Forums - Print Page

Forums
https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl
AUDIO FORUMS >> Vinyl >> Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1627831151

Message started by Coyote on 08/01/21 at 16:19:11

Title: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by Coyote on 08/01/21 at 16:19:11

Greetings all,

Thetanimal has a tread around here titled vinyl vs streaming, And that got me thinking about compressed vs streaming recording.

Some music like from iTune are (in)famously compressed to save bandwidth while older recordings and modern quality recordings avoid compression.

I understand (somewhat) how compression works, but I wonder what are the opinions out there about compressed vs uncompressed in our type of systems.

As a side note, are there sites to stream or download HiFi uncompressed music from the Net and if download what is the preferred file format?

Cheers,

a.

Title: Re: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by Lon on 08/01/21 at 17:43:13

My opinion: a lot of compression applied in mastering can really suck. Some of us with Decware systems are lucky that with "gain riding" we can sometimes alleviate this a bit and tube-rolling also can help.

I myself actually apply some of what I call "natural compression" in gain riding to add some density to the sound and tailor some treble response, to both vinyl and digital (I'm about 99 percent digital these days).

Compression is neither evil nor saintly--completely compression free recordings can sound flat and uninvolving, and heavily compressed recordings can sound HORRID. As in so many things application and use determine favorable results.

Title: Re: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by EdwardT on 08/01/21 at 22:05:53

I can’t think of any recording I’ve ever been involved with that did not employ some iteration of audio compression whether is was frequency band selected or overall bottom to top. It is vastly different from digital compression which is math and not musical at all and when used at extremes just disassembles the files until they have no life. I like to think of it as film vs dot matrix printing, when you zoom in on film you still see the image until you get to the very grains of the chemicals, do that to dot matrix and all you see is the medium between the dots of the image as empty space. So in my mind I think of the highest digital compression ratios as full of empty space when they are reconstituted into audio, at least with analog compression you still have the full audio just at a reduced dynamic range. It’s still very true that heavy handed engineers can really squash the sound into a big smear these days and that’s still not good.

Title: Re: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by Coyote on 08/02/21 at 21:20:49

Hello EdwardT , Lon,

Thanks for the contributions.
Yes in my head I was thinking compression in the digital world used to save bandwidth and I believe reduce quality by reducing data.

The only analogy I can think of is a pure sine wave vs a square sine wave that is missing the 'curves'.

I am unfamiliar with the analog compression and will have to review it. I kind of remember it from some sound engineering courses took wayyy back in the 80s.

Cheers,

a.

Title: Re: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by EdwardT on 08/03/21 at 00:02:24

Maybe instead of the square wave think of the analog sine wave as a solid line and the digital sine wave a dotted line, the lower the bit rate the wider the distance between the dots. Or something like that.

Title: Re: Compressed vs uncompressed recordings
Post by Coyote on 08/04/21 at 01:15:36

thx EdwardT, yes excellent way to explain it.

a.