Post B7tKrSaDfU1dd36mK8 by newt@stereophonic.space
(DIR) More posts by newt@stereophonic.space
(DIR) Post #B7tH9u3VrhSSEGLhRo by quad@akko.quad.moe
3 likes, 0 repeats
oh god. lofi girl vinyls.this vinyl trend must've reached peak NPC by now, but it just keeps getting dumberhttps://www.alltheanime.com/products/lo-fi-ghibli-vinyl
(DIR) Post #B7tHXw5TxkMhTqjJNg by quad@akko.quad.moe
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i guess it's good that people are finally supporting artists more directly.but it pains me that people are only willing to do so via some performative collector's item. and i'm damn certain that only like 5% of people actually prefer vinyl, the other 95% are just there for some retro aesthetic or placebo.
(DIR) Post #B7tI4asjpEOHGjLE9o by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan it's especially sad when you consider that 99% of the music people are buying on these vinyls were just mastered for digital anyways, maybe with an EQ for the vinyl.Oh how I wish they'd stop compressing tracks so we get some dynamic range back
(DIR) Post #B7tINtGrgAKdntpNoG by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@Amikke That's fine.But obviously people aren't buying CDs which are sold normally. A ton of these Vinyl prints also have CD versions released at the same time for like half the price, but they're apparently cool enough to buy.I do agree that I like money going to artists though, the problem is that as long as Vinyl is a trend, it means it'll eventually pass. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a decline again in like 4-5 years.
(DIR) Post #B7tIiVcKoms4WZhZho by quad@akko.quad.moe
1 likes, 0 repeats
@hj You should buy whatever format you prefer.The fact that some prefer vinyl isn't what triggers me, it's the fact that a bunch of people claim they prefer vinyl but they're 100% just following some trend.I'm not even necessarily in the physical media camp, most songs I've purchased were FLACs from Bandcamp.
(DIR) Post #B7tJ1ANS0pR09SdWdc by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan What do you mean stereo? If you're wearing decent headphones or earbuds that's even more reason why you should want them to not squeeze the detail out of songs.The compression is something Western music started doing back in the 80s/90s to make stuff transmit better over AM and sound bearable on a blown out car speaker.These days it stuck around because it turns out that the average person prefers it, since they don't actually listen to their music, using it only for the "rhythm" and/or the earbuds they're listening to music with are still poo.
(DIR) Post #B7tJ7QSr76Ihma9Jvk by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@hj same.i can buy the bleach soundtrack on a vinyl here in Norway. But on CD? nope.
(DIR) Post #B7tJkorQLIwkjwQQG8 by quad@akko.quad.moe
0 likes, 1 repeats
@stefan I think you underestimate what I mean by "detail". You're thinking of digital compression, like an mp3. What I'm referring to is audio compression, which is when you take all the sounds and squish them into the same volume range.Even with a 192kbps MP3 the difference is obvious.
(DIR) Post #B7tJq7UmUDJvyzMU8u by kumicota@akkoma.kumicota.moe
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@hj @quad Same, another things that triggers me is also when they sell CD, Vinyl, Cassete, ... but they don't sell a high quality digital version too
(DIR) Post #B7tJzD1BK4lLiVqoJE by kumicota@akkoma.kumicota.moe
1 likes, 1 repeats
@hj @quad I know but a lot of times I would rather buy an flac than a CD and rip it myself
(DIR) Post #B7tK1rUxmy1zqN2uUy by quad@akko.quad.moe
2 likes, 0 repeats
@hj @kumicota I mean I get where he's coming from. The vast majority of japanese music in my library is pirated.Because 90% of it is not available on CD or too expensive to get in Norway.But I can't buy digital lossless version from Norway either, so I usually have to pirate a copy that someone else got a hold of
(DIR) Post #B7tK30MEKuETbqVRFA by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan Give me like 10 minutes and I'll make you a demo file.
(DIR) Post #B7tKrSaDfU1dd36mK8 by newt@stereophonic.space
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@hj @quad why not? It's art, after all, and the medium is a part of the message. Just like quad mentioned in the comment above, the narrower dynamic range of vinyl is quite suiting for lo-fi music.I only hope that nobody is going to make 192kHz/32bit rips of these because it's just stupid (I have many of those)
(DIR) Post #B7tKrt6j3FTZtOW6bI by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
1 likes, 1 repeats
@quad@hj someone should make gramophone records out of polycarbonate just to spite the trend
(DIR) Post #B7tL5cxzrKjlt2zAHY by kumicota@akkoma.kumicota.moe
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@quad @hj Basically, for anything I import I would have to pay ~98% in tarrifs over the total price, so a 30(CD)+20(shipping) becomes almost 100 bucks in the end.I tend to only buy CD's when I couldn't find anywhere else(pirated or not) or has some special merch due that. For example, I have 143 albums bought on bandcamp, even if I only listen 1 or 2 song of an album just because I want to support the artist and legally own the music
(DIR) Post #B7tLTUkM4ZDPLJzAUi by quad@akko.quad.moe
2 likes, 0 repeats
@stefan Here's a sample file of "Nobody" by One Republic. The ending theme of Kaiju No. 8.The file is split in two, the first 15 seconds are the album version for the western market. The other is the anime ending version for the Japanese market.The Japanese market has a really picky audiophile scene, so it's not uncommon for a Japanese release to be better made. Because they still buy CDs and care about the audio quality on them, unlike the west.The Western album release actually has a shorter file labeled "End title version" as well, but it's mastered the same as the regular western one, not actually the same as the anime ending.In other words, the first half of the attached file is a "normal" mastering job where it's been compressed to the same volume level. This is the standard way to release music these days in the west and has been for like 20+ years by now.The Japanese half doesn't squeeze all the audio to the same level, leaving dynamic range intact. The anime version has a slightly longer intro so I had to fade that one in to match the western one.But besides the first 5 seconds both halves of the attached file contain the SAME song, just two different masters of it, the first is mastered for the west, and the second is mastered for Japan.
(DIR) Post #B7tLpp1vL9cKcaqk1g by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
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@hj @quad @wolf480pl inb4 GG Allin fans would get the vinyl version.
(DIR) Post #B7tM4xiZJz4XuU12iu by quad@akko.quad.moe
1 likes, 0 repeats
@stefan Western version is from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChukpOHfAI8Japanese version is from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCMXJ4zKWABoth are lossy rips from YouTube which have then been LUFS normalized and lossily recompressed again to a 128kbit Opus file. While I do have FLACs of these, I did this just to prove that the difference is blatantly obvious even at lower bitrates.A lot of people are unaware of this, but a ton of modern music is already ruined in the production phase. The artist themselves (or the recording studio) smushes all the stuff together to a common volume level with a heavy EQ before it ever makes it onto a CD, streaming service, youtube video, etc. This is done because as far as statistics say, this is what people want, they prefer if you ruin the song to keep the volume consistent and the bass pronounced.This is why there's a whole clique of nerds who prefer Japanese CDs, even for Western artists, because Japan tends to still master music the "old way".Using a lossless source file, good eq and amazing headphones is just an attempt at trying to pull some quality back out of the file through brute force.All modern music could sound like the second half of the demo file if studios wanted. But the unfortunate reality is that typically such a version never leaves the studio, the only finished file that ever gets sold or streamed is "compressed" like the first half of the demo file.
(DIR) Post #B7tN4Y5Gj9oqMW05B2 by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan When people say that "music used to sound better on Vinyl", what they mean is that it was properly mastered. If you look up 30 year old albums, you'll often see two different versions, "Track" and "Track (Radio Mix)". And this is what that means, the radio mix is compressed to hell because that made it more legible over AM radio and/or a blown out car speaker.But for whatever reason, rather than these radio versions going away in the digital age, the opposite happened, artists stopped releasing "proper" masters of their music, and basically all music is a "Radio Mix" instead, which has the side effect of burying minute details.This is what most misguided modern audiophiles are trying to achieve. They keep spending money on expensive equipment and lossless tracks so they can hear these details and stuff again through the sheer force of throwing more money at the problem. What they should be doing is instead demanding that artists release better masters of their stuff like the audiophiles in Japan did.Unfortunately Japan also seems to be slipping towards the same trend as the west during the past couple of years.TL;DR: Most modern music basically has a god awful EQ already applied straight from the factory, which means that a "proper" version with the details intact often doesn't exist. If one does exist, it's often only in Japan because for the past 15-20 years they've been the last region with a customer base who actually cares enough about audio quality.
(DIR) Post #B7tN9uOZCaWZ0VaBLk by quad@akko.quad.moe
1 likes, 0 repeats
@stefan You have now been radicalized against modern music production and you might never be able to listen to most music again without imagining how much better it could be if the artist released a less crap master of the song. Sorry about that.
(DIR) Post #B7tYR7VumPo871Qfvk by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan Unfortunately I'm unsure if there is a Japanese CD release of this particular track. It's only present in the Anime opening, so you'll have to do with the version from YouTube or grab the audio from a Blu-ray release of the Anime.However, I do have "Nobody (End title version)" from the global web release which despite its name, is not the version from the end title, it has the same acapella at the start yes, but the mastering is typical western work and it sounds very close to the regular track on the CD.Here are the global releases ripped from Tidal:Regular track: https://send.salonen.no/Nobody.flac"End title version" track: https://send.salonen.no/Nobody_-_End_Title_Version.flacSince these are from the same release their mastering is similar.But if you compare them to a version from Japan (like the YouTube video of the ED, or audio from a Blu-Ray) you should notice the difference. (The anime version's volume is actually more equalized, probably for broadcast reasons. But the actual mixing job is entirely different)
(DIR) Post #B7tYbYqA2FRFlAsToW by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@stefan Unfortunately I don't have a better example at the moment. I don't listen to much western music either from regular artists either, my collection is mostly weebshit with no "western version" for comparison.
(DIR) Post #B7tZJQZC9q2mqDrL04 by m0xEE@breloma.m0xee.net
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@quad @hj CDs are pretty easy to burn at home — a lot of people still have the equipment and blanks aren't that hard to find. It's much more complicated with vinyl LPs :marseyemojismilemouthcoldsweat: CDRs don't last long, but compared to CDs manufactured in small quantities — the way most artists would go for, the difference won't be night and day. I think that's the reason why CD option is less common.Also shipping and handling costs — depending on your region that might exceed the price of CD itself. I do prefer having music on proper CD, but sometimes I see rate like $50 and I'm like :marseyshock: Okay, FLAC it is! I'm going to burn it myself :marseysigh:
(DIR) Post #B7tZJQlFR1gXRbUxmq by quad@akko.quad.moe
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@m0xEE @hj Meh, CDs are cheap. But like many things they are often sold as a collector's item.A lot of music available on Vinyl costs like $10 for the CD version of $50 for the vinyl one though, yet the Vinyl one readily outsells the CD.