In article , Chris Morriss
wrote:

Nearly all the cd releases of old vinyl recordings that I have heard in
the past 15 years or so have had the so-called 're-mastering' applied.
This normally is little more than an excessive amount of level
compression, though I think that any compression applied to a good
quality original recording is unacceptable.

Yes, this seems to be common for 'pop' and 'rock' music. But is rare for
'classical' music, fortunately.

Normalise to -1dbFS by all means, but why all the compression? Loudness
wars surely don't apply to those who want a CD version of a favourite
recording? It's not the CD transfer that's the issue, it's foolish sound
engineers thinking that they know best.

I agree. Alas, many of the pop/rock re-issues clearly show that that those
doing 're-mastering' think they 'know' that 'louder sells'. Even though the
real evidence shows otherwise.

Contrast that, though, with the excellent BBC Music Mag cover discs. FWIW
I've now found that a few more of these are also 'Red Book' pre-emphasised.
So someone is going out of their way to try and maximise the effective
dynamic range for these. I suspect it may be Jennifer Howells who is
credited for the 'CD mastering', and I'd love to ask her, but don't have
any contact point.

I often use audacity to check recordings that seem to have compression
issues. The overall amplitude graph of the track concerned will soon
show if there is an issue. Is there not a similar program for those who
persist in using a bizarre platform such as a RISCos machine?

ahem Oddly enough, some chappie did a program for examing dynamics
some time ago...

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/software/index.html

You can find both RISC OS and Linux/ROX versions of a simple program that
analyses the stats of dynamics of a Wave file. The Linux version outputs
both CVS files of the results and lets you plot them using Veusz.

I've used the software for the results in various articles and webpages on
topics like clipping and compression of CD 're-releases'.

RISC OS tends not to be based on the idea that one app/program should
seek to do everything. Instead it is more Linux-like in people producing
smaller apps that can be easily made to co-operate or be chained or
adapted. And TBH most RO users also happily use other platforms as well,
chosing depending on what kind of task, and how they like to work. So
in my case I use my RISC OS machine for 'text and illustrations' sorts
of activity, but mainly use Linux for processing audio data, etc. A
screwdriver is not a hammer.

However my interest that prompted this thread was the question of spectral
response. So far as I have experienced, the classical re-issues by EMI,
aren't particularly level-compressed. That said, some Mercury CDs[1] are
over-loud and clipped. But that seems to be due to the gain being set too
high overall, rather than compression. I have the feeling that for the
Mercury recordings someone felt that 'impressively loud' was the
mass-market face of 'impressively hi-fi'. :-/

FWIW I listened last night to one of the Mercury Box CDs that as three
works by Prokofiev. Scythian Suite, Three Oranges, and 5th Symphony. The
first two sound superb to my ears. Rich sound with extended low LF.The last
has a distinctly 'closer and dryer' sound with relatively cut LF.

However the first two were played by the LSO in 'Great Britain' whereas the
last was two years later, played by the Minneapolis SO in 'USA'. So this
may say something about the differences in the acoustics of the Halls.
Annoyingly, the CD sleeve doesn't specify the halls.

I'll have a trawl on the web later, but does anyone know already of
somewhere that lists the recording venues, etc, of each Mercury recording?
This info isn't in the box set, which I find an unfortunate omission. Even
the EMI box of Steinberg's old recordings lists the recording venues, and
it is interesting to hear how much difference this seems to often make.

Slainte,

Jim

[1] Obvious example being the '1812 Overture' recording that is promoted on
the basis of LOUD CANNON SHOTS... which are clipped on the CD. Thus
squashing the dynamics of the 'cannon shots'.

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html