The death of high-fidelity

[ricosuave]

"Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...igh_fidelity/1

[flip]

Yeah, I hate MP3s. Lossless all the way.

[Nuje]

I only read the first page, but it most definitely makes sense. It's so sad too, because saving space isn't even necessary anymore. I remember having a computer with a 200MB hard drive, that didn't even have enough power or RAM to play MP3s. Now, Gigabytes aren't expensive, and lossless compression exists....and even in a case where someone doesn't believe the lossless part of the equation....a Terabyte hard drive costs around $120 now? Almost 1300 CDs worth of space on that, even if you download your music...hmm, come to think of it, I'm going to compare some Beatles remasters to the older issue at some point soon.

[nfotiu]

Way to totally miss the point of the article, including the first page. The article is about dynamic range compression (granted with a few myths and misconceptions about mp3 compression thrown in for good measure)

[sclitheroe]

This gets a big meh from me. It's how the sound has evolved, and it's what is in demand with the current generation of listeners and many artists. The comparison between Nora Jones and RHCP or Fallout Boy is really unfair on RS' part. One is by its very nature a spare and airy arrangement, the other tunes are more slamming straight ahead rock, and are going to be loud by nature. Rock musicians have been putting compressors in their pedal chains long, long before engineers were digitally compressing in the studio. Hell, every distorted guitar out there is basically just an overdriven amp, which is by its very nature undergoing compression in the tubes.

In fact, the more I think about this article, the more I think it doesn't even make sense except to stroke the ego of self proclaimed audiophiles. They are basically pointing out that some artists have lots of dynamic range, and other *gasp* modern rock acts don't. Imagine that - a straight ahead faux-punk band has mostly the same dynamic range on their records. I BET THEY DO LIVE TOO!

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

This gets a big meh from me. It's how the sound has evolved, and it's what is in demand with the current generation of listeners and many artists. The comparison between Nora Jones and RHCP or Fallout Boy is really unfair on RS' part. One is by its very nature a spare and airy arrangement, the other tunes are more slamming straight ahead rock, and are going to be loud by nature. Rock musicians have been putting compressors in their pedal chains long, long before engineers were digitally compressing in the studio. Hell, every distorted guitar out there is basically just an overdriven amp, which is by its very nature undergoing compression in the tubes.

In fact, the more I think about this article, the more I think it doesn't even make sense except to stroke the ego of self proclaimed audiophiles. They are basically pointing out that some artists have lots of dynamic range, and other *gasp* modern rock acts don't. Imagine that - a straight ahead faux-punk band has mostly the same dynamic range on their records. I BET THEY DO LIVE TOO!

Good post. It seems almost like they were pushing some kind of agenda. What tricks do they think the 80s engineers were doing to get their stuff to sound good on cassette tapes and AM hit radio?

[Nuje]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Way to totally miss the point of the article, including the first page. The article is about dynamic range compression (granted with a few myths and misconceptions about mp3 compression thrown in for good measure)

Perhaps I missed some of the point. I do know as much, that music is mixed to be "flat" in the sense, that if the music even is perceived as loud (for example, when comparing a theoretical acoustic guitar intro, to the 2 Stratocasters sounding abruptly, along with the bass, drums, and vocals), it's still more or less the same in decibels, whereas the music of old was produced so it had parts that were actually quiet....unless I'm REALLY out to lunch with what I just said. I suppose the short phrase about MP3s seems like a bigger chunk of the article when you read just the first page...I'll check out the rest for sure though.