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Let's all sit in a circle and talk about mastering
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elektro80
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 6:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

What we do is just offering alternative products to the consumers. No matter how good or innovative what produce is, we are only bringing more goods into the supermarket. Hopefully what we do is essential, interesting or smart.
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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
What we do is just offering alternative products to the consumers. No matter how good or innovative what produce is, we are only bringing more goods into the supermarket. Hopefully what we do is essential, interesting or smart.


Yes, and basicly it all boils down to who you are catering to: consumers, or audophiles. But not everyone gets that distinction.
Cyx

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paul e.



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 9:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

intersting distinction 'consumers' vs 'audiophile'

cyxeris wrote

Quote:
The Well Tempered Clavier is wonderful music whether it's played back on a Sound Blaster or an Otari.


so maybe good music does not have to be 'audiophile' quality if it is in fact good music already


i think basically it boils down to a highly developed, spontatenous, instinctual/ intellectual reaction to good music that we cannot control

or even define
i.e what is the 'right and correct' music Question .. who knows Question

people will react to the almost 'supernatural' phenomena that is music, not as 'audiophiles' or 'consumer' ...but neo-cortex equipped animals


it is nebulous what makes us love music,
but the common denominator is our humanity and not
conditional factors such as what sound card we used or mastering technique

what makes good music and what is bad music or the right way to make it or the wrong way to make it Question

no one really knows..which is the great enticing mystery of music...

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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

sudden wrote:
intersting distinction 'consumers' vs 'audiophile'

cyxeris wrote

Quote:
The Well Tempered Clavier is wonderful music whether it's played back on a Sound Blaster or an Otari.


so maybe good music does not have to be 'audiophile' quality if it is in fact good music already


Well, what I am getting at is that music that is not good does not warrant audiophile-grade mastering, but instead requires tricks like 3 Ultramaximizers in a row. If your music is Spearsesque, it may require it to be passable, but when you have real art, real music, please dont destroy it by cutting all your waves' heads and torsos off.

Cyx

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paul e.



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
real art, real music,


very tricky to define what you mean by real ....

but anyway..check out the waveforms of an early bealtes track..it may cause you to challenge those assumptions a bit

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

i you 'listen' to John Cage's 'Silence' you can see what really matters in art

it is not the 'product' or the end result,

it is the intention or spirit of the artist that matters - the idea itself

there is nothing but silence in that piece..it is a kind of nothing, yet it is something 'real'

he throws out all concepts of audiophile vs consumer vs rms vs maximizing etc

so it can maybe art can be reduced to the artist's orignal intention and that is it this that makes something 'good' or not good or even 'real' and not 'real'

and not the processes involved or the form the work takes...

i think this relates to mastering..i just can;'t remember how heheh

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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

sudden wrote:
i you 'listen' to John Cage's 'Silence' you can se that what really matters in art

it is not the 'product' or the end result,

it is the intention or spirit of the artist that matters

there is nothing but silence in that piece..

he throws out all concepts of audiophile vs consumer vs rms vs maximizing etc

so it can maybe art can be reduced to the artist's orignal intention and that is it this that makes something 'good' or not good or even 'real' and not 'real'

and not the processes involved or the form the work takes...


Actually, the product in 4'33" is the sound around you; your enviornment provides the "music," and the still pianist and the piano serve to accentuate that fact, when faced with a complete lack of "music"

I think that several different issues have gotten mixed togeter here, at no small part of my own. I'll take a look at the Beatle's work in SF, but I am willing to bet that the destruction to their sound, if any, is a far cry from what I am refering to. That would make a nice comparison point if I do that article.

The real point I am making is that when it comes to your music, you should work to ensure that it comes out the ass end the way you want it to, and if you're A. going to have it professionally mastered, or B. master it yourself, please be aware of this onerous pitfall.

Cyx

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paul e.



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

and what i am basically saying is

some aveforms can looked chopped and squashed and still sound good..and some waveforms can look great and sound boring

so perhaps there can be no axiom on matering...no real fixed rules...

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

No there are no rules, really, and I dont mean to say that when something looks bad it has to sound bad, but you know what a normal waveform looks like. Now look at the peaks in this:

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

That just happenes to be the quickest example I could wind without being home.

Cyx

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

interesting

and what do you conclude from this Question

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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

nothing, other than clipping, of course.

Cyx

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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

or, the result of applying analog techniques to the digital medium.

Cyx

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

A section of Now Wait For Last Year - using digital mastering
I have tried to keep the compression restrained.. and keep some dynamics. This means that the playback volume will have to higher.
Now_daw

File number two, NOW_tape.mp3 is different. The intention was to go for a compressed sound but still doing this not quite in the modern tradition of "ultraloud"
Now_tape

Perhaps I should upload these as aif files too. MP3 is bad. The difference in sound quality is pretty big, but the mp3 encoding seems to kill some of important details. There is still a difference of course, but not that obvious.
It seems like mp3 encoding is kiiling phase, treble and details, even though this is done at 192khz. Now I really hate mp3.

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Cyxeris



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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Try A/Bing 2 identical tracks, one an original CD track, the other an MP3 using any codec, of the same track, converted back to CD audio (which is what happens anyway after the MP3 is decoded and handed over to your audio subsystem for D/A conversion out to the real world, on a nice pair of phones or a really nice pair of nearfields. With many, it sounds like there is some weed whacker action going on in the high freqs and between stereo channels. It's ugly, but almost unevident on current consumer gear, and I am talking 192k+ mp3s.

When they say lossy compression, they mean exactly that.

Cyx

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

True, MP3 is extrtemely lossy. I haven´t yet tested this with the AAC conversion.
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
True, MP3 is extrtemely lossy. I haven´t yet tested this with the AAC conversion.


I'm sure it's better per capita, but it's still lossy.

I really dont have a problem with MP3's for casual listening. I mean, you get what you pay for with MP3. And the convenience is complimentary. Can't beat that. And I'd still take it over cassette.

Cyx

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

MP3 is ok.. it is what it is. But I guess I will try ACCtoo. There is one setting in the iTunes ACC encoding which is meant for 24 bit input.


hmm... http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2003/05/20030507172342.shtml

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes.

Hm, I wonder if it compresses the original 24 bit audio, or converts to 16 and then compresses...

Cyx

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 8:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I've spent a lot of time with this. Ogg is far better than mp3. I'd be interested in someone comparing that one with ACC. Isn't ACC a Dolby algorthm? A good thing about ogg is that its open, public domain, so it keeps getting improved.

Can the iPod play ogg files?
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 9:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
A section of Now Wait For Last Year - using digital mastering
I have tried to keep the compression restrained.. and keep some dynamics. This means that the playback volume will have to higher.
Now_daw

File number two, NOW_tape.mp3 is different. The intention was to go for a compressed sound but still doing this not quite in the modern tradition of "ultraloud"
Now_tape


are both of these files from the digital realm and one is just more compressed than the other, or is the one labelled 'tape' from a tape source Question

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 8:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

wow..

the tape source sounds amazing

no competition for me in terms of warmth and the sounds ability to reach out and grab me

makes me worry about digital and emotional impact

thanks for those examples elektro 80

[btw a very cool track]

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

ogg files... I will check that one Howard. Dunno, who knows..

Sudden... txh. Both versions sounds better when in .aif format. There you can really hear the difference. I am not quite sure which one is really best, but now I have some reference files for further testing.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:
Can the iPod play ogg files?


Out of curiosity, I rendered a track as an .ogg and tried playing it in iTunes, no go. Winamp handled it beautifully, but not iTunes, and if iTunes cant handle it, I would at least suspect that the iPod may not.

Cyx

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Seems like the iPod will not play Ogg., Just tested it. If you have QT 6 on your PC, you will probably be able to install Ogg codecs.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I would expect this to be but a firmware update or two away.

Cyx

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