix stuff, you may as well write off pretty much all of the modern mastering facilities that do commercial remastering for mass market consumption.

As far as 'intentionally adding distortion', I don't think this is the case at all. They added loudness (so to speak) and perhaps went a little over the limit (literally). But as far as their "explanation"goes, they were simply covering their ass. Did you think they were going to come out and say "Hey, you're right. We f***ed up. We'd better recall all those copies and do it again".

This would not look too good to potential clients.

If only one person complains about too much salt on McDonald's fries, do you think they will alter their "recipe". No. Millions are content with them as is, nobody is complaining. If a couple of million people complained, they'd do something. I don't like shoddy, negligent mastering practices either, but how loud a voice do we, the minority audiophile community, have? Not very loud, from a dollars and cents standpoint. Sad, but that's the way it is.

Nevertheless, I applaud Mats Schorling for his crusade in the name of good sound. He got his point through to the people who mattered.

 

This seems to be one of those urban legends among recording folks. To some extent it's true for radio -- listeners tend to tune past quiet stations (or did when they had knobs!), plus there are the aforementioned car noise problems and etc; but as far as I know there's no research to indicate that loud records/cds/tapes sell better than quieter (more dynamic) ones, yet the myth is tenacious.

 

Thanks, I'd love to read it. If Roger Nichols says it's inaudible, I'm positive it is.

I remember hearing "Gaslighting Abbie" on the car FM radio and it was noticably lower in level that the previous songs that had played. Yet it sounded much cleaner and open.

 

But there are potential problems with this. Even if you don't hear the overs in the studio, you don't know what anyone's CD player is going to do with them.

I recorded a concert once, which had a loud, unexpected "Thank you!" shouted into the mike at the end. It was clearly "over", but it sounded fine -- until I ran it through an analog broadcast console. No matter how I padded down the player's output, I could not get it to sound clean through the console. My theory is that the console (not my favorite piece of gear) shifted the phase relationships enough to make it audible.

In a similar vein, I have a CD that has a passage that pushes right up to the limit. On most players it doesn't sound clipped, but on some older ones it does. If it were up to me I'd leave at least a little headroom. No one's going to buy a CD because it's .5 dB louder than another one.

 

"I don't see how you come to this conclusion. I'm sure prior to reading this, nobody had a problem with these remasters. Now everyone suddenly has a problem. There are lots of remastered CD's out there that are flawed by digital distortion. Ozzy's recent "No More Tears" is full of it. AFAIK it was not done at Sterling."

Well, not everyone has a problem, just me, and I agree that there are lots of remastered CDs that are flawed by digital distortion. If I can avoid those by virtue of pre-purchase information to that effect, I will. Which is one of the reasons why I am becoming addicted to this forum


"If you are going to write off Sterling based on the Hendrix stuff, you may as well write off pretty much all of the modern mastering facilities that do commercial remastering for mass market consumption."

I am writing off recent CDs from Sterling because I now know, from its own statements, that it is their policy to add digital distortion. If I am convinced that that is a policy at other mastering facilities, I would avoid CDs produced by those facilities as well.


"As far as 'intentionally adding distortion', I don't think this is the case at all. They added loudness (so to speak) and perhaps went a little over the limit (literally). But as far as their "explanation"goes, they were simply covering their ass. Did you think they were going to come out and say "Hey, you're right. We f***ed up. We'd better recall all those copies and do it again". "

You could be correct, but the context and tone of their response suggests to me that this is Sterling's actual policy.


"This would not look too good to potential clients.

If only one person complains about too much salt on McDonald's fries, do you think they will alter their "recipe". No. Millions are content with them as is, nobody is complaining. If a couple of million people complained, they'd do something. I don't like shoddy, negligent mastering practices either, but how loud a voice do we, the minority audiophile community, have? Not very loud, from a dollars and cents standpoint. Sad, but that's the way it is."

While I wish that Sterling (and other facilities) would change their policy, I'm not asking them to and wouldn't expect them to listen to me if I did. I'm just not going to buy their recent CDs unless, I know beforehand that a particular CD was made without added digital distortion


"Nevertheless, I applaud Mats Schorling for his crusade in the name of good sound. He got his point through to the people who mattered."

I absolutely agree. My hat's off to Mats.

 

Well, Steve Grahm, that's the problem. Either no one takes older players into consideration or no one cares. The only two options are to leave the sound alone or at least use some limiting or compression to tame those peaks.