Loudness War

Back in the day when LP's ruled the media world, these same complaints were constantly being heard

Yup, in those days you had to buy Japanese pressings and 12" 45 rpm (for clubs) of all the vinyl pop music if you cared about quality (enormous differences compared to regular vinyl). Both LP's and the small 45's were often made 'hot'. The CD Loudness wars has, however, taken this to a whole new extreme level of compression.

I tried a software called SeeDeeClip

It works but it cannot create sweet sound of uncompressed music from much of the crap put out today. IMHO the improvement is around 5 to 10% - so some of your worst clipped stuff may just become bearable.

T Bone Burnett is another strong proponent and advocate of quality and bemoans the loudness wars too.

No surprise there - he is rather a sound quality fanatic and likes to play music loud on his ATC 150ASL...

Essential Michael jackson CD package?

Yes the Quincy Jones (Thriller) productions were already fantastic to start with. Ndugu is an amazing drummer. Quincy Jones is a superb producer.

Why can't the recording industry learn from the most succesful album of all time - Thriller - recording & production quality counts!!

I would say Thriller is up there with the very best of recordings - absolutely. I have never found the sibilance and issue but there is plenty of attack so the midrange is not recessed as it is on many rock/pop albums (this will add to sibilance as attack is in the 3 to 5 Khz rangew hich overlaps sibilance from 3 to 7 Khz).

Frankly the balance is extremely good IMHO - after all Thriller cost nearly a million dollars to produce at Westlake Studios (one of the top notch studios in LA)

BTW - Michael Jackson used Westlake speakers most of his career - absolutely awesome speakers - you rarely see them outside of studios though.

The Dead or Alive original version is much better - less compressed. The extended mix has good dynamics.

The software I mentioned above can tell you the dynamic range and peak for each track.

It appear that you can send your files to the website and presumably the software checks the dynamic range and then adds the file to the list.

Here is the upload form

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/#

I have perused the database and based on my experience and specific albums that I have - it appears to be quit accurate.

I'm with Mapman on this. To me Thriller would have been successful without the high quality production, the question is would it have been the most successful album in the history of music if it sounded like most of the crap we get to day in pop/rock?

Blindjim,

Why disparage the most successful album of all time?

Why not give credit where credit is due!

I feel back then quality played such a small part as to be inconsequential.

Hang on. Thriller was part of the 8O's - an era where, as far as I am concerned, music recording quality peaked. So many extended mixes from that period. Works by Trevor Horn and Alan Parson for example - these 80's productions were the pinnacle of what the recording industry has ever achieved. IMHO

Just scroll down and look at Metallica

No wonder their fans are upset about the recent crap quality.

Also note that the new release of MJ Thriller is a much worse than the original 1982 CD (which I have as I bought it in 1982, although I am not much of an MJ fan and do not want to prolong the discussion but lack of "dynamic range" on some verions might explain why there are different views on the quality of this particular album)

Interesting that the Sheffield Lab Drum Track comes out the in the top 5.

And, for those who don't trust their ears, clear proof that the Beatles Mono 2009 remasters have more dynamic range than the stereo versions...

And the top 20 is all music from the 80 - I rest my case - this was when teh recording industry production quality peaked...

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?sort=dr&order=desc

Gawdbless and Mapman,

It is not the dynamics on the "loud" CD that is the problem. It is the complete lack of dynamics. In order to remove the dynamics of natural sounds it requires heavy manipulation to flatten the waveforms. As you flatten a waveform it eventually loses the sinusoidal shape and becomes square. A square waveform representation of an original smooth sinusoid is made up of many odd harmonics - all of which is distortion.

If you have a system that is forgiving (unable to handle transients and reproduce the square waveform accurately) then it will indeed improve the sound as this will reduce some of the higher odd harmonics. Another trick is to have a recessed midrange as the midrange is where our hearing is very sensitive - a laid back midrange will also improve the sound of distorted "loud" CD's.

On the flip side - if you play the Sheffield Labs Drum track CD (oodles of dynamic range) or any of the higher quality jazz, classical and much of the 80's pop/rock recordings then it will sound most realistic on an accurate system that is not forgiving.

The points you make are quite valid though and pose a dilemma. Do you need two systems - one for the loudness war CD's and one for the audiophile (jazz and classical) CD's or do you try to find something in between (a compromise). Another solution is to go to Vinyl - as the physical analog medium of Vinyl (or analog tape) simply cannot produce a square wave as ruthlessly as digital can - so "loudness wars" are inherently less of a problem on Vinyl.