Can anything be down about this? There must be an agenda!

Sam here if the digital recording is a direct transfer from the analog master tape why does the 1st press vinyl have stereo + stereo depth perception and the digital album has stereo + mono depth perception? and you can clearly hear the difference. when i remove the dynamic compression from digital audio the dynamic range is now the same as the 1st press vinyl version however the digital version still has mono depth perception which indicates the digital file is being manipulated on purpose?

To answer the original question, there is really only one thing you can do about this. Before buying a remastered recording check the Dynamic Range Database to see if the remaster is heavily compressed. If it is, don’t buy it. The only way to fix this problem is to not buy these recordings - seek out the originals. The Steve Hoffman Forum (link mentioned above) is also excellent for finding the best version and pressing of a particular recording.

Regarding the second question, the record companies did have an agenda, albeit a misplaced one. The original reason for hitting the master tape with severe limiting (compression) was so that the songs would sound louder on the radio. What they also found is that for casual listeners (non audiophiles) the compressed masters sounded better. When people don’t know anything about quality sound the compressed master sounds punchier and more lively. Also, if you are listing through cheap earbuds where there is a lot of ambient noise the compressed version sounds better because it overcomes the outside noise. People either don’t realize that the sound gets fatiguing after a short while or maybe they are just used to it. For them that’s how music should sound.

I had a recording studio for about 10 years from the mid 90’s to the mid 00’s. I did complete projects including recording, mixing and mastering for bands in the Portland Oregon area. Except for hardcore and metal bands where the severe limiting was part of the genre’s sound, I would always try to go easy on the limiter. However, I repeatedly found that most of the bands liked the sound better when I smashed the master all to hell using the limiter in Ozone. It was the sound they expected and they would describe the heavily limited songs as sounding "BIG."

There is some evidence that new remasters are avoiding the severe compression that we see in the Fleetwood Mac song. Steven Wilson’s work is a good example. There’s hope for the future but there are a lot of remastered albums where we just have to vote with our pocketbook.

millercarbon,

'A secret meeting was held on Jeckyl Island in which the titans of the music industry agreed to keep secret the details of how to make perfect digital. They all knew the key to long term profits was to slowly and gradually year by year go from absolute crap to slightly less absolute crap.'


If you look at all the various Pop/Rock remasters/reissues/box sets/ Hi-Res downloads etc it's all too to easy to draw the same conclusion that the decision not offer definitive digital remasters is a deliberate one.

Just look at how many times the back catalogues from the likes of The Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, The Smiths etc have all been reissued without anything yet like a definitive version.

Even today in far too many cases the original 1980s CD issues are still deemed the best. Definitive digital releases are few and far between, at least as far as popular music goes.

The two exceptions to my ears are the back catalogues of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Those CDs already sound excellent and I'm not expecting any further improvements there.

100% dynamic compression can be removed from digital audio without the use of denoisers or declippers using the iir filter in foobar2000

I don't think so, once a track has been compressed the only way to "undo" it is by having the original tapes. You can't add something back that isn't there in the first place. 

@guitarsam Don’t know where you get your info. But it’s mostly wrong.