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Depends on what they did

Posted by mls-stl on March 11, 2012 at 09:54:58

In Reply to: Telltale signs of compression? posted by Awacs on March 10, 2012 at 16:28:28:

There's more than one way to do things at the production end of things.

Sometimes the whole recording is simply boosted in overall volume and anything over the maximum volume is hard clipped. These CDs can end up very in-your-face and harsh.

There is also a "compander" effect where there isn't necessarily a lot of clipping, but the soft parts are brought up in volume. This reduces they dynamic range. The result is the recording is more listenable as background music or in environments with competing noise (cars, etc.) but when listened to critically, the reduced dynamic range robs the recording of some of its life.

A lot of recordings are multi-tracked at the studio, with a separate channel for each instrument. Some instruments, such as drums, can have multiple tracks of their own. Modern studios make it pretty easy to compress or limit one track and not another, or to apply different amounts to different tracks.

Compression and limiting by a skilled engineer on a per-track basis who isn't being heavy-handed can be hard to spot.

I recall taking a look at a Lucinda Williams track a few years back and noticed the visual display indicated all of the drum strikes were all of absolutely uniform intensity. That's something that was impossible in the old analog days - one would see several dB difference between individual drum hits over the course of the passage.

Such uniformity can sound interesting at first, but it often robs the recording of its "human" qualities. Sometimes "perfect" isn't as musically interesting as "human".

In short, what to listen for depends on how they limited or compressed the recording. And it isn't necessarily bad. Rock 'n roll, for example, depends to some degree on compression. The problem is, in these days of the "loudness wars", that it is easy to go over-the-top and end up with a recording that is harsh and annoying.

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