[sdiy] Synergy (was Re: OT: Music movies)

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Monday 27 June 2005 08:23 pm, KA4HJH wrote:
> *snip*

<more snip :-)>

> Aside from the aforementioned overuse of pitch correction (a double-edged
> sword if there ever was one), one of the biggest technical problems with
> most pop albums today is the insane overuse of dynamics processing, which
> is virtually unnoticeable to the average listener but immediately obvious
> to anyone who knows what good dynamics sound like. This is a result of the
> "my album sounds louder than your album" war currently going on and the
> fact that it's technologically convenient to squash the life out of a
> recording now.

It's also a result of radio station processing their signals to sound 
"louder".  Like the one that used to be around here that called itself the 
"50,000 watt rock-n-roll blowtorch" or somesuch nonsense.

There were times when I was in the broadcast studio and noticed this light 
that kept coming on,  in the rack of equipment that stood in the corner.  I 
walked over and looked,  and the light said "limit".  They'd regularly peg 
the meters all the time,  too.

I had occasion to play with some LM3915 bargraph display chips at around that 
time,  and was thinking about doubling up,  so I could get 20 LEDs worth of 
range on it.  With the filtering I was using I needn't have bothered,  
though.  And I was amazed,  after watching this thing with a "movement" of 
only a couple or three LEDs when I was feeding it from the radio,  to a whole 
LOT wider range when I fed it with the same recording coming off my 
turntable.

> Throw in record company suits who are convinced it sells more albums and
> it's a given. Even heavy metal albums are over-compressed now, something
> that would have seemed like a ridiculous oxymoron fifteen years ago (if you
> thought they had no dynamics back then, think again--it's even worse now).

Yep.  And I blame commercial broadcast radio for a lot of that.

> For an in-depth analysis of dynamics on some famous (and infamous)
> recordings, check this out:
>
> http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Dynamics.html

Now _that_ is some interesting reading!

> For those who want some DIY content check the speakers Chris built.

I haven't gotten to those yet...

But speaking of DIY in this context,  how about some DIY signal processing to 
deal with the dynamics of things?  Anybody have some links they'd like to 
share?