What does hi fi mean today also a Mastering question

Marrafat

Marrafat

Experienced
I've just been refurbisihng the cabinets for my Tannoy 15 inch Monitor Gold speakers and it made me wonder about Hi Fi today.
With audio streaming, iPods etc. how many people still have a decent stereo system ? does anyone care if the quality is not optimum ?. I was speaking with someone recently who said they could not listen to MP3's because the sound was not comfortable on their ears.
With regard to Mastering a recording, EQ, etc. what should the target playback device be ? iPod with headphones ?, personally I don't know the answer so your thoughts on this topic would be welcome.
 
I can't (and don't) listen to the majority of popular music today because everything is compressed to death within a millimeter of 0dbFS, and it hurts my brain (and, honestly speaking, greater dynamic range wouldn't do squat to help out with the majority of popular music anyway... but at least it wouldn't buzz in my ear like a persistent gnat when I'm walking around the mall/store/restaurant/wherever 'music' is continually playing).
 
Hi fi today means how it sounds in the studio. That's before they master out the dynamics and deliver the product with a lossey format.

Most people cant listen to anything hi fi anyway. Hardly anyone has great sound systems in their houses anymore.
 
My fears have been confirmed then. I don't have problem myself listening to MP3's etc. but it's correct what you say that greater dynamic range won't help. I feel that most devices people use have limited frequency response anyway so they can't even reproduce the full range of an MP3. Time to put the kettle on methinks and get some vinyl out.
 
'High-Fi' to me means recorded prior to 1990!

I love this subject and could rant for hours about the decline in audio quality of albums....

In regards to your mastering question: unless you are mastering for vinyl - you don't usually master for specific playback devices.

General rule of thumb these days is crank the multiband compression & limiting until it's on the verge of distortion - then crank it another notch. If the loudness meters drop below -2db at any point during a track- you've failed!
 
zack said:
General rule of thumb these days is crank the multiband compression & limiting until it's on the verge of distortion - then crank it another notch. If the loudness meters drop below -2db at any point during a track- you've failed!
Click to expand...

Haha thanks for the tip, I guessed it would go something like that. What about Classical music for example, does that suffer in the same way these days ?
 
I've no idea (I never listen to classical recordings), but I would certainly hope not!
 
classical music can't tolerate that kind of mastering because the dynamics are too extreme..

it's only really pop, rock, metal, dance etc that can use it and get away with it...

I enjoy and write music with dynamic diversity..
I just think it's more interesting..
 
The answer to any mastering question these days is "make it LOUDER! LOUDER LOUDER LOUDER! LOUDER than everything else, LOUDER than anything else has ever been or ever could be! LOUDER!"

That should take care of any questions you have.
 
zack said:
'High-Fi' to me means recorded prior to 1990!

I love this subject and could rant for hours about the decline in audio quality of albums....

In regards to your mastering question: unless you are mastering for vinyl - you don't usually master for specific playback devices.

General rule of thumb these days is crank the multiband compression & limiting until it's on the verge of distortion - then crank it another notch. If the loudness meters drop below -2db at any point during a track- you've failed!
Click to expand...

There are a few exceptions - I was impressed that the Adele's 21 album was so rooted in "traditional" recording and mastering. (Jim Abliss is a brilliant engineer - he also engineered Bjork's album "Debut").

Adele's not really my cup of tea, but her work proves that you can achieve huge commercial success without Autotune and red-lining the output meters. And say what you want about John Mayer, but his stuff is beautifully recorded.

OF course the problem is that Adele actually has talent and ability, unlike the rest.
 
If you wanna have a visual representation of the differences between modern mastering and "old school" mastering, get a CD from a band from the 70s or 80s. (original release) Then purchase the remastered version of the same CD as well. Drag the same song from each CD into your DAW and look at the waveform. There should be quite a big difference on visual inspection alone. Look at both of them in your meters. Again, pretty big difference. Now listen to them and tear out your hair trying to figure out why the remastered version is considered "better". Lather, rinse, repeat. :)
 
Jiffzillla said:
If you wanna have a visual representation of the differences between modern mastering and "old school" mastering, get a CD from a band from the 70s or 80s. (original release) Then purchase the remastered version of the same CD as well. Drag the same song from each CD into your DAW and look at the waveform. There should be quite a big difference on visual inspection alone. Look at both of them in your meters. Again, pretty big difference. Now listen to them and tear out your hair trying to figure out why the remastered version is considered "better". Lather, rinse, repeat. :)
Click to expand...

+1
The remastered version of Nirvana's "Nevermind" was one of the signs of the Apocalypse as far as I'm concerned.
 
Rane said:
I don't know that I've ever actually heard a "high-fi" recording...
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Wow now that's scary. How about some homework, Your mission, should you accept it, is to visit a high end audio retailer, one with a dedicated listening room, experience a Hi Fi recording and report back here with the findings.
This post will self destruct in 5 seconds.
Ideally it should be a side by side comparison of the same track in full dynamic range and MP3 for example.

It sounds like we have to accept that CD's are Hi Fi, is that the right thing to do ? it never used to be.
 
Yes this is yet another soapbox moment for me.
Modern music is mastered so it can be easily heard through smartphones, tiny laptop speakers, and ipod headphones. Therefore playing it through a proper high end Hi-Fi (which nobody really makes anymore by the way) is a pointless excersise. My Dad's got high end Arcam stuff, and they don't make that anymore. My stuff is all B&O from the late 80's and although hardly high-end, it still knocks spots off most modern equipment, IF I play PRE 1992 mastered CD's and good vinyl through it.

At some point convenience took presidence over quality for most, and perhaps that will continue which is a real shame. I don't want to get snobby about it, but the quality of modern music and the way it's mastered is generally awful. Oh....and don't even bother with MP3's....
 
Marrafat said:
I was speaking with someone recently who said they could not listen to MP3's because the sound was not comfortable on their ears.
With regard to Mastering a recording, EQ, etc. what should the target playback device be ? iPod with headphones ?, personally I don't know the answer so your thoughts on this topic would be welcome.
Click to expand...
As I don't want to jump on the "overcompression is the death of music" bandwagon here (because compression can actually improve the listening experience when it's done right; of course, as always, within certain limits), all I can say is that I can't understand people who tend to bash the MP3 music format for bad tone.
Sorry, but this is total bullshit to me. MP3 is nothing but a file format with size-compression algorythms applied to it. There's a lot of maths and science behind it that MAY come with a loss of quality, but not neccesarily a loss of quality that human ears can actually notice.
It's the same as with JPEGs. A strong size compression will result in a loss of quality. However, with a reasonable amount of compression no ordinary human will ever be able to tell the difference between a per-pixel-file (like BMP) and a JPEG. The differences are only noticable with test images (Black 1-pixel lines on a blank white background). If we apply this logic to music, that would be like listening to a sine wave for 10 minutes. And even the test-image will look the same as the per-pixel-picture with the lowest compression setting of JPEG and still be 80% smaller in filesize.

I highly doubt that any human in this world could hear a difference between a clean .wav (no-loss-data-format) and a 320kb/s mp3 file or even win the A/B test.
 
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