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Have you ever wondered why a lot of music DVDs don't sound as good as a typical CD, even the ones with PCM audio tracks?I was curious, and did some investigating. The results may shock you ...
Follow Ups:
A couple of music concert DVDs like Phil Collins' "Seriously Live" I got a few weeks back were very disappointing. I'll try the 5.1ch mix and see. Then I'll have to revise my training materials....
Diana Krall "Live in Paris" and James Taylor "Live at Beacon Theater"?Most of what has been said about these two are very positive from the reviews/opinions I've read.
Nice work Christine. The bleeding idiots are applying hper compression to DVD A. No wonder so many people turn off to DVD A and Hi Rez/multichannel audio.
Dan Banquer
I knew somthing was amiss but I've been fooling around with speaker placement.
Chris, I simply stunned how mastering equipment in studios evidently doesn't provide the most basic of fail-safe systems to alert the engineer of clipping. SURELY, there should be a red light (or something similar) which flashes whenever a max digital value is reached? In other words, whenever all binary bits in the bit word are "1" so for a 16 bit number, the alert should stop the engineer when a saturated "1111111111111111" level occurs?Also, having real-time animated scopes for all channels — such as what you have illustrated — should instantly convey (visually) to any over-zealous idiot at the controls when he’s got the levels too high.
Most tools have clip detectors. This is not the problem.The problem is a deliberate use of compression, peak limiting and over-driving music to clipping in order to make the music sound "loud". This has been happening for the past few years, and is one of the reasons my brother quit his job as a recording engineer.
One only has to listen to Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will" DVD-Audio as proof of this injustice.
Cheers,
Paul.
A great VST plugin. For free.Does everything you asked for.
No doubt that similar tools exist for other daw software.However if the audio is squashes with limiters and compressor within 'legal' limits these tools don't help.
It seems common practise to compress the 2 channel pcm track as it is most likely that it is connected to the tv's audio inputs.
Frank
I think it was Sony who released a bunch of multichannel SACD's, that were all sourced from accompanying DVD sets (Springsteen, Roger Waters, Concert for New York) a couple years back. There was ultimately little (if any) sonic difference when comparing the compressed DVD-V layer with the (supposedly) uncompressed SACD layer. Great marketing, though, I have to say...
-wolf
I wish I could say that this surprises me, but it does not.
The bi problem, as pointed out, is overcompression.
THROW AWAY those Finalizers, maximizers or any other -izers, drop the PPM metering & go over to using K-20 for multichannel & we will begin to get a bit of sanity back.
I sincerely hope that multichannel DVD-A does not end up going the same way, although it probaby will.This has been a pet peeve of mine for some time now, and things have got to the point where if we get a client wanting us to do this, we will try & point out why it is such a bad idea. Lets face it - if you think it's too quiet, then turn up the ****ing amplifier - it is what it is there for.
Have a look also at www.loudnessrace.net for more examples.
BTW - we would rather tell a potential client to go elsewhere than do this to perfectly innocent, unsuspecting music. I mean, why go to all the trouble & effort of getting everything just right to crucify it like this?
Finally, mix engineers are also to blame here. STOP automatically using compression on the mix buss. If it takes a compressor on the MIX to make things sit right, then you have got it badly wrong somewhere else.
Compression should only ever be applied across the mix in mastering, and only then at a ratio of no higher than 1.2:1 at best.
As for those damned brickwall limiters - bin them, or relegate to doorstops.If you monitor correctly, or even take a round trip to analogue in the chain, you don't need them anyway. Mix to no more than -3dBFS, and remember the maxim
"it's not about how loud you make it, it's about how you make it loud"
www.opusproductions.com
Multichannel Audio Specialists
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