Modern Recording - Loudness War Edition

Roon Software Discussion
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Summed up nicely.
Ace!

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Those $12 earbuds along with “insert portable digital device here” have really killed modern music. Sure, there are some niche genres and an occasional artist who make a stand, but most of them roll over for their recording engineer’s “expertise”.

Buying that first stereo back in the 60’s/70’s/80’s/90’s was a right of passage for a young person. My first stereo when I was 18 consisted of a Yamaha natural sound integrated amp, Nakamichi BX300 tape deck, Yamaha turntable, and a pair of DCM Timewindow 1a speakers. It was worth about 3x the value of the 1976 Mustang II coupe I was driving. The thing is, I wasn’t that out of the norm with other people I knew.

Like everything in society, it’s about quantity and price over quality. Everything is now disposable.

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Ah, DCM.

I am still the proud owner of a pair of DCM QED 1A (I think the model before the Timewindow) which are on semi-permanent loan to a friend of mine. He has a 300 watt amp to push them around and they respond well to the discipline.

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I always thought DCM made great speakers. I had a friend with a pair of Timeframe 700’s and thought those were awesome. I still have the Timewindow 1a’s, but they haven’t been use much in the past 15 years. I should probably sell them off and let someone else enjoy them.

Honestly, I think most people would have been content with CD audio (44.1/16bit) if it was just mastered correctly. I wonder how much the loudness war has driven vinyl and high rez audio sales?

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Hi Folks… This is my first post on the Roon Forums. Love Roon!

I see on the playbar an image of the track which in some cases shows no dynamic variation, it’s just maxed. This is on several classic pop albums and I’m assuming it’s where I had ripped a heavily compressed remaster over the original master.

Does Roon show you the real image, generally speaking? Is that a good way to “inspect” the amount of compression? Is there a good resource for figuring out what mastering of a popular album is “best” to have?

I understand the Loudness Wars issue to some extent. My question is, with a large CD collection, should I generally stick with my original CD releases or are some remasters OK? I have several remasters, but I fear many of them look “maxed” like this.

What do you guys do?

Incidentally, if it doesn’t already, it would be nice if Roon would tell you what “version” of an album you have: original master, '90’s remaster, 2000’s remaster etc.

Andrew

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I hope someone that has more inside knowledge answers your question. That said, from my own experience I’ve found the Roon track image to be pretty accurate. So, if your track image looks like the brickwalled “loud” track in the OP caricature then, yes, sorry to say you likely have a bad production in Roon.

You can look up different versions of albums and the amount of compression here: http://dr.loudness-war.info/

That’s a resource I use to make sure I get the best version of an album that I can. Once you find a version you like you can shop at https://www.discogs.com/ for the exact production you want.

Roon tries to automatically match your files to the corresponding album but it isn’t 100% accurate. I usually have to force “identify” again. Click the 3 dots by the album name (in album view) and hit “Edit” then click on “Identify album” and then choose the one that matches your album. When you choose that you will see an image of the album cover on the top left and the list of tracks below it compared to your tracks in Roon. Below the image there are < and > arrows that you can click on to page through different productions (I didn’t notice this at first…that’s how you can pick different masters/productions).

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There are some Loudness War tools coming in 1.3.

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Cheers! :+1:

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There may be hope yet…

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So I’ve been delving into the Dynamic Range Database all day and this is a great resource. You know, if Roon could give you access to this info based on the exact version of the source you ripped, that would be terrific. Just an idea…

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Already on the roadmap… :slight_smile:

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Guessing he’s referring to implementation of R128 volume leveling.

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Not if you think in terms of alpha…

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Sorry to seem so gnostic about this. Although there was a passing reference in point 6 of the DAR article the details haven’t been publicly announced.

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That is a very informative article! Thank you for sharing.

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I know I’m replying to an old post here but I was recently reading this oldish piece:

Particularly:

"It doesn’t have be like this!

I mastered a track call ‘This Town’ for a Niall Horan (One Direction) remixed by Tiesto. This was a good test as I had accurate technical details of the lossless master file. I mastered ‘This Town’ to -0.5dBTP and -10.5 LUFS. Once Apple transcoded the master it was -0.4dBTP and still -10.5 LUFS.

When Soundcheck is enabled, Apple Music streams this track at -2dBTP and -12.50 LUFS. A much less drastic change than ‘Rockstar’, but still a bit of room for improved dynamics. At the time I was just happy to get this (very dynamic for electronic music) master past the decision makers involved.

So my master of ‘This Town’ plays back a whole decibel louder on Apple Music than ‘Rockstar’. It’s also got a much broader dynamic range and doesn’t distort. Winner!"

The Tiesto remix he mentions doesn’t sound too bad at all, especially on Tidal but also Apple Music and Spotify (with normalization disabled in the latter two) - mainly in comparison to most of the other similar popular mainstream stuff I listen to.

Often the blame is put on Spotify/Apple Music but he says:

“So, most major labels are giving their listeners an over-compressed and distorted listening experience…? Still…? There’s nothing wrong with the way Apple Music delivers audio, it’s the fault of the mastering engineers and labels who submit these masters.”

1 Like