Why the peaked volume?

[klasman]

First of all, I just want to thank all you talented musicians who gives me the pleasure to re-experience most of the great music I was loving as a 8-year old (and still am).
This is rather a question than a topic, aimed to the two very talented remixers Putzi and Sonic Wanderer (along with some others I could add).
Some of my favourite remixes of all time actually are Sonic W's "Beyond The Zero (Re-Entry)" and Putzi's Lotus YTCC remix. However, your recent productions have all been with a very peaked volume which gives me a sad experience while listening with hifi-equipment. As I can tell, bass, drums and most other instrument are way off the chart and are cropped/peaked quite hard.

It just makes me wonder if:

• 1. My mp3-replay software is not up to date.
  2. You're peaking the volume because the sound should sound more 8-bit (or something like it)
  3. You're planning to sell CDs and therefore publishing your tunes in poor quality?
  4. You don't believe that I will turn up the volume enough to give your tune what it deserves.
  5. Just turned out to be like that

Well, I love your work, but I would enjoy it even more if it didn't sound like it was played on a broken speaker.

[Chris Abbott]

Option 6) Maybe overused the dynamic compression?

Frankly, I think it's 5) or 6). No one would ever be cynical enough to do option (3).

Chris

[DHS]

........

option 7: you're using a crappy hifi equipment.

to answer you and Chris:

-Sonic and (expecially) Putzi are doing what every other modern studio does on "dancey" music. Optimizing dynamics and pushing highr the *apparent* volume of music.

Talking about overcompression is out of place Chris.
Sonic isn't pushing so high while Putzi has, imho, reached a really professional standard in mastering.

So, if klasman setup sounds those mp3s in a crappy way, the same will go with most commercial music.

a little parenthesis about "compression" and "overcompression":

As many say, there's too much apparent volume in digital tracks nowadays. That could be true, but you have to make a dinstinction between different kinds of music. While a solid pumping mastering is good for (many, not all) dancey tunes, it will totally ruin any tracks that need dynamics (example, classical, orchestral, some rock, and so on).

Finally (sorry chris, don't take offence) it literally gives me the cramps when someone talks about "overcompression" about the works of people who worked so hard to reach a pro or near-pro level in mastering, and, maybe, spent a lot of money to buy the necessary gears. And expecially when the tracks in question aren't overcompressed at all.

[Chris Abbott]

........
And expecially when the tracks in question aren't overcompressed at all.

I hadn't heard the tracks: I was suggesting another option which seemed more likely than the other 5 given the symptoms described. It's probably fair bet that the chap is able to listen to commercial music without too much hassle, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned these tracks as being special cases. Maybe some frequencies just overpower his speakers or something.

My logic went:

IF problem exists THEN option 6 more likely than other options GIVEN other music sounds OK.

I don't think that's unreasonable, and I didn't mean to imply anything about the quality of Sonic's or Putzi's mastering.

Chris

[Romeo Knight]

You're completely right, DHS (while "overcompression, I have to admit, is also some kind of subjective and a matter of taste. It in fact depends on the genre)
To give a good example: My first remix "Thrust" is compressed to the extreme to reach maximum loudness. I now think a little too extreme. It also contains distorted guitars with eq peaks around 2000 Hz - that's why so many listeners complained about "too much noise" or something. And they're right - it won't sound good until you use decent hifi equipment cos otherwise you'll get in a lot of unwanted inharmonic distortion. Same thing with most other high compressed remixes.
I'm pretty sure your equipment, klasman, is somehow suboptimal and/or your listening habits comply much more to typical dynamical music.

[klasman]

I hope I have not offended anyone by my comment about the sound level. For your information, I do love "undynamical" music as well. I listen to stuff by Dune, Supernao, Shpongle, Chemical brothers, µ-ziq and others who uses loud and disorted sounds a lot. In these cases I would say it's their style.
However, when talking about Sonic wanderer, Putzi and DHS (for instance on your Apydia remix) it seems to me like they just turned up the volume a bit too much… speaking from an amateurs point of view (obviously).
When playing these tunes on the hi-fi set I get a much better and wider sound image, no doubt about that. But I can't deny that a similar tune, recorded on a lower sound level, played on the same hi-fi set with some more amplification has a clearer sound.

For your information, at work I simply use a pair of Sennheiser (HD 250) and at home I have a decent hifi-equipment with Jamo speakers (150W music). I guess I will never reach the level of a really professional hifi equipment (and I have no desire to do so either). But it's sad that one cannot enjoy your work without such a top-of-the-line hi-fi set.

[DHS]

The tracks i do are tested, during mastering, on a wide set of hifi. This is done exactly to assure the best compromise in sound quality.

Apidya, well, that's another story (bad mastering imho).

Of course, i can't expect a track to sound good and brilliant on a pc speaker set or in headset as good as it does on a good home hifi or car hifi.

I can't do miracles (yet)

[putzi]

Apidya, well, that's another story (bad mastering imho).

Wasn´t there a click at 0:09 on the right channel...?

[putzi]

For monitoring, I use AKG K141 headphones which sound so damned "honest": if something sounds clear and good on them, then it is really good. For a contrast, I also have beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones which make the sound a lot nicer (EQed to sound smooth) but give an impression of the bass like from real loudspeakers.

Real "Hi-Fi equipment" should never make the music sound bad. If I want to hear things in a way "just nice" and not so true to its original quality, I play it on my Technics SA-DA 10 amp. It does magic on the sound and I am pretty sure it filters some annoying things away or has a (hidden) dynamic EQ.

So if you, klasman, really have a kind of distortion on the modern tracks,
then the only reason I can imagine is that the D/A-converter of your soundcard has a problem with the 0,0 db-mastering of some tracks. Very sophisticated mastering tools like MD3 are especially aware of this (no, I don´t own this one) with their brickwall limiter, see here:
http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=3453

After knowing this, I changed my mastering chain using a plugin that does the same (sounding more analogue, for less money )

I´l like to know if my recent remix release Birthday (2005 re-remix) gives you the same sound impression.


Btw: funny you picked me and Sonic as examples.

[Analog-X64]

I picked 3 Tunes by Sonic Wonderer no reason other than it he's tracks were mentioned.

Parallax (Wanderized) <-- Released 2005
Noisy Pillars (Euro-4-Sure) <-- Released 2005
Beyond the Zero (Re-Entry) <--- Released 2002

I first played and listend to them through my headphones and they all did sound a bit on the loud end not much noticable on my headphones (Sennheiser HD 433)

I than loaded all 3 into Sonic Foundry v7.0 and right away without doing anything visualy I could see that the majority of the waveforms were at their highest peaks in both direction of the db spectrum, not much headroom. I than ran the "Detect Clipping" with "Detect Only audibly-noticeable clips" option at its lowest setting and I got hundreds of Clipping points displayed on all 3 songs.

Maybe problem is in the encoding process from wave to mp3?

[putzi]

It really depends on the tools/plugins used if a "loud" mix does clip.
I also had a look at some tracks now and it is simply that the limiter sometimes misses to compress/remove peaks which result in a "peak hit" of the dynamic range. I doubt that someone can hear these short "audio errors" as they are happening with the base drum beat which mutens the ears anyway

I´d rather say that the D/A-converters are the problem with audio signals that are mastered to the maximum, because the chips doing this work are not producing the same results, even if from the same production line.
Building a chip that transforms a 16 or 24 bit digital sample stream into an analogue electric signal is still today not like 1-2-3 if it has to be done "perfect".

So you can get a various resulting sound, that is why Hi-Fi enthusiasts make a religion out of amps, DVD-players and speakers:
"this one has a very distinguished packed sound, the other one has more space in the sound, blah blah blah"

[Larsec]

Apidya, well, that's another story (bad mastering imho).

Wasn´t there a click at 0:09 on the right channel...?

LOL, I remember that ...and I have a picture somewhere to prove it

[putzi]

Apidya, well, that's another story (bad mastering imho).

Wasn´t there a click at 0:09 on the right channel...?

LOL, I remember that ...and I have a picture somewhere to prove it

I wonder who found it out

[klasman]

Putzi: Yes, I listened to your Birthday (2005 re-remix), and it did sound more balanced than your earlier stuff. No distorted peaks that I could hear. Very nice remix btw.
I believe it's true what you describe, that it's quite possible that someway in the path of D/A conversion the sound peaks are clipped by an unoptimised sound chip. I guess most regular users these days satisfy with a normal on-board sound card (I don't even dare to ask what stuff you guys have put into your boxes ). If this is the reason for me experiencing peak-distortions, there are surely many more users out there who have the same problem/experience.
The 'peak-hits' which appear in some load songs are mostly in the low-frequency areas of the sound, and will not be heard by the ear as you mention.
I just might be over-sensitive, but those 'peak-hits' seems to blur the sound somewhat...

Sonic wanderer: Your new Crazy Comets (BITLite Invintro) remix was also better balanced out. Great!

Romeo Knight: Your pieces sound very fine here. Not blurry at all.

Anyway, in most cases, a more likely reason for disharmony is a crappy hifi-equipment/speaker (as mentioned before). However, I consider myself to have an OK setup (without being able to prove that).
Mmmm, at least this thread did develop into a quite constructive one. Thanks for your patience.

An example of a tune with too low volume:
http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=spy+vs+spy+2
Here we got the opposite problem: when turning up the volume on the amplifier to listen, the song looses some in quality (?).