Comparing mastered track to references

D

davecg321

New member
Should I avoid comparing my mastered tracks to music on Spotify and other streaming websites?

I've read that they use heavy limiting/compression to even out the consistency from song to song and don't give a true represntation of the original master i.e making it louder!

Is it better practice to reference CDs/mp3 rips (played back through the same speakers and setup I use for recording) ?

Tah

Dave
 
In short, yes. You are much better using something you've ripped yourself from a CD, or at least a high bit rate (say, minimum 320k) sample.
Almost all the web music systems heavily compress to save on bandwidth.
 
BroKen_H said:
Almost all the web music systems heavily compress to save on bandwidth.
Click to expand...
That data compression, not dynamic range compression. Some might do some of that, too, but I don't think it's actually common. More likely they are normalizing the tracks so that they all come out about the same average loudness, but usually the dynamic range itself isn't changed. Of course, I don't really have extensive experience with all the different services out there. There could be exceptions, or I could just be wrong. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
That data compression, not dynamic range compression. Some might do some of that, too, but I don't think it's actually common. More likely they are normalizing the tracks so that they all come out about the same average loudness, but usually the dynamic range itself isn't changed. Of course, I don't really have extensive experience with all the different services out there. There could be exceptions, or I could just be wrong. :)
Click to expand...

This is my understanding as well.

Reference material should always be best quality you can get, otherwise it defeats the purpose of using it as a reference. I used CDs and/or FLAC (CD quality) files.
 
Imma go along with that. Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud... Bleccchhh (quality wise). And lately either squashed or normalized down (hard to tell which, as much of what's up there is squashed anyway).
 
First I do not compare my masters to ANYTHING. I go strictly by is the output short of clipping, is it not pumping, is the mix right...all in the ears. I have read in other forums about music streaming sites compressing etc, and as somebody else pointed out, data yes, but no evidence of dynamically. I have an album on Spotify and iTunes and have no problem with it. They only convert to mp3. Make your master good as it can sound, in wav and let it go.
 
I have to review the sound of any web stream - maybe good one day, maybe bad the next, but I wouldn't say I've been pleased, either way.
 
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