volume or quality?

[weeman]

Do you prefer masters above 0dbfs that distort on most generic crap CD players, but are commercialy loud and proud. Or lower level masters that wont distort and have better tonal balance, a trade off between the too is the norm in commercial "good" crap but opinions here guys! I personally prefer distortionless masters without volume.....

[Blue Bear Sound]

 

Do you prefer masters above 0dbfs...

 

That doesn't make sense...

 

You cannot have "masters above 0dBFS" - 0dBFS is the absolute top-limit of amplitude - representing all bits on - for digital audio.

 

If you're talking 0dBVU (analog line-level) - the question would make a bit more sense - but 0dBVU is typically about -15dBFS or so in the digital realm.

[Jimbroni]

Thats not true. I have several Cd's that hit +1 or +2. As an example, Led Zeppelin remasters have alot of overs in them. Its a way to get RMS levels up without squashing as much. I don't understand how this even works at all, I was quite shocked when I found that out. But nonetheless those Cd's that have overs play fine, and I have yet to find a cd player that craps out or distorts when playing them. After some digging, I found there's quite a debate amongst mastering guys as to what sounds better a few peaks that clip or oversaturating the mix. Alot of these probably would rather keep the levels down and allow the dynamic range to exist, but they are faced with loudness competition day in and day out. So compromises must be made. Some prefer to keep a little more dynamics let overs go by, others feel thats too dangerous as not all CD's players can handle the overs, so they saturate.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Then that's a perfect of example of the absolute stupidity of the "loudness wars".... digital audio has a finite upper limit of 0dBFS. This is the point where all bits are on and no other amplitude levels can be stored/reproduced.

 

Attempting to do so leaves one a the mercy of whatever way a DAC handles the overs... and there's not one of them that I know of that handles overs in any musical way. Digital distortion is nothing other than ugly.

 

So we go through all the trouble of producing high-quality masters and some clueless {censored}wit decides they're going to leave the final sonics to some random handling of an unwanted audio condition?!?!

 

{censored} me......... I knew the loudness wars were bad, but I had no idea they progressed to this point!

 

Guess which side of the fence I'm on............

[wwwjd]

I will never go beyond the 0 level in peaks via digital or simulated Analog D/A playback converters. If it's not loud enough, I can crunch more, but as a practice, I won't be crunching past any normal commercial stuff. I don't care what others are doing past 0, perferring to avoid ANY potential distortion in my art

[UstadKhanAli]

We've chosen quality every single time, and have repeatedly told MEs not to crush our mixes.

[WRGKMC]

I'm surprised they could even burn the CDs without failing if they were getting peaks over zero db. Normally it causes all kinds of data crashes. If I were to suspect anything it would be the relyability of your playback meter Jim. I know Blue Bear is right on this one, there is nothing beyond 0DB that can be produced in a plus range and it may just be some built in limiting device kicking in on the playback device or a red light eronusly set off not an actual burning above 0DB. The red light may be set for -.01DB for example and the song hit a peak of 0DB but above, you'd definately hear it ripping.

[Jimbroni]

 

I will never go beyond the 0 level in peaks via digital or simulated Analog D/A playback converters. If it's not loud enough, I can crunch more, but as a practice, I won't be crunching past any normal commercial stuff. I don't care what others are doing past 0, perferring to avoid ANY potential distortion in my art

 

 

To me I think crunching with ceiling limiter is distortion. I'm not a mastering guy, so when I do my stuff. I put a ceiling limiter at -0.3 with threshold all the way off. I turn off the limiter and use a line level inserted before it. Turn that up until I get a couple of overs, turn the limiter on. Make sure doesn't saturate my mix, because I hate the sound of limiter saturation, at least from the L2 which is all I have. This allows me to get my peaks up to the ceiling without using the threshold and all saturation fx that come with it. Even though theoretically the limiter isn't supposed to saturate until you start getting attenuation, I hear it long before I see any attenuation on the meter. That said, I have just only used a line level and turned it up until the loudest peaks hit +2, and while I'm a little scared to release my music that way, it sounds way better to my ears then using a limiter and pushing the threshold to get to same RMS. Essentially this way you only get a couple of peaks that clip, instead crunching/distorting the entire mix. None of my masters ever come out at what I'd call competitive loudness. But they are usually within K14 standards. When I wanna release something saleable, Its going to a mastering house.

[Jimbroni]

 

I'm surprised they could even burn the CDs without failing if they were getting peaks over zero db. Normally it causes all kinds of data crashes. If I were to suspect anything it would be the relyability of your playback meter Jim. I know Blue Bear is right on this one, there is nothing beyond 0DB that can be produced in a plus range and it may just be some built in limiting device kicking in on the playback device or a red light eronusly set off not an actual burning above 0DB. The red light may be set for -.01DB for example and the song hit a peak of 0DB but above, you'd definately hear it ripping.

 

 

nope. I've actually burned CD's at +6 just to see what would happen. My DVD player played the CD fine, it sounded like {censored} but it played. I use Wavelab which has a good peak and RMS meter, in combination with the SSL meter which does both peak and intersample peaks, as well as a analog meter sim thats calibrated to K14.

[Jimbroni]

BTW. Just because you put a ceiling limiter at -.3 doesn't mean your master doesn't have overs in it. I highly recommend the SSL intersample peak meter. Its highly enlightening to see that even though you have that ceiling limiter to see that you are actually still getting intersample overs. A lot of commercial CD's are released with intersample overs on them. Not saying it sounds good, but just saying. I've been quite shocked to see how many commercial releases suffer from that issue.

[weeman]

Right bears right in the digital realm you cannot go over 0dbfs. When this digital data is converted to analogue in a CD players DAC "or using poor encoders" it introduces forms of filtering and handling when converting the data into analogue audio, at this point masters in a computer system that reach 0dbfs can go above +0dbfs in an DAC. Some plug-ins can meter these peaks that reach above 0dbfs and distort the analogue signal. Generally mix engineers dont meter these when producing mix's as that infomation is just essential in mastering. Note +odbfs can be recorded from a microphone and be converted to the top end of the allowed bit rate so when its reproduced in a analogue form it goes above. Dont ask me the science i had to read that this stuff existed but it does happen in ADC and DAC because of filtering and poor quality converters. Im not going to be an idiot and say all commercial music contains 0dbfs+ peak but most do. For example the Led Zepplin remaster mensioned earlyer. So what im asking is do we like these OVER peaks "distortions" or weather we dont? This isnt a how or why thread its just a opinion on commercialy mastered material. Do we prefer these distortions or not? does anyone care that a DAC will distort their master on poor quality hardware or not. You can foul alot of people with loud masters but u cant foul a meter. So what do you guys really think is it volume or quality and why? Personally i prefer dynamic mix's but i love alot of commercial tracks too so im at a loss to which ones right or wrong.

[Jimbroni]

I don't think anybody likes the overs. I just think some people consider it to be the lesser of two evils. Allowing some overs allows more dynamics than the alternative which is compressing the snot out of the mix.

 

Its all kinda silly to me. And I think a lot stems from bad mixes or bad musical arrangement. I think a lot of modern music is too dense. To me dense music "wall of sound" sounds small. And in order to make those dense mixes louder and bigger you have to get the RMS up there.

 

One of the best sounding masters I've heard in a while is the latest Beastie Boy's album, which is all instrumental. But Its RMS stays right around -14 to -11 and gets very low sub -20 in part. Doesn't have any overs or intersample overs for that matter, but sounds just as loud and just as big as other CD's I've compared that do have overs and single digit RMS'. Why? I think its the music and mix. There is a lot big giant bass hits with a ton, I mean a mile of space around them. There a lot of layers of melody, with mucho depth. But the trick in this one is the songs never get to a point where there is a lot of density. Think 60's music, where not every frequency in spectrum is accounted for. Yet that music sounds big as hell.

[WRGKMC]

Jim, I think you missed my point. Just because your software allows peaks above 0db (Most does) doesnt mean the date gets printed to the disk that way. 0DB is the maximum Ceiling a CD can be printed at its not a threshold like you see in daw software for playback purposes.

 

As you said you applied +3 or +6, The noise thats generated on playback of the CD is the data above 0db that doesnt get printed to the disk. Its information lost in the process, not compressed, unless the burning software or CD burner has some kind of normalizer or limiter built in to prevent hardware damage which most burner programs do have.

As you know Its not like analog where you can scratch a deeper record groove to get it louder or saturate a magnetic tape. Digital data being applied to the disk in zeros and ones. Once you go above zero all thats left is digital white noise created by the absence of peaks leaving only valleys of the wave form. The resulting Square wave is nasty because theren nothing being used to smooth off the missing peaks.

 

0DB is the Manufactures limit agreed upon when the media was introduced to provide compadibility between Mfgs of CDs, players, and burners and has not changed. There is no way to force a higher level onto the disk it just gets flatened or eliminated above 0DB. Data correction is usually incorperated in the burning process to insure the CD burned can be recognised and played back by the Player, but once the data is compressed to maximum there is no higher DB level that can be achieved. Playback equipment is calibrated the same way using 0DB as a ceiling.

[FoxTick]

Quality, please.

 

I have no problem turning up the volume if I want the music louder. I've got 1200 watts to spare

 

I listen to CDs I bought 20 years ago and they all sound open and punchy with plenty of dynamics. Then I pop in a recent release and it's down-right abysmal.

 

A friend of mine brought over Metallica's Death Magnetic and I couldn't stand to listen to it, it's an over-compressed and distorted piece of {censored}.....and I love Metallica. There's no life or punch to today's releases and it's heart breaking.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

I don't think anybody likes the overs. I just think some people consider it to be the lesser of two evils. Allowing some overs allows more dynamics than the alternative which is compressing the snot out of the mix.

 

 

You can have dynamics for days without overs. Quite frankly, you can have MORE dynamics without overs.

[Jimbroni]

 

You can have dynamics for days without overs. Quite frankly, you can have MORE dynamics without overs.

 

 

I can't argue with that.

[weeman]

A friend of mine brought over Metallica's Death Magnetic and I couldn't stand to listen to it, it's an over-compressed and distorted piece of {censored}.....and I love Metallica. There's no life or punch to today's releases and it's heart breaking.

The clipping is the ADCs unability too deal with the +peaks over 0 in the conversion process id even go as far too say they just put the kick drum gain on full and recorded the digital saturation at the ADC lmao! just a guess but im probably right. its also the reason i love bob rock and hate that album!

[weeman]

Hay guys does anyone enjoy these albums........

 

Panic at the disco : pretty odd

all american rejects : their last album sorry forgot the name

pink floyd:darker side of the moon

Metallica: black album

 

I also love the singles

Justin timberlake - sexy back

Jay Z - 99 problems

 

Most of these are +0dbfs on ADC so i can say i love distortions!!!

[wwwjd]

I play all the latest mixes in my car all the time and some of them have bad distortions where I KNOW it was not the intention like a punch spot with a chord, a kick drum, cymbals and vocals, and it just goes "GA-RUUUUNGE" [no, it's not my equipment] and I just think, "man, the mixer or masterer was an idiot to allow that" Doesn't sound good at all.

[Zooey]

I thought this thread was going to be about something else!

 

Like, do you spend forever getting recordings completely perfect, or do you just quickly slap something down and move onto the next project.

[Phil O'Keefe]

IMO, no overs, EVER. Even if you compress and limit the snot out of the raw stereo mix, there's no reason to have overs. Back in the day, many CD replication plants would refuse any submission with any overs on it - even a single sample. Today, a lot of them apparently will caution you about it (or not ), but if you want them to press a CD with overs, apparently they will.

 

If you're using something like a Waves Maximizer, you can set your maximum output level to something slightly below 0 dBFS, even if you're limiting the crud out of it. I would normally recommend a maximum of -0.2 or -0.3 dBFS for your maximum...

 

And I would also recommend against over-limiting or over-compression on your masters. Leave a little life, and some of the natural, musical dynamics in it.

 

Take a listen to the new Julie Day track ("Rio") I put up on my studio's Myspace page. That is an UNMASTERED mix. The levels were in the -23 dB RMS range when I printed the mix. That's a bit low, so I brought the levels up just a touch to where the peaks were below 0 dBFS, but without applying any compression or limiting. That brought the RMS up to about -19 dB or so. That would still be a bit low for a commercial release, but again, it's an unmastered mix. When the album is finished, I'll take the original -23 dB mix to Bill Dooley at Paramount Mastering and let him do what he does so well. He'll bring it up a bit more than I did, but without over-squashing it. And there won't be any "overs" on it...

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

I thought this thread was going to be about something else! Like, do you spend forever getting recordings completely perfect, or do you just quickly slap something down and move onto the next project.

 

 

I have to admit, that's what I thought too - is it better to do a lot of projects quickly and have a high amount of product output, or fewer releases, but of higher quality?

 

Personally, I'll take quality over quantity any day. When a band comes in and says they have three days to do a demo, and they're thinking of trying to lay down five or six songs, I nearly always advise them to spend the available time trying to get three songs done well rather than trying to get five or six songs done so-so. A club owner or A&R rep isn't likely to listen past the first song, or maybe first two songs unless you absolutely knock their socks off with the first track on the demo... and if they absolutely love those three songs, they can always ask you for "more".

[weeman]

Thanks for the reply's ... quality overt quantity phil if u get a minute could u check out. http://www.myspace.com/hangingbasketsband Some productions i did with 2 kids that paid me. I think its kool check out 89th key and Con if u get chance.

[Instrospection]

I know that on my Pioneer cd recorder, if something would exceed O db, it would definetely still show up on the playback version of it, too....it would be written like that. I didn't recall always hearing it as a loud obvious distortion, but sought out to eliminate that peak distortion problem anyways.

 

As far as quality versus quantity, I prefer quality. For my latest release, I chiselled a few albums' worth of material into the current album that flowed in a certain way. Everything else I like alot too, but when i'm sequencing an album, that's when I realize that there needs to be more of something or less of something--more faster songs, more slower songs, etc, so I find that tracking alot of stuff helps out later on when you need something that fits a certain mood or pace.

[Zooey]

 

Personally, I'll take quality over quantity any day. When a band comes in and says they have three days to do a demo, and they're thinking of trying to lay down five or six songs, I nearly always advise them to spend the available time trying to get three songs done well rather than trying to get five or six songs done so-so.

 

 

I take very few outside projects now, but when I did, I had bands come through my studio thinking they're going to finish an album in a day.

 

On the other hand, I've also worked with people who will track basics for a song in a day, then spend the next year futzing with it until nothing that was good about the basic tracks remains. Sometimes you just have to let go and move onto the next thing. Also, the more projects you crank out, the better you get at it, and you achieve better results in a shorter time.