Ridicule Audiophiles - Find the cat shit's resonant frequency

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Ron Burgundy: Dec 24, 2005; This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.

Pushing buttons? The skills died with back cueing records while pushing a jingle cart in with your foot.

# ? Jan 18, 2013 02:22

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 07:36

bigtom: May 7, 2007; Playing the solid gold hits and moving my liquid lips...

Ron Burgundy posted:

Pushing buttons? The skills died with back cueing records while pushing a jingle cart in with your foot.

Not when you run the automation in manual mode - at CBS-FM and NJ101.5 everything but the commercials was segged by hand. I came up working at oldies stations, so I was instilled to do it that way, and it's stuck with me thru the years.

# ? Jan 18, 2013 06:24

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

baka kaba posted:

Yeah it's meant to be loud and attention-grabbing, so it's compressed to hell and given a 'cool sound' so you'll prefer listening to songs on that station, or that's the idea anyway. But dead air is anathema to commercial radio, so the opposite is... an endless torrent of sound that never stops, even for talking or letting a song fade out!

It's always a weird experience to first hear a song on the radio, get familiar with it, then hear it elsewhere and discover how it actually sounds.

Hearing Wayward son on an LP really opened my eyes to how horrible radio is. The predominant station where I live just takes all the levels and put them up to "11".

# ? Jan 18, 2013 16:23

DELETED: Nov 14, 2004; Disgruntled

Blistex posted:

Hearing Wayward son on an LP really opened my eyes to how horrible radio is. The predominant station where I live just takes all the levels and put them up to "11".

This prompted me to check it out and holy crap does it sound much better. Any other good examples of songs that have been murdered by radio?

# ? Feb 13, 2013 18:02

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

DELETED posted:

This prompted me to check it out and holy crap does it sound much better. Any other good examples of songs that have been murdered by radio?

Basically any song that was made before studio butchery got to a level where they would find the ideal settings to play everything to sound decent on the widest variety of devices as possible. Almost all radio stations do this, and anything you listen to will even sound better on a CD (assuming it wasn't butchered to have everything at a constant volume).

The studio, producer, and technicians also make a difference. I seem to remember hearing that some classic albums were nearly destroyed because they were recorded and mixed in such a retarded and heavy-handed way. Apparently Bowie managed to barely save something mixed by Iggy Pop way back when?

A lot of the Radio fuckery boils down to how much that station technician wanted to "crank the bass" and "make it sound fuller".

# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:14

longview: Dec 25, 2006; heh.

I think the Iggy Pop discussion was in this very thread, IIRC he had done things like downmix multiple instruments per track and I think cranked the loudness to max for everything.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:24

baka kaba: Jul 19, 2003; PLEASE ASK ME, THE SELF-PROFESSED NO #1 PAUL CATTERMOLE FAN IN THE SOMETHING AWFUL S-CLUB 7 MEGATHREAD, TO NAME A SINGLE SONG BY HIS EXCELLENT NU-METAL SIDE PROJECT, SKUA, AND IF I CAN'T PLEASE TELL ME TO
EAT SHIT

Thing is audio engineering is a skill, and that includes live-sounding stuff (which usually sounds good live because of whoever's running the sound board). Great equipment will help but you need to know the basics of carving up the frequency range to get everything sitting nicely, and compressing to get an even volume. Throwing things together and turning them up gets you a sound like raw balls (unless you're into that kind of thing).

This is what I was getting at earlier really, asking if part of the reason mastering engineers brickwall their tracks is so radio stations don't have any room to stick their oar in. If everything's pushed right up there's not a lot you can do to push any parts up any more and reshape the sound, so it may sound overdone but at least the sound is consistent. Whereas with older recordings that have a bit of headroom (not all of them) there's space for dynamics and detail... which is space for radio to invade and go YEAH CRANK THIS BIT AND THAT and push it into a new, crappier, louder shape

# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:34

Ron Burgundy: Dec 24, 2005; This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.

Yes the Iggy/Bowie thing was the mixing of Raw Power. As far as the story goes Iggy handed the 24 track tape to Bowie who discovered that everything had already been mixed down to just 3 tracks, with no other copies.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 21:09

baka kaba: Jul 19, 2003; PLEASE ASK ME, THE SELF-PROFESSED NO #1 PAUL CATTERMOLE FAN IN THE SOMETHING AWFUL S-CLUB 7 MEGATHREAD, TO NAME A SINGLE SONG BY HIS EXCELLENT NU-METAL SIDE PROJECT, SKUA, AND IF I CAN'T PLEASE TELL ME TO
EAT SHIT

Hey Dave here's my mix of the album, I'm calling it RAW POWER I think you'll see why, laters!

# ? Feb 15, 2013 23:48

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

baka kaba posted:

This is what I was getting at earlier really, asking if part of the reason mastering engineers brickwall their tracks is so radio stations don't have any room to stick their oar in. If everything's pushed right up there's not a lot you can do to push any parts up any more and reshape the sound, so it may sound overdone but at least the sound is consistent. Whereas with older recordings that have a bit of headroom (not all of them) there's space for dynamics and detail... which is space for radio to invade and go YEAH CRANK THIS BIT AND THAT and push it into a new, crappier, louder shape

That doesn't really have anything to do with it. Mastering these days is done for the lowest common denominator - iPod/iPhone earbuds, lovely iPod dock speakers, etc. where all nuance goes out the door. Besides, radio processing can still radically change the sound regardless of how brickwalled the recording is. Radio processing usually involves at least dual band AGC, multiband compressors and expanders, limiting, etc. which will have a huge effect on both dynamics and equalization/frequency response.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 01:05

jonathan: Jul 3, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Two stories of Raw Power:

First, Iggy engineered it. 3 tracks containing everything. Levels all hosed up. Hands it to Bowie (Not really a genius producer either) who attempts to fix it. In the end you get the highest rated rock album ever recorded to have the shittiest sound.

Then, 1997 rolls around, and Iggy takes the "master" for that album, and runs it through this newfound computer technology and makes it even worse than the original fuckup.

quote:

In 1996, Columbia Records invited Iggy Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on CD. Iggy says in the liner notes that had he declined, the studio would have remixed it without his blessing. Iggy cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of Rough Power, his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of Raw Power sounded, and the fact that Columbia were going to release the new mix on its sublabel Legacy Recordings as factors that led him to go through with the new mix, which was undertaken at New York's Sony Music Studios in 1996. The remixed edition of Raw Power was released on April 22, 1997. In album's accompanying liner notes, Iggy states the following:

In retrospect, I think the little touches Bowie put on the mix helped and I think some of the things MainMan did helped, and more than anything else, what the whole experience did was to get me out of Detroit and onto a world stage. And also I learned a helluva lot being over there in England and I started thinking differently. It led to a very ambitious piece of work, and that's fine. But the fact was that neither Bowie's mix nor my previous mix could do justice to the power of the band or even to the legibility of the vocal�I feel that now I have the wherewithall, the position, and the expertise at my disposal to give this thing its due sonically, and I didn't have that before. So it's kind of like I'm finishing that off. I don't think you can beat David's mix, it's very creative. But this is just a simple, straight band mix of a powerful band. I feel like there's a closure on it and that's a nice thing.[12]
On the other hand, some fans � guitarist Robert Quine among them � felt the new remix was as unfaithful to the material as the original 1973 mix, and further criticized the audible digital distortion in the new mix.[14] In the reissued CD's liner notes, however, Pop points out that one of his intentions in doing the new mix was to keep audio levels in the red (which would deliberately cause such distortion) while at the same time making the music more "powerful and listenable". This new version is arguably the loudest album ever, reaching RMS of -4 dB, rare even by today's standards.[citation needed]
James Williamson and Ron Asheton have both stated that they prefer Bowie's original mix of the album to Pop's remixed version.

Williamson:
I personally think [the remixed Raw Power] sucked. I gotta tell ya that I like the IDEA of what [Iggy] tried to do, and I talked to him about it, and there's a lot of factors involved, but at the time, none of us liked Bowie's mix, but given everything, Iggy, when he went in to mix it, he found out that the guy who had recorded it originally had not gotten a lot of level on certain things, like the bass and drums, especially the bass, so he didn't have a lot to work with. Then Iggy, on his mix, he left a bunch of guitar stuff on there that probably shouldn't have been left in, and just odds and ends. Bowie's not my favorite guy, but I have to say that overall, I think he did a pretty good job.[15]

Asheton:
Don Fleming goes, "You know what? When Iggy's Raw Power mix comes out, I'll bet you're gonna go -- we always used to say how bad the original David Bowie mix of Raw Power was -- Fleming's going, "When you hear Iggy's mix, I guarantee you're gonna say, 'Man, remember that great mix that David Bowie did?'" So I heard it, I got the advance copy from his manager, and listened to it. Then I called Fleming and I'm going, "Gee, Don, I just listened to Iggy's mix of Raw Power. Man, I sure loved that old David Bowie mix. Was it ever great."...Basically, all that Iggy did was take all the smoothness and all the effects off James [Williamson]'s guitar, so his leads sound really abrupt and stilty and almost clumsy, and he just put back every single grunt, groan, and word he ever said on the whole fuckin' soundtrack. He just totally restored everything that was cut out of him in the first mix, and I thought, drat, I really did like the old mix better.[16]

In 2002, Bowie said that his original mix of Raw Power is "the version I still prefer over the later remix � it has more wound-up ferocity and chaos and, in my humble opinion, is a hallmark roots sound for what was later to become punk."[17]
Pop and Bowie's mixes were both remastered in 2012 for a Record Store Day double LP, by Kevin Gray and Mark Wilder, respectively. This remastering was free of clipping.

That is, until I ran Search and Destroy through WubMachine.

https://soundcloud.com/jonathan-cole-4/the-stooges-search-and-destroy

jonathan fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 01:17

baka kaba: Jul 19, 2003; PLEASE ASK ME, THE SELF-PROFESSED NO #1 PAUL CATTERMOLE FAN IN THE SOMETHING AWFUL S-CLUB 7 MEGATHREAD, TO NAME A SINGLE SONG BY HIS EXCELLENT NU-METAL SIDE PROJECT, SKUA, AND IF I CAN'T PLEASE TELL ME TO
EAT SHIT

^^^ Man maybe they can put that on Iggy's car insurance ads

Megiddo posted:

That doesn't really have anything to do with it. Mastering these days is done for the lowest common denominator - iPod/iPhone earbuds, lovely iPod dock speakers, etc. where all nuance goes out the door. Besides, radio processing can still radically change the sound regardless of how brickwalled the recording is. Radio processing usually involves at least dual band AGC, multiband compressors and expanders, limiting, etc. which will have a huge effect on both dynamics and equalization/frequency response.

Expanders sure, that's basically undoing the mastering compression so they can remake it, but as far as multiband compressiona nd limiting goes, that's what I was getting at - if it's already massively compressed in every band, to within an inch of its life, there's a lot less a radio station or whatever can do to put its signature stamp on there, without trying to reverse a bunch of it first. I mean expanding it and recompressing it into a lovely track might be super easy and not a problem at all, but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not

baka kaba fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 02:07

bigtom: May 7, 2007; Playing the solid gold hits and moving my liquid lips...

baka kaba posted:

...but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not

That is the idea, much the same as Spector had in the 60's, but for lovely iPod earbud headphones and small speakers in smartphones vs 45 RPM record players and transistor AM radios - so they do all the agc/compression/limiting before we get our hands on it to butcher it. The newer processing rigs can detect material already compressed/limited and will bypass those sections of the processor and only do a minimal amount of EQ and final limiting to keep it at legal mod levels. We are trying to put cleaner audio on the air....it's just that we only now have the tools to do it.

I'm in the middle of redoing the audio on a station I just started at - the big issue is that the STL (studio to transmitter link) is compressed (apt-X radio lines), so I'm already at a disadvantage to my competition. The other problem is that the automation computer that plays the music is all MP2's @ 256k instead of pure uncompressed WAV. I had to tweak the processor to compensate for that - after I get the MP2's out and convert to all WAV, I can re-tweak it again to take advantage of the better sounding source material.

Another station contacted me and asked to tweak their audio because the chief engineer is great at RF, but lousy at audio. Hopefully I can get them sounding decent. Like any other business, there are those in radio who have a "it's on the air..its good enough" attitude to things. And it drives me crazy to hear crap audio distract from good programming same as everyone else.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 05:09

Socket Ryanist: Aug 30, 2004

KozmoNaut posted:

You'll hear every little detail of a bad mix or bad compression, which is why they're no good for actually listening to your music for enjoyment's sake.

Depends on what kind of music you like. A lot of more artsy electronic music has a lot of "weird" content in the low end that can sound terrible if it just happens to line up badly with the frequency response of your speakers.

Like this track for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyut3GyQtn0

On cheap speakers, you can barely hear that bassy synth in the background sliding all over the place until the filter opens up in the second half of the track. The first time I listened to it on headphones it blew my mind that it had been there all along.

Socket Ryanist fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 11:31

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Socket Ryanist posted:

Depends on what kind of music you like. A lot of more artsy electronic music has a lot of "weird" content in the low end that can sound terrible if it just happens to line up badly with the frequency response of your speakers.

Like this track for example: [T�l�popmusik]

On cheap speakers, you can barely hear that bassy synth in the background sliding all over the place until the filter opens up in the second half of the track. The first time I listened to it on headphones it blew my mind that it had been there all along.

Obviously, if all your music is really well-mastered, you'll absolutely love speakers that bring out every little detail, that's really they way it should be.

"Flattering" speakers aren't cheap or bad, though, there's an art to flattery without overemphasis. I've got a set of Audiovector C2s, and while they hide most of the warts of modern music production, they still bring enough detail to the table to be interesting. A lot bad mastering that I can easily pick out on my headphones, the speakers just sort of gracefully gloss over. It's still there, but I have to concentrate a lot more to find it. So if I'm listening to something that's got iffy mastering, listening on the speakers is a lot more enjoyable. Tracks like the one you posted go through really well both ways.

I should have added at third category of speakers, the "crap speaker". Basically anything make of plastic, silver-colored plastic in particular. Bonus points if the speakers have lights in them for some reason. For instance, my sister has one of those cheapo 5.1 "1200 watt" systems (powered by a teeny-tiny wall wart) and you literally cannot hear the kick drum in the beginning of Iron Man by Black Sabbath. It simply isn't there, it's absurd. That is the lowest common denominator, and the fact that music is being mixed for something that cheap and crappy pains me.

KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 12:09

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

baka kaba posted:

Expanders sure, that's basically undoing the mastering compression so they can remake it, but as far as multiband compressiona nd limiting goes, that's what I was getting at - if it's already massively compressed in every band, to within an inch of its life, there's a lot less a radio station or whatever can do to put its signature stamp on there, without trying to reverse a bunch of it first. I mean expanding it and recompressing it into a lovely track might be super easy and not a problem at all, but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not

Oh, sure, as bigtom said that was part of the original intent with the Loudness Wars I and Loudness Wars II, but today radio isn't nearly as important and nothing about current mastering would change if radio or other sources looking to process their audio didn't exist.

I was just trying to point out that multiband compression isn't just a tool to eke out more palatable compression than a wide-band compressor, it's also an EQ since each band has separate settings for drive, expansion, compression etc. that will affect the EQ of the sound. I think this resultant EQ is often more noticeable than differences in the brickwalling between the master and the radio version, and there's not much a mastering engineering can do to prevent this EQing.

bigtom posted:

The newer processing rigs can detect material already compressed/limited and will bypass those sections of the processor and only do a minimal amount of EQ and final limiting to keep it at legal mod levels. We are trying to put cleaner audio on the air....it's just that we only now have the tools to do it.

Which ones can do this? The Wheatstone AirAura processors? I'm about to take over a college radio station that has the quietest audio in the area and might be looking for a processor. I didn't get to see their transmitter site yet, so I've no clue what they're running now (if anything). I'm expecting the worst at every turn since they have an Arrakis console :eng99:

Megiddo fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 14:22

bigtom: May 7, 2007; Playing the solid gold hits and moving my liquid lips...

Megiddo posted:

Which ones can do this? The Wheatstone AirAura processors? I'm about to take over a college radio station that has the quietest audio in the area and might be looking for a processor. I didn't get to see their transmitter site yet, so I've no clue what they're running now (if anything). I'm expecting the worst at every turn since they have an Arrakis console

The Wheatstone AirAura can (these are the boxes that are on the air where I work). I can put you in touch with my friend at Wheatstone if you want to demo the box - he's the guy who goes around the country tweaking the boxes for customers, so he can show you how to get the best sound out of it. PM me for more info if you want, or you can email me at doowop.guy at gmail.com.

Arrakis? *shudder*. The only thing worse than the build quality is their tech support - when I rebuilt my college station I went with a Audioarts D75 for on air, and we recapped the old board (a A50) for production work. If you can ditch the board, go with audio over IP - makes life much easier than having to punch everything down...

Back on topic - tried on the Beats heaphones in BestBuy the other day...sounded like someone EQ'ed them for nothing but thump. Mids and highs weren't really there: my $100 Sony MDR-7506's sounded better than the $300 Beats. Amazed that they have the chutzpah to put "HD" on them....

# ? Feb 16, 2013 19:18

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

bigtom posted:

Back on topic - tried on the Beats heaphones in BestBuy the other day...sounded like someone EQ'ed them for nothing but thump. Mids and highs weren't really there: my $100 Sony MDR-7506's sounded better than the $300 Beats. Amazed that they have the chutzpah to put "HD" on them....

A student of mine had these big rear end things that looked like someone sawed the ends off of a JVC Kaboom, they were huge and all I could hear was "Thump, thump, thump" coming out of the giant PVC monstrosities. I asked the kid if I could try them and played a few tests on youtube (I know, not the best way). Just like you mentioned, they were 80% bass and 5% mid, 5% high, and 10% static.

Look at any headphone box, 9 times out of 10 the first thing they mention, or put the most emphasis on is the Bass.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 21:39

Skeleton Ape: Dec 21, 2008

Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? :argh:

Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money?

# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:14

Khablam: Mar 29, 2012

Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well.

I find beats to be ridiculous, overpriced fashion accessories, but they're not bad in any way.

As for the above multi-page thing about compressed ranges, it's been my understanding that "what worked for radio works for earbuds" is pretty much the reason you're still seeing it happen - you won't hear all the music walking down the road if its not compressed, so they compress a lot of it.
For instance, if I listen to Die Moldau walking down the road with earbuds, I can barely hear the score for the first 5 minutes whereas this is perfectly audible in a quiet room. A lot of people vastly underestimate the effect of sound floor on music playback.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:16

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Khablam posted:

Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well.

I find beats to be ridiculous, overpriced fashion accessories, but they're not bad in any way.

As for the above multi-page thing about compressed ranges, it's been my understanding that "what worked for radio works for earbuds" is pretty much the reason you're still seeing it happen - you won't hear all the music walking down the road if its not compressed, so they compress a lot of it.
For instance, if I listen to Die Moldau walking down the road with earbuds, I can barely hear the score for the first 5 minutes whereas this is perfectly audible in a quiet room. A lot of people vastly underestimate the effect of sound floor on music playback.

But if I need to compress the audio in this way, it should be something I do via EQ on my player, not how the music comes out of the box. Everybody consumes music digitally now. There's no reason not to give people pristine copies and let them pick the "it's fuckin' noisy out here" preset on their iPod or whatever to apply any compression they find necessary.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:20

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Skeleton Ape posted:

Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money?

Being all about thumping bass is kind of the whole concept of the product line.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 00:52

Blistex: Oct 30, 2003; Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Skeleton Ape posted:

Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money?

The general consensus over at Head-fi is that the entire Beatz line is a waste of money as they do not sound anywhere good enough to justify the cost. I have not spent much time there, so I don't know how spergy and prone to magic rocks they are, but they seem to know phones. For that money I'd probably get some professional studio phones off ebay or something that looks and sounds nice. I missed getting a pair of sansui ss 100's that went for $30 (no reserve) because I was 5 minutes late getting home from work.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 01:43

jonathan: Jul 3, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Khablam posted:

Like most headphones, they'll lack mid and high response until they've been broken in a little. Giving them a test in Best-buy probably isn't really fair, especially when you consider the sound-floor is probably a lot higher than you'd realise as well.

I find beats to be ridiculous, overpriced fashion accessories, but they're not bad in any way.

As for the above multi-page thing about compressed ranges, it's been my understanding that "what worked for radio works for earbuds" is pretty much the reason you're still seeing it happen - you won't hear all the music walking down the road if its not compressed, so they compress a lot of it.
For instance, if I listen to Die Moldau walking down the road with earbuds, I can barely hear the score for the first 5 minutes whereas this is perfectly audible in a quiet room. A lot of people vastly underestimate the effect of sound floor on music playback.

This guy does measurements of different headphones in a rather scientific way and then reviews them. The Beats by Dre Solos have the worst frequency response of any headphone he's reviewed aside from the $2 American Airlines headphones they give you on a plane.

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-solo

However, his review of the SkullCandy Mix Master Mike (The beastie boys DJ) is quite favourable.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 04:57

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

Headphones are broken in in mere seconds. The components don't move enough to venture outside of the flex in the materials used. That said, beats headphones are targeted at the sort of kids that stuff a huge bass box into the boot of their first car. Sound quality isn't a priority here.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 12:25

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:00

Combat Pretzel: Jun 23, 2004; No, seriously... what kurds?!

With Monster's involvement, it should be clear that there's a huge gap between claim and fact. But the purpose of marketing in general is to sell apples as bananas. You'd think any halfwit would know this by now. But seeing the demography involved...

# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:04

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Speaking of marketing, are Koss Portapotties still a thing?

# ? Feb 18, 2013 13:07

DELETED: Nov 14, 2004; Disgruntled

KozmoNaut posted:

When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality.

The best part is that they don't seem to list any kind of specifications for the drat things on their website. This is probably the most technincal thing on their page:

quote:

Weight (kg): 0.16
Height (mm): 197
Length of Cable (m): 1.361
Type of Jack: 3.5mm

# ? Feb 18, 2013 14:04

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

DELETED posted:

The best part is that they don't seem to list any kind of specifications for the drat things on their website. This is probably the most technincal thing on their page:

To be fair, weight and length of cable are pretty much the most important specs for headphones.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 14:10

synthetik: Feb 28, 2007; I forgive you, Will. Will you forgive me?

I don't think Monster has anything to do with them anymore: http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world

# ? Feb 18, 2013 15:24

Hippie Hedgehog: Feb 19, 2007; Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Jerry Cotton posted:

Speaking of marketing, are Koss Portapotties still a thing?

I'm not sure what you mean - the PortaPros are still a really good option in their price segment, so I guess yes?

For general headphone discussion, why not take it to the headphone thread? Looks like this thread is not making fun of audiophiles as much as making fun of gullible low-end consumers, now.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 15:59

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

KozmoNaut posted:

When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality.

They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound.

I mean jeez, look at the name, its "Beats" not "Accurate broadband frequency responses".

# ? Feb 18, 2013 17:24

Twiin: Nov 11, 2003; King of Suck!

Install Gentoo posted:

They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound.

I mean jeez, look at the name, its "Beats" not "Accurate broadband frequency responses".

They're not, though. The bass response is much lower quality than other headphones in their class. They're bad headphones.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 18:18

jonathan: Jul 3, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Install Gentoo posted:

They ARE all about the sound quality, but the sound quality they are about is for a very specific range of sound.

I mean jeez, look at the name, its "Beats" not "Accurate broadband frequency responses".

Did you real the link I posted above with the frequency response charts ? These headphones promote very loud mid tones, kill the treble and the bass. There is an actual headphone on the market with a worse response than Bose products.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 19:18

Khablam: Mar 29, 2012

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

But if I need to compress the audio in this way, it should be something I do via EQ on my player, not how the music comes out of the box. Everybody consumes music digitally now. There's no reason not to give people pristine copies and let them pick the "it's fuckin' noisy out here" preset on their iPod or whatever to apply any compression they find necessary.

Yup. Awesome in theory. However, most pop-music consumers aren't going to care / think they care enough about this, or lack a player that can do this properly. So when given different pieces of music to listen to they will genuinely prefer the version that is more compressed.
As much as I agree with you, it's done for very real reasons that consistently test to be true.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 19:29

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Khablam posted:

Yup. Awesome in theory. However, most pop-music consumers aren't going to care / think they care enough about this, or lack a player that can do this properly. So when given different pieces of music to listen to they will genuinely prefer the version that is more compressed.
As much as I agree with you, it's done for very real reasons that consistently test to be true.

Considering how cheap DSPs and EQing is these days, both in cost and computing power, it's about time that we do something about the solitary volume control that's a part of every amplifier and music player in production.

Replace it with two controls, one marked 'volume' and one marked 'loudness'. The volume control should function exactly like it does today, raising the overall volume of the music. The loudness should function like a compressor, changing how loud the music sounds without altering the volume, in effect applying more and more "radio sound processing" or normalization the farther your turn it up. For simplification, implement it as a "party mode" button on mass-market stereos.

This would also be awesome for watching movies without disturbing neighbors. Turn loudness to max and volume way down, turning down the loud sound effects and turning up the speech track.

Why isn't this part of every stereo made for the last 5-10 years? We have the technology and computing power to make it happen. I know a lot of people have talked about something like this, in this thread too.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:44

Shadowhand00: Jan 23, 2006; Golden Bear is ever watching; day by day he prowls, and when he hears the tread of lowly Stanfurd red,from his Lair he fiercely growls.; Toilet Rascal

KozmoNaut posted:

When they market them with phrases like "people aren't hearing all the music" and claim that Dr. Dre uses them in his own studio, they're basically claiming that their headphones are all about the sound quality.

There're images out there where Dr. Dre is shown using Sony MDR Studio headphones. I doubt he's looking for a headphone that's coloring his sound when he's in the studio.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:52

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Shadowhand00 posted:

There're images out there where Dr. Dre is shown using Sony MDR Studio headphones. I doubt he's looking for a headphone that's coloring his sound when he's in the studio.

That pretty much says everything about the quality of his Beats "studio" headphones.

The headphones I have are called "studio" because actual musicians and sound techs use them in actual studios for actual music production. Fancy that

# ? Feb 18, 2013 20:54

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 07:36

longview: Dec 25, 2006; heh.

KozmoNaut posted:

Considering how cheap DSPs and EQing is these days, both in cost and computing power, it's about time that we do something about the solitary volume control that's a part of every amplifier and music player in production.

Replace it with two controls, one marked 'volume' and one marked 'loudness'.

That reminds me of my favourite 80s stereo feature, the Loudness button. It's pretty funny when literally all it does is apply +10 dB to 60 Hz, especially when the stereo also has bass/treble knobs that already do +-10dB adjustments.

# ? Feb 18, 2013 22:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Ridicule Audiophiles - Find the cat shit's resonant frequency

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