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Ask HN: How do you deal with badly mastered music on good headphones?

4 points by dusted ↗ HN
My setup at work is not exactly headfi, beyerdynamic dt 990 pro 250 ohm on a fostex hpa-4 dac.

But it's good enough that I get into trouble with much of the music I like to listen to, like static-x and system of a down, they clip so much, I can see it when I import the flacs into audacity, I've tried ripping the original CD's too and the clipping is there!

I've though about trying some valve amplifier, to hopefully soften the clips a bit..

Or maybe there's a filter, I'd like there to not be too much distortion, but not have the hard clips eiter.. What do you do?

13 comments

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mintaka5
use a limiter. clipping is due to the gain peaking beyond reasonable decibel levels. you DO NOT want to amplify an already hot signal. you need to limit the gain levels. maybe try lowering the input volume when recording if you can't use a limiter.
dusted
I mean for playback, the clipping is audible at any volume, it's visible in the waveform from the CD too, for some albums, I can get the vinyl version which may or may not be better in this regard (but then have generally less crisp highs, probably for the same reason)
skydhash
If the music files already have clipping, there’s not much that can be done.

I just steer away from badly mastered music. There are enough good producers out there to not subject myself to that.

pestatije
which cd from SOAD? i never heard any clipping
dusted
I don't want to ruin SOAD for you, but take for instance and rip Bad Statue from the Mezmerize album, look around 53 seconds, on mine it's 00:00:52.916 that's A LOT of samples just going flat all topped out, that's a clip, and the whole song is filled with them, it has these little clips all over which gives an overall sensation that someone had their gain juuust that little tad too high at some point, and it's just pretty hard to unhear..

A more jarring example (SOAD is kinda noisy anyway and it's easy to ignore), take "4th of july" by Amy MacDonald, pretty clean sounding song, and yet, her voice is just that tad over the top and it's popping, lots of times just 4-5 samples, but constantly, and the audible clipping is at the same place where they are on the waveform..

Luckily I'm not the only one who's noticed this, but I'm kind of surprised that people don't find it more of a problem.. https://www.reddit.com/r/systemofadown/comments/xdspsl/i_tri...

Here's an edited version without the clipping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg-5XUu6hWA see how his voice is less harsh (I'd say it's maybe overdone here, voice can be harsh just fine without the clipping sounds)

I actually thought my download was broken, but it's the same on the physical cd version.

brudgers
Could it be clipping is an artist's artistic choice?

I mean music is bigger than the set of rules rulemakers have made.

dusted
There's definitely lots of that too, especially guitars and synth, but it's typically aesthetic and both sounds (and looks) like it belongs in the track
qbrass
Static-X might have done something like that intentionally, but it's generally what was done on CDs during the loudness war. It's why people were buying albums on vinyl instead of CDs, back before it became trendy.
brudgers
My understanding is the loudness war reduced dynamic range, but that it didn’t do so via clipping of high amplitude frequencies in the music, but rather by increasing gain of low amplitude frequencies with techniques like parallel compression.

But I could be wrong.

b20000
looking at the time domain waveform and seeing what you think that looks like clipping does not mean it was badly mastered

people in mastering studios know what they are doing, much better than you

there is probably something else going on with your setup or you are listening to lossly compressed material using mp3 etc

dusted
Try listening to some music with clipping, take 4th of july from Amy MacDonald for instance, now, if you don't hear it clip like mad when she hits the highs, it's your ear, I don't think anything can save that..

It's not like I'm playing my audio in audacity to look for clipping waveforms, but sometimes I hit some song that I really like, and notice the clipping, and spend a bunch of time debugging my setup, and FINALLY look at the waveform, and well...

"people in mastering studios know what they are doing, much better than you"

yea, yet that soft lil waveform is trying to break through the fucking roof, and while it could have done that (up to -3 db!) on my reel to reel player, it has no place to go in an audio file, and so it's just a cut off top, and, behold, gasp! that's where in the song the clipping is, like, the same place, what a coincidence.

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