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Author Topic: Sickening Compression  (Read 1763 times)

benn600

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Sickening Compression
« on: December 10, 2008, 11:58:16 pm »

Okay, this dynamic range compression has really been angering me to no end.  I've been reading a lot more about it and am really starting to get mad.  One of the songs that really FIRST stuck out as being compressed to no end is "A New York Christmas" by Rob Thomas.  It is a great song, but I can actually hear distortion/compression in the song.  Post feedback.  As far as I read, when you see a sine wav essentially cut or leveled off, like the arrows, it was forcefully volume limited and compressed.  All but the first were released in 2008!

Many of these songs give me a lifeless feeling.  Blah, yikes, overbearing, turn it down...way down.



The second is by the new artist David Archuleta, "Crush."  Look at how compressed this is!!!


No surprise here, he will be a huge seller for the record labels.  It's just too bad that modern music is destroyed so horribly.  I cannot even listen to a lot of the new stuff--especially as I start realizing what is going on and improve my audio equipment to be better able to reproduce the disasters.

Hollywood's Not America by Ferras


Disturbia by Rihanna


I would venture to say that the bitrate value produced by the FLAC encoder reveals just how likely it is that a song is compressed.  In order to require over 1,000Kb/sec, you pretty much have to compress it...unless there are sections of quieter parts.  All of these are well above 900 but many pass 1K--the ones that don't have as many quieter parts that bring the average down.
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benn600

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Re: Sickening Compression
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2008, 03:01:36 am »

I took some of these and several other songs that I know have low peak volumes and good dynamic range.  I then applied sickening compression in Audacity.  Wow, it is easy to see how the waveform changes--it becomes fully flat and equal.  Then listen to it...exactly what I've always noticed on the radio and knew it was compression but now I can compress my favorite songs in the comfort of my own home!  I can destroy my entire 17K song library quickly with free software!  Yea!
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ubernode54

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Re: Sickening Compression
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2008, 01:19:01 am »

I totally agree! No wonder people are going deaf. Brings up the chicken and egg problem to me... people deaf already so they turn it up? Or the other way 'round?

I have gotten into the habit of scanning all the music I listen to for ReplayGain values. I use foobar 0.83 and the built-in scanner to scan and write the tags. This, coupled with a capable player, allows me to listen to my tunes at a *relatively* consistent volume level.

I do notice with the music in the past 5-10 years, that the adjustment levels have been increasing from an already horrendous pad of 9 dB to values of 13 and 14 dB.

Certainly, this alone does not help the already destroyed recording, but does alleviate some of the pressure on my ear drums.

Thanks for the post and the lovely pics!
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