DR varies greatly with genre even when performed live. I used to play drums mostly in small clubs in a rock band. Every style of music uses more and less DR. Most popular rock/pop performed live also uses very limited DR.
I don't know how you can honestly say there aren't many really poorly mastered recordings out there unless you've completely ignored pop/rock/jazz/country for the last 10-15 yrs. I've checked out a lot, and a dynamic range of 4-6 (i.e. peak amplitude above rms amplitude - in dB's - in the loudest parts of the music) is common, as is a frequency spectrum with the average amplitude from 5-15 kHz equal to or louder than the 300 - 2000 Hz range. IME, the better the system the worse a recording like that sounds, but from an iPod with average 'phones it can sound OK.
I have a lot of pop/rock (usually recorded in the '70's - '80's) with dynamic range measured as I described up around 15-16, or a full 10 dB greater (and that's just looking at volume above average; it's even more if you include volume below average) than what's typical today. I'm taliking about artists like The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendirx, Cream...hardly quiet or subtle music for the most part. Compare the SACD of "Some Girls" to the HDtracks version and you should get an idea of what I mean, and it's not just about dynamic range.
What you talkin bout willis? How can music be poorly mastered but still sound good in a "good system?" If you have a terrible recording, it should sound terrible regardless of the system. If you have a system that you can feed with garbage and it outputs wine and roses, something is amiss.
You must live in a very different musical reproduction world than I ... so many of my LP / CD's are mastered poorly ... I could claim the exact opposite (NOT that many "great" mastering jobs) ...
You must live in a very different musical reproduction world than I ... so many of my LP / CD's are mastered poorly ... I could claim the exact opposite (NOT that many "great" mastering jobs) ...
I don't know how you can honestly say there aren't many really poorly mastered recordings out there unless you've completely ignored pop/rock/jazz/country for the last 10-15 yrs. I've checked out a lot, and a dynamic range of 4-6 (i.e. peak amplitude above rms amplitude - in dB's - in the loudest parts of the music) is common, as is a frequency spectrum with the average amplitude from 5-15 kHz equal to or louder than the 300 - 2000 Hz range. IME, the better the system the worse a recording like that sounds, but from an iPod with average 'phones it can sound OK.
Hello rrbert. It looks like you and I see eye to eye on this. You can't make chicken soup out of chicken poop. While I have selected gear that is well rounded [sounds decent even with poorly recorded music, unless it is too extreme to put up with] when comparing a well recorded selection to a poorly recorded selection, the difference can be quite large. I just thank the audio Gods that when I put on an extremely well recorded selection, the listening session offers an almost surreal experience. After that, it's hard to go back to listening to a selection that is not so well recorded and there just so happens to be a lot of those in the genres you have listed above.
You must live in a very different musical reproduction world than I ... so many of my LP / CD's are mastered poorly ... I could claim the exact opposite (NOT that many "great" mastering jobs) ...
Hello rrbert. It looks like you and I see eye to eye on this. You can't make chicken soup out of chicken poop. While I have selected gear that is well rounded [sounds decent even with poorly recorded music, unless it is too extreme to put up with] when comparing a well recorded selection to a poorly recorded selection, the difference can be quite large. I just thank the audio Gods that when I put on an extremely well recorded selection, the listening session offers an almost surreal experience. After that, it's hard to go back to listening to a selection that is not so well recorded and there just so happens to be a lot of those in the genres you have listed above.
Are we giving too much credit and blame to mastering engineers?? It's not like mastering engineers are handed sonic masterpieces by the recording engineer(s) every time. I'm sure a ton of recordings were wasted long before the mastering engineers ever got their hands on them. I guess there should be a Hippocratic oath for mastering engineers just like the one doctors take: First, do no harm.
To be fair, that's far from unheard in the music industry. And whose fault is that really? Would you want to buy a recording recorded and mastered with crappy electroncis and Aural-dreck?
The problem as I see it is more that a system like Steve's becomes more like a Chinese menu. Too many spices are a surefire formula to spoiling the soup. So many different spices thought that one doesn't know what's screwing up the recipe.
check out Abbado's recent Beethoven cycle for some not so good sounding classical mastering, particularly distressing since the performances are excellent.
Heh try listening to Adele 21 for some experience.
So disappointing that someone with her talent ends up with the album screwed up due to mix-mastering; unfortunately this is a trend with other talented acts and musicians outside of classical.
But I still feel the album is more satisfying on a better resolving/transparent system from my experience, same goes for other albums.
I only say this as I do enjoy a wide spectrum of music beyond quality traditional genres, such as a diverse range of pop/rock/"lite" country-jazz-blues/etc that are good and appalling in equal measure
Are we giving too much credit and blame to mastering engineers?? It's not like mastering engineers are handed sonic masterpieces by the recording engineer(s) every time. I'm sure a ton of recordings were wasted long before the mastering engineers ever got their hands on them. I guess there should be a Hippocratic oath for mastering engineers just like the one doctors take: First, do no harm.
I've been trying to get this heard over the "mastering" mantra for a long, long time. Every step, every stage of the production chain is important. There's only so much even the best mastering engineer can do to try and rescue a bad mix. At that point a lot is unrecoverable and the best that can be done is put lipstick on the porker and hope it doesn't smudge. Obviously a dumb mastering engineer can screw up a good mix too blame that on the producers!
I think the latter is a couple of orders of magnitude more common than the former, unfortunately. A lot of good recordings are being destroyed for release in the mastering. The best evidence for this comes from remasters of older recordings that sound worse than the original, and the different masterings depending on format of new recordings.
I think the latter is a couple of orders of magnitude more common than the former, unfortunately. A lot of good recordings are being destroyed for release in the mastering. The best evidence for this comes from remasters of older recordings that sound worse than the original, and the different masterings depending on format of new recordings.
