Apple Music Sound Quality/Playlists/Library

[djr7572]

Does anyone else do this? I know it can't possibly be just me.

In Apple Music, when adding a song to a Playlist or your library, a lot of times you have the choice of 2~3 options (same song, just from different albums). Before you add your song (assuming there's several choices of the same song), do you sample each song to see which one sounds the best or the loudest? I find myself doing this every time I add a song to my library because often times there's a noticeable difference in volume and overall quality of the track. Sometimes they are all too close to really notice.

Am I wasting my time doing this? I mean, if I have a choice, obviously I'd prefer to have the best quality track. I have my Apple Music Settings set to Apple Lossless for everything (streaming, downloading, etc) but at the same time, one choice might be noticeably quieter than the other, the giving impression of lesser sound quality. I almost always choose the one that sounds louder/more "full".

Your thoughts?

 

[Crunchynut]

Hi

You are right that different offerings of the same track may be different, and yes I do sometimes listen to a few and choose which one I want.

But, it’s wrong to equate loudness with quality. The opposite is often true. There is this thing called ‘Loudness Wars’ whereby in the 80’s record producers wanted their tracks to play more loudly because that made people think the track was better and hence more popular. But you can’t just crank the recording volume up because the naturally loud bits of the track will be clipped - that is - the natural loud bits will be distorted because there isn’t enough ‘headroom’ for them to play properly.

They get round this by reducing the dynamic range of the whole track. So if you imagine the distance between the lowest trough and the highest peak is 100, and the average volume is 50, they squeeze this range down to, say, 70, and then sit the average volume at 65. The track will sound louder on average and to the casual listener it is better, but the dynamic range of the track has been compressed meaning its audio quality is worse.

There is a whole thing about it on the internet and there is a database of thousands of albums showing their dynamic range. So, if I’m bothered about choosing the best track from an Apple Music offering of 2 or 3, I might consult the database to see which recoding has the best DR. Generally speaking, recordings from the 60s and 70s are better than the 80s and 90s.

There are some notable artists who bucked the trend and made sure their recordings were produced for quality and not popularity- eg Grace Jones and Sting, to name just a couple. And then some artists that you would have thought would have been more concerned about this who apparently were not.

 

[Crunchynut]

Here is the link

https://dr.loudness-war.info/

 

[djr7572]

Hi

You are right that different offerings of the same track may be different, and yes I do sometimes listen to a few and choose which one I want.

But, it’s wrong to equate loudness with quality. The opposite is often true. There is this thing called ‘Loudness Wars’ whereby in the 80’s record producers wanted their tracks to play more loudly because that made people think the track was better and hence more popular. But you can’t just crank the recording volume up because the naturally loud bits of the track will be clipped - that is - the natural loud bits will be distorted because there isn’t enough ‘headroom’ for them to play properly.

They get round this by reducing the dynamic range of the whole track. So if you imagine the distance between the lowest trough and the highest peak is 100, and the average volume is 50, they squeeze this range down to, say, 70, and then sit the average volume at 65. The track will sound louder on average and to the casual listener it is better, but the dynamic range of the track has been compressed meaning its audio quality is worse.

There is a whole thing about it on the internet and there is a database of thousands of albums showing their dynamic range. So, if I’m bothered about choosing the best track from an Apple Music offering of 2 or 3, I might consult the database to see which recoding has the best DR. Generally speaking, recordings from the 60s and 70s are better than the 80s and 90s.

There are some notable artists who bucked the trend and made sure their recordings were produced for quality and not popularity- eg Grace Jones and Sting, to name just a couple. And then some artists that you would have thought would have been more concerned about this who apparently were not.

Interesting ... I wasn't aware of any of this. Thank you!