LUNA 24BIT

[Spazzy Bystander]

Have to say though, I think the band has missed a trick with pricing these masters so high - I mean for a digital download with no physical production costs, it seems a bit rich to be charging more than double the cost of the actual CD - it's still only £8 at HMV. Surely you'd sell more copies by cutting the price a wee bit - say to the value of a standard CD, somewhere around the £10-12 mark?

On the other hand, given that modern levels of compression are a bit crap - why not just buck the trend and master your CDs without maxing out the volume in this way? - Seems a weird thing for folk to do with what presumably is work you're very proud of? Given the quotes from the two Johns in this press release, I would have thought you'd agree with me...

[joanne]

I wouldn't be surprised if EU law requires volume limiting on CD's, as they do with MP3 players

As for the price of the 24bit recordings, it's a very niche market and it's priced accordingly, I guess. How many people would have the audio equipment to justify buying master quality songs? And it's not just Luna that's expensive, all the masters on that site are more expensive than buying the CD.

[Spazzy Bystander]

It isn't the volume limits that are the issue, it's the audio compression at the mastering stage that pushes the quieter bits of the music up towards the top levels of the recording's range, thus making the whole song sound loud instead of having quieter bits and building to crescendos and suchlike - that's the change they were talking about in the Wikipedia article that Ripley linked to.

CDs don't limit the 'loudness' you play them at, you control that through the volume dial on your stereo!

This gif off the wikipedia page shows the change in mastering 'loudness' standards over time:



...and the two below show the levels on the original 1983 master and the 2005 remaster of Abba's 'One of Us' by way of example:



You can see from those that, as the quieter bits are made louder, the louder bits get 'cropped', cutting out the contrast between the different sections of the song.

NB One of Us wasn't my choice of example, I've just linked the images off the wiki page.

The rationale behind this kind of mastering has nothing to do with EU law or anything like it - it's just about competing with all the other dodgily-mastered tracks on the radio.

[byrd9999]

I haven't bought the albm yet, I was waiting for the vinyl, but I have 2 questions:

1. Would someone mind running Luna through these waveforms to see if it has been overly compressed? (It is not mandatory to over-compress a record, this is a deliberate choice made by the band/producer/engineer/mastering company. See the links to the two articles I posted in my previous e-mail. James Yorkston's new album doesn't sound compressed.)

2. Does anyone know if the vinyl will be produced from an analogue or digital master?

Thanks!

[Spazzy Bystander]

OK, I've done a few tracks, it looks pretty clear from here, particularly on Magic Man.

Bobby's Song:


Amen:


Magic Man:


Billy Jack:


Boats:


Dove Returning:


Feel free to delete this post if I'm treading on anyone's toes with this. I'm not arguing for anyone not to buy the album, I think it's cracking... but this annoys me, to be honest.

[joanne]

Why exactly do they do this? Is it purely to make it sound more radio-friendly?

[Spazzy Bystander]

As far as I understand it, it's just to make it sound as loud as everything else on the radio / your ipod / winamp playlist / etc. From what John says in that press release on the Linn Records site, it definitely isn't for audiophile / quality reasons.

Any comments, John?

Like I keep saying I'm not just being argumentative here, it just concerns me is all. Surely another solution would be to have a separate mix for radio from what actually gets put out in the shops? - Although I would guess there are costs associated with that...

[Henry]

Unfortunately in this day & age there seems to be pressure for bands in mastering to turn up the volume & increase the high end so the album does sound loud and can compete with their peers. I don’t agree with it myself but the thing with the aliens album is that it doesn’t sound compressed at all, it sounds almost analogue in parts & really warm and it’s pretty obvious that it wasn’t made for radio as it’s more of a work of art that the band must be proud of.

I think this band deserves to be heard and with ignorant listeners in this world if the volume wasn’t turned up they would think it wasn’t up to standard. I think it sounds fantastic what they’ve done & I don’t need to put it through computer software to see how much compression is on there & I won’t be getting annoyed because of what I see – I hear.

These guys have released their masters & not many bands do that, if any at all & I for one think it’s a great move & look forward to hearing it. The files are so big that they wouldn’t fit on a commercial CD & price wise I doubt they set the price it was probably linn records but I hope that they get a big cut of it as they deserve it.

[byrd9999]

Thanks for those pictures, Spazzy.

Ouch!

Does anyone know if the vinyl be compressed like the CD, or will they use a different master?

Does anyone know how to contact someone associated with the band to ask them this?

I don't like listening to music through my computer, so i won't buy the Masters, but I would pay more money for a nice-on-the-ears mastered vinyl.

[rich amino]

call me mental but i think i might buy this.

is a vinyl release imminent ?

ripley, i was just teasing. sorry.

[Spazzy Bystander]

Think I'll end up going for it as well. Money's a bit tight right now, so far I've only gone for the (£8) CD.

[J-a-m]

hmmmmmmm what an interesting debate we have going here.......recording and mastering things myself for playback in venues, I for one know how easy it is to hit the "normaise" button and peak everything out- which is what "everyone" has been doing for the last 3-5 years. You've got to give the lads their "fair dues" for giving the audiophiles of us the opportunity to hear this as nature intended...........