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Brian W.
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| Posted: 06 March 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged
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We have discussed this topic here before, but I thought it would be a good idea to start a list of CDs where one or more tracks are confirmed to have been mastered from an MP3 source. Because I just found out that this is the case with a very surprising title: Varese's "25 Rockin' Instrumentals."
Varese has a reputation for careful mastering, so I doubt if anyone on their end was aware of the situation. But it appears that the track "Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2)" by Bill Doggett, featured on this CD with both sides of the single edited together, was mastered from an MP3 source.
Look at the images below. This is the track "Honky Tonk (Part 1)" from Ace UK's "Teen Beat Vol. 5":
As you (barely) can see, the audio frequencies go all the way up to at least 22hz.
Now take a look at the same spectral view of "Part 1 & 2" from Varese's "25 Rockin' Instrumentals":
See how frequencies above 15hz are just cut out? That's exactly what you see in medium-bitrate MP3 (under 256kb). That's part of how MP3s compress the audio -- they just cut out frequencies that are above the range of most people's hearing.
I showed this to Aaron, and he agrees, with no doubt: that song was mastered from an MP3 on the Varese CD.
I'll add that I checked this on three different copies of the CD, and all are identical. I don't know what happened. Again, I doubt if the mastering engineers knew about this -- I think they were probably sent a digital master by King Records. But it makes me wonder if the other songs on this CD are like this. Or what other tracks out there might be...
EDIT: Let me add one more image. This is the Ace UK version of "Honky Tonk (Pt 1)" which I've ripped as a 128kb MP3 with iTunes. See how the spectral view now resembles the Varese CD:
Edited by Brian W. on 06 March 2012 at 11:32pm
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aaronk
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| Posted: 06 March 2012 at 11:27pm | IP Logged
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I'm willing to bet that a good number of the "Now" CDs have mp3 sources. I can confirm "Now 31" and "Now 32" have lossy tracks, as detailed in another thread.
Are we just listing the CDs or the tracks, too?
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Aaron Kannowski
Uptown Sound
91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 06 March 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged
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I thought it would be a good idea to list the tracks, if we know what they are. "Hey There Delilah" was the first one to come to mind.
Edited by Brian W. on 06 March 2012 at 11:32pm
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aaronk
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| Posted: 07 March 2012 at 9:02am | IP Logged
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Wow. The Classic Sixties Collection 1969-70 (2006, Unversal B0007446-02). EVERY SINGLE TRACK is taken from mp3. That's just sad, poor mastering.
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Aaron Kannowski
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 07 March 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged
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OMFG! NO WAY! Unbelievable. What a pain -- now I'm going to have to do spectral analysis on virtually every one of my CDs from about 2003 on.
Edited by Brian W. on 07 March 2012 at 10:54am
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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 07 March 2012 at 11:06am | IP Logged
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Guys, please continue to share other CD tracks mastered from mp3 here. I sure hope this dubious practice isn't widespread. If it is, I consider it scandalous because I'd have never bought any CDs knowing they were mastered like this.
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Ringmaster_D
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| Posted: 07 March 2012 at 1:02pm | IP Logged
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Pat,
Not to create too much extra work for you, but does it make sense to add a parenthetical "mastered from MP3" note in the database for those tracks that we know are from lossy sources? It would certainly add value. I see it as no different than the "mastered from vinyl" comments that are in there now.
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KentT
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| Posted: 08 March 2012 at 11:35am | IP Logged
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Keep a list of these dubious discs so listeners are
forewarned. This is sonic Fraud!
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crapfromthepast
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| Posted: 08 March 2012 at 12:40pm | IP Logged
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Props to Brian for figuring out the sonic signatures from
mp3 compression!
The views that he shows in the embedded pictures are from
a newer version of the old standby, Cool Edit Pro. (I
still use an ancient version of it for my editing, and
will likely never change to anything else.)
The default view in Cool Edit Pro is the "waveform view",
which we're all used to seeing. It's trivially easy to
switch to the spectral view that Brian shows - Go to View
> Spectral View.
I'd think that Audacity or the other editing programs
should have a similar view, but I can't confirm.
I played a little with mp3 encoding from the old CDex
program, just to see if the effects are visible even at
very high encoding rates. I took a wav file of one of my
needledrops, encoded to mp3, then converted back to wav
so I could view it in Cool Edit Pro. I mp3-encoded with
"preset insane" option on CDex, which encodes at 320
kbps. The wav-to-320 kbps mp3-to wav file shows the hard
cutoff effect that Brian shows, but at 21 kHz. The
source file has frequencies that extend to the max scale
and don't show a hard cutoff.
Edited by crapfromthepast on 08 March 2012 at 12:41pm
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Hykker
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| Posted: 08 March 2012 at 5:28pm | IP Logged
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crapfromthepast wrote:
Cool Edit Pro. (I
still use an ancient version of it for my editing, and
will likely never change to anything else.) |
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You may have to at some point. Last year we upgraded the production studio machines at my stations. Previously, we'd used Audition 1.5, but it wouldn't run properly on the new computers. Weird issues where the cursor & timer weren't in sync with the audio being played. Spent way too much time trying to get it to work, finally upgraded to 3.0 and it worked fine.
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The Hits Man
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| Posted: 08 March 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged
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Even the older Audition 1.5 has issues under Windows 7. I
doubt it will even work under Windows 8 very well, if at
all.
I'd say the best version of AA is 3, even though CS5.5 has
a few neat features, plus that it's much faster.
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TomDiehl1
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I haven't yet had any issues running Adobe Audition 1.5 on my Windows 7 computer..... personally I'd go back to XP if I could, though.
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crapfromthepast
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Props to my "Cool Edit Pro - Special Edition version 1.1",
which appears to have a copyright date of 1998. Still runs
great under both Windows XP and Windows 7.
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The Hits Man
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The features in the later versions are indespenible to me.
I'm already using Windows 8!
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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 31 March 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged
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Ringmaster_D wrote:
Pat,
Not to create too much extra work for you, but does it make sense to add a parenthetical "mastered from MP3" note in the database for those tracks that we know are from lossy sources? It would certainly add value. I see it as no different than the "mastered from vinyl" comments that are in there now.
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I think that's a great idea, Ringmaster D.
I also conducted a spectral analysis of the remaining tracks on the 25 Rockin' Instrumentals (Varese Sarabande 302066484) and the only other track besides Bill Doggett's "Honky Tonk Parts 1 & 2" that appears to have been mastered from an mp3 source is Billy Joe & the Checkmates' "Percolator (Twist)". I have no idea why mp3s were used for these two tracks, but I suspect Varese received the tracks this way from the licensing record labels and simply never realized these were lossy files.
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The Hits Man
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| Posted: 02 April 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged
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One thing to consider, guys, is that, at least for the
older tracks, the sources may not have been from mp3. The
tracks, or tapes they used, simply had a high-pass filter
applied to them to eliminate high frequency noise or
something.
Edited by The Hits Man on 02 April 2012 at 10:58am
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aaronk
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| Posted: 02 April 2012 at 8:42pm | IP Logged
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Looking at Brian's pictures above, there's no question in my mind that the
track is from mp3...and I haven't even heard it.
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Aaron Kannowski
Uptown Sound
91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 02 April 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged
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The Hits Man wrote:
One thing to consider, guys, is that, at least for the
older tracks, the sources may not have been from mp3. The
tracks, or tapes they used, simply had a high-pass filter
applied to them to eliminate high frequency noise or
something. |
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That cannot be true on the "Percolator (Twist)" track that Todd Ireland
analyzed. When I saw it, it not only had frequencies above a certain point
shaved off, but it had all the hallmarks of a VARIABLE BITRATE MP3, similar
to LAME at, say, the V1 or V2 setting. What I saw (can't post it now, my
regular computer is on the blink), was a flat shave-off of frequencies at
about 16hz, then higher frequencies at certain points throughout the song.
When I get my regular PC working again, I'll post a photo.
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AndrewChouffi
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| Posted: 03 April 2012 at 6:00am | IP Logged
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Back to specifically "Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2)", people may have forgotton that cleverly edited track surfaced on peer-to-peer networks about a year before Varese released it, so maybe Varese realized they couldn't do a more seamless splicing effort and decided to release it the way they found it. Just a thought...
Andy
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 1:29am | IP Logged
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Just discovered that my Ludacris "Stand Up" promo CD single (DEFR 15907-2) is lossy except for the instrumental:
1. Stand Up (Radio) (lossy source)
2. Stand Up (Instrumental) (lossless)
3. Stand Up (Call Out) (lossy)
That's a 2003 single, so they started this sort of thing pretty early.
In addition, my promo CD single of "Crank That" by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em AND my commercial import CD single of the same title are ALL from lossy sources. Have not been able to find the 45 version of "Crank That" in lossless format yet, since the album version segues in from the previous track. (Something that should probably be noted in the database.)
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: List of MP3 sources on CD
