Congratulations, EMI...
May. 22nd, 2010 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magicaddict...you lose 500 internets.
Having thoroughly enjoyed watching Seth Lakeman at Komedia a couple of weeks ago, I finally got round to buying his albums. The copy of Freedom Fields I bought was EMI's re-release, and I knew there were a couple of remixed tracks on it compared to the original, but no biggie, I thought. Indeed, the reworkings of Lady of the Sea and The White Hare are perfectly reasonable, no worse or better than the originals I had already.
My problem came when I stored it digitally.
There I am, quietly listening to my digital version of The Colliers, lowest compression, dual stereo mp3 at 320kbps, supposed to be so close to the original that it can fool a professional sound engineer if they're having an off day, and I hear (would you believe it) normalisation artefacts. The version I have from another source doesn't have that.
Hang on, I think. My gear much be off. I use LAMEv3, which is a very old codec but has never given me trouble in the past, and while I can normally pick 192kbps or below from the CD, I shouldn't have a clue about a smoothly captured 320. I put on the original CD to check what I should be hearing.
Well, blow me down with a balloon animal.
"...many lost in the d*crackle*ark and dust..."
Grats, EMI - an amateur music fan has just picked the moment your mixing engineers decided to go for a coffee break.
Seriously, how many times what I make do they make?
I'm going to remake my backups, at a lower bitrate, to see if the oversampler will get rid of some of the mess. I shouldn't have to be the one improving the sound of a professionally produced audio CD.
Having thoroughly enjoyed watching Seth Lakeman at Komedia a couple of weeks ago, I finally got round to buying his albums. The copy of Freedom Fields I bought was EMI's re-release, and I knew there were a couple of remixed tracks on it compared to the original, but no biggie, I thought. Indeed, the reworkings of Lady of the Sea and The White Hare are perfectly reasonable, no worse or better than the originals I had already.
My problem came when I stored it digitally.
There I am, quietly listening to my digital version of The Colliers, lowest compression, dual stereo mp3 at 320kbps, supposed to be so close to the original that it can fool a professional sound engineer if they're having an off day, and I hear (would you believe it) normalisation artefacts. The version I have from another source doesn't have that.
Hang on, I think. My gear much be off. I use LAMEv3, which is a very old codec but has never given me trouble in the past, and while I can normally pick 192kbps or below from the CD, I shouldn't have a clue about a smoothly captured 320. I put on the original CD to check what I should be hearing.
Well, blow me down with a balloon animal.
"...many lost in the d*crackle*ark and dust..."
Grats, EMI - an amateur music fan has just picked the moment your mixing engineers decided to go for a coffee break.
Seriously, how many times what I make do they make?
I'm going to remake my backups, at a lower bitrate, to see if the oversampler will get rid of some of the mess. I shouldn't have to be the one improving the sound of a professionally produced audio CD.
