Search the Community

For details and chances to debunk caveats errors etc, please refer to If you have suggestions, you're welcome Results : Bernie Grundman uses, or at least used to master Joe jackson's Body & Soul in 1984, the Bruel & Kjaer Kevin Gray, at least for his SACD of the above, used straight 0 dB to 1K, downward straight slope from 1 to 20 K, 20 K -3 dB (projected, he lets, as I do, the natural parabolic fallout of his speakers above 10K) Alan Yoshida seems to use the same (Somethin' Else by Cannonball Adderley for HDTracks) Shawn R Britton to master Steamin' by Miles Davis (MFSL SACD) : same as above but -4.25 at 20 K Bob Katz (claims): same as above but -7.26 @24000 Steve Hoffman : oh my ! read in the above quoted thread Please think carefully : are the versions you prefer the absolute very best (could be because of source, transfer...) or the best match to your own in room response ? What if there's no alternative version and you're far off ? I encourage to have at hand several in room responses to match the engineers' Mind that there are several dBs difference that no usb cable or LPS will compensate

As suggested by the title, this is no substitute to much admired @Josh Mound ‘s TBVO. However, it’s a follow-up to comments/questions I appended to TBVO: Can we deduct the in-room response (and/or “ear”) of praised mastering engineers from comparisons? Isn’t our “in room” response (“” meant to include headphones) biasing best version into best fit? TBVO thoroughness can’t be beat and I don’t pretend I address source tape quality, transfer (machine, baking, ADC, etc) nor do I address dynamics, levels, compression, etc, I don’t even compare peaks while the attached comparison goes to show than peak treatments can display bigger differences than averaged power comparisons.

Dear Hornet's nest: The left over DolbyA imprint just struck again yesterday: I just ran into the 6th or more (not 100% sure) premium download album that didn't sound quite right. These are apparently still 'noise reduction' encoded. Note before reading further: I am not criticising anyone in particular, and definitely not codemning the people doing the mastering/remastering/etc, a lot of the time there are documentation problems and other complications that make their jobs a little tricky -- I am only commenting on the state of affairs, and the problem of not-so-good material reaching the consumer. I generally do not include proper NR decoding as a part of mastering, because it *should* be a part of the normal process to prepare for the consumer -- mastering should be considered the extra steps done to make the recording better/cleaner/etc for the consumer. (Mastering might include massaging the material to fit better on vinyl, for example.) This observation has happened on numerous pieces premium 'material', 192/24 or 96/24... I have 3/Simon&Garfunkel 192/24, Roberta Flack 192/24, Carpenters 96/24, PaulMc 96/24 and maybe a few others -- this is enough of a set of examples. It seems likely that the 'quality' problem is still a left-over DolbyA-like imprint on these recordings. The most ugly thing isn't the HF compression per-se, but the thin (compressed depth) stereo space left on these recordings. *This quality experience/difference is difficult to describe, and is best experienced. Suffice to say, I am NO golden ears, but can clearly hear the difference/improvement of proper handling of recordings. These more egregious examples are mostly from well-known pay-for-download sites ( the download sites are not especially at fault -- they are selling what is available to them. The distribution is the problem.) The problem doesn't come from any one seller -- I have some old CDs from eons ago also with the left-over imprint. Of course, we don't expect the old CDs to be perfect, but it would be nice. However, with proper re-EQ, and decoding, many CDs can be incredibly improved. This last Roberta Flack example was a bit of a 'oh, my' kind of moment. Luckily, I did borrow a song from a friend (I already had the normal CD) so I could determine if I wanted the 'pristine' copy. I guess I can say -- no bother about getting the 'premium' album, that is unless I need to hear the above 20kHz noise/other artifacts on the album. Unfortunately there appears also a DolbyA encoding imprint on the 'premium' album, but seems to have been further damaged by some compression. So, this 'premium' album is even less useful to me than the old CD -- at least, I can clean-up the CD. Why do I notice this FRUSTRATING problem? I am in a almost unique position that I can actually diagnose the problem, and can resolve it - not so much at the consumer level, however. The software to 'detect'/'correct' the problem is not a simple thing to do, and is definitely not a weekend project. Using the decoding software is NOT for the consumer either -- we need to advocate for more complete digital preparation before we are sent the digital copies. So, after these 30yrs of digital distributions, I am finding that many of them from over the years are 'just not right'. Very often, the material appears to be DolbyA encoded. Recordings are STILL being distributed not 'quite right' even nowadays. With all of the discussion over the years about mp3, opus, 16bit PCM vs 24bit PCM, 192/96 vs 44.1k, etc... to me, knowing what I have learned in the last 3-4yrs, it appears that they are all diversions, because only the slower lossy compression are more important than the 'damage' from non-NR-decoded material reaching the consumer. (choice between properly mastered 192kmp3 vs. undecoded 192/24, I'll take the mp3 quality anyday.) I am NOT advocating for mp3 though -- just that the un decoded material sounds worse. I almost blew a 'gasket' with this last album (Roberta Flack, 2012 remaster.) When purchasing/downloading a 'premium' album, I'd expect that the material wasproperly prepared for the consumer -- but it seems like a lot of material is just not properly handled. I do have some premium albums (Nat King Cole, for example) which also APPEAR to also have the residual DolbyA imprint, but cannot prove it, even for myself. Given the fact about MQA causing such an uproar (In my opinion ONLY, I still believe that the worst thing about MQA is the obfuscation/complication and possible DRM), I wonder why this missing-mastering-step travesty hasn't caused a riot!?!?!? :-). Is the thin stereo space, compressed high end material actually good enough? If that is good enough, then why worry about needing more quality than mp3 at 128k? (rhetorical.) PS: I am only pushing for the distribution chain to do the right thing and properly master the material -- no need to get attention by hypercompressing conventional releases, just do the basic preparation correctly!!! Every user cannot practically do their own mastering (or re-mastering), it is the job of the distributors with the actual master tape copies to finish the job!!! John

This a separate thread because this doesn't apply only to the DHNRDS, but the general state of the old recordings originally created/mixed down in the 1960s through early 1990's... First, the original 'Harsh digital sound' complaints didn't come from only one cause, as there were at least three reasons (not in the order of impact): 1) Early state of 'digital audio' technology. 2) Unexpected signal detail that was partially covered up by complex dynamics in vinyl production 3) Different final/production mastering for digital media vs. analog media. I believe that items 1 and 2 have been well understood all along, and the relative magnitudes of items 1 and 2 have been discussed for 30+yrs. Item 3 has been underestimated or ignored in the public/consumer arena. This is a real problem, and has varying magnitude depending on the exact difference. I dont' know enough about the final mastering (I am not speaking of mixing the material, I am writing here about the two track stereo being prepared for distribution), to know all of the steps, but there are some deviations between the handling of digital vs. analog material. --- This discussion is not solely intended to shill for the DHNRDS -- that is NOT the goal here, but maybe to explain why the 'love' for vinyl and other analog media had been sparked and even sustained for so long. There are definitely recordings which cannot sound as good as they should, some are simply NOT available in their natural form. Instead, some material is still mostly available in the 'harsh digital' form unless on vinyl or properly mastered tape. For an example of the 'natural' Carpenters sound -- refer to the link below -- it must be removed in a few days, but it is here for illustrative purposes. TRY to find a natural sounding Carpenters distribution... You might have problems doing so -- unless you have vinyl or a VERY VERY special digital copy. Even the Carpenters 'singles' on HDtracks is NOT DolbyA decoded!!! It does NOT have the natural sound. (I haven't been able to 100% accurately decode the Carpenters until recently, only possible once I found the correct inverse equalization...) I APOLOGIZE FOR THE MP3s -- believe me, they are better than any normal digital release of the same material!!!! www.dropbox.com/sh/g7bye8uii2ashq1/AACyGhV4R5FYZXDFlAz3HNFoa?dl=0 --- I have listened to a LOT of CDs made from older recordings, both CDs mastered/produced in the early days of digital, and CDs/digital produced more recently, and it is extremely clear to me that the differences can be enumerated as below: 1) No DolbyA decoding, substituted by EQ 2) No DolbyA decoding, not substituted by EQ 3) Additional manipulation, incl compression. In recent years, becoming much more prominent starting in the middle 1990s, and even more egregious in the 2000's and beyond, dynamic range has been deemphasized as a desirable trait, and loudness seems more important to the distributors. This dynamic range matter is well understood, and even some of the motivations for decreased dynamic range are understood -- it is the other items that I am writing about here. Actually, this missing step of DolbyA decoding, and the oassociated decrease in high frequency dynamic range MIGHT have been a contributing factor to the current 'loudness wars' and the consumer toleration for decreased dynamic range! --- Here is the scenario that has happened REPEATEDLY in the past: DolbyA Recording -> EQ -> distribution to consumer Instead, the following should have happened: DolbyA Recording -> DolbyA decode -> distribution to consumer One my ask: Why did this happen? I have no firsthand knowledge, but just existance proof. It has taken some time to collect the information, but there might be several causes: 1) Material already in digital form, archived by LOC (Library of Congres) procedures that make NR decoding before archiving an optional step. 2) Insufficient metadata/documentation and/or missing calibration tones making the decoding effort inconvenient. 3) Time/cost of realtime limited for HW DolbyA decoding, much slower & inconvenient than copying digial files directly. When looking at these items above, and the fact that distribution moves a commodity around, ti is not an artistic endeavor from the standpoint of the business people, I'd suspect that there is sometimes an explicit financial decision to do EQ to attempt to hide the DolbyA encoding instead of the actual decoding operation itself. EQ can be done digitally fast, while decoding actually takes 1:1 time on recording vs. time to decode. Mentioning the details of the problem again: when the mastering was done by the distributor, instead of DolbyA decoding, they did an EQ operation like this: Recording -> EQ -> distribute instead of Recording -> DolbyA decode -> distribute... So, what the remastering does is this: distribution copy -> inverse EQ -> DolbyA decode -> 'better sound results' The problem is that the original EQ isn't documented, and also the ongoing problem was that I didn't realize how precise the EQ needed to be... ---- What is my goal here -- mostly to do what I can do to resurrect the old recordings. These recordings are important to history and will NOT be heard correctly unless correctly and accurately processed.... John

There are several threads discussing target curves ; please let's keep this one tidy with simple sharing of our findings regarding Matching House Curves and Mastering. So yes there's a postulate that beyond subjectivity and idiosyncrasies of loudspeakers/room fit, there's a rational for using different curves so to get closer to the conditions in which the art was created/approved. The linked paper is an excellent read. I provide a picture of the curves I'm referring to (top to bottom : JBL Synthesis, Harman RR1, Bruel & Kjaer 1974, not theoretical but how I actually achieved them L + R with my room/system) ); please specify if you use different ones but let's not discuss their respective merits and motivations here. Once again, let's focus on matching, simple, straight to the point. However a few words about your criteria might be useful. AFAIC, it's mostly soundstage, how things fold together. The obvious more or less bass and sub bass criteria is not that operational and how vocals are infatuated or not tends to be the go/no go point for RR1 (above the 2 others between 160 and 500 Hz) vs either BK or Synthesis that are equivalent in that region. Also, the extra mids from 800 to 4 K of the Synthesis often act as an appealing reason to go Synthesis even if there's a touch too much bass, because of extra presence and delineation of soundstage, instruments and vocals separation. Next post is an example of how I suggest we populate this thread. If deemed necessary, precisions about decade of mastering or country could br added 17839.pdf

Not the format. Discuss - with these websites in mind: http://no-more-loudness-war.blogspot.com/2014/10/welcome-to-safe-haven-to-discuss-issues.html https://www.audiostream.com/content/high-resolution-downloads-nevermind and https://www.facebook.com/2016SaveOurMusicNoRemasters/

Just read this article on Digital Audio Review shared by Srajen Ebaen of 6moons. Very interesting to say the least. http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/07/kih-46-mqas-missing-link/ Best. Mev

Can Bad Recordings/ masterings be fixed and made to sound good? Maybe a little creative EQ for each track? Decompression/Declipping? Maybe a better system does it for you (realizing the potential within) ? Color me warm with sonic sunglasses? This topic was inspired by posts in another thread some of which are quoted below to kick things off. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not sure if this was already shared here but the mastering engineer Brian Lucey seems to have interesting comments and views on MQA. http://fairhedon.com/2017/11/05/an-interview-with-mastering-engineer-brian-lucey/ Best. Mev