Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Music To My Ears
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 10:00 AM
This article was originally published in the February 25th issue of Lockergnome Windows Fanatics, and with Brandon's permission, we're re-publishing it here. I thought it was a great article, and quite thought-provoking for those of us into audio.
One of my biggest complaints with CDs isn't a fault in the media, it is the fault of the idiots who master them. It seems there is but one goal for them: to ruin my hearing. Great sound and great music require there to be several elements: punch, definition, and clarity.
Think of some of the most identifiable natural sounds. The crack of lightning followed by the roll of thunder, the spring peepers croaking in the woods, the roar of the ocean; these sounds have a melodic quality, a rhythm and definition, and a definite change in decibels as the sounds are heard. Sounds that are considered pleasant most often mimic the qualities of these natural sounds.
There is a class of guys who lay down soundtracks for movies that understand this. Music becomes part of the experience: booming and fast paced in action scenes, soft and subtle during romantic scenes, and so on. This is demonstrated in movies like Lord Of The Rings and Legend where the music is blended in so well you almost don't know it's there. There are, of course, exceptions to this - movies like Mystic River where the music track completely drowns out the voice track at times.
Most music CDs don't seem to get the kind of attention they should. Music CDs are compressed, a term that has nothing to do with the amount of size a file takes up but rather the amount of range in the volume of a piece of content. By compressing audio you never end up with sounds that are too quiet to be audible or so loud as to be deafening. Instead, you end up with audio that is very monotone.
This image shows four audio tracks. The first is an example of how audio should look. With a great deal of change in volume within the file: occasionally being truly silent, and occasionally being at its peak.
Next is an acceptable example. While peak isn't reached at any point, there is a good amount of variation in the volume.
Sample three suffers from severe compression. This is a piece that no longer has any diversity - it is all monotone. This piece also never reaches a peak level, so to make the song soft, it was compressed but not normalized.
Sample four is very close to perfect. There's good variation in volume, though it is normalized to a bit beyond peak (which can cause distortion).
In CDs you buy today, sample three is the most typical. The audio is compressed to the point where there is added distortion and all the "life" is gone. The music becomes severely ugly. This, of course, helps sell concert tickets because these days most everyone does sound better on stage. It also helps MTV as the Unplugged music sounds much more lifelike than the music that gets passed off on CD.
One of my biggest complaints with CDs isn't a fault in the media, it is the fault of the idiots who master them. It seems there is but one goal for them: to ruin my hearing. Great sound and great music require there to be several elements: punch, definition, and clarity.
Think of some of the most identifiable natural sounds. The crack of lightning followed by the roll of thunder, the spring peepers croaking in the woods, the roar of the ocean; these sounds have a melodic quality, a rhythm and definition, and a definite change in decibels as the sounds are heard. Sounds that are considered pleasant most often mimic the qualities of these natural sounds.
There is a class of guys who lay down soundtracks for movies that understand this. Music becomes part of the experience: booming and fast paced in action scenes, soft and subtle during romantic scenes, and so on. This is demonstrated in movies like Lord Of The Rings and Legend where the music is blended in so well you almost don't know it's there. There are, of course, exceptions to this - movies like Mystic River where the music track completely drowns out the voice track at times.
Most music CDs don't seem to get the kind of attention they should. Music CDs are compressed, a term that has nothing to do with the amount of size a file takes up but rather the amount of range in the volume of a piece of content. By compressing audio you never end up with sounds that are too quiet to be audible or so loud as to be deafening. Instead, you end up with audio that is very monotone.
This image shows four audio tracks. The first is an example of how audio should look. With a great deal of change in volume within the file: occasionally being truly silent, and occasionally being at its peak.
Next is an acceptable example. While peak isn't reached at any point, there is a good amount of variation in the volume.
Sample three suffers from severe compression. This is a piece that no longer has any diversity - it is all monotone. This piece also never reaches a peak level, so to make the song soft, it was compressed but not normalized.
Sample four is very close to perfect. There's good variation in volume, though it is normalized to a bit beyond peak (which can cause distortion).
In CDs you buy today, sample three is the most typical. The audio is compressed to the point where there is added distortion and all the "life" is gone. The music becomes severely ugly. This, of course, helps sell concert tickets because these days most everyone does sound better on stage. It also helps MTV as the Unplugged music sounds much more lifelike than the music that gets passed off on CD.
