In article , Iain
Churches wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Iain
Churches wrote:

As you well know. Dave, levels of pay in our industry are skill
related.

ahem Given the clipping and related oddities I've encountered on
some CDs I must confess to having my doubts as to how that 'skill' is
judged and applied in various cases.

Jim. May I ask you a question? As a lover of classical music, are you
pleased with the standard of mastering of the CDs you have in your
collection? I am pretty sure the answer is "yes".

Overall, "yes". :-)


If not, I would be interested to read a list of recordings that do not
meet your expectations

The problem is that the situation varies from CD to CD, and from genre to
genre.

If you look at the 'Clipping On CD' webpage I put up a week or two ago
you'll find the worst example for a Classical CD that I found. Indeed, that
was the worst example of *any* CD I found. Yet is sold as "Mercury
Living Presence" and presented as being an audiophile item. So why is
it clipped? Didn't anyone involved in mastering it from the original
tapes *notice*?

But apart from this, the problems seem to be with pop/rock music in the
main. Although I have found some Jazz examples. The example given on the
above page is a Horace Silver track. The music is great, yet it is clearly
clipped when there was no need for that.

(bearing in mind that you really need to AB
between the production master and the CD to know if there is anything
wrong)

That is incorrect in this context.

A 'flat top' series of successive samples at the maximum sample
value can be identified as clipping. Particularly when the sample runs of
the same value crop up repeatedly during the track/CD.

When it happens with music which was originally recorded on analogue tape
it simply does not have the characteristics of analog tape . The flat-top
is simply too precise.

Also, in some cases I have multiples versions, and some show the clipping
when others don't. Ditto with level compressions.

Interestingly, I also have some examples of flat-top clipping at a sample
value *below* the CD max. This implies the signal was clipped before the
final stage when the CD sample sets were produced.

Have a look at the 1812, Hendrix, and Silver examples on the webpage. Do
you not think they are clipped?

As a jazz fan, and a recording professional, I rarely find a jazz CD
which does not lived up to my expectations as far as the mastering is
concerned (bearing in mid that much of the jazz repertoire is historical
material, often from concerts and club dates)

I also find that most Classical and Jazz CDs are fine - but with a caveat
wrt the forthcoming article I mention below. Alas, this isn't universal,
and some of the examples don't seem to me to demonstrate a 'skill' I'd be
pleased to have - hence my comments.

If I ask pop music fans, as I have done on many occasions, "are you
happy with the quality of the product", they reply in the affirmative.

They may also do so for low bitrate MP3s, or heavily level compressed radio
braodcasts (where already-compressed CDs may be compressed even more
when transmitted). As I said, selling this may be a 'skill', but not one
I'd be proud of, myself.

So, generally speaking, the mastering engineer has succeeded in
pleasing both producer and audience in three major, very different,
genres of music.

The distinction is between "generally" and specific examples, I'm afraid. I
can't see that any engineer need clip the signals. To do so seems to me to
be an accident, or complacent ignorance, or cynical.

Doesn't this rather negate your comment about lack of
skill in mastering?

I don't think so. However rather than give more details here I'll direct
you to an article that will be appearing in Hi Fi News next month. :-)

In that I revisit this topic from a slightly different approach. For the
sake of my editor I won't say more until the article appears. ;-

FWIW as with previous HFN articles, a few months after it appears I'll put
an expanded version up on the AudioMisc site.

A chef may offer Beef Wellington as his speciality, but if some of the
customers insists on soggy pie and mash.......

The problem is that usually they aren't offerred *both*. If they like a
specific artist and/or peice of music then they are offerred what the
makers produce. Thus it becomes "clipped/compressed or not at all" for
quite a lot of pop/rock. The choice is Hobson's in many cases. Indeed,
there is no written comment on the relevant CD to the effect that "we've
clipped this to make it louder". So the problem is that the "chef" simply
isn't "offering" the better version on CD in some cases. TINA.

Unless, of course, you mean that the LP version (where it exists) isn't
similarly clipped. But again, if this is the case, no-one I know of is
saying, "We sell both the CD and LP versions. We've clipped the CD version,
so you might want to take that into account."

Or, "We can sell you Beethoven's 9th unclipped, or Hendrix clipped". The
problems here are obvious.

Slainte,

Jim

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