Surround Mixes that have Brickwalled/Digitally Compressed Front Channels

[tlake6659]

Looking for a list of discs that have digitally compressed front channels but the rest of the channels are fully dynamic.

Some examples:

Beck: Sea Change
Foo Fighters: In Your Honor

Seems like a lot of Bob Ludwig masterings have this issue.

 

[HomerJAU]

It would be possible to write a recursive program to extract the FL and FR from all my MCH albums converted to FLAC on my NAS and get Foobar to measure DR on all those stereo files.

That would take a while to run.

I already have DR for all my MCH FLACs, so another program needed to report both DRs (FL/FR vs MCH) in a table.

I’d be interested to see the results.

I’ll whack it on my TO DO list.

 

[tlake6659]

More examples:

Metallica - The Black Album
Beck - Guero
Oasis - What's the Story Morning Glory

 

[tlake6659]

I feel that lowering the front left and right channels about 3 decibles gives a better surround mix on these albums.

 

[sjcorne]

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...pressed-and-or-overloud-front-channels.25999/There are dozens of 5.1 mixes from the early-2000s SACD/DVD-A era that have this issue, but not all of them are necessarily bad-sounding (for instance - Sea Change sounds absolutely amazing to my ears, wouldn't change a thing there).

Barenaked Ladies - Are Me
Barenaked Ladies - Everything To Everyone
Bruce Springsteen - Devils & Dust
Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
Billy Joel - The Stranger
Billy Joel - 52nd Street
Chicago - II
Chicago - V
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
David Bowie - Stage
David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name
Derek & The Dominos - Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs
Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Fleetwood Mac- Fleetwood Mac
Graham Nash - Songs For Beginners
Grateful Dead - American Beauty
Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead
Led Zeppelin - How The West Was Won
Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell
Porcupine Tree- In Absentia
Porcupine Tree - Deadwing
Porcupine Tree - Stupid Dream
Queen - The Game
Train - My Private Nation
Usher - 8701

 

[jsulzinger]

Many of these have had a newer (and presumably remastered) release ie The Stranger, 52nd Street, How The West Was Won, Sea Change, In Absentia. Do these also suffer from the brickwalled fronts?

 

[sjcorne]

Many of these have had a newer (and presumably remastered) release ie The Stranger, 52nd Street, How The West Was Won, Sea Change, In Absentia. Do these also suffer from the brickwalled fronts?

In Absentia on Blu-Ray is identical to the original DVD-A (though the inverted center channel was corrected). 52nd Street also appears to be the same, based on these pictures.

Also, I'm not so sure that Sea Change belongs on this list--I just checked my SACD rip through the DR meter, and the front pair of every track has greater average dynamic range than the original stereo mix. The only song that really exhibits that 'chopped-off' waveform look is "Paper Tiger".

5.1 SACD - Front Channels Only:
1. The Golden Age: DR14
2. Paper Tiger: DR9
3. Guess I'm Doing Fine: DR14
4. Lonesome Tears: DR12
5. Lost Cause: DR11
6. End Of The Day: DR12
7. It's All In Your Mind: DR12
8. Round The Bend: DR12
9. Already Dead: DR12
10. Sunday Sun: DR11
11. Little One: DR11
12. Side Of The Road: DR12

2002 CD (Info Taken From DR Site):
1. The Golden Age: DR8
2. Paper Tiger: DR6
3. Guess I'm Doing Fine: DR9
4. Lonesome Tears: DR6
5. Lost Cause: DR7
6. End Of The Day: DR8
7. It's All In Your Mind: DR8
8. Round The Bend: DR7
9. Already Dead: DR8
10. Sunday Sun: DR7
11. Little One: DR6
12. Side Of The Road: DR10

 

[jimfisheye]

I haven't really heard anything that has such a high level of brick wall limiting that it actually affects the dynamic range in a listening scenario. (We can pretty much make DR meters read whatever we want to.)

I'm not disagreeing with the premise, mind you!
I just want to suggest that it's more gross level alterations between channels and gross treble-y eq boosts that are the more root cause of problems when these complaints come up.

It's simply that you always see that telltale brick wall waveform profile in addition to the real damage done. 4 - 6db of brick wall limiting is pretty transparent. Sometimes it's only that much. The eq boost is where the shrill stuff you're hearing comes from. Over 8db of limiting starts to leave a mark. Muffled sounding and pumping sounds. Volume war can get into 12 - 18db sometimes. If that's going on, then I agree with the original comment!

Some of these mixes are front heavy mixes or ambient rear mixes. Then they get a 4 - 6db limit and boost. They honestly sound exactly the same after that. It's the mix itself that wasn't very good and that's the complaint.

But then there ARE the occasional mixes that get inexplicably mutilated. Crazy level alterations between channels and the eq blast thing. Some of them sound for all the world like no one could have possible listened to the final files with any kind of awareness. Like that recent Al Stewart release! Again, this is a LOT more than simply limiting and boosting something up a little too loud! More like "Let's let little Timmy play with the mastering console while we go out to lunch."

 

[tlake6659]

Some titles like In Absentia, Soft Bulletin, the Soundgarden titles have digital compression on all the channels. I'm only looking for one's that just have brickwalled left and right front channels, while the other channels (center and rears) are fully dynamic.

 

[tlake6659]

The DR meter will show some of that info, but you can only really be sure by looking at the waveforms for each channel.

 

[tlake6659]

My wish is that the surround sound polls would have waveforms for each release (at least one song) to show if the mastering is messed up or not.

 

[steelydave]

It's important to make the distinction between compression in mastering (which is, or can be bad), and compression or limiting in recording and mixing, which is a valid part of the artistic process, and has been since the dawn of rock and roll. The whole "Motown Sound" for example, stems from the use of this technique.

There's been such a drumbeat of "compression is bad!" from places like the Hoffman forums (which, as I said, is generally true in a mastering sense) that people new to "audiophilia" just repeat it as some kind of mantra without fully understanding it, because they want to fit in with the older guard who espouse it like it's a religion.

I agree that a lot of the early '00s DVD-As have some brickwall limiting, but I don't think the SACDs of the era generally suffer from the same problem unless the started life as PCM, as there were no pure DSD limiting or compression plugins at the time.

To my ears (and eyes) the Sea Change 5.1 mix has little (or no) mastering compression on the front channels. In almost any mix (mono, stereo, quad, or multichannel) of popular music of the last 50 years, the elements that get the most compression/limiting in the mixing process are the rhythm section (ie bass, and especially drums), and I think more often than not what happens in 5.1 mixes (and especially in quad mixes) is that it's those things that remain in the front channels (along with the vocals) while guitars, keyboards, horns and strings get pushed to the rear. This leaves the drums and bass kind of "naked" in the front channels, and if you run a DR analysis that shows individual channel values (or look at waveforms) it can make the front channels look "bad" when it's purely an artistic decision, and not bad at all - compression in the recording process is an important artistic tool, and in the case of drums for example, it can add a ton of excitement, making the bass drum thump, and the snare really 'crack' for example. Take Barry White arranger Gene Page's All Our Dreams are Coming True from 1974, for example - I bet if you split this into a quad mix that was bass and drums in the front speakers, and "everything" else in the rears, the fronts would probably be DR8 and the rears would be DR16 (or more) and it was recorded some 20 years before the advent of digital compression.