Digital Props Part II
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Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Yeah, we had our Audio Society ExCo meeting here Tuesday night and I was showing a few of the guys the before and after effects of certain processes. We tried it out on my latest mastering (jazz guitarist). They were pretty impressed (or distressed) at how good and bad things can sound!
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
I was distressed at what you have to do to please the customer - because it's definitely not what we as audiophiles want! Also, the guys who sat at your console twiddling knobs now have great appreciation of the hard work mastering is!!
It should be noted for the record that many things you say are abstract, especially when it comes to answering questions about exactly what you have done to your BIAB in order to make it sound better.
You have just reinforced what I said and what Bruce stated from his many years of experience in mastering. Your “customized” version of a waveform that never existed is not the same as saying that you can perfectly restore the original waveform that was compressed. It’s just jigger-pookey on your end that you hope someone might find pleasant and be willing to pay for.
I’m a realist and truth-teller Frank. You can dork around with a compressed waveform and change the way it sounds, but it’s just a guess on your part for the reasons that even you stated, and more importantly, what Bruce stated.
You're missing a key point, Mark. I'm talking of a service, not a take it or leave it, tough titties if you don't like it, approach. You pay $200 for a suit off the peg, but if you want the suit to have exactly a certain material, a certain cut, to precisely fit your body shape and make you happy, you can pay thousands. Which is not to say that's what I asking for, just that if someone wants something just so, then they may be prepared to pay for it. Even what Bruce does is one time decision, everyone further down the chain is stuck with whatever he and his direct customer have decided ...
Frank
Just had a quick look at the Flux Alchemist: what I would be offering would go way beyond what this plug-in offers in decompression and expanding. Any software that does everything can only have a small amount of room to do something that is highly specialised in intent, and the worst bit, the specialised sofware may not have a really, really spiffy looking interface ...
Frank
Frank
This sounds like one of the KBCO Studio C charity release discs or a compilation of a number of them. I have a few and the Jill Sobule, Joan Osborne and Tori Amos tracks are one one or another of them. The Boz Scaggs track I don't have and I don't remember the Timbuk 3 track being on any, but then again I pick and choose tracks from them for demo purposes because some are better than others.
I think there's a section about the Studio C discs somewhere on www.kbco.com - at least, there used to be. They're just up the road from us and great people!
I think there's a section about the Studio C discs somewhere on www.kbco.com - at least, there used to be. They're just up the road from us and great people!
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
If you want the more specialized plugins, then go for the other ones by Flux
Pure Compressor II
Pure DCompressor II
Pure Expander II
Pure DExpander II
We have the whole suite and they're great becuase they can be used up to 384kHz for SACD/DSD/DXD work.
People have had success to some degree with DCompressor, but the other one that some speak highly of is SPL DynaMaxx. Have you assessed or compared the latter to what you normally use?
Frank
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
My mix engineer had one for about 6-8 months. We played around with it, mostly just compression of individual tracks or drum stems. The only time we tried to decompress something was when bands would send their mixes in too hot. We could only get back 2-4dB more dynamic range before it started imparting it's own signature.
And could I possibly ask, what was this signature? And what made it obvious that this was the decompression processing failing, rather than getting closer to a usable version?
Thanks,
Frank
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
The bass was increasing and the mids were getting muddy. The imaging began to smear.
Digital and Milk
I don’t know why this thought/analogy came to me today, but it did. I was driving down the road and I started thinking that the evolution of digital sound quality is analogous to milk. When digital was first introduced, it was like skim milk compared to analog. It sort of looked like milk, it sort of tasted like milk, but you knew something was “wrong.” As digital (mainly D/A converters) became better, digital became like 1% milk. It got a little thicker and creamier and more like the real thing. More advancements as the years passed by, and digital became like 2% milk. With the better digital recordings today, we are approaching whole milk.
And now according to MikeL who gets to listen to 2XDSD; files, digital is now surpassing some analog. And now that I think about it, pondering what MikeL said about 2XDSD is what made me think of the milk analogy. So maybe now digital is approaching Guernsey cow milk. For those of you that don’t know what Guernsey cow milk is, it is high in butter fat and the milk has a yellow/golden hue to it. I believe it’s the richest milk you can buy (or at least once upon a time you could. Back in the days when you had milkmen come to your door with your milk, it was available).
And I realize that for some of you that are and have been dyed-in-the-wool digital lovers since it was first introduced, this is all pure nonsense to you because you always believed that digital whooped ass on analog straight out of the chute. And that’s ok as I’m mainly writing this for the benefit of those who didn’t drink that Kool-Aid.
In summary, I very much hope that the best of digital is still to come and we will be taken places we have never been. I’m optimistic that things will get even better.
I don’t know why this thought/analogy came to me today, but it did. I was driving down the road and I started thinking that the evolution of digital sound quality is analogous to milk. When digital was first introduced, it was like skim milk compared to analog. It sort of looked like milk, it sort of tasted like milk, but you knew something was “wrong.” As digital (mainly D/A converters) became better, digital became like 1% milk. It got a little thicker and creamier and more like the real thing. More advancements as the years passed by, and digital became like 2% milk. With the better digital recordings today, we are approaching whole milk.
And now according to MikeL who gets to listen to 2XDSD; files, digital is now surpassing some analog. And now that I think about it, pondering what MikeL said about 2XDSD is what made me think of the milk analogy. So maybe now digital is approaching Guernsey cow milk. For those of you that don’t know what Guernsey cow milk is, it is high in butter fat and the milk has a yellow/golden hue to it. I believe it’s the richest milk you can buy (or at least once upon a time you could. Back in the days when you had milkmen come to your door with your milk, it was available).
And I realize that for some of you that are and have been dyed-in-the-wool digital lovers since it was first introduced, this is all pure nonsense to you because you always believed that digital whooped ass on analog straight out of the chute. And that’s ok as I’m mainly writing this for the benefit of those who didn’t drink that Kool-Aid.
In summary, I very much hope that the best of digital is still to come and we will be taken places we have never been. I’m optimistic that things will get even better.
+1 ...
My only point would be, that it won't solely occur through better recording, much greater heights will be achieved in playback with the recordings that have been done up to now -- I've tried digital classical recordings from the early 80's that have been resoundingly condemned, and they can be fully brought to life. The biggest problem area, as discussed in the other thread, is if the dynamics have been grotesquely squashed, this actually requires some sort of repair to the track: playback on a good system otherwise gives you the impression of having a pack of very aggressive, take no prisoners, gorillas in your room ...
Frank
Mark,
My friend Charlie Richardson sent me this response when I commented on the quality of his digital recordings.....
"If you think the CDs sound good, you should hear the original master tapes which are even better."
I hope digital keeps getting better, but I am convinced it all depends on the recording engineer,equipment used,and setup. That is what Charlie has proven to me.
I'm confused, Roger, were the recordings digital or analogue? If digital, then absolutely nothing has been lost getting it onto CD, apart from meddling done by the engineer in his audio workstation. Remember, if anything is digital then the only way to hear, I repeat, to hear how good it is is for the data to go through a DAC, whether in the studio or at home. And that's where the damage, if any, is done ...
Frank
Pardon me Frank, the original recordings were analog and then transferred to the HD digital format. Until I had heard Charlie's recordings I had no idea how good a recording could be. I asked my self what's done differently here then everybody else? That's why I made my comment. Maybe digital can equal analogue someday, I have my doubts. I better clarify that "Charlie's analog".
Downsampling of high-resolution master files decreases fidelity, according to several comments by Bruce B. here. It would be interesting to compare the magnitude of degradation caused by downsampling vs. the degradation caused by the transition from Master analog tape to LP.
Lee
If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on one day people saying, "why did we think that analogue was intrinsically superior to digital, silly us ...". And there's at least one simple answer why: ultimately there is no limit to the degree of resolution of digital. Just to be silly, there is no inherent reason why in the right digital format you couldn't have an opera track layered over a heavy metal layered over a classical guitar solo, and on playback to completely, 100% separate them out, play them in 3 separate rooms and have zero cross interference, and "perfect" reproduction. Try doing this trick with your very best R2R ...
Frank
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