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CDs were most commonly played in cars on the loud highway

That is a false way of saying it. Because then you are unpacking what dBs are, which is fascinating, but not how humans perceive sound. We use dBs exactly because it approaches human experience of sound better (although still shitty) than sound pressure would. A better logarithmic system would use base 2, I think phons tried to popularize that, but signal processing calculation with a base 2 log is less convenient than a base 10 log. So I think that is the reason.

For who wants to know: sound perception doubles every 10dB so. 30db of dynamic range is about 8 times as much dynamic range from the perceptual perspective.

I keep 3 pressings of Led Zep II out so I can demonstrate the difference to people who don’t believe that there is one. A first-week Robert Ludwig mastered version, a second-week pressing of the Ahmet Ertegun disaster, and 1977 remaster that really sounds just as good as the 1969 RL mix and is a lot cheaper. $20 for a VG+ copy compared to $1300. I am not insane so I did not spend $1300 on a used vinyl record, I found mine for $2 at Goodwill.

https://www.therevolverclub.com/blogs/the-revolver-club/the-...

> I never bought into the recent vinyl hype.

This. I'm 55. My teenage years were in the 1980s, where CDs started to appear but vinyl was still mainstream. I remember Dad having a significant vinyl library and I also got my own collection.

But I hated caring for that thing. The medium is finicky, prone to scratches and whatnot, and CDs had more length and also more range and better sound. So as soon as I was able to get CDs, I got rid of my vinyl collection faster than one does it with a hot potato in their hands. I used vinyl daily, hated the whole burden of caring for it; and against CDs, I really found them wanting.

Too bad the medium got degraded with idiots who used dynamic compression, but inherently CDs and lossless digital audio in general is way much better. I never understood the vinyl resurgence, until some people explained it as being something more performative and also a way to get better artwork and physical mementos of the music. Understandable, but I still feel it's weird.

>I never bought into the recent vinyl hype.

For me, it's the expense and the inconvenience... as the meme goes. But anyway - I just like it; when I put on a record it's like "I'm doing this now and nothing else". Sitting on the couch and listening to Dark Side with a glass of wine. Remembering when my dad used to play records and I wasn't allowed to touch it because the stylus was expensive and fragile. It's a vibe, as the kids say.

Good site, but it has some frustrating limitations that make it vastly less useful, specifically regarding the phenomenon in the article. The search UI doesn’t expose the release code (and many entries don’t even include it), so when it says “vinyl” you have no idea which of the possibly dozens of releases it refers to, some of which can be awful, like the article points out.

I’m willing to help fix this, but the source code is not public, and when I emailed the author I got no response.

PSA 2: the formula used here can easily be gamed via inaudible phase alteration and can't be used to compare CD and LP. Ears are still much better until a correctly designed metric arrives.

There are usefull software components (=extensions) for the foobar2000 music player (sadly Windows only player) that can analyze the dynamic range and loudness according to EBU standards.

foo_dr_meter: A simple Dynamic Range meter based on DR estimation formula published by https://dr.loudness-war.info/

foo_truepeak: ITU-R BS.1770-5 compliant True Peak scanner.

ReplayGain is part of the core components of foobar2000, so automatically adjusting the volume depending on the loudness of the trakc or entire album is pretty much a default feature of this player. The latter two components, especially the latter one give valuable insights into the loudness and mastering quality of a recording. True Peak can calculate the Peak-to-Integrated Loudness of a recording for example the headroom between loudest part and the maximum possible loudness of the format, or it tells you the loudness range in LUFS meaning how squished or wide the dynamic range of a track is. Really nifty if you have a huge music collection and need numbers to quickly compare releases.

The "loudness war" issue is not inherent to digital sources. Nor is it something you need to "master the record out of". It's sufficient to not break it in the first place.

>44.1/16 digital

This is already way beyond what vinyl is able to reproduce. The best case is roughly 12-bits PCM equivalent. Literally not an issue in the slightest.

This is mostly the result of a lot of vinyl factories having shut down due to vinyl becoming mostly irrelevant after the release of more convenient formats like the CD. At least irrelevant enough to make factories unsustainable. Most modern vinyls have extremely bad quality, I'd even go as far and say almost all freshly produced vinyls. Source: I've worked in a high end luxury HiFi store for years prior to getting into tech, selling turn tables, tube amps, speakers and basically whatever you can think off in that space.

I don't know where you're getting this. For rock/pop music, it's as bad as it's ever been.

All things being equal, the compressed tracks will still sound louder even after normalisation, unfortunately. I haven't seen any sign of dynamics returning to pop music since Spotify/YouTube.

What AirPods are you talking about? The wired AirPods that sound pretty bad have been overtaken by wireless Bluetooth AirPods for many years now. The AirPod Pro 2 sound quality is a world of difference from the wired earbud style AirPods. In fact, most of the most popular TWS Bluetooth Earbuds have fantastic sound quality. The main issue with them is that they have a V shaped tuning, with various levels of bad. However, Apple and Samsung tunings are quite decent.

And you can buy replacement ear pads - breathing new life in to $150 Sony Studio Monitor phones I bought 30 years ago...

This is an absurd comment. Maybe you are just too young and ignorant to know what the average gear use to sound like.

> I think the sound quality of modern-day bluetooth speakers is really good.

The sound quality out of the speakers of some Apple products seems borderline impossible to me. The MacBook in particular makes me feel like I missed an important DSP lecture at university.

Yep.

Most people aren't in a quiet environment when they listen to music these days. Compression helps significantly with this.

What would be neat would be to have a compression metadata 'guide' that would allow a compressor on-device to perform the compression, rather than baked into the audio track.

This would allow the user to tune 'severity' of compression. In a car / fancy headphones, you could sample the ambient noise level and adjust accordingly.

> Most people listen to music in their car.

Most people don't have cars

Compression can definitely help with that, but so can automating the volume knob. If it were just about keeping volume consistent, they would compress different tracks differently (which they do).

They overly compress the master channel specifically to make it very loud, and there's dozens of interviews with engineers that are frustrated with it.

And just wait until they find out that compressor/limiters came about for reasons other than shaping the dynamics of music. If you're not slammed against the wall, your AM broadcast signal isn't going far.

Vinyl has the benefit that you can largely assume that it will NOT be listened to at all, cf. the studies showing that half of all vinyl buyers don’t even own a turntable.

> 1 … they will often chose the more compressed/louder one

I’ve always been curious - but presumably that’s true even after volume matching?

> 3 Compressed sound works better in noisy environments and as background music

I’ve heard this is also why film and video game soundtracks are often very compressed, even when orchestral, because they have to fit in the background with dialog/sfx

I read that as: SACD customers expect a better mix.

The format is only relevant in that it requires audiophile level dedication and money to use the format in the first place. Not dissimilar to vinyl before its recent boom.

I have an SACD setup, but for what I want to listen to, everything is out of print and secondary market is insane. Players can be found relatively cheaply at thrift stores (many don’t bluray and multi-CD carousels support it with digital output).

It's true from time to time. Low's last digital releases are actually unlistenable due to heavy-handed compression, but the vinyl seems to have been spared.

I had to record the vinyl to get usable digital files.

It’s completely true, when the vinyl has a different mastering. It can be a completely different version. It’s not because it’s vinyl

> There are also a lot of genres that can never sound as good on vinyl simply due to the

inability to encode very low tones.

I have a decent[1] system with a dedicated center channel. Everybody complains that the mix is too loud if we tune for audible dialog on anything made in the past decade or so (MI3 bluray is fine, and I suspect that Transformers would be too).

1: Powered by a Denon AVR, not separates if you want to "No true cinephile" me.

I've always set up my center channel volume using the test mode (by ear many years ago, and more recently automatically with Yamaha's YPAO).

Am I meant to then override that by increasing the center channel volume so it's louder than the other speakers?

Or raise the system volume?

What really would solve the movie issue is there was more standardised sound across different streaming services. Every single seems to have a different volume and compression / setup.

That and having an industry standard way to crank the center channel (user setting) when downmixing to 2.1

Anecdotally, I have gotten many compliments on my small Unihertz phones that I've owned over the years, particularly from women.

As far as revealed preference goes, those who complimented me on it all had the smallest iPhone available when purchased.

Physical media is dying, so that's a strange conclusion to draw.

They did that back in the reel to reel tape days too...it was just destructive. Songs could have tons of layers, but they had to bounce tracks down to stay within track limits for the final mix.

Queen's music is a massive pile of overdubs, especially for vocals and guitar. The Beatles also, and they were heavily into looping (physically cutting audio tape and gluing it in a loop, then re-recording it). Vocal and guitar double-tracking has also been the norm since the 50s, at least.

80s pop was also generally full of synthesizer stacks, where MIDI from one keyboard was simultaneously triggering several synths to create layers.

people said "it's impossible to separate tracks (voice, bass, ...) after they are mixed". true in theory, but neural-networks can separate them in practice

same here, but there is no real market for somebody to bother yet

ReplayGain sounds pretty cool. Does it pre analyse your library ?

Is it true? No idea. It's plausible. My point was that one example of a heavily compressed track doesn't make a loudness war. I offered a plausible alternative explanation of the same facts. It seems likely that someone buying a mass market album today would expect it to sound pretty similar across all formats.

I don't know why you've introduced this 'serious' vs. streaming thing.

What does taking music more seriously even mean here? If you seriously like listening to normalised Purple Rain on 128 kbps mp3 and also like collecting physical media, you might seriously like to buy and listen to normalised Purple Rain on your preferred (lossless, or less-lossy) format.

You might find it lame, but jazz has the highest share of physical media sales in the US

https://www.statista.com/chart/32863/genres-with-the-highest...

RIAA is a standards body.

Everybody is lazy nowadays and sends their ruined digital mixes out for everything. It's the production teams that need to fix their behavior.

What RIAA should do is promote universal use of ReplayGain across digital distribution platforms. That way people can manage relative volume as desired without the need to corrupt the audio. They could make money with a signed tag certifying the mix meets quality standards.

Vinyl? Sturdy? Please.

Because the TV wouldn't be as good a representation of the original painting as the canvas print would be. Similarly, vinyl wouldn't be as good a representation of the original sound as CDs would be.

I'm guessing you're not a musician or studio worker, or I wasn't clear.

If I am using an analog device (in my case tube amplifier) I want to listen to something that was mastered on analog equipment. If it's square wave pressed on to vinyl you might as well stream.