On Sat, 2011-07-09 at 21:00 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: I agree with Fons, in that we should not be crushing recordings and over-compressing them. But having said that, a limiter is a very useful and necessary tool at times. I would love to see what sort of limiter that a talented programmer like Fons offers. In lieu of that, Steve Harris has a fast-look-ahead-limiter which is good. It's in JAMIN, and also available as a separate stand-alone plugin.

Hello Fons! I also agree, that overcompression is not what we need. Although, there are times, where you might want to use it as a tool for sound shaping. Not everything is classical and live sounding music. Mixture of electro and acoustic can be in need or just production of one instrument. I admit, that as a mastering tool, all I use is a limiter at present. Mostly it works out, sometimes it doesn't. And as much clever adivce it might be to turn up the volume, you just compare. You compare your music to other music, that has an overall very nice sound. And I 've heard somewhere, that more volume is one thing, that makes people think it's better sounding. there is music, where I really wouldn't expect it, but there's other music, where I'm looking for it. May it be good or bad practise and I'm sure, I'm not alone. Wanting to educate people is one thing, but doing it in a jiffy is another. :-) Still it's always good to see new tools/plugins, that have good algorithms, interesting approaches, etc. You can never tell, what people might get up to with your software. But I would always reckon with the good, that people can do! Warm regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Hello Fons! Several reasons, why I - and possibly others - would use the masterng stage to adapt a few things, that could be done on the track level. 1. Limit of time available for production. 2. Sticking to a doctrine to immitage a certain sound as close as possible. That's why I started using tube warmth on my drums, picked it up from Q, becuase that happened in the 70s and gave a rather specific sound. Well there can be a thrid reason: You have an overall good sound, but not the knowledge to keep it, while increasng overall volume and keeping the overall sound. So lack of information, practise and/or theory. So many people -at least here - are still hobby musicians. Willing to learn, but you have other obligations. Warmly yours Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 05:57:41PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: Not all music is 'songs', and some people still have an attention span that exceeds 180s. Ciao, -- FA

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 07:55:40PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: Only because you allow it to do that. And in the unlikely case it doesn't offer you the choice: because you accepted to use such a broken tool. Please don't discharge your own responsability onto technology. :-) Ciao, -- FA

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 5:44 PM, Hartmut Noack <zettberlin(a)linuxuse.de> wrote: fetishization of a technological accident ought to be a sin, right up there with coveting thy neighbour's spouse. the artist(s) want your attention, not your belt drive :)

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 05:47:59PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: Hm, what about guitar feedback then? Or tube saturation distortion, for that matter? Or echoplex feedback? There are at least a few cases where technological accidents-- or gear being pushed beyond its boundaries-- caused a very desirable, very musical effect. I think it was Brian Eno who said the appeal of distortions like tube saturation, film grain, pixellation, tape saturation, etc., was that it gives the impression that the emotion or meaning is so strong that it strains or breaks the medium that's trying to convey (or contain?) it, and that's the reason it sounds or looks so exciting. -ken

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Renato <rennabh(a)gmail.com> wrote: precisely. there's nothing wrong with any of the various "technological accidents" that have shaped audio recording (or even more broadly, music creation), but we don't have to get stuck on any particular instances of them unless there's a *really* good reason. when it comes to recording media, and even mastering techniques, there just isn't a really good reason. if you want a counter example, i'd suggest something like the twelve tone octave. its really just one of any number of possible set of tones within a given doubling of frequency, but its also more than that. even then though, it seems unwise to turn it into a fetish ... there are several other scale systems around the world with their own compelling logic too. focusing on the characteristics of a specific medium (e.g. vinyl) as the definition fo what "real" means completely undercuts a full appreciation of the role of music in our lives, and how it affects us.

On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 09:43:07PM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Well, I thought that too at first, but it does actually. The usable dynamic range of iPod earbuds on a noisy city street is pretty damn narrow, for instance. Likewise, the dynamic and frequency range of shitty laptop speakers is pretty narrow too. I had the experience last year of trying to mix a record so that it would at least be intelligible on those distribution media. I resisted the pressure to compress the hell out of the mix, because I hate that sound, it gives me a headache. But if I were really serious about making those mixes work on those media, I'd have to have squashed them a lot more than I did. It was kind of sad for me to walk around with those mixes on shuffle while walking down the street or riding on BART trains, and realize that the songs we worked so hard to record were largely below the noise floor in that environment. Commercially-mastered recordings were noticeably louder and listenable, in the same environment. If what I've read and seen about comb-filtering is true, I'd guess that the mastering engineer's ROOM, dampening, and speakers are really what you're paying for as much as his or her ears or engineering knowledge or "vintage" gear. And, I suspect, some of what mastering engineers get paid to do nowadays is use various tricks to to fix broken home-studio mixes from people who didn't know what they were doing. -ken

Hi, I won't jump into this fray of art vs. technique, as its just too dicey. I agree with you, Fons, on the distortion introduced by limiting; but do you have any theory as to why most people actually seem to like it? My experience is that people seem to feel lightly compressed, open mixes are weak, but will take to a "brutalised" mix enthusiastically. Do you have a theory? Also, aren't we a bit of a slave to whatever people happen to like, however much we might feel it is inferior? Cheers, S.M.

Le 11/07/2011 21:43, Folderol a écrit : Subjectivity ?

Am 11.07.2011 22:03, schrieb Arnold Krille: These are the formats that shape consonats and thus they are most important if people talk to each other. The hearing tends to focus on them to make sure one catches the words of the other. So distorted Guitars "sound" louder than their amplitude would suggest.

Le 11/07/2011 22:59, Folderol a écrit : or let everyone make his choice, something lmike subjectivity :::

On Monday 11 July 2011 23:00:38 S. Massy wrote: Yes, I can :-) I didn't talk about harmonics vs non.harmonics. I talked about additional high-frequencies in general. For the power/freq its not important if its the 8th-harmonic or the 7.57357842th harmonic. But for the perceived loudness is influenced by this. Whether its pleasant to hear or not is on a different page. Have fun, Arnold

Adding my voice to the choir :) The only thing I use limiting for is to shave a couple of dB off the occasional spikes that seem to come from nowhere in a mix. I listen very carefully to the 'before' and 'after' before committing the change. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

Am 09.07.2011 23:00, schrieb Fons Adriaensen: There is no such thing in the 21st century. The failure of all the enhanced super-CD efforts has proved that. There is only a set of methods to make music distributable as a file or as a physical record. And to do this the HiFi/Audiophile way is only but one of these methods. In the early 1960ies guitarists like Pete Townshend or John Lennon started to crank up the volume on their amps and thus introduced distortion. And the engineers startet to scratch their heads to find ways to make such bad distortion disappeare. When Jimi Hendrix sent his tapes of Electric Ladyland to the EMI-Masterlabs, the engineers took great efforts to eliminate the phasing-effects Hendrix had applied to some of his tracks and thus Hendrix was shocked, whe he heared the first copy of the record. And this is all that matters: if the artist is unhappy with the result, then the recording and mastering has failed - period - If a band *wants* to have their songs brick walled so that the wave-graphs look like toothpaste: let them have it! This is a perfectly sensible method of expression. The simple reason is: it is different. If an artist is not satisfied with a work, then it simply means, he/she hears a difference between the results and the vision in his/her head. To eliminate such differences is the job of the recording-engineer and he/she should be ready to eliminate by all means neccessary ;-) Of course brick wall limiters are often used for the wrong reasons. To make it simpler for a bad mixing-technician to make it sound something like "loud and clear". Or to make sure, the track does not sound lower than the others on a stupid format-radio-programme. But there is fantastic, great music out there that looks like tooth-paste and is spiced with tons of distortion. So in the end: a hard limiter is but a tool -- it represents an opportunity for artistst to get certain effects to make their music sound different the way they like to. And such opportunities should be available. I use the foo-limiter to handle peaks and some vocals, it works for me. If I really want to smash a mix to the wall, I try to do it as Fons recommends by balance the mix to make it sound louder. And than I use Jamin to go a step beyond... btw: Yes I admit it! I LOVE the sound of the late-90ies/2000s Red Hot Chili Peppers. I do not care for technical details like distortion, I only hear great, powerful, lively pop-music. That some bands not the same as great, powerful and lively believe, they could be the same as cool by applying the same loudness is another story though... best regards HZN

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 10:07:39PM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote: I agree with this, I will appreciate it, and I guess others will. And I also very much appreciate if the auto-tune plugin allows to do the wild things that proprietary auto-tuning plugins do :P While I don't like the loudness issues with most modern music, sometimes highly compressed dynamics are expected with certain kind of music. Not superior, but just "correct" to the ears of listeners that expect it. I mean: if someone wants to drink a beer, and it is replaced by a much better and healthy orange juice, it is quite possible that the person will be highly dissapointed. There is no point to argue which one is better, that person does not want something better, he wants a beer.