Better Music

I agree with Bob Speers:

"What happened to dynamic range? That's a question that should be asked of record labels, producers, artists, and last but not least, recording and mastering engineers. The question needs to be asked because we're the ones responsible for what's happened to our music. Much of the music we listen to today is nothing more than distortion with a beat. Great music is suffering because it lacks dynamic range. When music lacks dynamic range, it lacks punch, emotion, and clarity. The record labels blame digital downloads, MP3s, CD burners, and others for the lack of CD sales. While there is some truth to their constant whining, they only have themselves to blame for the steady decline in CD sales. The record labels need to reevaluate what they consider to be good music."

I have been blogging for years about the need for the record companies to recognise that the way forward is better technology. Now we have wider bandwidths for our broadband connections, we can download tracks in FLAC or ALAC non-lossy formats. The biggest music distributor, Apple iTunes, needs to recognise this also and push the record companies to provide studio master recordings without all the limiting and compression that is used on CDs, AACs and MP3s.

Let's see this in technical terms (from Wikipedia):



This dramatically shows the limitations of the 16bit CD and FM radio, and the improvements we could have by using 24bit downloads. I don't have any figures for MP3 or internet streaming but they will be much worse.

A properly recorded CD at 16bit resolution, should have its 0dB level equivalent to a digital level of -18dBFS, giving an 18dB overhead, a 24bit file should have the 0dB analog level (1.23V rms) set to a digital level of -24dBFS thus giving a 24dB overhead before digital clipping occurs. For comparison live music demands an overhead of 30dB.