The Spaces Between the Notes

John
Atkinson
The Spaces Between the Notes
I
le
heck it out." Music editor
Robert Baird handed me
a CD. "He's 70 years old,
it's his 13th album, he got
Don Was to produce it,
and it's his best yet."
RI3 was talking about Delbert McClinton's new CD, Acqllired Taste (New West
NWA3044).
"Is it good enough for this month's
'Recording of the Mouth?'"
"Musically, yes indeed, but the sound
is a bit funky, especially the first track.
Give it a listen."
So I did.
TIle sound was indeed . . . funk-y. TIle
overall sound was in-your-face, with rather
a buzzy quality that was emphasized on
that first track, "Mama's Little Baby," by
having girl singers double the lead vocal an
octave higher. Track 2, "Starting a Rumor,"
did have some light and shade and space,
but Dclbcrt's baritone still sounded raspy
and rough around the edges. As Robert
had said, musically Mr. McClinton was ill
great shape, but the sound was fatiguing. I
couldn't listen all the way through the CD.
I opened the first track with music-editing prosrram Bias Peak Pro 6. As I suspected, the waveform was continually banging
its head against the CD's maximum lcvelzooming in on vocal sections revealed the
£'uniliar squared-off shape of a signal whose
peaks have been chopped off, either by being clipped or by being hard-limited. Interestingly, the tops of the square wavelonns
were slightly rounded-as if, subsequent to
the brutal trimming of peaks, the signal had
been low-pass-filtered to get rid of some of
the spurious high-frequency energy.
Producer Don Was talks about Acquired
Taste ill this issue's "Aural Robert" column
(P.146), where he says he's against the overuse of compression. But this month, as in
many months, I despaired of finding a goodsounding new release to be featured in "Recording of tile Month," which is intended
to spotlight recordings with great music alld
great sound. Fortunately, we had to hand
jim O'Rourkc's The Visitor, which has light,
shade, space, and dynamics aplenty (P.129).
But heavy-handed
compression and
even plain old distortion have become
ubiquitous in what have become termed
the "Loudness Wan," in which songs
are dynamically squashed to the point
where they sound uniformly and fatiguingly loud throughout, even when played
quietly. As I've written many times in the
past decade: when all the dynamic conwww.5lereophile.com.
November
2009
trast is removed, the music is damaged.
The notes-the sounds played by the musicians-are not the music, but merely the
framework for the music. As Miles Davis
said, the music exists in the spaces Leuvecn
the notes. If that is the case, it hardlv
seems appropriate for recording and mastering engineers to fill up those spaces,
even if, in their defense, they're forced to
do so by record-company suits' incessant
demands to "Make it LOUDER."
I wrote ill February 2008 about the efforts being made by Turn Me Up! to combat the insane trend to maximize loudness
at the expense of the music. (The name
comes from the fact that if the record has
a wider dynamic range, it must have a
lower average level, though the consumer
won't necessarily know that-all he has to
do to compensate is turn up the volume.)
The Turn Me Up! website (www.rurn
meup.org) includes a two-minute QuickTime tutorial video as well as a growing
list of links to articles on the subject.
Now there is another resource available
to those who care about sound quality. In
a post to the forum at wwwstereophile.
C0111, "ucdrawl" recommended
the downloadable dynamic range meter to be found
at wwwpleasurizernusic.com,
a foundati011 that aims to be able to label recordings with a whole-number dynamic value,
giving consumers an immediate means of
knowing if a recording has been over-compressed or not. TIle TT Dynamic Range
Meter gives a number that appears to be
calculated &om the difference between the
peak and RMS levels, which was called the
"crest factor" back in the day.
Pleasurizernusic's founder, Friedemann
Tischmeyer, writes that "music-as an artistic means of expression-should transmit
emotions. Nowadays, this is possible only
to a limited degree because dynamics-a
fundamental part of expressiviry--are of.ten missing .... Modern mainstream music sounds like a flatly pressed board being
rammed through loudspeakers and uses
the greatest possible amount of intrusiveness just as advertising does-as a means of
constantly trying to get the listener's attention. In this way, a fundamental aspect
of music is lost."
Using the TT Dynamic Range Meter as a plug-in for Bias Peak Pro 6, I
analyzed my new Attention Screen CD,
Live at Otto's Shruuleen Head [Stereophile
STPH020-2). I had had to squash the occasional peaks of the original 24-bit files
a little in the mastering to better fit the
music within tile CD's 16-bit window,
Nevertheless, the meter indicated that
the dynamic range was still 10-14dB,
which is much wider than a typical electric rock recording. By contrast, Delbert
McClinton's "Mama's Little Baby" got
the thumbs down from the TT meter,
with an average dynamic range of just
5dB in the left channel, 6dB in the right.
As Roberr Baird said, "funky."
In the October issue (pp.1l5-119), RB
reports Oil the conversation we had had
with the team responsible for remastering
the Beatles CDs. After we'd listened to
several of the master files for several of the
new COs, I asked project coordinator Allen
Rouse if there had been corporate pressure
ro make these classic recordings louder, to
squash them down to better match what
has, sadly, become the modem norm. No,
he said; while they did raise the average
level of the stereo mixes by 3-4dB, to make
better use of the CD's dvnamic window,
everyone involved was aware of the hisrorical significance of what they were doing.
As of tile time of writing, I have yet to
hear tile finished COs, but record-industry
commentator Bob Lefsetz confirmed in
the August 28 edition of Ius LqselZ Later
that Rouse was not blowing smoke.' Of the
"White Album," Lefsetz wrote: "Immediately noticeable is the low level. Today's
tracks are squashed to tile max, with tile
volume cranked. They sound like slut, but
they're ve~1' loud. These Beatles COs are
nor. ... [WJhat was immediately noticeable
was that the guitar sounded like a guitar, one
of those things with a body, with resonance,
the guitar sounded three-dimensional. As
did tile vocal. This was no longer a record,
this was someone real singing,
"In an era where sound quality is going
in the wrong direction," Lefsetz continued, "where [algOlidul1s] remove some of
the sound to squeeze songs down into tiny
files, releasing remasrered CDs is akin to
polishiug lip an IBM Sclcctric, Still, maybe
these finally pristine releases can be a beacon. Maybe the younger generation will
invest in better speakers, [and] techies will
invent new file formats that allow people
to hear music the way it was truly made."
From Bob's keyboard to God's ears.
1 See, for example, "As We See It" in December 1999
{wwwste.reophile.comhsweseeit/177),June
2003 (as
wo<cc.itI851), and Pebruary 2008 (mVcsccitl208awsi)
2 TI,e L.jsclz Uti," archive i., available at hnp:1 !lel~e[
z.com/wordpress/.
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