Man...if having a baby and having to reprioritize my discretionary spending wasn't enough ("What's the more sensible purchase...Lollapalooza tickets or 13 packs of diapers?"), this recent event was a (rude) wake-up call:
You know when your listening to a mixtape (or "playlist" for you whippersnappers) and that Led Zeppelin tune pops up amongst the somewhat-more-current tunes, it's volume barely audible in comparison, reminding you that one day, long ago, when your parents were kids, the fidelity of all recordings must have been similarly lacking?
Just the other day, a song I love from a record I love from a band I love was.......the "low" song on the playlist. There I was, on "shuffle" enjoying some fairly annonymous Strokes song from...I dunno..."Is this First Impressions of Earth on Fire?" when the comparatively hollow (in terms of fidelity) opening sludge of Soundgarden's "Let Me Drown" eeked through my headphones. Could this be true??? One of the finest opening songs from one of a decade's finest records...reduced to this?? Did it always sound like that? That tinny? That distant? It didn't seem so at my fourteenth birthday party...Chris Cornell turned that mother out.
But such is life...you get older, you have kids, your favorite songs actually sound shitty compared to the damn Strokes.
eh...still beats the hell outta Audioslave. ;)
My Trusted MOGs
Periodically, I can be caught belting out "You're a Pink Toothbrush, I'm a Blue Toothbrush" by the Smurfs right next to the Eve 6, Pearl Jam etc. - you adapt, it's sad, but true. ;-P
My Trusted MOGs
Can't sleep at night for the endless brain rotation of "here's the mail, it never fails, it makes me want to wag my tail....." in HIGH fidelity. It does not mix well with Black Eyed Peas, Jane's Addiction, et. al.
by the way, I'd get the tickets....diapers hold an awful lot these days ;)
My Trusted MOGs
Let Me Drown... fantastic song. I miss Soundgarden.
My Trusted MOGs
why doesnt someone come up with a way that when you burn a cd or make a mixtape, all the songs are playing at the same fidelity level. i mean, on itunes you can play your songs all at the same level, but when you make a cd the sound level is different. that really irks me.
My Trusted MOGs
I remember hearing that over the years they have been recording music louder but that the downside to this is that music is more compressed and distorted with less dynamics.
My Trusted MOGs
'tis true...I believe the intended effect is to trick folks listening on smaller, crappier speakers/soundsystems that the recordings sound "better" than they actually do, since a kneejerk reaction is that louder=better.
My Trusted MOGs
You mean louder doesn't actually mean better? Damn! So that's what I've been doing wrong all these years...
My Trusted MOGs
Inventing is right... I made a post a little while about shitty digital compression on the radio, and music like the Strokes is produced, from the get go, to work in tandem with this compression - to play more agreeably with as many different kinds of shit speakers as possible. Normalization has been possible through programs like Roxio (formerly of Adaptec... a long time ago) Jam, and probably Toast as well. I'm surprised iTunes doesn't have it, though I've never checked (I don't use iTunes for anything other than playing files). Though if you're normalizing an entire selection, it should be normalized to the Soundgarden track, not the Strokes track. The "quieter" normalization allows for MUCH greater dynamics, pushing the bass to the bass end of the spectrum, rather than the mid-range. The best example of the "quiet" phenomenon is when you listen to classical music on the radio. There's so much dynamic in the music that there's no way to get it to sound good on a wide variety of speakers.
My Trusted MOGs
It's not really a "fidelity" issue with anything recorded in the last 15-20 years. The issue is more related to the current trend for "loudness" - you flatten out the dynamics (variance of highs and lows) for the sake of sheer volume without overloading the recording device. It sounds louder, but if you're listening to the albums back-to-back on a good stereo (and not in some compressed lossy format like mp3), then you'll notice that the highs (loud portions) don't have quite as much trill, and the lows (soft portions) aren't quite so ethereal.
With older analog studios, going over the limit wasn't as destructive, but when a digital studio (as almost all are now) goes over the limit, the sound is instantly destroyed. It's called "clipping" and is the bane of all digital musicians.