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Pushing buttons? The skills died with back cueing records while pushing a jingle cart in with your foot.
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# ? Jan 18, 2013 02:22 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 15:34 |
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Ron Burgundy posted:Pushing buttons? The skills died with back cueing records while pushing a jingle cart in with your foot. Not when you run the automation in manual mode - at CBS-FM and NJ101.5 everything but the commercials was segged by hand. I came up working at oldies stations, so I was instilled to do it that way, and it's stuck with me thru the years.
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# ? Jan 18, 2013 06:24 |
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baka kaba posted:Yeah it's meant to be loud and attention-grabbing, so it's compressed to hell and given a 'cool sound' so you'll prefer listening to songs on that station, or that's the idea anyway. But dead air is anathema to commercial radio, so the opposite is... an endless torrent of sound that never stops, even for talking or letting a song fade out! Hearing Wayward son on an LP really opened my eyes to how horrible radio is. The predominant station where I live just takes all the levels and put them up to "11".
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# ? Jan 18, 2013 16:23 |
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Blistex posted:Hearing Wayward son on an LP really opened my eyes to how horrible radio is. The predominant station where I live just takes all the levels and put them up to "11". This prompted me to check it out and holy crap does it sound much better. Any other good examples of songs that have been murdered by radio?
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# ? Feb 13, 2013 18:02 |
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DELETED posted:This prompted me to check it out and holy crap does it sound much better. Any other good examples of songs that have been murdered by radio? Basically any song that was made before studio butchery got to a level where they would find the ideal settings to play everything to sound decent on the widest variety of devices as possible. Almost all radio stations do this, and anything you listen to will even sound better on a CD (assuming it wasn't butchered to have everything at a constant volume). The studio, producer, and technicians also make a difference. I seem to remember hearing that some classic albums were nearly destroyed because they were recorded and mixed in such a retarded and heavy-handed way. Apparently Bowie managed to barely save something mixed by Iggy Pop way back when? A lot of the Radio fuckery boils down to how much that station technician wanted to "crank the bass" and "make it sound fuller".
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# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:14 |
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I think the Iggy Pop discussion was in this very thread, IIRC he had done things like downmix multiple instruments per track and I think cranked the loudness to max for everything.
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# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:24 |
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Thing is audio engineering is a skill, and that includes live-sounding stuff (which usually sounds good live because of whoever's running the sound board). Great equipment will help but you need to know the basics of carving up the frequency range to get everything sitting nicely, and compressing to get an even volume. Throwing things together and turning them up gets you a sound like raw balls (unless you're into that kind of thing). This is what I was getting at earlier really, asking if part of the reason mastering engineers brickwall their tracks is so radio stations don't have any room to stick their oar in. If everything's pushed right up there's not a lot you can do to push any parts up any more and reshape the sound, so it may sound overdone but at least the sound is consistent. Whereas with older recordings that have a bit of headroom (not all of them) there's space for dynamics and detail... which is space for radio to invade and go YEAH CRANK THIS BIT AND THAT and push it into a new, crappier, louder shape
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# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:34 |
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Yes the Iggy/Bowie thing was the mixing of Raw Power. As far as the story goes Iggy handed the 24 track tape to Bowie who discovered that everything had already been mixed down to just 3 tracks, with no other copies.
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# ? Feb 15, 2013 21:09 |
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Hey Dave here's my mix of the album, I'm calling it RAW POWER I think you'll see why, laters!
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# ? Feb 15, 2013 23:48 |
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baka kaba posted:This is what I was getting at earlier really, asking if part of the reason mastering engineers brickwall their tracks is so radio stations don't have any room to stick their oar in. If everything's pushed right up there's not a lot you can do to push any parts up any more and reshape the sound, so it may sound overdone but at least the sound is consistent. Whereas with older recordings that have a bit of headroom (not all of them) there's space for dynamics and detail... which is space for radio to invade and go YEAH CRANK THIS BIT AND THAT and push it into a new, crappier, louder shape
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# ? Feb 16, 2013 01:05 |
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Two stories of Raw Power: First, Iggy engineered it. 3 tracks containing everything. Levels all hosed up. Hands it to Bowie (Not really a genius producer either) who attempts to fix it. In the end you get the highest rated rock album ever recorded to have the shittiest sound. Then, 1997 rolls around, and Iggy takes the "master" for that album, and runs it through this newfound computer technology and makes it even worse than the original fuckup. quote:In 1996, Columbia Records invited Iggy Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on CD. Iggy says in the liner notes that had he declined, the studio would have remixed it without his blessing. Iggy cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of Rough Power, his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of Raw Power sounded, and the fact that Columbia were going to release the new mix on its sublabel Legacy Recordings as factors that led him to go through with the new mix, which was undertaken at New York's Sony Music Studios in 1996. The remixed edition of Raw Power was released on April 22, 1997. In album's accompanying liner notes, Iggy states the following: That is, until I ran Search and Destroy through WubMachine. https://soundcloud.com/jonathan-cole-4/the-stooges-search-and-destroy jonathan fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Feb 16, 2013 |
# ? Feb 16, 2013 01:17 |
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^^^ Man maybe they can put that on Iggy's car insurance adsMegiddo posted:That doesn't really have anything to do with it. Mastering these days is done for the lowest common denominator - iPod/iPhone earbuds, lovely iPod dock speakers, etc. where all nuance goes out the door. Besides, radio processing can still radically change the sound regardless of how brickwalled the recording is. Radio processing usually involves at least dual band AGC, multiband compressors and expanders, limiting, etc. which will have a huge effect on both dynamics and equalization/frequency response. Expanders sure, that's basically undoing the mastering compression so they can remake it, but as far as multiband compressiona nd limiting goes, that's what I was getting at - if it's already massively compressed in every band, to within an inch of its life, there's a lot less a radio station or whatever can do to put its signature stamp on there, without trying to reverse a bunch of it first. I mean expanding it and recompressing it into a lovely track might be super easy and not a problem at all, but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not baka kaba fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 16, 2013 |
# ? Feb 16, 2013 02:07 |
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baka kaba posted:...but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not That is the idea, much the same as Spector had in the 60's, but for lovely iPod earbud headphones and small speakers in smartphones vs 45 RPM record players and transistor AM radios - so they do all the agc/compression/limiting before we get our hands on it to butcher it. The newer processing rigs can detect material already compressed/limited and will bypass those sections of the processor and only do a minimal amount of EQ and final limiting to keep it at legal mod levels. We are trying to put cleaner audio on the air....it's just that we only now have the tools to do it. I'm in the middle of redoing the audio on a station I just started at - the big issue is that the STL (studio to transmitter link) is compressed (apt-X radio lines), so I'm already at a disadvantage to my competition. The other problem is that the automation computer that plays the music is all MP2's @ 256k instead of pure uncompressed WAV. I had to tweak the processor to compensate for that - after I get the MP2's out and convert to all WAV, I can re-tweak it again to take advantage of the better sounding source material. Another station contacted me and asked to tweak their audio because the chief engineer is great at RF, but lousy at audio. Hopefully I can get them sounding decent. Like any other business, there are those in radio who have a "it's on the air..its good enough" attitude to things. And it drives me crazy to hear crap audio distract from good programming same as everyone else.
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# ? Feb 16, 2013 05:09 |
KozmoNaut posted:You'll hear every little detail of a bad mix or bad compression, which is why they're no good for actually listening to your music for enjoyment's sake. Like this track for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyut3GyQtn0 On cheap speakers, you can barely hear that bassy synth in the background sliding all over the place until the filter opens up in the second half of the track. The first time I listened to it on headphones it blew my mind that it had been there all along. Socket Ryanist fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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# ? Feb 16, 2013 11:31 |
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Socket Ryanist posted:Depends on what kind of music you like. A lot of more artsy electronic music has a lot of "weird" content in the low end that can sound terrible if it just happens to line up badly with the frequency response of your speakers. Obviously, if all your music is really well-mastered, you'll absolutely love speakers that bring out every little detail, that's really they way it should be. "Flattering" speakers aren't cheap or bad, though, there's an art to flattery without overemphasis. I've got a set of Audiovector C2s, and while they hide most of the warts of modern music production, they still bring enough detail to the table to be interesting. A lot bad mastering that I can easily pick out on my headphones, the speakers just sort of gracefully gloss over. It's still there, but I have to concentrate a lot more to find it. So if I'm listening to something that's got iffy mastering, listening on the speakers is a lot more enjoyable. Tracks like the one you posted go through really well both ways. I should have added at third category of speakers, the "crap speaker". Basically anything make of plastic, silver-colored plastic in particular. Bonus points if the speakers have lights in them for some reason. For instance, my sister has one of those cheapo 5.1 "1200 watt" systems (powered by a teeny-tiny wall wart) and you literally cannot hear the kick drum in the beginning of Iron Man by Black Sabbath. It simply isn't there, it's absurd. That is the lowest common denominator, and the fact that music is being mixed for something that cheap and crappy pains me. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Feb 16, 2013 |
# ? Feb 16, 2013 12:09 |
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baka kaba posted:Expanders sure, that's basically undoing the mastering compression so they can remake it, but as far as multiband compressiona nd limiting goes, that's what I was getting at - if it's already massively compressed in every band, to within an inch of its life, there's a lot less a radio station or whatever can do to put its signature stamp on there, without trying to reverse a bunch of it first. I mean expanding it and recompressing it into a lovely track might be super easy and not a problem at all, but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not I was just trying to point out that multiband compression isn't just a tool to eke out more palatable compression than a wide-band compressor, it's also an EQ since each band has separate settings for drive, expansion, compression etc. that will affect the EQ of the sound. I think this resultant EQ is often more noticeable than differences in the brickwalling between the master and the radio version, and there's not much a mastering engineering can do to prevent this EQing. bigtom posted:The newer processing rigs can detect material already compressed/limited and will bypass those sections of the processor and only do a minimal amount of EQ and final limiting to keep it at legal mod levels. We are trying to put cleaner audio on the air....it's just that we only now have the tools to do it. Megiddo fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 16, 2013 |
# ? Feb 16, 2013 14:22 |
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Megiddo posted:Which ones can do this? The Wheatstone AirAura processors? I'm about to take over a college radio station that has the quietest audio in the area and might be looking for a processor. I didn't get to see their transmitter site yet, so I've no clue what they're running now (if anything). I'm expecting the worst at every turn since they have an Arrakis console The Wheatstone AirAura can (these are the boxes that are on the air where I work). I can put you in touch with my friend at Wheatstone if you want to demo the box - he's the guy who goes around the country tweaking the boxes for customers, so he can show you how to get the best sound out of it. PM me for more info if you want, or you can email me at doowop.guy at gmail.com. Arrakis? *shudder*. The only thing worse than the build quality is their tech support - when I rebuilt my college station I went with a Audioarts D75 for on air, and we recapped the old board (a A50) for production work. If you can ditch the board, go with audio over IP - makes life much easier than having to punch everything down... Back on topic - tried on the Beats heaphones in BestBuy the other day...sounded like someone EQ'ed them for nothing but thump. Mids and highs weren't really there: my $100 Sony MDR-7506's sounded better than the $300 Beats. Amazed that they have the chutzpah to put "HD" on them....
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# ? Feb 16, 2013 19:18 |
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bigtom posted:Back on topic - tried on the Beats heaphones in BestBuy the other day...sounded like someone EQ'ed them for nothing but thump. Mids and highs weren't really there: my $100 Sony MDR-7506's sounded better than the $300 Beats. Amazed that they have the chutzpah to put "HD" on them.... A student of mine had these big rear end things that looked like someone sawed the ends off of a JVC Kaboom, they were huge and all I could hear was "Thump, thump, thump" coming out of the giant PVC monstrosities. I asked the kid if I could try them and played a few tests on youtube (I know, not the best way). Just like you mentioned, they were 80% bass and 5% mid, 5% high, and 10% static. Look at any headphone box, 9 times out of 10 the first thing they mention, or put the most emphasis on is the Bass.
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# ? Feb 16, 2013 21:39 |
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Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money?
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:14 |
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Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well. I find beats to be ridiculous, overpriced fashion accessories, but they're not bad in any way. As for the above multi-page thing about compressed ranges, it's been my understanding that "what worked for radio works for earbuds" is pretty much the reason you're still seeing it happen - you won't hear all the music walking down the road if its not compressed, so they compress a lot of it. For instance, if I listen to Die Moldau walking down the road with earbuds, I can barely hear the score for the first 5 minutes whereas this is perfectly audible in a quiet room. A lot of people vastly underestimate the effect of sound floor on music playback.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:16 |
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Khablam posted:Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well. But if I need to compress the audio in this way, it should be something I do via EQ on my player, not how the music comes out of the box. Everybody consumes music digitally now. There's no reason not to give people pristine copies and let them pick the "it's fuckin' noisy out here" preset on their iPod or whatever to apply any compression they find necessary.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:20 |
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Skeleton Ape posted:Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money? Being all about thumping bass is kind of the whole concept of the product line.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:52 |
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Skeleton Ape posted:Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money? The general consensus over at Head-fi is that the entire Beatz line is a waste of money as they do not sound anywhere good enough to justify the cost. I have not spent much time there, so I don't know how spergy and prone to magic rocks they are, but they seem to know phones. For that money I'd probably get some professional studio phones off ebay or something that looks and sounds nice. I missed getting a pair of sansui ss 100's that went for $30 (no reserve) because I was 5 minutes late getting home from work.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 01:43 |
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Khablam posted:Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well. This guy does measurements of different headphones in a rather scientific way and then reviews them. The Beats by Dre Solos have the worst frequency response of any headphone he's reviewed aside from the $2 American Airlines headphones they give you on a plane. http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-solo However, his review of the SkullCandy Mix Master Mike (The beastie boys DJ) is quite favourable.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 04:57 |
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Headphones are broken in in mere seconds. The components don't move enough to venture outside of the flex in the materials used. That said, beats headphones are targeted at the sort of kids that stuff a huge bass box into the boot of their first car. Sound quality isn't a priority here.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 12:25 |
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When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:00 |
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With Monster's involvement, it should be clear that there's a huge gap between claim and fact. But the purpose of marketing in general is to sell apples as bananas. You'd think any halfwit would know this by now. But seeing the demography involved...
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:04 |
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Speaking of marketing, are Koss Portapotties still a thing?
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:07 |
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KozmoNaut posted:When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality. The best part is that they don't seem to list any kind of specifications for the drat things on their website. This is probably the most technincal thing on their page: quote:Weight (kg): 0.16
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 14:04 |
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DELETED posted:The best part is that they don't seem to list any kind of specifications for the drat things on their website. This is probably the most technincal thing on their page: To be fair, weight and length of cable are pretty much the most important specs for headphones.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 14:10 |
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I don't think Monster has anything to do with them anymore: http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 15:24 |
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Jerry Cotton posted:Speaking of marketing, are Koss Portapotties still a thing? I'm not sure what you mean - the PortaPros are still a really good option in their price segment, so I guess yes? For general headphone discussion, why not take it to the headphone thread? Looks like this thread is not making fun of audiophiles as much as making fun of gullible low-end consumers, now.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 15:59 |
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KozmoNaut posted:When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality. They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound. I mean jeez, look at the name, its "Beats" not "Accurate broadband frequency responses".
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 17:24 |
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Install Gentoo posted:They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound. They're not, though. The bass response is much lower quality than other headphones in their class. They're bad headphones.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 18:18 |
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Install Gentoo posted:They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound. Did you real the link I posted above with the frequency response charts ? These headphones promote very loud mid tones, kill the treble and the bass. There is an actual headphone on the market with a worse response than Bose products.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 19:18 |
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:But if I need to compress the audio in this way, it should be something I do via EQ on my player, not how the music comes out of the box. Everybody consumes music digitally now. There's no reason not to give people pristine copies and let them pick the "it's fuckin' noisy out here" preset on their iPod or whatever to apply any compression they find necessary. Yup. Awesome in theory. However, most pop-music consumers aren't going to care / think they care enough about this, or lack a player that can do this properly. So when given different pieces of music to listen to they will genuinely prefer the version that is more compressed. As much as I agree with you, it's done for very real reasons that consistently test to be true.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 19:29 |
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Khablam posted:Yup. Awesome in theory. However, most pop-music consumers aren't going to care / think they care enough about this, or lack a player that can do this properly. So when given different pieces of music to listen to they will genuinely prefer the version that is more compressed. Considering how cheap DSPs and EQing is these days, both in cost and computing power, it's about time that we do something about the solitary volume control that's a part of every amplifier and music player in production. Replace it with two controls, one marked 'volume' and one marked 'loudness'. The volume control should function exactly like it does today, raising the overall volume of the music. The loudness should function like a compressor, changing how loud the music sounds without altering the volume, in effect applying more and more "radio sound processing" or normalization the farther your turn it up. For simplification, implement it as a "party mode" button on mass-market stereos. This would also be awesome for watching movies without disturbing neighbors. Turn loudness to max and volume way down, turning down the loud sound effects and turning up the speech track. Why isn't this part of every stereo made for the last 5-10 years? We have the technology and computing power to make it happen. I know a lot of people have talked about something like this, in this thread too.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:44 |
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KozmoNaut posted:When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality. There're images out there where Dr. Dre is shown using Sony MDR Studio headphones. I doubt he's looking for a headphone that's coloring his sound when he's in the studio.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:52 |
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Shadowhand00 posted:There're images out there where Dr. Dre is shown using Sony MDR Studio headphones. I doubt he's looking for a headphone that's coloring his sound when he's in the studio. That pretty much says everything about the quality of his Beats "studio" headphones. The headphones I have are called "studio" because actual musicians and sound techs use them in actual studios for actual music production. Fancy that
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:54 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 15:34 |
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KozmoNaut posted:Considering how cheap DSPs and EQing is these days, both in cost and computing power, it's about time that we do something about the solitary volume control that's a part of every amplifier and music player in production. That reminds me of my favourite 80s stereo feature, the Loudness button. It's pretty funny when literally all it does is apply +10 dB to 60 Hz, especially when the stereo also has bass/treble knobs that already do +-10dB adjustments.
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# ? Feb 18, 2013 22:14 |