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Audiophile Qualities Debated in Conjuntion With Cheap Mastering
11 Jun 2011, 5:14 am
Audio quality is a much discussed topic amongst audiophiles, muso’s and musicians. There are some people who have a preference for the sound of vinyl records, they prefer the warm sound and pops and crackles add a sense of nostalgia or time stamping a different era of recording. Much of audio quality has to do with the frequency response of any given piece of music, this in itself will differ from one musical genre to the next. However generally speaking there tends to be a preference for warm sounding recordings as opposed to “harsh” sounding ones. Since the advent of digital recording the noise floor (hiss levels) has been significantly reduced in recordings and this has created a trend to add extra treble to recordings (high frequencies). Adding high frequencies through use of equalization (like an amplfier tone control) used to compound any hiss problems when analogue magnetic tape was used and you could easily end up with “frying eggs” hissing sounds in the background.In part this over use of high frequency eq on digital recording mediums can account for the harsh sounding modern records of today. Another reason why harshness can creep in is because of limiting which is a process used in mastering studios to increase the perceived volume of music on a CD. You may have heard the term “The loudness wars”. It describes a state where record labels compete to have the “loudest” sounding records. Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch and as such distortion and loss of detail and harshness creep in to the sound as well as the detriment of any dynamics in the music. In a mastering studio the diligent mastering engineer will try and cure many of the sonic ills before they ever reach the listening public. The mastering engineer will have some very fine analogue mastering equipment such as equalizers, compressor and limiters. Used with care the sound can be tweaked and enhanced in such a way that the music will sound the best it can on all reproduction systems. Online mastering is the final stage before CD’s are replicated or duplicated and the mastering engineer will also listen out for sonic defects such as clicks, edits and vocal pops.It is possible to get CD’s to sound as good as vinyl and achieve a warm sound but much of the character will have been decided upon during the recording and mixing stages. Mastering can add some analogue sheen to a recording and give it that “warm” sound if required.Audio quality matters to listeners and another issue that has degraded audio quality is compressed audio file formats such as MP3. These files throw away audio information for the convenience of lower file sizes and you can hear it quite obviously if you are a music lover. Keeping audio standards high is important for everyone, musicians, bands, record labels and dedicated listening fans. Incoming search terms: | 
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