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oxis
Junior Member
Portugal
128 posts
Joined: Apr, 2014
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 Posted - 2019/03/23 : 21:29:05
I was wondering if anyone else noticed or is extremely annoyed that Scott Brown's newer releases seem to be all exported at what looks like 192 kbps mp3 audio. When I buy them on beatport they come in supposedly 320 kbps, which has arguably minor data loss when compared to lossless, but Scott's tunes are all missing almost everything from about 16 khz up so it's clear that they were rendered in poor quality and then upscaled to 320.
Here's two pictures for comparison, the first one is a sonogram of Scott Brown's To The Beat, 320 mp3, the second one is Don't Doubt, also 320. The pictures show left and right channel on the top and bottom respectively.
 
If you don't know what you're looking at, essentially it is a representation of the frequencies of the music and their intensity as the song plays, the more orange a section is is the more intense the sound is in that frequency. The top shows the high end frequencies, the bottom shows the low end. The black bar above each channel on the first picture are the high end that is missing from the song, something that only happens when it's rendered or converted to a low quality lossy format. It seems that he started doing this at some point and is still doing it (the last track I bought was Like The Sun and it suffers from the same thing).
The difference is very audible if you don't have hearing loss, the songs sound like they miss "air" because they are missing the very high frequencies. I first noticed it in the remix of Laugh With Your Heart, where it is particularly grating. It has sadly disencouraged me from buying some of his tracks as of late, despite me being a fan and always wanting to support the guy (his old back cat stuff is being released all good quality though thankfully). It's also strange to me that nobody else has pointed this out.
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Edited by - oxis on 2019/03/23 21:35:13 |
Si Thompson
Advanced Member
United Kingdom
3,421 posts
Joined: Mar, 2016
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Posted - 2019/03/23 : 21:42:11
I have noticed a difference. Yes.
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Impulse_Response
Advanced Member
United States
724 posts
Joined: Jun, 2013
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Posted - 2019/03/24 : 06:06:19
I haven't bought any of his recent releases but I noticed this on Indigo Sky (Scott Brown Remix). I actually bought the wav of that one, as I always do, and it is missing the high frequencies like a <192 kbps mp3. It also has a ton of clipping, so I don't know what the hell he did to it.
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Producers and record labels, please stop "loudness war" mastering everything. It sounds terrible.
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Samination
Advanced Member
Sweden
13,179 posts
Joined: Jul, 2004
195 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2019/03/24 : 07:17:20
I have noticed similar things on various mp3s, but I dont think it has anything to do with waht bitrate it's on, and solely on the mp3 codec itself.
I've have a few 192kbps go almost the full 22hkz range, so this comparison... But yea, in general 192kb doesnt seem to he above 17khz and 320 about 19khz
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Edited by - Samination on 2019/03/24 07:22:01 |
oxis
Junior Member
Portugal
128 posts
Joined: Apr, 2014
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Posted - 2019/03/24 : 08:51:11
You're right, my bad. The bitrate that cuts off around 16 khz is 128, anything above that can sound good or bad depending on the encoder and whether it's cbr or vbr, correct me if I'm wrong. In that case it seems that the songs have been rendered in or converted to 128 kbps or something equivalent before being distributed.
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Edited by - oxis on 2019/03/24 08:54:03 |
kazukism92
Senior Member
Chile
302 posts
Joined: Aug, 2013
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Posted - 2019/03/24 : 15:05:57
I remember bought "Boom" from Joey Riot with Jackinabox at beatport, and sounds like a trash, 15kHz around.
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lainnix
New Member
United States
58 posts
Joined: Oct, 2017
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Posted - 2019/03/24 : 15:34:01
If M-Project was involved in the mastering, I've seen him do it before too.
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trippnface
Advanced Member
United States
1,657 posts
Joined: Jan, 2010
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Posted - 2019/03/25 : 15:21:40
lol, how do " professionals" let this occur?
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AWal
New Member
United States
66 posts
Joined: May, 2010
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Posted - 2019/03/25 : 16:57:26
Not a fan of masters that don't occupy the full range, but this one doesn't stongly occupy the high end above 16kHz anyways.
For reference, here's a screengrab from SPEK of the same track from the Hardcore Heaven 2 album from Hardcore Underground:
As you can see, there's not much in the high end, which would cause encoders to likely disregard it outright. I'm not saying an mp3 was mastered, but there was some strong low-pass filtering applied for many of the instruments.
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Impulse_Response
Advanced Member
United States
724 posts
Joined: Jun, 2013
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Posted - 2019/03/26 : 00:53:04
quote:
Originally posted by AWal:
Not a fan of masters that don't occupy the full range, but this one doesn't stongly occupy the high end above 16kHz anyways.
For reference, here's a screengrab from SPEK of the same track from the Hardcore Heaven 2 album from Hardcore Underground:
[img]http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/0c37/v34lt0e78v9tsrs6g.jpg
As you can see, there's not much in the high end, which would cause encoders to likely disregard it outright. I'm not saying an mp3 was mastered, but there was some strong low-pass filtering applied for many of the instruments.
I suspect the source was an mp3 for HH2 as well as the full release. Having a hard cutoff right at 16kHz like that screams lossy compression. Moreover, those thin and frilly bits above 16kHz look like lossy compression. At least, that's the pattern I've seen after doing countless tests.
I made a thread like this one years ago and got mixed responses. Some were even angry, and Al Storm himself chimed in. I apologize in advance for the "academic" tone of my writing.
https://www.happyhardcore.com/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=67480
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Producers and record labels, please stop "loudness war" mastering everything. It sounds terrible.
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Edited by - Impulse_Response on 2019/03/26 00:54:45 |
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