[LAU] master levels (and dithering)

[Peder Hedlund]

Quoting Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net>:

Ralf,

> are you aware about the zero-copy issue?
> If you mix e.g. all your Qtractor tracks and master them to a stereo
> Qtractor track, this digital mix does cause a loss of sound quality.

A loss of sound quality compared to what? Your mint condition vinyl  
copy of "Der Ring des Nibelungen"?

Have you had someone do a blind test on you to see if you can tell the  
difference between the individual tracks and the stereo mix?
Please do and report the results.

> Peder, any hints for this problem:
>
> On Mon, 02 Feb 2015 22:25:49 +0100, Atte wrote:
>> I had a fairly unpleasant experience last weekend. A band (indie/folk)
>> in which I play and for whom I also did/does some recordings + mixes
>> for, were played on national danish radio on the national chart. The
>> unpleasant part was that our song sounded really wimpy compared to the
>> other tracks.

Yes Ralf, and the answer is not "Use Windows or OSX". I'm sure even  
you understand that.

> ABX test? Is Atte the most bad audio engineer on this planet?

I never said anything about ABXing Atte's wimpy sounding recordings.  
What good would that do?
I suggested you show us your golden ears and that you can tell the  
difference between a properly encoded MP3 and the original WAV. Since  
you say you can even hear the dithering noise you should have no  
problem acing an MP3/WAV ABX.

> Never ever the problem was that the other bands used more compression.
> And I don't think that Atte is the most bad audio engineer. I suspect
> that he's a victim of Linux audio pitfalls. Next time Atte should
> compare his mastering with recordings of other bands, instead of
> trusting the Linux audio community.

If he had only used Windows or OSX like all the other bands I'm sure  
his music would have been selling in the millions.
Some people say it's impossible to make bad sounding music in Windows  
or in OSX.
Only in Linux.
And I'm not so sure about OSX since it's foundation is BSD and that's  
almost like Linux.

> That I mentioned recordings of relatively good cymbal samples from a
> drum sample player has got a reason.

Atte was recording using a Zoom R24. Are you saying that runs Linux?

  - Peder