How dumb have music listeners and musicians become?

FrantzM · Feb 14, 2012

Hi

Speculation. Do the majority of people listen to music with intent. Trying hard to not sound elitist, Do the masses listen to music as a primary activity? Music has become a backdrop, often a prop, rarely the primary activity. People rarely go to music with the intent and attention required. Inflexions, intonation and all the nuances that make music so beautiful , powerful and transforming, seem to require a focus, an attention to ...well..music, that is not prevalent today and that even for many audiophiles.
Thus music has to be a little one dimensional, at least from the viewpoint of those who are currently producing it. This is a business and people are after making money and what works is what they will do , copy, invent. Dynamics is a bad thing in this regard, subtle sound are to be avoided since they will not be heard, cannot be heard if one does not focus on them .. Imagine trying to listen to soft passage while running or at a party ...

I do find the present push toward better headphones interesting , yet most people continue to listen to music as a secondary activity through these thus, the headphones have to grab attention and they do this by manipulating the FR and flavoring the frequency extreme.. The Dr Dre so popular with youth of all creed are a point in case... Few if any of these headphones even the top of the line would be considered neutral by any audiophile, yet manufacturers spurred by the success of these Dr Dre are obliging and aligning their "sound" to these criteria.. There is a limit IMO, there is so much bass and treble you can add before the music becomes unrecognizable, yet this is in this sea of poorly recorded music a sliver of hope .. An island of perhaps good things to come. I am not overly optimistic

treitz3 · Feb 14, 2012

fas42 said:
Fair enough, if you're the person recording, and then replaying, that event. But if the event you wish to experience has had the capture of it locked up in a certain form, as a "historical" (even if just last year) recording, what is the real sound then?

I can not answer for others but I can answer for me. Things are what they are and you can't make chicken soup out of chicken s__t. The "real sound" would be the closest representation that could be reproduced to what I would consider real sound. I mean, come on. You can't pick up a "dropping" by the clean end. It is what it is and without any kind of influence to different mediums, the sound should remain as close to real sound as possible. In today's record industry, this is a seemingly impossible task. It shouldn't be. For archival reasons, if nothing else.

fas42 · Feb 14, 2012

treitz3 said:
The "real sound" would be the closest representation that could be reproduced to what I would consider real sound. I mean, come on. You can't pick up a "dropping" by the clean end. It is what it is and without any kind of influence to different mediums, the sound should remain as close to real sound as possible. In today's record industry, this is a seemingly impossible task. It shouldn't be. For archival reasons, if nothing else.

So for a truly historical recording, say from the 1940's, would that mean that it would be reasonable to manipulate the sound, "distort" the sound, to make it sound more "real", closer to what you believe it should sound like? As an example, use very sophisticated DSP processing to add high frequency harmonics to the violin sound, which you know are, were, the real thing for those instruments ...

Frank

JackD201 · Feb 14, 2012

Adele 21's recording quality is a real heartbreaker. I started a thread about this a few months ago. Gary and I both singled this album out as one of those that actually benefitted from file compression. The A side of the LP was all but unlistenable. The B side just a bit better. Only Someone Like You and The Cure cover, Love Song were okay. Rolling in the Deep and Rumor Has it were disasters.

treitz3 · Feb 14, 2012

fas42 said:
So for a truly historical recording, say from the 1940's, would that mean that it would be reasonable to manipulate the sound, "distort" the sound, to make it sound more "real", closer to what you believe it should sound like? As an example, use very sophisticated DSP processing to add high frequency harmonics to the violin sound, which you know are, were, the real thing for those instruments ...

Simply put, no. Now, I must admit, I am not a recording guru nor do I care to be. That said, leave it be for now. At least, that's my current stance knowing what I know. When the recording industry actually cares and strives to improve the sound, or the end result as to what hits our ears, probably decades from now......

I'll leave it to them to determine what's best. Then hope for the best, if I'm still alive.

fas42 · Feb 14, 2012

JackD201 said:
Adele 21's recording quality is a real heartbreaker. I started a thread about this a few months ago. Gary and I both singled this album out as one of those that actually benefitted from file compression. The A side of the LP was all but unlistenable. The B side just a bit better. Only Someone Like You and The Cure cover, Love Song were okay. Rolling in the Deep and Rumor Has it were disasters.

Now you've got me confused, Jack! Went back and read that thread: you never once mentioned the recording quality, your comments were purely about compression seemingly having to be used to fit the playing time onto LP, and therefore the actual mastering for, and cutting of the vinyl was that which was at fault. Also, you and John commented on the crummy quality of the vinyl material that was used: you actually enthusiastically recommended to others to buy the CD for its quality!!

Frank

MylesBAstor · Feb 15, 2012

JackD201 said:
Adele 21's recording quality is a real heartbreaker. I started a thread about this a few months ago. Gary and I both singled this album out as one of those that actually benefitted from file compression. The A side of the LP was all but unlistenable. The B side just a bit better. Only Someone Like You and The Cure cover, Love Song were okay. Rolling in the Deep and Rumor Has it were disasters.

Really makes you wonder what the hell the recording engineer and producer were listening to? Or was it done in a basement?

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 15, 2012

Evidently I need to compress it more. I have a 320kbps file for loading onto iPad/Pods. It is almost unlistenable. And I almost don't believe in unlistenable. But there are tracks on that album that are just awful. That she can do so much, through that horrid veil of mud and condensation, speaks volumes of the sheer quality of the work. Who engineered and master this album? He should be drummed out of the business; removed, like a tumor. This is beyond "pleasing the client." It is incompetence. Agree with the "ok" on Love Song. Someone Like You is distorted. It sounds like the mic pre has been overdriven or something. Most of the tracks do. Incredible vocalist, recorded with distorted vocals.,..

Tim

PS: Listening to this again right now, in the most discriminating and painful way, on the headphone rig. Don't You Remember and He Won't Go...particularly the latter, are ok too. You could make a decent EP out of the Rick Rubin productions here. They're loud. The vocals are a bit recessed for my taste on Don't You Remember, but they're not grossly overdriven like they are on some of the other tracks. Want a quick lesson in how severely production can impact music? Switch back and forth between He Won't Go and Rumor Has It.

JackD201 · Feb 15, 2012

fas42 said:
Now you've got me confused, Jack! Went back and read that thread: you never once mentioned the recording quality, your comments were purely about compression seemingly having to be used to fit the playing time onto LP, and therefore the actual mastering for, and cutting of the vinyl was that which was at fault. Also, you and John commented on the crummy quality of the vinyl material that was used: you actually enthusiastically recommended to others to buy the CD for its quality!!

Frank

All that says was that the CD was better than the LP but not good per se. I had the AAC download first, not quite sure if it was LP second, CD last. The compressed download was most listenable of the three to my ears. An oddity and against all possible expectation biases.

All three are heartbreaking. I really love Adele and practically all the songs on 21.

garylkoh · Feb 15, 2012

JackD201 said:
All that says was that the CD was better than the LP but not good per se. I had the AAC download first, not quite sure if it was LP second, CD last. The compressed download was most listenable of the three to my ears. An oddity and against all possible expectation biases.

All three are heartbreaking. I really love Adele and practically all the songs on 21.

I had the low bit-rate mp3 first. Loved the singer and practically all the songs. Then when I managed to get the CD and the LP, they were both heartbreakingly bad. I think that the engineer did a great job mastering for compression and mastering for non-high fidelity equipment. Adele's 21 sold over 12 million copies in 2011. I don't think that there have been 12 million high-end systems sold in all time. We are not the audience - sad as that may be. May be the tapes can be used to re-mix and re-master for an audiophile version. But I don't think that's going to happen.

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 15, 2012

garylkoh said:
I had the low bit-rate mp3 first. Loved the singer and practically all the songs. Then when I managed to get the CD and the LP, they were both heartbreakingly bad. I think that the engineer did a great job mastering for compression and mastering for non-high fidelity equipment. Adele's 21 sold over 12 million copies in 2011. I don't think that there have been 12 million high-end systems sold in all time. We are not the audience - sad as that may be. May be the tapes can be used to re-mix and re-master for an audiophile version. But I don't think that's going to happen.

That we are not the audience is no excuse, Gary. There are many contemporary records that are victims of the loudness wars and have been mastered to make the soft stuff audible on a motorcycle while wearing earbuds from a iPod (I may exaggerate a bit), that sound much better than 21. There are cuts on 21 that are acceptable. They have no real dynamics, but they're listenable. The problems with bad cuts on 21 go way beyond dynamics.

Tim

fas42 · Feb 15, 2012

Okay, people, got it now. Went out and got the CD, the mixer had far, far too many knobs to twiddle; couldn't stop playing with them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the quality per se, but the mixer screwed up the brief.

Essentially, he created an instrumental album, and halfway through thought, gee, would be handy to add a backing singer to fill in the sound a bit -- hmm, that Adele's supposed to be not too bad ...

So, all the backing sound has been overcooked to make it impressive, distracting you from what supposedly is the point of the album. It certainly is an excellent showcase for wannabe mixers, demonstrating how all the various elements can be played with to achieve any sort of spotlighting desired on a particular aspect.

Yes, a good example of the trees being everything, and the forest an afterthought: there can be such a thing as too much power ...

Frank

fas42 · Feb 15, 2012

Gary's comments are also spot on. The engineers are now clever enough to optimise the sound so that after the file compression algorithms do their thing, it has the "best" sound. Too clever .... in the old days they did not understand what the raw sound truly sounded like, their monitoring systems weren't clear enough, and they "erred" on the safe side of minimal fiddling, resulting in excellent results for us.

Frank

fas42 · Feb 15, 2012

And yet another thought on the matter. My wife and I were just having an argument, a discussion of what was going on; the album was running at a volume of 6 out of 40 on the HT setup, and the sound was still sounding big and intense. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it was engineered to sound impressive at very low audible volume; as you increased the volume that intensity just grew and grew. My wife commented, the music backing and her voice just clashed; there was all this instrumental stuff happening, and then adding her voice on top again was just too much, the "busy" knob was well and truly wound up. Certainly very interesting ...

Frank

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 15, 2012

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the quality per se, but the mixer screwed up the brief.

Not sure how you could have concluded that. Some of the problems on some of these tracks could go all the way back to the microphones, some of them may not have happened until the mixed tapes got to the mastering suite, and there certainly is plenty "wrong with the quality per se," as far as I can tell. But maybe someone, like Bruce, with a bit more studio experience will weigh in.

Essentially, he created an instrumental album, and halfway through thought, gee, would be handy to add a backing singer to fill in the sound a bit -- hmm, that Adele's supposed to be not too bad ...

Seriously unlikely. The guy who produced some of the worst tracks on the album co-wrote a bunch of the songs with Adele. I doubt his own work was an afterthought, and after writing the album with her, I suspect he was pretty familiar with her talents.

And yet another thought on the matter. My wife and I were just having an argument, a discussion of what was going on; the album was running at a volume of 6 out of 40 on the HT setup, and the sound was still sounding big and intense. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it was engineered to sound impressive at very low audible volume; as you increased the volume that intensity just grew and grew. My wife commented, the music backing and her voice just clashed; there was all this instrumental stuff happening, and then adding her voice on top again was just too much, the "busy" knob was well and truly wound up. Certainly very interesting ...

Agreed here. Heavy compression increases the volume of the soft stuff and smashes down the loud -- everything is the same volume. So at very low volume levels where you'd normally lose the subtleties, they're just as clear as the vocals. But when you turn the volume up, everything comes up. Sonic overload.

Tim

The engineers are now clever enough to optimise the sound so that after the file compression algorithms do their thing, it has the "best" sound.

I suspect it is exactly the opposite. It doesn't sound "best" on compressed files, it's just that the severely compressed files (it sounds as bad at 320kbps as it sounds as lossless) just mask a bit of the terrible. It sounds better out in the hallway, worse on the headphone rig...it's not that it is optimized for mp3, it's that the better the resolution and dynamics of the system, the more the flaws are revealed.

You should have heard exactly the same effect from Springsteen's "Magic." It just lacked the blatant distortion of some of the Adele tracks.

Tim

fas42 · Feb 15, 2012

Phelonious Ponk said:
Not sure how you could have concluded that. Some of the problems on some of these tracks could go all the way back to the microphones, some of them may not have happened until the mixed tapes got to the mastering suite, and there certainly is plenty "wrong with the quality per se," as far as I can tell. But maybe someone, like Bruce, with a bit more studio experience will weigh in.

Yes, I would be very interested in Bruce's comments ...

Seriously unlikely. The guy who produced some of the worst tracks on the album co-wrote a bunch of the songs with Adele. I doubt his own work was an afterthought, and after writing the album with her, I suspect he was pretty familiar with her talents.

Just my lame attempt at sarcasm, sorry!

I suspect it is exactly the opposite. It doesn't sound "best" on compressed files, it's just that the severely compressed files (it sounds as bad at 320kbps as it sounds as lossless) just mask a bit of the terrible. It sounds better out in the hallway, worse on the headphone rig...it's not that it is optimized for mp3, it's that the better the resolution and dynamics of the system, the more the flaws are revealed.

You should have heard exactly the same effect from Springsteen's "Magic." It just lacked the blatant distortion of some of the Adele tracks.

The interesting thing is that by normal standards, Adele is not dynamically compressed, not in the sense of having the final mix so mangled: as I said, if you look at the waveform and compare it to the bad examples out there, where they talk of the loudness wars, it's in pretty good shape. The Springsteen, on the other hand, in the last round of mastering was given a huge serve of "chop off the tops" of the musical peaks, 6dB were thrown in the bin so to speak. To me the Adele compression or sound intensifying was far more subtle, cleverer, so that no-one could point at the waveform and say, look at what's happened!

If you really want to be scared, in the last bit of that Soundonsound article about the mixing of the album, the chap who did it said he deliberately sent a hot version of the final to the record company for approval, what was sent to the manufacturer was the clean, uncompressed version! Be afraid, be very afraid ...

Frank

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 15, 2012

fas42 said:
Yes, I would be very interested in Bruce's comments ...

Just my lame attempt at sarcasm, sorry!

The interesting thing is that by normal standards, Adele is not dynamically compressed, not in the sense of having the final mix so mangled: as I said, if you look at the waveform and compare it to the bad examples out there, where they talk of the loudness wars, it's in pretty good shape. The Springsteen, on the other hand, in the last round of mastering was given a huge serve of "chop off the tops" of the musical peaks, 6dB were thrown in the bin so to speak. To me the Adele compression or sound intensifying was far more subtle, cleverer, so that no-one could point at the waveform and say, look at what's happened!

If you really want to be scared, in the last bit of that Soundonsound article about the mixing of the album, the chap who did it said he deliberately sent a hot version of the final to the record company for approval, what was sent to the manufacturer was the clean, uncompressed version! Be afraid, be very afraid ...

Frank

Well, maybe it's not compression, maybe it's just distortion. I know though, that this morning I was switching back and forth between one of the worst cuts and one of the Rick Rubin tracks and it was like transitioning from an old school master to a compressed modern pop cut. The bad track was loud. And bad.

Tim

garylkoh · Feb 15, 2012

Phelonious Ponk said:
That we are not the audience is no excuse, Gary. There are many contemporary records that are victims of the loudness wars and have been mastered to make the soft stuff audible on a motorcycle while wearing earbuds from a iPod (I may exaggerate a bit), that sound much better than 21. There are cuts on 21 that are acceptable. They have no real dynamics, but they're listenable. The problems with bad cuts on 21 go way beyond dynamics.

Tim

I don't believe that the mixing/mastering engineer set out to make a bad album. He just had a different objective, and in his own mind, he probably achieved it. Selling 12 million albums would have probably sealed it in his mind, and every future album he engineers would sound like 21 - because it's a success. Woe betide us.

treitz3 · Feb 15, 2012

Hello, Gary. Remember Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" Album? It has sold more than 120 million albums. I don't believe this Adele album will get anywhere close to that number, ever. This [Dire Straits, MFN] would be a better benchmark for a recording engineer. Not the nightmare we have been handed from yet another great talent. Unfortunately, you are most likely correct *disappointingly shakes head*.

Think of how many audiophiles and music lovers have bought, then re-bought and maybe had multiple copies of this album on different formats. I personally must have about 8 or 9 [maybe more] copies on just about every format there is and I know I'm not alone. I can't say that any audiophile or music lover would do the same with 21.

garylkoh · Feb 15, 2012

The big difference is that I have 5 different copies of Money for Nothing looking for a better one. I have 3 different copies of 21 looking for something I can listen to without a grimace on my face

How dumb have music listeners and musicians become?

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