Pourquoi faire des masters à un niveau aussi élevé ?

Hors sujet : t'es pas la ce we j'imagine

Citation : Moi juste vouloir que ce niveau soit le même pour tout le monde, ce qui ne change rien au contenu du cd et ce qui ne change rien à ce que toi entendre.

Citation : Toi devoir juste monter un peu plus le bouton rond de ta chaîne hifi pour avoir même sensation de volume sonore.

Citation : Alors, toi l'ami qui travaille dans un studio, quand est-ce que tu auras les COUILLES de convaincre ton client de te laisser travailler (car il s'agit bien de liberté de travail, plus de dynamique = plus de liberté)

Citation : If You Can't Make It Sound Good, Make it Loud?
Contrary to some people's beliefs, mastering is not supposed to be the process of making a record hotter than the competition. Mastering should be the process of making a record better than the competition. Currently there is a lot of pressure on mastering engineers to make a record hotter than its neighbor. I'm really surprised that more recording engineers are not up in arms about how mastering engineers (on producer's orders?) are ruining their recordings. I'm quite flattered that one recording engineer called me the first mastering engineer to make his recordings sound better. If you're a mastering engineer, wear the red badge of courage; strive for good sound, even if you have to sacrifice a few dB of loudness.

Clients often complain when they haveto turn the volume control up when switching CDs. Why aren't they complaining that they have to turn the volume down when a hot disc comes on? One client told me that she loved the sound of her master, but her test CDR was not hot enough when played in rotation on the CD changer in a local bar. This upset me, because it turned out she was comparing her CD against rather trashy-sounding competition and I didn't want to trash up her sound. In the bar, you can't tell the difference in sound quality, but we're making CDs to sound good at home. I told her that she would sacrifice quality if I made her CD any hotter. Ironically, it was already a hot CD, by the standards of last year and the year before, but obviously not this year! Oh, by the way, eventually I compromised, using my best skills to raise the volume on her CD slightly without sacrificing too much in sound quality, but it saddened me that this had to occur. Her CD would have sounded better if it were not as compressed.

The PARTY Button
CD changers present a real problem in client education. I had to tailor the apparent loudness of this client's CD to work with 5 other hand-picked CDs, but I could pick dozens more that are much louder or softer than hers. We have to teach clients that CDs will always differ in volume and that a CD changer is not a radio station. The restaurant CD changer really needs a live DJ, but that's not practical. The solution: put a compressor in the restaurant, the car, and the jukebox, and reserve quality listening for the home, without compression. We should lobby manufacturers to put a compressor button on receivers and future DVD players; with DSP technology this is a snap. They could label it the Party Button! There should be three compression settings--for background listening at low levels, for moderate listening in a noisy environment, and for parties, whereyou want to switch discs without adjusting the volume control. Panasonic and Sony will sell a million of them, and we engineers will be eternally grateful! The button may be misused by ignorant consumers, but no more than the loudness button I find permanently pushed in 6 out of 10 homes.

Citation : From The Sublime to the Ridiculous
roducers don't seem to like making a CD that's even a little softer than the competition, so each succeeding CD is often a little bit hotter. Just how much hotter can CDs get? I can cut a CD that's 16 dB louder than the ones we made in the early 90's, before digital limiters became popular, but it'll look like a square wave and soundlike audio cream of wheat! Imagine the consumer problems caused by large variations in loudness--switching CDs has literally become Russian Roulette, shooting out our speakers and ears! But ultimately, your hot CD doesn't get any louder for the public; they just turn their monitor down, and scream in disgust at the increasing range they have to move the knob when they change CDs. In addition, sound quality is suffering by an unjustifiable demand for hotter CDs. A fellow mastering engineer reminds me that in the early days of CDs, we didn't have any pressure to make them hotter (because there was little competition), and early pop CDs had good, open sound. They're much softer than current CDs, but if you turn up your volume control you'll see their dynamics are much better-sounding. Why do we have to go backwards in sound quality? We mustn't repeat this mistake with the DVD. Part II of my article on Levels discusses 21st century solutions to this problem.

Let's review the basics. The loudness war may have begun with analog records, but the current problem is many decibels worse than it was in analog. LPs were mixed largely with VU meters, which created a degree of monitoring consistency, but today's peak level meters give entirely too much more room for mischief, and today's digital limiters provide the tools to do the mischief. The net result: great consistency problems in CD level. The peak meter is currently being seriously misused. Remember that the upper ranges of the peak meter were designed for headroom, not for level. A compressed piece of music peaking to -6 dBFS can sound much louder than an uncompressed work peaking to 0. Mixing and mastering engineers, use compression for creative purposes, but why not master the CD at a lower peak level, and monitor at the same gain you used for your last CD? There's no reason to fill up all those bits if the CD sounds loud enough. Or, useless limiting if you insist on peaking to 0 dBFS. Too many producers are unskilled meter readers; they seem to need all those lights flashing. Try working at a fixed monitor level, with the meter hidden from view. It'll be a very educational experience.

It's come to the point where mastering engineers should think about working differently. In Part II of my article on Levels, I discuss the 21st century solution to this problem, because the future of our DVD Audio is at stake. Only education can stop this vicious spiral. It's time to fight for quality, not quantity. Sound lower than XYZ hit record?Turn up the monitor!

Citation : Je crois que mon disque le plus pourri en la matière est le CD d'Hooverphonic "Jacky Cane".