SQ Heads - What do you listen to?

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

i just wasted a disc burning the Alpine's Speed of Sound album... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

pink floyd //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

sq seems to be a tab cheaper on the equipment but time consuming

but **** its a hobby its supposed to be time consuming

 

[grooverider 10+ year member]

the crystal method

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

silly puddy

 

[DEdwards 10+ year member]

anything I can find that I like....

Dire Straits

Enya

Tulsa Disk

Focal disks

"My disks"...teehee

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

anything I can find that I like....

Dire Straits

Enya

Tulsa Disk

Focal disks

"My disks"...teehee

never heard of them. sounds hardcore.

 

[grooverider 10+ year member]

the prodigy

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

the prodigy

mozart?

 

[grooverider 10+ year member]

the band the prodigy.........................nice rock you must have lmfao

 

[5dollapizza 10+ year member]

my 'style' is pretty open (no ****)

that's pretty sad you won't listen to an amazing composer/singer just because he's a ***. not saying this is what i drive around listening to daily, that would be 3mg, el-p, aesop rock, tool, arch enemy, blah blah blah.

but if someone happens to say, "danm, that sounds clean," i'll wait til we get wherever we happen to be heading, pop in one of those listed and say, "here, sit in the driver's seat and listen to this..."

 

[Rich B 5,000+ posts]

I can't tell you how TIRED I am of hearing that.
If compression is used wisely, which it IS a good bit of the time, then it not only lets the recording get louder, it gets rid of unwanted, overpowering peaks in the frequency spectrum, and fixes issues that EQ's cannot!

Geez... dadgome old people always griping about compression and modern mastering techniques

The Loudness Wars, What Went Wrong with CD Sound

Why Modern CDs can be Fatiguing or Don't Always Sound Right

Something isn't right with the sound of many rock and pop CDs now. They're just too loud, as mastering engineers crank up the sound listeners are getting fatigued. Tragically, nearly everybody with a long-term stake in good sound is losing out.

Artistically, music needs the soft to balance the loud, and the life is being squeezed out of the sound as record companies and in some cases producers race to have the loudest songs on the dial.

Loudness Wars - Why are CDs getting Louder?

When two sounds follow each other, people tend to be drawn towards the louder sound. This is a physiological effect, but it has always caused problems when musicality meets commercial interests. Radio stations vied with each other from the 1970s on to be the loudest sounds on the dial as listeners tuned across the band.

Now record labels push their engineers to make their CDs sound louder than anyone else's. While this may make their CDs stand out, the tragedy is that it is the paying listener who is short-changed. The short term impression may be louder is better, but after the second track or so the lack of musical dynamics starts to make things sound similar, and fatigue starts to set in after a while.

How can Mastering Make CDs Louder?

A CD player has a maximum output level which is defined by the manufacturer and the CD standard, and this is similar across all CD players. The perception of loudness can be increased by simply boosting the quieter passages or taking down some of the peaks, effectively compressing the recording's range of loud and soft.

Compression has always been used in recording - used well a little compression can make individual tracks in the mix sound better and vocals sound fuller. But like any effect it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Compressing the combined mix in particular reduces the contrast between loud and soft, but it takes away one of the dimensions to the music. More recent processors can compress different parts of the frequency spectrum differently, to maximise the loudness of the recording even more.

Is the Way We Listen Part of the Problem?

We listen to more music now than in the past, but perhaps modern listeners do not listen as intently to rock and pop music as they did in the past. As Mat Serletic, former Virgin USA CEO said in Rolling Stone's "The Death of High Fidelity" diatribe on the Loudness Wars -

"In the Seventies and Eighties, you were expected to pay attention. Modern music should be able to get your attention."

There is a world of difference between sitting down to listen to a CD on the best audio system one can afford, and hearing the same album on an Ipod while on the train to work. Perhaps uncompressed digital downloads are the answer, a premium product for those who do care.

Uncompressed, that is, in both the non-MP3 sense of the word and uncompressed in dynamics. The good news is that the Loudness Wars are largely a problem in final mastering, and so such options are still possible in future if a niche audience cares enough to pay more for it.

http://music-technology.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_loudness_wars_what_went_wrong_with_cd_sound

 

[Corey69 10+ year member]

Music

 

[sqhertz 5,000+ posts]

that's pretty sad you won't listen to an amazing composer/singer just because he's a ***.

where did i say that? who's gay?

i have nothing against gays , as long as they arnt against me.

 

[5dollapizza 10+ year member]

thought you meant you wouldn't listen to an artist if they were gay. my bad for the misinterpretation.

 

[FoxPro5 5,000+ posts]

Well, recording is NOT a live performance, and its purpose has changed over the years. It is to make a song sound as good as possible for regular listening. Band's live cd's are meant to be just what you're referring to.

A "good SQ system" *should* be able to make the two sound the same. Well, at least reveal the essence as best as possible.

Nothing wrong with dynamic compression, limitation, expansion..whatever...in my book. What ***** it the addition of monitor gain (ie loudness) to a music that doesn't need it. If you listen to "pop" music, then it's always going to be too loud as louder sounds better on the radio.

I use this as a reference and listen to a few of the albums on this list all the time on my super esssQ radio: http://www.digido.com/honor-roll.html Best thing about it is there's none of that overrated Eagles crap on it. Yea, I said it.