A pal and I were just discussing Michael Jackson’s albums and remasters and I pointed him to this website which lists the DR of various issues of an album.
Isn’t it astonishing that the original vinyl issue of Thriller has an average DR of 15 but the later 40th anniversary reissues via CD or streaming can only muster an average DR of 6
I must say it infuriates me that mastering engineers nowadays seem to engineer so much music to sound good on crappy headphones on a noisy moving train rather than striving for their recordings to sound excellent on a good system in a silent room.
It feels like the industry panders to the lowest common denominator and ironically those are the very people who probably pay the least for their music too because they stream it for free or via cheap subscription to Spotify rather than doing what people with good systems and who care about quality do, which is purchase it on vinyl/CD or stream it via Tidal or Qobuz (both of whom pay higher artist rates than Spotify)
So in short the irony is that the recording industry seems to be pandering to those who generate the least revenue!
I don’t get it… Thankfully we now live in an era where youtube and various websites can steer us towards those versions of an album which sound best and are mastered with care. It takes time though to do your research. As an example I was all set to go out today to buy a copy of Buckingham Nicks on vinyl until I discovered that there’s a higher quality version coming out mastered by Kevin Gray on the Rhino Hi-Fidelity label for a tenner more… Seems to be only available in the USA just now but should land in the UK in the Autumn apparently.
Especially when crap-Fi has aggressive DR compression built-in. As I recall DR compression was available in 3 settings on my old Sony MP3 Walkman and the default was max (extreme compression).
There is simply no need for what engineers are doing in this regard.
[addendum]
about 30 years ago, I had a friend in the music industry on the business side (producer). They told me flat out that to do the job you kind of have to not like music or the artists. In fact it was better if you distance yourself from both and make them abstract so you can focus purely on business.
To say it was a depressing conversation was an understatement.
We had a thread a while back on a similar subject - I found the original pressings of CDs to be far superior to the remasters versions in the vast majority of cases:
There’s a link in that thread (below) to the Rick Rubin / Giles Martin podcast on remastering albums; a really good listen when you have the time.
Though it pains me to say it, the number of people who listen in the first manner will vastly outnumber those who listen in the latter manner. As such, the engineers can argue they are simply applying democratic principles and mastering for the majority.
That is a good resource to check our when buying music.
Sadly that is how 99.99% of music is listened to today. So it is inevitable that music is mastered for the majority of listeners. Most people are quite happy with crap reproduction.
I believe the only growing market in audio is portable HiFi and Headphones, especially IEM’s The big fixed HiFi system with big speakers is becoming incredibly niche. I use headphones a lot as in modern housing, unless you have a detached house, it is impossible to play music on ones speakers at interesting listening levels, unless the neighbours are out. Also my wife hates my way out tastes in Jazz. There are lots of people like me who invest in high quality headphones, to listen to music without hassling others. Check out the Head Fi site.
We are slowly arriving at headphone/ HP amp technologies, that mimic a high level listening room experience, and will be capable of fooling our ears into believing we have the music in front of us. We already have angled drivers and crossfield, but there is still more to do. But here I digresse.
I listen to Jazz, and most recordings are mastered decently . I just checked out Chick Corea and Keith Jarret at random. The results are generally very good. Classical music is still mastered well.
Classical music lovers can be demanding. I’ve read complaints about DR reduction in Decca’s most remastering of Solti’s “Ring,” although I believe the difference is only about 1-2 db (if that) compared with the prior mastering.
Overall, though, I think the biggest complaint of classical music listeners is an about no-noise type methods of reducing hiss on analog recordings, which had a negative impact on the sound of the music, itself. Fortunately, that issue appears to have subsided.
If anyone is interested: there’s an open source tool coded in Python called dr14_tmeter that can display the DR values of your audio files. I’d suggest to use the github source committed by “hboetes” b/c it containes some fixes.
I’m not a Python coder so I cannot say if it can be made to run on Windows or MacOS - I use it on Linux (gentoo here) but other distros incl. WSL should work too.
JRiver’s Analyze Audio feature captures dynamic range - both DR and R128.* The measurements are done automatically as part of my ripping process and added to the file’s metadata.
*The R128 method begins by computing the statistical distribution of loudness values present at different points in the track, ignoring periods of silence. The computed dynamic range represents the difference between the 10th percentile and the 95th percentile of that distribution. In other words, the “top” of the range is the volume level that 95% of the track sits below, and the “bottom” is the volume level that 10% of the track sits above.
Very recognisable, also why end of the 90s I left the music industry after only a few years.
Alas not the last time I entered an industry based on brand/business enthusiasm, only to find bean counters and simple minds (not the band) inside. Much better nowadays, one learns.
How very sad to hear this… You’d have hoped that like the hi-fi industry it’s stuffed with music lovers and people with a passion for sound. That’s actually been one of the best things about working in this (hi-fi) industry - there’s some fabulous people here I now count as friends…
The airlines are much the same - at least at the operational level across all departments, the vast majority of staff really love the industry and have a passion for aircraft, aviation, travel and people. It never ceases to amaze me how many have followed their parents into the industry. Of course like everywhere else the bean counters and some managers do their best to destroy this esprit de corps, but I imagine that’s much the same in many industries.
Music though should be a passion as well as a business, I mean it’s not like they’re marketing corn flakes is it? They’re marketing something a vast majority of the world’s population deeply care about.
We’re just watching the superb BBC series “Mix tape” and I must say it’s especially enjoyable if you are a music lover and in middle age perhaps a little nostalgic for a lost youth…
The music industry has given me access to a variety of content that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. They have priced that access so low that I keep expecting it to disincentivize new content creation, but so far at least I’ve been proved wrong. On the other hand, dynamic compression etc can compromise my enjoyment of the music they give me. So it’s a mixed bag, I guess, like most industries.
Mixing engineers love mixing . They know very little about music. In 50 years of working in the live side of music (touring that is) I would say that less than 5% of the sound engineers I worked with had any interest in music, or listened to it in their own time. Sound quality is seen as an abstract, nothing to do with actual music.
Yeah I met two or three mixing booth engineers in my time and none of them even had a hifi at home. Well one actually had a patchwork of separates from a skip that they didn’t know much about and none of it worked properly.
OTOH, I can fully appreciate after spending a day in a booth listening to some terrible bands that you might want peace and quiet when you’re off the clock.
Of course, we don’t listen to music in the same way as a sound engineer.
No doubt, we are all music lovers who will always prefer to enjoy our choices on the best hi-fi we can afford.
Reading about the professionals having no real love for what they hear surprised me no end, but then, there’s quite a lot of music that leaves me cold; in fact, I’ll occasionally switch off the volume swiftly when hearing something I dislike before it becomes an earworm that’ll stay with me all day!
But I had not considered the fact that sound engineers would rarely be able to choose what musicians they work with. How awful it would be to have a love of music, only to spend most of your working time listening to something you’d never choose to listen to…
Maybe it is a career best suited to those with no love of music after all.
Thanks for the insight, I’ll be more appreciative of the man behind the mixing desk who might not be enjoying the gig he’s working at, but without whom the performance could sound very disappointing
