Posting Spree part 97: Dynamic Range.

[swestrup]

Here's a rant by an audio engineer who says the reason that all CDs sound so bad these days is because the recording studios are deliberately recording everything as 'extra loud' thereby squashing the music into the top of the dynamic range and leaving the bottom empty. The music sounds compressed as a result.

Comments

[messiahdivine.livejournal.com]

That is very true.
When I heard a friend's band's recording I was dismayed by the lack of depth—I told them I preferred the first draft without all the "remastering".

Their producer and soundguy's answer was "listen, I know what I'm doing - I've mastered for Celin Dion and *add famous people padding here* and look how they're doing."

[sps.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I have to fight against the use of compressors in my own work - the audio engineers often want to install them to 'make the sound more natural', patent gibberish to my mind.

Well, it may make distance from the mics less of an issue, but that should be dealt with by using a microphone array, not compression.

Except for the 'leaving the bottom empty' part - it's fixed point, so there's no 'bottom' to leave empty.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I saw an article back in - uh, whenever the Rush album that followed Test For Echo came out - that did an indepth analysis of the album. It was pretty blatantly wrecked.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

To make my point more clear - the article was mainly about the phenomenon in general, and just used the Rush album as an example.