Compressed recordings? HiFi enemy 1?
A little compression is a good thing. It fills out the sound and gives it some weight. Too much compression sounds really bad. Flat, undynamic and generally uninteresting. Unfortunately, once compression has been applied to music its effect cannot be undone. BTW, it wouldn't sound like rock n' roll without a good deal of applied compression. |
I still have that dbx DX5 cd player in my bedroom system...it has settings for "ambiance, compression and DAIR"...it improved the dynamics of almost all cd's...I used to run it on a Marantz 2270 with BIC Venturi 6 speakers and then a Sony GX67ES until I did a full system replacement a few years ago...I have fond memories of it |
I think with music that has been compressed a lot, I have to put the volume really low. Even then it sounds too loud. And just bumping up the volume a hair has a big effect on volume. Sometimes I hear a song and don't really like the tune but it sounds good from a sound quality perspective. When I then look at the CDP (which shows playback sound level), the meter is all over the place. An indication of less compression? Hopefully with all those B&W speakers as monitors, we'll be getting better quality recordings in the near future. |
FYI, an interesting discussion by pro engineers about the how and whys of compressor use. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=004255 |
