Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm not really into anything NIN has done since the Downward Spiral, but you gotta love how Trent is pushing things forward, forging new ground with how he distributes his music. Word from Mr Reznor:

http://theslip.nin.com/



Even 24/96 WAVE format! God damn, that is sweeeeeeeeeet! THIS IS THE WAY MUSIC SHOULD BE GETTING DISTRIBUTED! Free downloadable uncompressed files plus physical formats for those who want a "thing". I hope he makes a shit load of money from touring this album and never has to be bled dry by record label parasites ever again!

I haven't listened to it yet, so it could be shit, but it's got to be better than the Saul Williams record he did last.

Oh CD quality? Oh, good, that tells me all I need to know.

*runs away quite quickly from a confused Pupil*

Hi!

This has already been discussed in the 'musics' thread, I believe. Would you like me to merge it together or leave it as it is?

While it's great Reznor is doing this, it's interesting how this, the Radiohead thing and other similar acts have made people forget something staggeringly simple: many record companies are arseholes, but without their backing, many artists wouldn't get heard. I don't really care if the majors go to the wall, but when people start going "hell, Reznor's doing it for free", they then start thinking all music should be done that way, and that indies are somehow ripping people off for charging a tenner for a new release.

crap.

this is why i never bother posting new threads, i can't keep up.

Edit: at Myoptika

I'll move them in here and make it look tidy, if no one goes all spazzy at me for it?

Don't worry about it. I'd (personally) rather have threads created that we've meandered onto the topic of before, as opposed to people not making new threads.

Then as you were.

Is 'The Slip' any good? Or should I give The Slip a miss?

It's free, so why not give it a try?

A potential banana skin, but could end up being quite good.

*shakes head despairingly*

And




(I just wanted to use this dimlie)

Is it possible to download this in CD quality?!?!

I thinking I'm catching on. This is a joke to snare, I think, Sheepeh into screaming at you? Right?

If not, then FLAC is uncompressed 44.1KHz/16Bit aka CD Quality.

*** QI SIRENS ***

Is there any way I can get it double CD quality, so it sounds twice as good?

Use a DVD.

I know you were being silly, but CD "quality" really is a misnomer - CDs are actually quite, quite shit at reproducing music.

<edit> and before anyone says it, no you can't just burn MP3s on to a DVD and have them sound better!

I should have not mentioned this.

There's a reason why my PC speakers cost £100 for a 2.1 pair, and my sound card is M-Audio; and it's not to play 128k MP3s on

</edit>

What about a Blu-Ray disc? Will that sound better than DVD-quality?

In theory, it has the potential to, I believe. It supports lossless methods of storing/extracting. However as precisely 4 people have a BluRay player they'd use a primary music drive, and would pay over the odds for BluRay versions of CDs, I don't think anyone's actually tried it yet. Correct me if I'm wrong there, someone.

The studios won't put enough effort in to their mixing processes before it became mainstream (as evidenced by the SACD format falling flat on it's arse, even though Hybrid SACDs work in a normal CD player). SACDs are set up to hold a decent quality track, with proper 5.1 mixing - but most studios just dumped a slightly higher quality version of the CD version on it, which led to noone really bothering.

Ooh, here comes a debate. Please justify this statement as I would totally disagree with you.

The main problem with music these days is the stupid mixing that shoves all the levels to maximum, compresses everything to buggery and then hacks off the peaks. So-called 'loud' CDs are generally utter crud.

As for the new NIN, I quite like it, aside from the first three tracks.

A lot of the time it's the mastering though, rather than the mixing. But otherwise yes, totally. On the plus side, I'm listening to a hell of a lot more varied music than I was just a couple of years ago, for that very reason. Something is very wrong when the new Autechre album is a silky smooth EZ fest, and a #1 single like I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor is a painful and jarring senses-shatterer.

FLAC is most certainly compressed.

There were " marks around "quality" for a reason; it wasn't meant to be taken literally

CDs were originally designed to replace cassettes, not vinyls. Even the engineers who invented CDs would say that quality wasn't their number one priority, more portablity, durability, and cost. After all, digital sound is pretty much always going to sound worse than it's analog equivalent purely down to the fact some information has to be lost (I appreciate it might be unnoticable to many, but it is factually "worse").

CDs only really took off because they were cheaper, easier, and smaller than vinyls, while also being "Good Enough". See VHS, iPod et al.

Notice how even given this, the marketeers came up with the slogan "Perfect Sound Forever" - something the engineers who made it would refute...it's not "perfect" when it's not capable of the fidelity of a vinyl...

[citations needed]

Yes, I do use CDs. Yes, I still use vinyls and still buy vinyls quite a lot. Yes, I do have some shitty quality MP3's in my collection. I won't puke upon hearing one, but through a really good pair of speakers the difference is quite, quite noticable. Maybe it's because I'm younger than most of you and haven't been to many "loud" concerts/festivals my ears aren't "damaged", I dunno; but I can certainly hear a difference.

I suppose it also makes a difference what music you listen to and are trained to hear. Some of Davyd Grimm's music (and no offence meant by this) I wouldn't be able to pick out details from CD to Vinyl, I don't think. But classical, or jazz, it's much easier to spot instruments in the background, and extra little melodies or sounds on a vinyl copy than (most) CD copies.

Yep, its all in the mixing/mastering that designates the "quality", which of course is incredibly subjective.

RE: CD "Quality", ie 44.1KHz/16Bit uncompressed audio caters for 99.5% (my figures, no citation) of listening experiences and listeners hearing apparatus, so is perfectly fine for the majority of people. If you have ninja ears, then 60KHz is the optimum frequency sweet spot where hi-freq caters for the golden eared, and digital error doesn't start messing things up at those high oscillation rates. 20Bit equates to 120dB dynamic range, which is the difference between just audible to the threshold of pain for humans where the audio will make you go deaf. 16bit is 90dB range, which is pretty damn loud, loud enough to get a good dynamic range, but as you say is rarely used these days since most commercial records are compressed to hell, so everything just runs at a static volume. producers fault, not the CD's.

Compressed in the sense that the file size has been reduced, like a Zip or Rar file, but not compressed in the sense that any quality is lost. It's still bit for bit identical (when unpacked) to the WAVE file original. Sorry, I should have been clearer.

That's two separate arguments, I think.

The CD producers certainly are cranking up the volume to silly levels, I think we'd all agree on that. The other argument being that there's not the depth or warmth to a CD, being digital as it is, than there is a good quality vinyl being analogue.

But that's down to all the equipment you have, you ears, the disc being played, the quality of the physical disc, and not least your preferences.

I'd still prefer a vinyl of [The new NIN album] than I would a CD version.

"Lossless", rather than uncompressed, ja. FLAC is best, I think, in an overall sense. Certainly if you want it to be cross-platform (not just Windows or Mac).

*Considers getting involved in the Vinyl vs CD debate for the 2,000,000th time, but instead punches Sheepeh in the face for being a cretin*

Come on chaps, keep it civil.

At least come to the table with constructive chat. Notice underneath what you quoted I did say there's more factors than just "that" at work and I'm not trying to be a zealot "OMG I AM DA BESTEST I HAZ THA GREATEST FORMATS OF ALL AND I RAWK!"

If you've got some proof that a digital wave can produce the EXACT SAME quality as an analogue one, I'd love to see it, chap.

I was totally joking about the CD quality thing, see the musics thread for why.

At a sample rate of 4400KHz, the amount of information lost is tiny, and anyone who claims to hear a difference because of that is an easily-led moron. Though send them to me, I've got a £1000 kettle lead to sell them.

The difference between how a vinyl recording and a CD sounds are down to the primitive method of playback required to listen to a vinyl recording. A stylus simply does not pick up all frequencies equally. That's why the record player boosts certain frequencies, giving the recording a warmer tone.

Analogue vs Digital is comparing apples and oranges. They're fundamentally different, and thus "quality" is subjective.

In a technical sense, CD's usual hold more information than vinyl. Bass frequencies below a certain level have to be in uber compressed Mono on vinyl otherwise your needle will never stay on the groove, vinyl can not cope otherwise. So technically, if you have sonically rich bass in your music, you're much better of with a CD. Also, Hi-Freq are only good for a limited amount of plays on really good quality vinyl, the more it wears down, the less high freqs remain. Obv CD stays the same no matter how much you play it (bar scratching the fucker and making it unplayable, natch).

The whole Vinyl is better than CD thing is a massively misunderstood debate. "Warmer" is completely subjective, its just the medium its getting reproduced on. I like the grit in vinyl, the same as I like the grit in 35mm film. It's just dirtying up the signal. Get a tube amp in your digital signal chain and that will "warm" up young music nicely.

Seriously, I could go on about this all day, my head is full of stuff about Psychoacoustics for my MA dissertation atm, I can hardly think about anything else!

How can a needle beat a LAZOR!!!

Also Sheepeh, you do realise that virtually all of the records that have come out in the last decade or so or produced digitally, so putting them on vinyl isn't going to gain anything over a CD, other than the analogue warmth/dirtiness.

Well my original point was that a DVD (or, I believe a BluRay as Myoptika suggested) would do better than a CD would, rather than vinyls are all seeing all dancing all knowing.

My CD player is a bit ancient as well, using a Technics SL-PG460A (it says here) with a Technics SA-EX100. Speakers are Jamo 110s.

I simply remarked that CDs were never actually intended to replace vinyl when they were invented, they were to replace cassettes. Which seems to be borne out by the fact that you can still buy vinyls, and you can't buy cassettes (much).

I generally agree with Sheepeh, apart from the use of 'vinyl' as a synonym for 'record'. My triple-disc Carl Craig Sessions is no more 'a vinyl' than the M1 is 'a tarmac'. Apologies if this makes me seem like (more of) a jerk, but pet peeves and all.


Depends on the mastering, but apart from that a vinyl release should benefit the listener because, even when digitally mixed, albums are stored in formats of higher definition than CD (hence Rez-NOR making available his album in 1.2GB form). It is in these cases, and when mastered well, that 12s sound better than 5s.

e.g. Mastodon's Blood Mountain doesn't really sound different on the different formats. Converge's Jane Doe really, really does. And that is a good-sounding CD.

[edit]
This is why labels like Rephlex, K7 et al release multiple-disc albums. The bass is usually bigger on a vinyl release due to having, like, two songs a side.

Really good quality vinyl has the ability to contain higher freq material than CD, but beyond 20KHz, only a very small fraction of the population can hear these freqs, and most of those are very young kids. Psychoacoustics can possibly have subconscious effects on the listener above this threshold, but it's negligible and if the music was produced digitally (which nearly all are these days) then the digital errors induced by the extreme oscillating speeds above 60KHz actual cause degradation in the audio, thus doing more harm than good in this high end. Also, many factors can reduce the upper freq limit of vinyl for example as vinyl wears, you lose fidelity and these higher freqs diminish with the age of the record, so it doesn't last, and the high freq limit of the inner grooves is much lower than the outer grooves of a record, due to constant rpm but diminishing space for audio information as the needle moves closer in (2 times pi times r, init).

The noise floor of vinyl is much higher than on a (cleanly produced) 16bit CD, so if dynamics is your worry, you're MUCH better off with CD (or even better, 20 bit audio as this equates to the absolute dynamic range of human hearing).

The reason the same album can sound better/worse on vinyl/CD is because it isn't actually the same album. A pre-master/final mix of the album is mastered very differently for vinyl and CD, the final mastered audio will sound noticeably different, even before being pressed on to their desired analogue/digital consumer format. It's only post Y2K that CD's have really started to sound decent, as the knowledge/technology of mastering to a digital format was still very embryonic before that, and using mastering techniques for vinyl to produce a CD would result in a horrible sounding album. In your example of Jane Doe by Converge, I would say the vinyl mastering engineer was much better skilled than the CD mastering engineer, or if it was the same guy, he masters to vinyl much better than he does to CD. Very different method for each medium... and your subjectivity of "better" plays a huge role in this too due to massive amounts of difference that analogue playback adds to the sonic character of the music coming of the record


PS I listened to the NIN album and its mostly meh. The singy rock songs are nicely produced (I love his use of percussion samples) but nothing special song-wise. I like the three instrumentals near the end of the album though, they're good.

Mm. My old Los Campesinos EP's sound lovely and ragged and funky, but as to the new album I really don't like the production at all. It suffers exactly from what you say, leaving little variation between tracks and making the entire album sound like a bunch of hit singles slapped together - when some of them clearly aren't meant to be so.

Known, but I'm not sure where that factors into my post


Eh, it's less about the science of sound for me than it is how good the sound is. Sure, CD has a more inky blackness, but drums sound more like drums on wax. You make a salient point about frequencies, but rare is the decently-priced CD player with solid bass abilities. Technological limits are all well and good, but moot if yer gear doesn't explore those outer reaches. I'll forsake cleanliness of sound for awesomeness of sound. Can you tell I'm a layman?


Regarding CD mastering in general, I'd say it peaked (subjectively) in the mid 90s. Late 90s onwards, they seem to have got caught up in the Loudness War. Compression As Mastering etc. Imperial Drag CDs sounding great; Audioslave ones sounding flat (outside the music). One Hot Minute sounding fat and clean, while Californication distorts vocals and bass guitar. Inexcusably bad form, that.


Whether it is the case of a weakness in mastering onto CD, the wax sounds better. Be it inherent to the format or resultant from human limitation, it nevertheless be. In terms of the subjectivity of 'better', sure. But the CD sounds like the record is playing in another room. That different.

In the grand scheme of things I'm not format warring, just someone who spent a long time with CDs before realising he preferred vinyl (i.e. it's better). And not for 'warmth', 'crackle', or other cliche, but because it sounds - on my system - more like actual music and less like a reproduction of music. And that's all I really want. Here endeth my babble.

Chrome Tapes FTW!

Addressing the point you made that "12s sound better than 5s" since you can have "higher definition" audio on vinyl. For frequency rate, as I explained, it ain't really gonna matter, and for bit depth/dynamic range, definitely not!



The irony of my argument is that, I'm totally cool with what you are saying, I'm just pointing out the important differentiation between objective and subjective "better". With objective "better" (looking at it from a technical angle), I could keep this debate going on forever as it is an apples an oranges argument essentially, but subjective "better", I'm totally fine with your judgment. A lot of CD mastering engineers completely ruin an albums mix through digital maximising and various forms of over-compression. Hence why I've said before that I dislike most modern Death Metal, because everyones idea of "brutal" just means all dynamics bled out through compression and no character is left in the sound. Gimme early Death, Carcass and At the Gates any day. Raw as fuck! But you can't do it with vinyl to that extent, so the vinyl can often sound better. Personally I love both formats; gritty old fucked up blues recordings sound wrong digitally cleaned up and "remastered" (read: ruined) on CD. But then I'd take stuff like Autechre on CD any day, because I want to hear that digital chill factor.

The epitome of mastering? See these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab


And fuck all these formats anyway. Tesla Coils FTW!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1O2jcfOylU&feature=related

So, free albums eh?

Coo, which albums?

Tool's 'Lateralus' is an HDCD, also.