DT12 CD vs HDTracks - A visual representation

[ReaPsTA]

I don't quite agree.  The HD tracks clearly have less compression on them.  It's not just an issue of changing volume.  The aesthetics of the mix are different.  Plus, like shown at the beginning, the CD masters are brickwalled and the HDTracks have at least a little room to breath.

I'm not saying the HDTracks are necessarily a big enough improvement to justify paying 20 dollars for them.  Especially given that all that was done to produce them was probably taking whatever limiting plugin was used and simply change the input gain volume to something lower.  But it wasn't just a volume change.

[rumborak]

Reapsta, this isn't exactly a matter of taste. The waveforms are the same, except the scale factor. When the waveforms are the same shape, it is exactly the same signal (except the clipping, as mentioned).
That said, it is hard to judge what effect the clipping had on the CD version. I can totally see how overall intelligibility of the music increased by no longer clipping.

[seasonsinthesky]

going by a graph of sample volume also shows a single dimension of a multidimensional object – akin to judging, say, a photo of a 3-dimensional sculpture. looking at sample volume does not account for how we hear volume, which is frequency-dependent; limiters, whether analog or digital, apply a lot more than just volume compression and makeup gain. each has a sonic character in the frequency domain as well.

that's why you get comments about better separation and clarity – if volume and compression were the issues alone, you wouldn't hear differences that are clearly frequency dependent (cymbal definition through the wall of guitar). it's also why it's woefully inadequate to compare it to keeping the clipped master and simply backing up from the speakers: this can't achieve the same result because the directionality of the speakers and the amplification of the frequency spectrum changes with distance, and even if you did account for this somehow, the source is fundamentally different because the speaker analogy only changes transients because of where you hear them from (and how the DAC interprets the samples that have been clipped off), rather than the HDTracks master having the unclipped transient intact.

every song definitely had a compressor on the master bus, which is why they still sound like a glued wall. those would be intact on the final mixes, so if the HDTracks source is actually pre-mastering altogether, it wouldn't avoid that processing.

also, the standard is 24bit for recording and mixing. some places may have moved to 32bit floating point but 24 more than accounts for quantization error, so using a multiplier is generally adding unnecessary file size without particularly needed benefit.

[erwinrafael]

I don't quite agree.  The HD tracks clearly have less compression on them.  It's not just an issue of changing volume.  The aesthetics of the mix are different.  Plus, like shown at the beginning, the CD masters are brickwalled and the HDTracks have at least a little room to breath.

I'm not saying the HDTracks are necessarily a big enough improvement to justify paying 20 dollars for them.  Especially given that all that was done to produce them was probably taking whatever limiting plugin was used and simply change the input gain volume to something lower.  But it wasn't just a volume change.

20 dollars for HDTracks versus a crappy mp3 download. I would gladly pay. Especially as it is a fortune to get a physical CD shipped to our part of the world. Again, HD Tracks is marketed to those whose primary access to music is digital download. It was not really meant to compete against physical CDs.

[rumborak]

Golly, there is a lot of confusion in this thread about what waveforms are and how they relate to the music we perceive.

seasonsinthesky, the waveform is the instruction to the cone of your speaker. High positive value = push out the membrane. Low negative value = pull the membrane in.
I would assume you agree that, if the waveforms are the same, then the movement of the speaker cone is the same, and thus the music *must* be the same.

[tweeg]

Regarding the increased separation of instruments in the HD tracks version, I think it mainly has to do with the attack (the usually-louder initial few milliseconds of sound when you play something) of each of the instruments not getting squeezed to the same level as the body of sound by the limiter. So you get these little spikes in the waveform that correspond to the very first few milliseconds of individual notes. This is only somewhat true of the keyboards, as some sounds JR has programmed, like strings, are made so they fade in (albeit very quickly) when he plays a note.

[425]

As someone who has from near the very beginning been and still is a big proponent of the DT12 HDTracks, I don't get why rumborak is getting so much pushback. I think he's pretty well documented his claims.

And if you, like me, like the HDTracks much better than the CD version... Well, you still have them, they're still there, and rumbo's revelation about them does not change them one bit. I for one think they were still worth it.

[erwinrafael]

Golly, there is a lot of confusion in this thread about what waveforms are and how they relate to the music we perceive.

seasonsinthesky, the waveform is the instruction to the cone of your speaker. High positive value = push out the membrane. Low negative value = pull the membrane in.
I would assume you agree that, if the waveforms are the same, then the movement of the speaker cone is the same, and thus the music *must* be the same.

Have you listened to the two versions and have you noticed any difference?

[erwinrafael]

As someone who has from near the very beginning been and still is a big proponent of the DT12 HDTracks, I don't get why rumborak is getting so much pushback. I think he's pretty well documented his claims.

It is not a pushback. It is called a discussion. We're just trying to reconcile why we seem to be hearing a better sound from HD Tracks compared to the CD. If they did come from the same master, why does the other one sound better? Is it just a matter of lower volume? Of less clipping?

rumbo has forwarded also two debatable claims. that HD TRacks is a sham (to which I disagree because HD Tracks never claimed that they used a different master, so it is not a sham) and that the "improvement" may really just be a placebo effect (to which I am not sure because I have been testing the songs last night as I am reading the discussions, and I am really hearing better sound from the HD TRacks). So we're discussing things to find why we are hearing better sound. No pushback. Just discussion.

[425]

From where I'm sitting it looks like some people are contesting claims that rumbo has pretty well proven (and Blob has backed up) without providing any evidence of their own. And I'm also chipping in to remind everybody that both of these things can be true: 1) rumbo is right entirely on the facts of the situation and 2) the HDTracks is markedly superior and worth it.

[Implode]

Yeah. Rumby's right. Basically, the HDtracks sounds "better", but the album still sounds awful.

[Skeever]

Golly, there is a lot of confusion in this thread about what waveforms are and how they relate to the music we perceive.

seasonsinthesky, the waveform is the instruction to the cone of your speaker. High positive value = push out the membrane. Low negative value = pull the membrane in.
I would assume you agree that, if the waveforms are the same, then the movement of the speaker cone is the same, and thus the music *must* be the same.

Well, I doubt many people here have much experience with recording audio. I do a bit of amateur recording, but I really don't know how to use compression well. When I see graphs like yours, I assume that in the flat lines near the top are areas where everything (low, high, and whatever) has been given a "flat" volume. On the HD tracks graph, it looks like the waveform cones up more where it's otherwise flat on the CD. That leads me to believe that it's not just someone turning the volume down, but more like someone simply opening up an earlier version of the master, before the louder portions of the audio were "flattened" so that the entire thing could be then boosted up.

Of course, I think you are right in general - these aren't "remasters", at bet, they're simply a few keystrokes apart from what's on the CD. But, really, I could just be revealing how little I know about compression here

[BlobVanDam]

From where I'm sitting it looks like some people are contesting claims that rumbo has pretty well proven (and Blob has backed up) without providing any evidence of their own. And I'm also chipping in to remind everybody that both of these things can be true: 1) rumbo is right entirely on the facts of the situation and 2) the HDTracks is markedly superior and worth it.

I didn't even believe rumby at first because I know the HDTracks does sound markedly different and better than the CD version. But the hard evidence backs up rumby's observation. So I agree that both of those points can be, and are true.

I think most people agree that the HDTracks version does sound better, we're really just debating the "why" now. This whole time we've assumed it was due to a different master with less compression, but it appears it is the same master with the same compression, but with less limiting in the final stage, which has still resulted in much less clipping, giving more separation between instruments due to having the full waveform to reconstruct those peaks. When you clip off those peaks, you permanently lose detail during those loud sections that affects everything.

[ariich]

Thing is, I don't think it matters. So people conflated two things into one by saying "mastering" when in fact this, according to Rumby, includes two separate parts - "mastering" and "exporting". And the problem is apparently with the latter.

Fine, then. I don't believe that changes anything. I didn't know that exporting was anything separate, but clearly it has a big impact on the sound quality. So if it's the exporting bit that sucks, then it's the exporting bit. It is still, clearly, a crucial part of the overall sound production, and therefore is still vastly improved by the HDtracks.

Sure, it's useful to understand why, and Rumby's analysis has been awesome. But he's also been suggesting that the HDtracks are a sham and a placebo effect, which I don't agree with at all. It's just a distinction over the different parts of the process and what they're called, that's all.

[rumborak]

Yeah, the "sham" part was really mostly as a response to the prevailing idea that they used a different master.
The increased fidelity of the HDTracks apparently solely originates from the reduced amount of clipping (and maybe not surprising, since the CD version had rather egregious clipping).