Loudness War: Difference between revisions
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This is the main reason why people say vinyl records are "higher quality" (besides personal taste reasons such as the crackle and hum of records). The inherent quality of CDs is far better than records, but since "records are for audiophiles", there is far less incentive for audio engineers to trade-off quality for loudness on records. Additionally, vinyls have a smaller dynamic range, and any attempt to pull loudness war stunts on them will usually just throw off the needle or make them unplayable.<ref>The album pictured above, 1997's remaster of ''[[The Stooges|Raw Power]]'', would be impossible to put on an LP</ref> The [[Irony]] in all this is that digital formats like the CD finally made it possible to make audio as ''quiet'' as you wanted without any analog hiss obscuring it, but with a lot of equipment out there accommodating the audio levels of the War, exploiting this quality will often make things simply too quiet to hear.
For further information, [https://web.archive.org/web/20060612221324/http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm Imperfect Sound Forever] is required reading. [http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html More] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/10/digitalmusic information] [https://web.archive.org/web/20071014231310/http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/5429 is] [https://web.archive.org/web/20080708214538/http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm available] [http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/ online], including [http://www.justiceforaudio.org/2008/09/metallica-albums-re-mastered-for-2008-exciting-sound/ these] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ two] videos that do a great job of providing abbreviated explanations. There's also a [http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=bd35efbff5babeb883c6961def275418&showtopic=27691 20-page forum thread] dedicated to poorly mastered albums for examples. [http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep11/articles/loudness.htm See also this], to show things are more complicated than they seem. [
There are algorithms that can be used to repair clipped audio to a certain extent; none of them are perfect, but they will generally produce end results that sound better than the commercially released versions with clipping. More info on one of them is available [http://fools-gold.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1574535#post1574535 here].
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