MQA Off-Topic Spinoff

[esldude]

36 minutes ago, semente said:

Who is he by the way?

Brian Lucey.

[Brian Lucey]

2 hours ago, synn said:

Are you actually suggesting that we should skip the personal when you’re calling 90% of the forum something on the lines of the uneducated masses?

 

Never called anyone such things.  

 

This thread began as there were people coming after me with THEIR PERSONAL BAGGAGE NEGATIVITY about loud records.

 

I'm the problem?  Check the mirror.

Quote

 

the rest of the post is drivel that reenforces the fact that you read to react, not to answer.

 

You have it backwards. The reaction is built in the DR dogmatists.   I'm here to educate and defend modern music as equally legit and often BETTER than high DR music that I also love, old music.

 

Quote

 

i don’t particularly care about the fact that you are the “Only pro we can talk to” on the forum. I know and have met plenty of musicians and technicians in the real world. There’s nothing you could possibly help me understand over then internet that they couldn’t in real life.

 

Yet many did care and used my presence on the MQA thread to dump their off topic shit.  Thus we are here.

[PeterSt]

30 minutes ago, semente said:

I have little experience with rock&pop remasters but I understand that the landscape is quite grim.

The classical music remasters (EMI, Phiips, Decca, DG, Supraphon) I was referring to do sound more naturally balanced to my ears, and I don't notice that "trend" of an even colouration.

 

Because I don't use the CD's themselves any more, I have no insight in the "digital chain", but historically classical was recorded in "DDD" (I'm sure you know what I refer to). Back at the time this was more rare for Rock&Pop and mostly it was ADD.

I have no idea whether that (DDD) would incur for better possibilities to "remaster" (not probable because the first D is about the recording itself, IIRC).

[synn]

@Brian Lucey why do you keep insisting that loud, low DR music is “Modern”?

 

i have plenty of music recorded in the past 10 years that is high in DR and sound pretty organic. Do they not count as modern?

 

perhaps, what you mean to say is that you have a certain clientele who produce music in the now and prefer the wall of sound approach. They are free to do so and I am sure they have giant fan followings who couldn’t care less about DR and whatever, but that does not make them the be all and end all of “Modern” music.

[Brian Lucey]

29 minutes ago, firedog said:

 

Substitute the letters DR for MQA in your quote. It will accurately reflect some (not all) of what people here  have been trying to say, and for whatever reason - perhaps your own stereotypes - you seem unable to understand. 

 

We hear entire catalogs of music we love being redone with large amounts of volume compression added for seemingly no reason except to make it seem loud/modern. And it often isn't done by the "artist", it is done by_  or on the orders of - some functionary at a record label who clearly  has little regard for the "art" involved. 

 

With non legacy music DR is less of an issue, but it still is undeniable that excessive volume compression is often applied to recordings not for "artistic'" considerations, but out of "fear" (that's a quote from you).  When that happens it also "fucks up" recordings and is a travesty. 

 

BTW, I like Rembrandt and Picasso....

 I said repeatedly that I don't do and don't like the catalog remastering money game.

 

I have explained why it happens also.

 

Don't buy them. Problem solved.

[Brian Lucey]

Just now, synn said:

@Brian Lucey why do you keep insisting that loud, low DR music is “Modern”?

 

i have plenty of music recorded in the past 10 years that is high in DR and sound pretty organic. Do they not count as modern?

 

perhaps, what you mean to say is that you have a certain clientele who produce music in the now and prefer the wall of sound approach. They are free to do so and I am sure they have giant fan followings who couldn’t care less about DR and whatever, but that does not make them the be all and end all of “Modern” music.

 

99% of modern music is loud.  Doesn't make it better OR WORSE.   It's different.  Equal.  Valuable.

[synn]

Out of those three qualifiers you have used, only “Different” is an objective qualification.

[Brian Lucey]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Back to some topic ...

 

Wait ... where was that ? Maybe it was on your mind to do that, but it never happened. OK, yesterday maybe. But that is not what you meant.

 

 

 

This thread was created to clean up all the off topic from the MQA thread after my interview was linked and a few people including the moderator owner dumped all their mastering baggage on a nearby pro.

 

I demanded moderation. and this thread was created.

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, Brian Lucey said:

my interview was linked

 

I must say that I watched that with interest.

[Brian Lucey]

1 hour ago, Teresa said:

 

No, purist means unadulterated, as in not using gadgets to change the sound.

 

 

Impossible fantasy. There is no accurate anything, it's all done by choices and in degrees of imperfection.

 

Minimum chain = Mic+ Pre Amp+Tape or AD converter.  AxBxC = near infinite choice combos.

 

Then analog mixer to AD

or DAW in the box (software all sounds different)

 

Recording is fake.  Sorry.  You are simply rigid in your ability to enjoy prorduction styles.

 

Quote

Perhaps you have not heard a recording which is audiophile from the microphones to the finished product? Compare such a recording to live and listen for yourself.

 

I've heard more recordings and styles  than you, I find value in them all.

 

Quote

BTW I don' t like Picasso,

 

BINGO !!

 

 

Quote

 

some of the ugliest art I have ever seen, much like a lot of the highly compressed, horrible sounding music you call modern.

 

Well there we are. Realism snob.

[mcgillroy]

15 minutes ago, synn said:

Short version:

 

everyone: Recorded doesn’t sound like live,  but we like it when a live performance is recorded and mastered well.

 

brian: WRONG. Recording DOESN’T sound like live!

 

everyone: ...

 

 

I don't think it's that easy. Brian is questioning the audiophile trope of the live-event is the reference point of a recording.

 

How many times have you heard "sounds like live on my stereo", "like the real thing", "like having the band at home" etc?

 

That frankly is indeed bullshit mainly pushed by audiophile-marketing and anybody with exposure to music-production will chuckle at this notion.

 

Forget the Picassos and modern art analogies. A recording is as real as a photograph is real. But how real is a photograph? How many rectangular frames do you see in your reality?

 

Now go find a picture without one.

 

Every picture is a frame, it's a rectangular cutout of a moment, nothing moves, there is a certain focus highlighting a part of the picture, there will be diffractions and reflections implied by the lens-appartus etc. Same is true for film.

 

A microphone is much like a lens having certain characteristics, highlighting certain frequencies, has directivity, harmonic distortion etc. It will be put at a certain spot in the room (maybe a in dead room) and "frame" a certain part of the sound. 

 

Put a second mic in the picture and create the illusion of stereo etc, etc. Put the Mic-Pres on top of that, compressors, EQs, the desk, the monitoring etc. There is a billion things happening even in the simplest setup and engineers work creatively with those interactions.

 

A record is an artefact of aesthetic choices, even an audiophile-two-mics-direct-to-tape-affair. 

 

You can compare that as much as you want to the "live-reference" but letting that go would give you a much better grasp of what going on.

 

As for DR: I consider it as helpful with classical music where I prefer older masterings with higher DR. To same extend the same is true for remasters of older recordings in other genres (remasters suck 95% of the time anyways).

 

For modern pop & rock I find it to bear little correlation to perceived quality and dynamics.

 

Audiophiles like to objectify their aesthetic preferences via DR-values. But perhaps DR is a flawed metric and there should be a honest discussion about it's merits, shortcomings and alternatives.

[synn]

When someone uses the “I have heard more music than you” to counter someone’s subjective preference in music, that’s when you know there is little value in listening to that person’s opinions.

 

person A: I don’t like spicy food

person B: I have eaten a lot more spicy food than you and I think it’s awesome

person A: yeah ok, I still don’t like spicy food.

 

 

ok,then.

[Abtr]

47 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

...

 

Danse amoreuse by Karel Appel. He was a great visionair and saw us in his future.

At least there's nothing wrong with DR in that painting.

[synn]

1 minute ago, mcgillroy said:

 

 

I don't think it's that easy. Brian is questioning the audiophile trope of the live-event is the reference point of a recording.

 

How many times have you heard "sounds like live on my stereo", "like the real thing", "like having the band at home" etc?

 

That frankly is indeed bullshit mainly pushed by audiophile-marketing and anybody with exposure to music-production will chuckle at this notion.

 

Forget the Picassos and modern art analogies. A recording is as real as a photograph is real. But how real is a photograph? How many rectangular frames do you see in your reality?

 

Now go find a picture without one.

 

Every picture is a frame, it's a rectangular cutout of a moment, nothing moves, there is a certain focus highlighting a part of the picture, there will be diffractions and reflections implied by the lens-appartus etc. Same is true for film.

 

A microphone is much like a lens having certain characteristics, highlighting certain frequencies, has directivity, harmonic distortion etc. It will be put at a certain spot in the room (maybe a in dead room) and "frame" a certain part of the sound. 

 

Put a second mic in the picture and create the illusion of stereo etc, etc. Put the Mic-Pres on top of that, compressors, EQs, the desk, the monitoring etc. There is a billion things happening even in the simplest setup and engineers work creatively with those interactions.

 

A record is an artefact of aesthetic choices, even an audiophile-two-mics-direct-to-tape-affair. 

 

You can compare that as much as you want to the "live-reference" but letting that go would give you a much better grasp of what going on.

 

As for DR: I consider it as helpful with classical music where I prefer older masterings with higher DR. To same extend the same is true for remasters of older recordings in other genres (remasters suck 95% of the time anyways).

 

For modern pop & rock I find it to bear little correlation to perceived quality and dynamics.

 

Audiophiles like to objectify their aesthetic preferences via DR-values. But perhaps DR is a flawed metric and there should be a honest discussion about it's merits, shortcomings and alternatives.

I don’t think anyone here has argued that DR is the one metric by which music had to be judged by. You will see me saying the opposite quite a few times.

 

what you will see me not agreeing to is that people are not entitled to prefer higher DR recordings, because someone who is apparently more enlightened says so.

 

 

[Brian Lucey]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

 

Yes. That is obvious to everyone here. Why do you think you are telling us something we don't know?

 

The point of good reproduction is to recreate the recorded event as accurately as possible; in other words,to make the best illusion of live possible. None of us think a live musical event is  reproduced fully accurately in our homes. But we've experienced highly accurate/ successful illusions of live events that make it seem "as if" one was there. Obviously not the same as actually being there...DUH!
 

In cases of purely studio (never live) music, the purpose is to create the most accurate illusion of the musical event the artists were trying to create with the recording. In every recording the artist is trying to create some kind of illusion which involves the listener hearing the music is space - even if it is an imaginary space. So here the point is to most accurately reproduce the "illusion" the artists involved in the recording intended. 

No one here thinks anything else is going on. I don't understand why you keep thinking you are informing us of something we don't understand in this area - you aren't. 

 

Because you're talking in circles, if there is no live recreation (we agree) then it's all degrees.  As close as "we deem acceptable" is a position with no integrity.   It's subjective and can become lynch mob dogmatic.  It's disrespectful to the creativity of modern production.

 

Great playback setup is not about live music, it's about a proper setup for all styles of music and production. I have one here to my taste, you have one to your taste, ok.

 

Audiophiles create a playback setup, it's your creativity, I get it, but please ... some respect and humility for artists.  They ALL APPROVE and WANT the records you are unable to enjoy.  This myth of the pure event is a MARKETING thing.  Only. It's weird.

[Brian Lucey]

9 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

 

 

I don't think it's that easy. Brian is questioning the audiophile trope of the live-event is the reference point of a recording.

 

A small light shines in a weary world

 

9 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

How many times have you heard "sounds like live on my stereo", "like the real thing", "like having the band at home" etc?

 

That frankly is indeed bullshit mainly pushed by audiophile-marketing and anybody with exposure to music-production will chuckle at this notion.

 

Forget the Picassos and modern art analogies. A recording is as real as a photograph is real. But how real is a photograph? How many rectangular frames do you see in your reality?

 

Now go find a picture without one.

 

Every picture is a frame, it's a rectangular cutout of a moment, nothing moves, there is a certain focus highlighting a part of the picture, there will be diffractions and reflections implied by the lens-appartus etc. Same is true for film.

 

A microphone is much like a lens having certain characteristics, highlighting certain frequencies, has directivity, harmonic distortion etc. It will be put at a certain spot in the room (maybe a in dead room) and "frame" a certain part of the sound. 

 

Put a second mic in the picture and create the illusion of stereo etc, etc. Put the Mic-Pres on top of that, compressors, EQs, the desk, the monitoring etc. There is a billion things happening even in the simplest setup and engineers work creatively with those interactions.

 

A record is an artefact of aesthetic choices, even an audiophile-two-mics-direct-to-tape-affair. 

 

You can compare that as much as you want to the "live-reference" but letting that go would give you a much better grasp of what going on.

 

As for DR: I consider it as helpful with classical music where I prefer older masterings with higher DR. To same extend the same is true for remasters of older recordings in other genres (remasters suck 95% of the time anyways).

 

For modern pop & rock I find it to bear little correlation to perceived quality and dynamics.

 

Audiophiles like to objectify their aesthetic preferences via DR-values. But perhaps DR is a flawed metric and there should be a honest discussion about it's merits, shortcomings and alternatives.

 

Thank you

[synn]

Brian: You seem to have a lot of outrage over nothing, really.

 

i support Lindsey Stirling by streaming and buying her music because I think she is a phenomenally talented artist. I however wish that her recordings were not so compressed so that her violin could have some breathing space.

 

there is no disrespect there. Please stop looking for something that doesn’t exist.

[semente]

43 minutes ago, esldude said:

Brian Lucey.

 

Ok, I googled.

Doesn't seem to produce/master anything I'd buy but you never know...

[Brian Lucey]

11 minutes ago, synn said:

 

what you will see me not agreeing to is that people are not entitled to prefer higher DR recordings, because someone who is apparently more enlightened says so.

 

 

 

Defensive.

Projection.

 

Never happened.  You can like anything, but older music is not better.  DR is meaningless to musical value.  Old music has more DR.  be old if you want to be stuck.  Sad for you but your life.

[semente]

27 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Because I don't use the CD's themselves any more, I have no insight in the "digital chain", but historically classical was recorded in "DDD" (I'm sure you know what I refer to). Back at the time this was more rare for Rock&Pop and mostly it was ADD.

I have no idea whether that (DDD) would incur for better possibilities to "remaster" (not probable because the first D is about the recording itself, IIRC).

 

Some of those I was referring to where ADD and others AAD. Old stuff.

I'm not sure they're remastering DDD stuff.

[Brian Lucey]

Just now, synn said:

Brian: You seem to have a lot of outrage over nothing, really.

 

i support Lindsey Stirling by streaming and buying her music because I think she is a phenomenally talented artist. I however wish that her recordings were not so compressed so that her violin could have some breathing space.

 

there is no disrespect there. Please stop looking for something that doesn’t exist.

 

Outrage?  lol

 

None.

 

This is a typical Audiophile post, "I like the artist but wish they did X and Y differently."  Not respect IMO.  Dogma.  Armchair quarterbacking.   You have money to buy a great stereo.  Awesome !  You love music.  Awesome !

 

Best to leave it there and not become judge and jury, and yet many go there.

[synn]

2 minutes ago, Brian Lucey said:

 

Outrage?  lol

 

None.

 

This is a typical Audiophile post, "I like the artist but wish they did X and Y differently."  Not respect IMO.  Dogma.  Armchair quarterbacking.   You have money to buy a great stereo.  Awesome !  You love music.  Awesome !

 

Best to leave it there and not become judge and jury, and yet many go there.

 

As an artist (yes I am one), I don’t get offended when people tell me if I did something differently. A lot of it might be nonsense, but I have also learned a thing or two from layman critique.

 

The only one armchair quarterbacking here is you, who does not create any original work, but rather tinker on someone else’s creativity.

 

 A little less of the holier than thou attitude please.

[PeterSt]

40 minutes ago, Brian Lucey said:

Old music has more DR.  be old if you want to be stuck.  Sad for you but your life.

 

Brian, it looks like you are talking to your colleagues in the field. But we are really that other bunch.

[Shadders]

49 minutes ago, Brian Lucey said:

  DR is meaningless to musical value.  Old music has more DR.  be old if you want to be stuck.  Sad for you but your life.

Hi,

This sounds (no pun intended) like a fashion statement. Low DR is "in vogue" at the moment, and everyone (artists/labels) want it.

 

Most people - not audio buffs - have no clue that it is an issue - since they are not interested in this aspect.

 

I would expect that 99% of people do not know how good a recording can sound on a decent hifi - i have a modest (by today's standards) hifi, and people that hear it are amazed how good it sounds. People never get to hear what they are missing.

 

It is possible, that higher DR is not requested/pursued, since no one really knows how good music can sound from a good hifi.

 

Why don't you suggest to your artists, that the spare space on a CD is used for special remixes - which are high DR of recordings on the existing album.

 

We then get better value for money, loudness wars expectation complied with, artists may get better acknowledgement by catering for the afflicted (audio buffs), and everybody is happy. So much more efficient.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[PeterSt]

@Brian Lucey, OK, we just didn't get it. Over time we had some more conversation with people in your field. I never even considered that we were NOT customer to those people. I can't say that we always felt cozy and safe, but at least we were treated as customers WHILE ... apparently we are not at all. And of course not, because we are not playing you. But somehow I had the idea that we were paying people like you indirectly. We buy albums, you live.

 

But something has to go wrong, because nobody is going to buy those albums you deem modern. And I seriously don't see kids buy them either. Kids also don't do Tidal and not even Spotify. Kids make MP3's from YouTubes. They are not Paranoid, they listen to it.

 

The "artist" is the real fool. And you are not going to tell them, obviously.