LMGTFY The fact that I'm not linking every single mention of the loudness war in history here in the thread doesn't mean that it wasn't a thing and I'm making it up. The link above should not look foreign to you. You should be used to doing just that, and no reason you couldn't have already done it yourself. Don't be silly. I guess whoever this Barry guy is doesn't know what he's talking about, either. Declaring an end to the loudness wars The fact that you want to think the loudness war only started in the late 1990s doesn't make it so. There is ample reporting of it starting way before this. Like I say, just because we got some new weapons to fight that war in the 1990s doesn't mean that's when it started. That's the point you fail to understand. If John's posts are so thoughtful and knowledgeable then why do they contain so much incorrect information? When a minute of googling will find ample evidence, John's claim that there is no evidence before the 1990s makes no sense at all. And sorry that metaphors are lost on you, heh. Not my fault. The fact remains that the loudness war is decades, plural, older than the 1990s. Half a century, in fact.
Yes, the (intentional) loudness wars can be traced back to the 1950s when 45rpm singles, top 40 radio and jukeboxes were all the rage. It was significantly ramped up in the 60s, Notable examples were the Beatles who pushed loudness and compression further and Ludwig in the 70s who had a reputation for hot LP masters, eg Led Zep II. The limitation was always the analog equipment and media which was lifted with digital in the 1980s. However, all bets were off by the mid 1990s when 24 bit mastering and digital workstations came into the picture, the loudness wars ramped up in degrees that were not possible before that.
Agree. But it is only speculation that engineers back then would have been willing to kill and destroy the dynamics of music like we do today. Compression doesn't make music louder. This is a misconception. Compression in fact lowers the volume. What? Many of you are saying in horror. All compression does is squeeze the dynamic range down. Once the dynamic range had been pushed down now you can raise the level. This is why compressors have output leves. For example if you have 7 db of gain reduction during compression then you would raise the output level up 7 db. Every digital compressor has automatic makeup gain. (Don't lean on that too much...Be careful!) But believe it not they could have gotten more volume out of those records by heavily compressing the master. They did not do that however. It would have been easy to throw on three Fairchild Limiters in succession to crush the hell out of the dynamics. But they didn't do that. They could have maxed out the compressor on every track but they didn't do that. Sure they wanted it louder but not by destroying all the dynamics. 2 years ago a client had recorded all of his tracks using a old Ampex limiter from 1959. He maxed them out and it did the trick. Even without any compression over the master stereo bus or compression during mastering this song ended up with a DR of 5. Much more than any 50's single. So it WAS possible for them to have gotten the singles even louder. But the engineers and musicians didn't want to ruin the music back then. They wanted it louder but not at the expense of the song itself. So they wanted the singles louder, but not by any means neccessary. You can buy a Fairchild or a old Ampex limiter plugin and try this yourself. Don't take my word for it. But it was just the singles in the 50's and not the albums. . A hot stamper does not refer to a heavily compressed record. It is a record cut loud in volume. A "White Hot Stamper" like the the first pressing of Led Zeppelin 2 was cut so loud (volume wise) that very few cartridges of the day could track. It had nothing to do with compression.
Has anyone done a comparison of the original BD`s PG and a Club Edition reissue? I know the cough on IMTOD is gone. Anything beside this? Can we assume, they are the same mastering wise?
Not sure what you mean. It's original pressings that omit the cough, while the RE1/RE-1 pressings have it. And I haven't cataloged all of the club pressings, but I'm assuming both versions were issued through clubs. Here's an RE-1 CRC pressing: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
It's an interesting question - all the discogs CRC CD entries are RE-1 versions. Discogs is not 100% exhaustive of course, but it does make you wonder if the no-cough version ever was issued by the record clubs, especially since U.S.-pressed non-RE CDs do all have the cough (yes?).
Ah, I see - thanks! For some reason I thought only the Japan-made non-RE CDs lacked the cough. So is it that all non-RE CDs lack the cough - or is it that all the non-RE CDs were pressed in Japan (regardless of the intended sale market)?
I'm not an expert on the issue, but: 1) As far as I know, only CDs glass mastered by Specialty will have an RE-1/RE1 designation. CDs from other plants will not have it, regardless of what master was used. 2) This was apparently pressed by Record Service in Germany, but seems to have been glass mastered by Specialty. According to the entry, no cough, which is consistent with no RE-1.
It sounds like the Diament III is the only CD version to have correctly decoded Dolby A. We know that John Davis deliberately didn't decode the 2014 CD (he just EQ'd it to his liking IIRC), but I don't know why Marino didn't decode his remaster. Either he didn't know to do so or perhaps Jimmy liked it better without it? If Barry was still a member here, I'd love to ask him if he knew the III tapes needed Dolby decoding.
Missing Dolby A decoding is supposed to be pretty common. At least there is software available to correct for it.
Ahhhhhhhhhh! I can't take it anymore. (I fall on the floor dead) Seriously though. You would be surprised at how many quater inch half track masters from the 1969 - 1992 period fail to write Dolby "A" on the bloody box. Don't get me started on the analog multitrack tapes! Or multitrack tapes where some tracks are 'A' encoded and some aren't. Problem is frequently it isn't listed on the box. It just has the NR box checked off. If it was DBX Type 1 then it would have the DBX box checked off or DBX would be written on the box or whatever. For example the 1969 Zeppelin concert that was recorded on a 1 inch 8 track machine.. The one that ended up on the DVD. the band was only on 6 of those 8 tracks: TRACK 1: KICK TRACK 2 & 3: STEREO OVERHEADS TRACK 4: GUITAR TRACK 5: VOCAL TRACK 6: BASS / ORGAN TRACK 7: AUDIENCE MICROPHONES TRACK 8: synchronisation pulse for film. Anyway the Dolby 'A' was only on some tracks. Vocals and drums I think. But it wasn't marked clearly stating this. It just had NR checked on the box. You must realize that actually writing down what was on what track and then indicating clearly what track was Dolby 'A' encoded would have been way too much trouble. (Sarcasm) I find it hard to believe any engineer could be that careless or stupid! If you put on a quarter inch tape that is Dolby 'A' encoded and you play the tape without it you will hear it right away. And it is more true for the other way around: the tape is not 'A' encoded and you play the thing back to decode. How can anyone not hear that? Problem was back into the 70's using Dolby 'A' became the norm so engineers stopped printing it in the tape box. If you got a tape to cut 99 times out of 100 it was Dolby 'A' encoded. This is what Uncle Jack tells me. They just assumed. So why bother writing it. And being lazy. Incorrect information on tape boxes is a long standing tradition. It is a matter of pride! Thanks to the Dolby 'A' plug in this should not be an issue. They came up with the software because by the late 90's Dolby 'A' units in good working order were hard to find. Dolby units for 24 and 48 tracks more so. With the plugin you just transfer your 2 inch 16 track (or whatever) to Pro Tools and then click on the Dolby 'A' plugin over every track. Now you can go from decode to bypass on as many channels as you need. No Dolby circuits to colour the sound.. perfect decode without errors. Now here is the wierd part. Let us keep this simple. Let's say you are transfering a quarter inch master to Pro Tools. First you need to adjust the azimuth of the playback head for maximum treble and bass. You can't do that until you have set the NR properly first. Weather that be: A, SR or DBX Type-1. In this case where a Dolby 'A' decode is required then you would run your the output of your analog half inch half track machine through the A/D of your interface. Then click on 'A' decode in whatever software you are using and then do a D/A conversion. Now that you have properly decoded the Dolby 'A' you can adjust the azimuth of your playback head for maxim treble. Those of you who rightfully say that the resolution and such will be lost through another conversion are right but it really doesn't matter here. The frequency response will not be affected. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to align the playback heads height azimuth without proper Dolby decoding first. Dolby 'A' as you all know works a great deal on compression of the high frequencies during encode. The songs high frequency response will be way off and sound wierd if the highs aren't restore in decode. I just don't see how the mastering engineer could have missed all of this. Maybe these kinds reputation aren't deserved. Even a rookie wouldn't make that mistake.
I bought the Diament Song Remains The Same. It doesn't sound very good. I also have the Bob Ludwig expanded edition. I listen to the Diament for Whole Lotta Love which is the performance that was on the original LP. This is the one I prefer over the one used for the expanded edition. It has a better Theramin section for my tastes.
Actually high amplitude out of phase signals result in skips called "Lift Out" by in the book by Larry Boden (considered one of the masters of disc mastering) https://archive.org/download/BasicD.../Basic Disc Mastering Larry Boden(600dpi).pdf On the left under Oscilloscope, you'll see the Lissajous pattern of a massively out-of-phase signal; on the right in the red rectangle is the resultant groove; usually will manifest itself as a skip or loud pop. The oscilloscope pattern C is a mono in-phase signal; D is a mono out-of-phase signal.
Easy explanation: Mono signals (or to put it another way, stereo signals that are 100% in phase) produce horizontal excursions on a record. There is no vertical component. 100% out of phase signals (the same signal in the left and right channels, but with opposite phase) produce vertical excursions on a record. There is no horizontal component. Extreme vertical excursions can cause styli to jump out of the groove, and/or produce "lift-out", where the groove becomes so shallow that it doesn't actually get cut. Normal stereo recordings are somewhere between the above two extremes, and produce both horizontal and vertical excursions. As lower (bass) frequencies produce greater excursions, and because such frequencies are not as localized as higher frequencies, it was not uncommon to use an elliptical equalizer to reduce stereo separation in those frequencies to produce a more in-phase - lateral, easier to play back - cutting. As it pertains to CDs, often when the cutting was made, a tape was made from the outputs of the mastering console (often referred to as an EQ'd production copy) to facilitate easier re-cuts in the future. Sometimes those tapes have also been used to master CDs instead of the master tapes, for various reasons (the master could be missing, the wrong tape was pulled, somebody simply felt the production copy sounded better, etc). When an elliptical EQ was used, CDs mastered from such tapes will also have reduced stereo separation in the lower frequencies.
To me the term "elliptical EQ" is a bit of a misnomer, since an elliptic filter (also known as a Cauer Filter) is a signal processor that exhibits equalized ripple in both the pass- and stopband, behaving like both a Chebyshev and a Butterworth - Elliptic filter - Wikipedia An elliptical EQ is just a 2 band crossover that allows one to processes each of the four bands (two stereo) as well as sum the lower two bands to varying degrees. As Boden puts it in his book: " Sometimes called an elliptical equalizer, the low frequency crossover is a universal tool of all cutting studios. It is normally abbreviated as 'LFX" or "EE" Should there be program material on the master tape that is low in frequency and also more than 90° but less than 270° phase difference, the LFX will be used to eliminate excessive vertical groove lifts. This lift complicates both the pressing and the play-back operations. If the recording level of these identical signals were the same and they were 180° out of phase, the groove would be entirely vertical (hill and dale) in the normal 45/45 method of mastering. The LFX can be set to work at various frequencies to allow a tolerable cut. While disc cutters prefer to keep separation at its absolute maximum, there will be times when there will be sufficient out of phase material to make disc transfer troublesome. Basically, the low frequency crossover works by allowing the stronger of the out of phase components to cancel the portion of the weaker likeness on the opposite channel. That channel will then double terminate or leave half of its remaining power in place of the original out of phase likeness. There are times when too much crossover will alter the overall sound to an objectionable degree. Prudent use of this device is a must. Typical frequencies might include 30, 70, 250 and 700 cycles." The Voxengo LF MAX Punch has a function similar to what what was known as an LFX - and it can be used in contemporary EDM/dance/disco music to ensure the low freqs are in-phase, which can be noticeable in large venues. from the manual: "Crossover stage splits the input audio signal in two spectral bands by means of the 24dB/oct Linkwitz-Riley, 12 dB/oct or 6 dB/oct filter, depending on the crossover mode. The higher band is immediately sent to the output unprocessed. The lower band signal is sent as an input to various internal processing modules. However, if the “Puncher” module was enabled the lower band signal is first processed by this “Puncher” module before going to other modules. Crossover parameters are specified for all channel groups to avoid phasing problems ...The “Mono” switch enables mixing of the low-frequency signal mix to mono before it is sent to the output. This switch can be used as a quick “turn to mono” option for low frequencies which usually should not carry much stereo information." I used this in the remix of the pair of stereo drum tracks on the WLL remix... Remix of WLL Note the difference in the kick and low toms...
Not to hijack the thread, but I was once told a story by a well-known reggae reissue producer, about a reissue he was working on, I believe it was the Abyssinians Satta Masgana LP, but it was a long time ago and I might be wrong). And this record had been reissued multiple times, on different labels (some bootleg/pirates as well) but none of them ever sounded as good as the original Jamaican pressing. And so they were in the studio, getting ready to master, they were playing the tape back and it sounded awful, muffled and weird, and not right at all. Everybody was really frustrated. And he looked down at the tape machine, he was kinda staring blankly into space, while concentrating and listening in frustration.... and he suddenly saw the little "Dolby" button down there, looking back at him right in his face. And without really thinking, he absent-mindedly reached over and pushed it in. The sound suddenly boomed out the speakers, it sounded AWESOME, and everyone in the room turned their heads and went "WOW, what did you just do? That's it!" Turns out the original 2-track master had Dolby A, but it wasn't checked on the tape box, and every single reissue of that album since the original, literally five or six different pressings, had all gotten it wrong. So there is much truth to your post!
Typically, playing back an encoded Dolby A tape without the decoding would result in more highs... back in the day we used to use a trick called an Air Hack that used just the HF encoder to extend the high end. They talk a bit about it here: The Dolby A Trick - AudioThing At the time, we were using some pretty gnarly multitracks like the M56 and the old Ampex MM1000 Dolby's genius is in the fact that he realized one way to improve the noise floor was to emphasize the high end going on to the tape. That way, on playback with the proper high freq attenuation, the noise would also drop. I met a very famous console designer back in the mid 90's at an AES show - I had just designed a project studio using one of the consoles for the company he briefly worked for (AMEK). I've posted this pic before (from Studio Hum - Better than Zappa's Dinah-Moe ) : He once told me on a subsequent phone call that he was contacted by Ray Dolby to help with the design of the Dolby system - since Rupert was known for making some of the best compressors and expanders. He told Mr. Dolby that he didn't think it was a good idea since it would lead to issues; in the following interview it he mentions more business problems but when I talked with him he mentioned that he didn't think that modulating the hi frequencies to get over tape hiss was such a good idea and could lead to artifacts (he was correct in some respects) : from Pro Sound - - Recalling Ray Dolby Rupert Neve – Rupert Neve Designs In 1968, I supplied a large console to PYE RECORDS in London. They had various items of outboard gear already installed, amongst which were some items that I did not recognize. I was a little suspicious of unfamiliar gear. It was explained to me that this was noise reduction equipment. Apparently someone had come up with an expansion/compression circuit that gave more than 10 dB of noise improvement in signal-to-noise ratio on tape. In those days, a good tape recording only reached a 58-60 dB noise floor. When copies were made, noise got progressively worse. A master tape was unusable; editing and reduction to a 2-track finished recording were mandatory. The new equipment was made by a guy named Ray Dolby who had a small workshop in Battersea, London. His equipment used input and output transformers, and I was concerned that if his product was used on every track, it would impair the quality of my console sound. PYE recommended that I should go to see him. I had lunch with Ray; he was a very friendly and knowledgeable engineer. He told me that the real money was to be made in the consumer market. He had developed a simple version of the professional gear. He held the opinion that it was more profitable to let others do the manufacturing and collect a royalty on the design. I was very cynical. Cassette recorders were becoming popular and hundreds of unknown makers in the Far East were producing them. How was Ray ever going to discipline this market to appreciate the value of noise reduction and to line up to pay him for use of his circuit? I jokingly shook hands with him as we agreed that I would never compete on noise reduction if he would never build consoles. We always stuck to that. Ray always remained friendly when we met at shows, etc. When I congratulated him on his success, he asked me how many legal staff I employed. He told me a few years ago that he employed 60 design engineers—but 120 lawyers!
Can't remember if this Dolby A software was ever mentioned here. About DolbyA, and why it seems to lurk in the consumer realm - Gearslutz
