People complain about DR and music in an appropriate thread

Discussion in 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' started by Psalmanazar, Jan 31, 2020.

  1. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    Oh and Soekris modules beefed up ( better clock, analog, power supply, cleaner layout, etc) could be awesome.

    No because modern records brick walled with lookahead digital limiters have no transients. Good gear makes awful modern productions sound even worse. They sound bad on JBL 305s, they sound awful on bigger, clearer speakers. They’re just atrocious on ATCs. All of the IMD is there.

    Most of the mainstream music industry is fukkin deaf and deserves to die a horrific death. Billie Eilish record of the year lol. It’s not even diy recorded lofi, it’s awful bedroom computer shit. It sounds like an absolute shit bedroom recording that anyone with a few hundred bucks for real studio time could better technically, quickly mix it themselves cleaner with the house engineer or diy at home, and send it off or the stems off to a real mastering engineer with explicit instructions not to run it through a brick wall limiter. So much of the modern expensive gear and horrific processes used by modern major studio exists to do one thing: maximize perceived loudness on super lofi playback systems. So intentional clipping, limiting everything, transformers that are forward, etc. modern pop is mostly hyper repetitive and awful and makes nirvana and old school hip hop sound like Mozart and Beethoven.

    Cocaine fueled 80s synth pop and 90s boyband music written by pedophiles can’t come close to this shit for awfulness.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2020
  2. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Billie Eilish > Slayer

    Come at me bro!
     
  3. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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  4. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    The fact PS Audio thinks her album is "a really good recording" ensures I will never buy any of their products in my lifetime.

    Lulz @ "in:trash"

    Music production is no longer an art or requires any skill. Anybody can win a grammy now with an illegal copy of FL Studio and a Macbook. Not that grammies mattered in the first place. And trap artists bitch about not getting nominated for any awards GTFO. That shit is just straight garbage. Give me '90s boom bap hip hop any day.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2020
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I lost IQ points. Please don't post stuff like that, or 3D photorealistic renders of Lion King.
     
  6. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    So for the SR pros in the audience, what is wrong with that picture?
    For those that don't do SR look at the way the she is holding the microphone. It's in vogue but it is wrong.
     
  7. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Its the new "holding the gun sideways".

    [​IMG]
     
  8. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I mostly listen to acoustic classical, jazz, and non-vocal electronica. Just a few months ago I discovered P!nk (I literally did not know she existed before) and for reasons I don't understand I am regularly listening to her, particularly her last two albums. I am utterly fascinated by how synthetic and "processed" each and every sound is, yet somehow I still like it. I would love to sit down with someone with real studio experience like Psalm and have him explain how an "expander" was used at this or that particular point, or how a fill_in_the_blank was used to get the vocals to have that unworldly tail and sheen, etc.
     
  9. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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  10. winders

    winders boomer

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    Wow. Just because an album lacks dynamic range does not mean it was poorly recorded. If that were the case, there hasn't been a well recorded pop or rap album made in 20 years.

    I don't think that photo everyone is passing around is of Billie in the studio. So who cares how she is holding the damn microphone.

    I have heard the latest incarnation of Yggdrasil on my 2 channel setup and it sounds great. I have also heard the Convert 2 and it gives me headaches at my normal listening level. I still prefer my DirectStream.....
     
  11. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    She's clearly performing live.

    And yeah there truly hasn't been a well recorded pop or rap album made in 20 years. Take any mainstream big budget production pop/rap recording from the 90s on back and it will smoke anything made today. You gotta be kidding me man.

    And I listen to a shit ton of modern pop music. Huge fan of Ariana Grande, Grimes, Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli, etc. I find a ton of enjoyment in all of it but no way any of this recent stuff is well recorded. Even old Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera albums are better recorded, engineered and mastered. There's no longer any real fidelity to any of the big label pop recordings anymore. It's sad.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2020
  12. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Which means she might be lip syncing, but holding the microphone like that still looks silly.
     
  13. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Lol you should go to a concert and interrupt her Kanye style to show how to hold a mic.

    I don't know about the lip syncing bit, I've seen some recorded videos of her singing live and yikes.
     
  14. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    She isn't in the studio. That is live.
    SR = Sound Reinforcement
    FOH = Front of House, main mix the audience hears
    Who cares? The FOH engineer cares, A LOT. That is directional microphone. Directional behavior of microphones is created by ports on the back side of the screen, the ball if you will. Acoustical physics in action. When the microphone is held in that manner, or worse, the ball is cupped, not only is the directivity rendered back to omni-directional behavior, it is a bad sounding omni as the capsule had been tuned with the acoustical physics in mind. Feedback hell, thin, honky sounding singer. No amount of EQ will overcome that poor mic handling technique. It may look "special" but it creates an acoustical nightmare.
     
  15. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    That aside, dynamic range is good to have but some low-DR tracks aren't completely horrible to listen to (taking into account my subsisting on loads of Japanese pop and cruddily made Filipino indie besides classic rock and mainstream pop). If memory serves Random Access Memories is pretty compressed too but I'd be hard pressed to find someone that says it doesn't sound well-made; the Eilish album is great fun to listen to if you're into BIG bass punch and headrumble, plus the musical structure is very sad pop which is fun.

    xanny has been my test track for bass extension since the album came out, haha. Bass quality though? Nah lol.
     
  16. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Not to sound like a contrarian, but I really don't get the hype around Daft Punk's RAM as an audiophile demo CD. Someone needs to explain what makes it so special cause like Lyander, I can hear the compression.
     
  17. winders

    winders boomer

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    Like I said, who cares? Please note that is a rhetorical question. Billie obviously doesn’t care. The audience doesn’t look like they care either. So the only people that care are the FOH engineer and people here that want to demonstrate how smart they are by telling us how stupid the artist for holding a mic “wrong”.
     
  18. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    To clarify my point and further add to the derailment (sorry), I meant to say that DR measurements show it's only slightly less a pancake than the worst offenders but that the individual components of songs have such good texture and the actual arrangements are nuanced and complex without going full Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder that it's an excellent "audiophile"/reference album despite that.

    DR is just one metric in the same way SINAD is, is what I'm getting at.

    Do I hear the compression? Sure, if by compression you mean do things sound kinda squished together and there are no grand swells as in orchestral arrangements*. Is it horrific and prevents me from enjoying the album? Hahahaha no.


    *even more of a tangent: I've been really into Shostakovitch's compositions lately, holy f**k they're tense and scary in a good way.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2020
  19. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Awesome. His quartets are excellent, but also somber, weighty stuff, not for the faint of heart. The third movement of his First Violin Concerto reduces me to tears. When I was in Munich, I went to the Orchestra almost every week. It was wonderful. Him and Mahler are ones I've been listening to late at night recently.
     
  20. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    Let me put it this way, a shitty driver will shift too soon, the same way a shitty "artist" will misuse their trade tool.
     

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