I remember reading somewhere that modern music is recorded badly. Meaning, dynamic range is compressed, lots of bass/treble, etc. How much truth is there to this? I'm also not talking about MP3s, but actual CDs. The reason I ask is because I find that most music (within the past decade ) sounds better in the car than in my home system.
well ill tell you this, its not the kind of music i usually listen to but there is this one kelly clarkson song where I love what she did with her voice, and there is one avril lageign song where i really enjoyed her singing. i heard these in the car and I tough these songs would sound great on my home stereo, I went to the library and got the CD's brought them home all excited ot hear how awesome they were goig to sound.
I pressed play and i though someone put a heavy blanket over top of my speakers. i was amazed at how poorly those CD's were recorded. I do not really listen to the kind of stuff they play on the radio but it seems like allot of punk rock and rock and roll bands ( not stuff you hear on the raidio ) have better recordings than the big pop artist do.
most country music still seem to be recorded well. I cant really speak for radio rock since I do not listen to it. but pop music sure sounds lousy.
i think it sounds better in your car because the radio stations seem to add some effecst to the music so it sounds better when they broadcast it over the air. but play that CD on your home stereo with out the effects they just sound dry and dead. as much money as those artist make you would think they would record music and and try to make it sound as good as possible.
some artist still put out music that is recorded very well,
well ill tell you this, its not the kind of music i usually listen to but there is this one kelly clarkson song where I love what she did with her voice, and there is one avril lageign song where i really enjoyed her singing. i heard these in the car and I tough these songs would sound great on my home stereo, I went to the library and got the CD's brought them home all excited ot hear how awesome they were goig to sound.
I pressed play and i though someone put a heavy blanket over top of my speakers. i was amazed at how poorly those CD's were recorded. I do not really listen to the kind of stuff they play on the radio but it seems like allot of punk rock and rock and roll bands ( not stuff you hear on the raidio ) have better recordings than the big pop artist do.
most country music still seem to be recorded well. I cant really speak for radio rock since I do not listen to it. but pop music sure sounds lousy.
i think it sounds better in your car because the radio stations seem to add some effects to the music so it sounds better when they broadcast it over the air. but play that CD on your home stereo with out the effects they just sound dry and dead. as much money as those artist make you would think they would record music and and try to make it sound as good as possible.
some artist still put out music that is recorded very well,
Radio is compressed and limited because the bandwidth is from 30Hz-15KHz. Also, the background noise would make people stop listening if they didn't compress the dynamics. A few stations are better at doing this without treating it like a farm animal, but some, like WKLH in MKE, really make it sound bad.
Yeah a lot of the music today is poorly recorded, when I first heard Imagine Dragons I thought, "I bet this would sound cool at home". Boy was I wrong, absolutely terrible. Look up the loudness war.
Yes, as other posters have noted, a lot of current music is deliberately very poorly recorded. The below link is a graphic (literally) demonstration of this. There is a listing as well of dynamic range by album as well. Even the best popular CD's have only about 16 dB of range, somewhat short of the 96 theoretical on a standard ('redbook') CD.
Consumers are becoming aware of this. My 13 year old daughter asked for a 'record player' because "as everyone knows, vinyl sounds better". Urban Outfitters (if you have or are a teenager, you know this) has dedicated a large section of their store to all-in-one turntables (dating from the 1960's) and a large selection of vinyl.
Shame, back in the day I'd like to go to the audio stores and fire up a very dynamic CD played over their powerful amps and massive speakers to hear huge dynamic range. Spent 18 months building (and rebuilding) a 3 way vertical line array with subs and large amplifiers to duplicate that. The new stuff was loud and very compressed so my build really didn't make sense unless I wanted to go deaf. Pulled out my Dire Straits Brothers in Arms and that dynamic range was back.
My solution is simple, I don't buy music much anymore. I figured they would leave classical alone and I was wrong! Now when I buy music, I have to look it up to see if it was compressed to death and when it was mastered (or remastered) and figure it out that way. Back to the music stores I go and they don't have it...but plenty of compressed remastered or SACD and high res compressed versions.
Thankfully I can get the stuff from Amazon. To get new music, I search Youtube and a lot of it is a free lossless download since modern musicians play concerts to make money. The days of making insane amounts of money for a few songs thrown together are going away. I consider this a good thing, it takes actual talent to go on tour and earn money....faking it in a studio and having massive processors make the music requires little talent. Things are looking up so once the music companies die off, the loudness wars with lip synching line dancers will be over.
Ditto to all the above, except I went point source. Thankfully I still have several thousand LPs and CDs to keep me going. Discovering classical and opera in recent times.
Most modern music, with occasional and sometimes startling exceptions leave me quite cold. Even if they were recorded well, I'd never listen to the dross.
I'm divided on this. On one hand, modern music doesn't compare to Ellington, Hendrix, Coltrane, Dylan, and so on. But then what could? The '40s - '70s was a time for music like few others. And unlike the days of Beethoven and Brahms, much of it was recorded.
On the other hand, I firmly believe there's music of comparable quality being produced today. It's just harder to appreciate it as we get older. I'm only 37, but I already feel it getting more difficult. Or maybe it's just that we become increasingly unwilling to put the time into it. It took me about 5 listens all the way through for me to appreciate My Morning Jacket. Now I can't get enough. Then again, how many among us appreciated John Coltrane's saxophone the first time we heard it? These things require some effort.
About the loudness wars, I do feel it might be inflated in some people's minds. I find most recordings for the kind of music I seek out to be very nice. I've looked up recording on that loudness wars website, and some of the recordings I perceive as great do score poorly. For example, I think all the Bad Plus recordings score poorly. I love all their albums, which for the most part capture the energy that this incredible jazz trio's live shows.
My issue is they take something good then crush it to fit MP3, car or radio--it is not made to be enjoyed on a sound system. There is no reason to crush music as a standard, CD and lossless audio allow great dynamic range and clarity but it is being destroyed with the loudness wars. Pretty pathetic when a vinyl record has more dynamic range than a CD.
Granted, most music is made for teenagers--that started back in the 1950's and is not a recent trend. Most pop music is disposable as it is not made to be amazing, it is made to be profitable. The thing that is maddening is they take older more dynamic music and crush it--but the folks buying that older stuff are not teenagers.
Why not leave music from 1954 to 1995 alone? The loudness wars started in the mid-90's so they should remaster it to get the dynamics back--because "remastering" tends to imply it is better than the original--not made worse.
Is it too hard to IMPROVE the mastering? They could even take the loudness war casualties and fix it--bring the dynamics back.
Is the music industry destroyed because of the movie industry? I'd be willing to bet the best sound engineers go to the movie industry for the better money potential so.... do they send the bottom of the barrel to the music companies? If I was in sound mixing, I'd go for movies since the music industry is circling the drain.
I hear Telarc is doing well with increasing sales. Classical music sales are increasing or do people actually desire a very well crafted recording with dynamic range and actual effort expended to get the highest quality product? Could quality recordings become a trend? I hope so that will only come to pass once the remastering means more than running the master through a compressor and calling it good. Give it a few years and a few bankruptcies... it will improve.
I agree. It's all about sales. Today's generation doesn't take the time to enjoy well produced music. Now music needs to be simple so that it can be enjoyed wwhile multi-tasking. I can't imagine my kids listening to music without at least watching TV at the same time.
I'm only 25 and I find most popular music made today pretty unbearable. Not only in terms of sonic quality, but also actual content. Fortunately, I've discovered loads of unknown artists through YouTube which were very active many years ago. Due to being on small labels and even lack of funds, they never got exposure or any radio airplay. I think these unheard of bands were better than many of their mainstream contemporary acts of the time.
I just read through this post and I noticed a few responses speaking of "recording engineers" and "mastering engineers". I believe that is one of the major problems with music today - very few contemporary records are being recorded with the assistance of either. There is a lot (emphasis on LOT) of music being put out today for which the recording and mastering was done by a member of the band using a laptop and ProTools. Just because someone possesses a basic understanding of how to use ProTools does not put them at an equal standing with an established recording engineer who likely has spent many years learning the craft of recording and mixing music. The record labels love this because albums can be recorded with very little budget. But those of us who are fans of music pay the price with a bunch of sub-par craptastic music being released.
Why use someone who actually knows what they're dong when anyone can record on their computer, at home? Real professionals cost money! Some of these new "artists" take a year to "write" a song, made of little snippets, pasted together. The record a bit, play something over it and over, trying to "feel what to play". That can work, but it's a lot like creating a mosaic, starting at one end and deciding what to call it when you reach the other end. If you read or hear about bands like the Beatles, they were on a schedule- they worked from 9-5, with a few breaks and this was EVERY day, for quite a while. They tell of days where they didn't gt much done in the morning and after lunch, they wrote three monster hit songs. For someone to do that now, it would be a miracle.
I'll blame the douchebags in the recording industry. A lot of good albums have been ruined by this. Muse is one of my favorite bands and their albums sound absolutely terrible. Much like watching a bad recording on a good TV, the TV shows the flaws so well.
The scumbag executives in the music industry forcefeed garbage through the distribution channels, sue the competing business models out of existence and then whine to politicians that their sales are down.
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