X-rated Bob wrote:
I find it quite puzzling. How exactly was this treatment supposed to improve things?
It's only going to get worse until marketing doesn't become an issue for the big record labels. It's the mooks who are to blame for this whole dilemma and it's based on their desire for their product to stand out, not just on the radio, but in bars and clubs, etc. Another big problem with this whole thing is that locally we think we have to compete in this loudness war so our music is "competitive". As if being louder = being better. Although, we have more of an indie's market so there's still hope for us.
Studies have shown that in a listening test with engineers and non-engineers, that when given the choice of two of the same sample with supposed :different" processing, most people are drawn to the louder example and would deem it as sounding "better". A lot of the time there was actually no processing at all but merely a slight volume change.
Bob, going back to this:
Apparently when it got ripped and uploaded onto torrent sites, with the compression that that can entail, things got truly nasty
This is exactly what the TC Electronic paper by Thomas Lund that I posted is all about. At the core it's about something called "intersample peaks" and it is exactly because of this phenomenon that we get distortion when ripping an overly clipped and limited master such as TCV to mp3. Digital metering does not pick up these intersample peaks (unless you have a specialized intersample peak meter, like the SSL X-ISM:
http://www.solid-state-logic.com/music/x-ism/. It's free and there is a good article on that page about intersample peaks.) and that is why they pop up unexpectedly and will eventually accumulate and be amplified at the end of the line.
On the other hand, when all is said and done, the torrent pirates can have their distorted MP3's! Serves them right, anyway.
Cheers ?
