Is New Vinyl Exempt from Loudness Wars?

I know I probably shouldn’t say this but there’s no escape from the horror of overly aggressive dynamic range compression. Shucks, even SACDs and Japanese SHM CDs and gasp DOWNLOADS are not exempt. You might even say you rip what you sow.

The Adele that I am most familiar with is the tune "Skyfall" which was the theme song for the recent James Bond movie. I know and like it from a class at the gym (balance). I only have an mp3 download from Amazon so far and its not bad, fairly listenable overall I would say. Lossless digital version is surely better.

I do notice that orchestral soundtrack recordings on CD tend to fair pretty well these days. Sometimes they are exceptional. I think its because people hear this music on a large scale on a "good" system at any good quality local theater these days so the soundtrack releases try to retain that appeal. Although in general of course modern acoustic or orchestral music tends to fair better in terms of DR I think than a lot of more electronically amplified pop music. Same holds true with live concerts. If you go to enough well produced live concerts using electronic amplification you realize that similar stuff recorded and listened too at home is really not that much different. So if the goal is believe that what you hear at home is what you would hear live, no problem there in many cases.  If the goal is for every recording to sound like the best, well we know how that always works out....

Mapman wrote,

"The Adele that I am most familiar with is the tune "Skyfall" which was the theme song for the recent James Bond movie. I know and like it from a class at the gym (balance). I only have an mp3 download from Amazon so far and its not bad, fairly listenable overall I would say. Lossless digital version is surely better."

The lossless digital version must surely be better? Surely you jest. Take a gander at Adele’s page on the dynamic range database link below. See if you can detect why someone recently posted regarding Adele’s poor showing when it comes to dynamic range.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Adele&album=

Cheerios

Geoff,

All I;m saying is lossless CD res format is higher resolution than lossy (the .mp3 download).

But yes format alone does not assure the content so anything is possible.

In the case of the mp3 even, Skyfall may not be the DR champ in the grand scale of things but it is a very well done recording overall I would say though certainly not perfect by audiophile standards and is a lovely listen even if not particularly an Adele fan like me. I do think she is talented though and very much enjoy some of her stuff, warts and all.

I would only add that I often later get CD versions of tracks I like that I first download as .mp3 mostly out of convenience and in every case the ripped CD version is better by a small margin. I usually keep both on my music server and when one queues up randomly I try to guess which it is and usually guess right. Hows that for a/b blind testing?

Hello, Mapman. But we’re not talking about resolution, at least on this particular thread, only dynamic range.  Myself, I don't see any correlation between dynamic range and resolution but I have heard opinions at variance with mine. As I just posted this morning even hi res downloads are not exempt from trigger happy audio engineers in terms of overly aggressive dynamic range compression. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...