Compressed vs. "Remastered" CDs

Very informative folks. I plumbed by CD collection again and the ear agrees with you Gtfour45 & Mlsstl. Some of my "remastered" CDs are clearly superior to the early 80's CD releases, and also superior to the original vinyl (sorry analogists). Some of them, though, are victims of the "loudness wars." I find it interesting that the volume control on my Musical Fidelity preamp can change as much as 45 degrees after playing one of the boomy, bloated & butchered discs. It seems to me that better quality offerings come from Rounder, Warner Bros., Rhino and a the smaller labels. Any way to avoid the "loudness" without buying first??

Klipschking wrote:

Any way to avoid the "loudness" without buying first??

There are a couple of possibilities. One is to go by label. For example. In the rock & jazz world, Rhino is overall quite meticulous about sound quality and almost always good.

Second, you could see if the library or a friend has the release and sample their copy before you buy.

Third, see if the release has been reviewed. That works well if you are familiar with the individual reviewer, but is a bit more erratic if you aren't.

Singleendedsingle wrote:

Using compressed cd's may reduce sound quality, specially if the compression method is Lossy audio compression.

You're confusing two separate issues. "Compression" as used in the recording studio compresses the dynamic range of a recording. The soft sounds are made louder and the loud sounds reduced in volume. This can make a recording more listenable in a noisy environment such as a car or for background play, but robs the music of its live, dynamic impact when played on a better system.

File "compression" refers to digital computer file formats for song storage. This is done to save file space and/or make files smaller so they transmit more quickly over the internet. FLAC and lossless WMA and Apple formats reduce file size but do not change the data. This is similar to a "Zip" file for music. MP3, M4A and other "lossy" formats actually throw away part of the music to achieve a greater degree of file size reduction. This latter form of compression has nothing to do with the studio processing a recording engineer or producer may choose to do on a recording.

Gtfour45,

Funny you mention Deep Purple specifically. I had all the Deep Purple cuts on my server cued up the other day, which included original Machine Head CD master and recent remasterings of certain songs and took note of what you are talking about in essence. The newer remasters were superior in every way. They were also considerably louder on average.

KlipschKing, yeah, the difference in volume control levels can be considerable from many older CDs to most newer CDs.

On thing I have experimented with is a setting in Windows Media Player Library setup that would seem to indicate some type of volume leveling is applied to cuts as they are played, which also has some server performance overhead that goes along with it. I have tried this but not done a careful a/b listening test to determine its effects.

Anybody know more about this feature on Windows Media Player? It sounds useful perhaps if it works though the result might be something somewhat different than what the producer intended?

Gtfour45,

Funny you mention Deep Purple specifically. I had all the Deep Purple cuts on my server cued up the other day, which included original Machine Head CD master and recent remasterings of certain songs and took note of what you are talking about in essence. The newer remasters were superior in every way. They were also considerably louder on average.

KlipschKing, yeah, the difference in volume control levels can be considerable from many older CDs to most newer CDs.

On thing I have experimented with is a setting in Windows Media Player Library setup that would seem to indicate some type of volume leveling is applied to cuts as they are played, which also has some server performance overhead that goes along with it. I have tried this but not done a careful a/b listening test to determine its effects.

Anybody know more about this feature on Windows Media Player? It sounds useful perhaps if it works though the result might be something somewhat different than what the producer intended? I'm guessing it just applies a fixed level boost to everything before it gets served up to make lower volume CDs match better to higher volume ones, but the devil would be in the details.

I have a vague recollection of their being a web site that listed CDs that people thought were overly compressed. I tried a quick Google search but I'm at work and many of the sites are blocked.