SirNickity wrote:
While this is true in the sense that most commercial music released today is marching steadily towards a 0dBFS square wave, compression can be (well, is) actually used to enhance dynamics instead.
Consider two examples:
First, an instrument, like a vocal line or drum kit. Typically, you would use compression with a slow attack (50-200ms, depending), then clamp down to keep the sound from overwhelming the mix. This quick transient burst helps the brain notice the sound, without it having to be foreground. In this way, every word or snare hit has a moment of bite, then settles back into its place. Without the compression, the sibilance of a voice would get buried in the din. Drums have very high transient levels, but it's extremely short -- typically inaudible in a mix -- and will tend to sound dull.
Now take this same principle and apply it to a bus, or a mixdown. The first note of a song, or when the beat drops out and comes back full-force, is accentuated by a little compression. You'll hit the limiters at first with a hot average level, then the compression kicks in and pulls the average back down by a few dB. Without compression, that grand entrance will be lacking huevos rancheros.
In rock (or indeed most any dense popular music genre), compression is necessary for the sake of clarity. In orchestral or jazz, or some (but not all) acoustic folk, you might consider it optional in favor of the realism and you-are-there spaciousness. At low volumes, you'll appreciate it either way.
In the case of your self-released album there, if it was professionally done, there is no doubt considerable use of compression. Just not overbearing limiting in the mastering.
Personally I find it disheartening that there are some techno and dup tracks out there where the strongest fundamental of the bass and the “um teenth thousandth harmonic “of the reverberation filter are the same -0.1dB signal level. Yikes.
Take a raw modern recorded file and (+)lossy compression + digital audio filters +Compression (result )= the Left and right channels which are full of phase distortions .
You can’t perceive this in frequencies higher than 500Hz but at 50 Hz and 25Hz, Whoa trouble. In full range stereo cabs this means a weird sense of loss when listening to the lows lol. (uh oh audiophile soap box speech)
but wait we got crossovers. (duh?)
Well in such a case, which channel becomes the master bass channel do you choose? Left or right? which is the truer bass? (Industry uses the left as a default) what happen to the phase distortions in the opposing channel? Will they not bleed over because on the roll-over range. Either way you’re screwed because when you amplify music a small error gets exponentially worst the harder your drive the sound.
In the Dark aged days of Record LPs 78 rpm and tape mastering, engineers worries about surface noise, so they had to keep a nominal level of signal to overcome the hiss or scratching of the record or tape.
Nor could they afford to allow the loudest passages to overrun the maximum levels of the medium. (records the groove would destroy the neighboring grooves or in tapes incur the wrath of saturation distortion)
So in practice the average levels were set with 70% of the available dynamic range was used for mids and highs. The remaining 30% was reserved for bass, this give a good level playing field for all types of music. Compression limiting equipment was invented to keep the dynamic ranges in check when they first came into use. (fathers of modern drum kits Tony S’barbaro[1917] & Gene Krupra [1930s]use of bass drums were quiet loud in live performances but had to feather their performances or omit solos because no workable compression limiter was available until the middle of the century. )
SO why the tangent into bass, well it’s always about bass. Well it’s still the dark days and in order to prevent horrible phase distortions in stereo LPs and tapes, master waxers/tapers removed the bass from both channels and summed the bass into equal parts Left and Right. So the same signal will be in both channels to help in play back. (really a forgotten art) really really forgotten.
If your familiar with your audio programs such as audacity. Take a 5 sec snippet of your favorite techno track with bass. Run a low pass filter at -12db and 125Hz and look at the resulting bass waveform’s left and right channel, that’s coming out of your cabs. If the track was master correctly the left and right channel should be the same.
But that is not the case since the 1990s when most the golden generation of waxers died or retired.
So back to the present. And the conclusion
Buy a freaking crossover that has an active Bass summing amplifier to overcome the digital age’s version of Mastering, lossy compression, and digital filters.
