Another Type Of Compression: Or Why ‘Poker Face’ Is The Biggest Thing On The Planet 1558.11

Steve (Porcupine Tree) Wilson has been writing a bunch lately about ‘the evils of compression in music listening.’ I’ve certainly done my share of ranting on this topic.

Transition IV – Snippet The Boats 356.14

Yet another Transition that is out of order from the opera The Boats.Peter Gabriel. Bodhrán. Hans Zimmer drums. Compression is a drug. Time shifts. Cuban music and the clave. Sneaky Bastard. One horse town. Duke and Harlem Nocturne. Joyce Brothers and Reality TV. How the sausage gets made. One more transition.

Roger CortonLast time we were talking about folk songs. But this thing sounds like one of Peter Gabriel’s soundtracks.

Transition IV

JCHActually, I was thinking the same thing. I tried to fight that, but you kinda have to go where the piece takes you.

RCNow don’t get me wrong. I love Peter Gabriel. I just didn’t think of it as ‘Celtic’ sounding.

JCHWell I don’t care about that. I just want it to fit the staging for switching between scenes.

RCWe talked about that last time and so if the title of this can be believed, this is the space right after the […]

The Steroid Scandal Of The Seventies 311.62

OK, I’ve been finally listening to a gift I got at the Salvation Army about three years ago… Time Life’s “Super Hits From The Seventies ‘Have A Nice Day”. Twenty Five CDs with everything that made the seventies, er… whatever they were.

But whether or not you swoon (or run for the loo) when you hear ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ you can’t help but be impressed by the sound of all the best recordings of that era. It truly is the Golden Age Of Recording for all devotees and it can be summed up with one word. No not cocaine–that was the 80’s, dude.

The word is compression.

Compression is the steroid that made everything sound good. In fact, I’ll go so far as to suggest that it is the answer to the question of ‘why?’

A little history and a little theory. A compressor is a device which automatically adjusts the volume of audio signals. In it’s most basic form it is much like the governor on an engine… it keeps the […]

The Steroid Scandal Of The Nineties (Part I: The Problem) 178.07

Last time I talked about why records made in the seventies sounded so goooooood. Punchy. Danceable. And also, why the music started to suck. One factor… the widespread use of ‘compression’.

But there has been a second compression scandal which began in the early 90’s and continues to this day. This is commonly known as The Loudness Wars.

Now when CDs first came out, they were mastered a lot like vinyl. Sure the dynamic range is much greater, but the actual perceived volume of the CDs was quite similar to good ol’ records.

A funny thing started happening though. Like most drug habits, it was subtle at first, but over time, it turned into a monster that ruins lives. Little by little, CDs (the new ‘records’) became louder and louder.

Now technically, they didn’t get ‘louder’. They can’t really get louder. The strongest signal a CD can handle is exactly the same loudness as the strongest signal a record player can. But what can and does happen with digital tools is that the dynamic […]

The Steroid Scandal Of The Nineties (Part II: The Other Problem) 89.03

In Part I, I ranted on about the evils of compression. How it has been used to make records louder and louder to the point that they are not only far less musical but also almost painful to listen to.

The flip side to this has been that music is itself changing in response to the technology. As I pointed out, this started out as a subtle enhancement to the pulse of music… aka ‘disco’, but now the effects are far more dramatic.

In fact, I’d suggest that things went so far afield that the music that so thrived during the heyday of CDs… culminating in rap, with the thundering 808 kick drum, has now been superseded by music that can have no bottom or top because, frankly, we’re all listening on ear buds while doing other things.

In other words, the music itself is changing to reflect the fact that music is a background activity; listened to (if one can call it that) even in a crowded place. So, what kinds of […]