# Are CDs normally recorded too hot (or have clipping)?



## Weston

My long coveted CD of James Levine and the CSO's version of the The Planets arrived at my door today, and I immediately started ripping the disc to encode to mp3 with Audacity.

The very first track loaded up with what appears to be a LOT of clipping. Is this normal for a classical CD? How can this not sound distorted? Actually I haven't listened yet. I'm just outraged at how it looks:



















What did they do? Compress it and try to make a metal album of it?

Moderators, let me know if there is an audiophile sub-forum. I couldn't find one.


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## Weston

Okay, yes the wav file does sound distorted. So I listened to the CD itself and it too sounds a little distorted in the bass. How can this happen? I am disappointed.


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## Albert7

Weston said:


> Okay, yes the wav file does sound distorted. So I listened to the CD itself and it too sounds a little distorted in the bass. How can this happen? I am disappointed.


Sounds like bad sonic engineering to me. Have you tried to buy the iTunes version to see if a different master was used?


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## Weston

I don't think it is available on iTunes or other mp3 sellers. At least I haven't found it.










Now that I have calmed down, I can't say it sounds horrible. It's still pretty awesome in fact. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. But I will be wary of Deutsche Grammophon going forward.

Also now that I have calmed down, I see the Hi-Fi subforum. My apologies for posting here.


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## bigshot

That is a pretty old recording isn't it? It might have been recorded in the early days of digital when all they had was 16/44.1 and Levine may have overdone the climaxes and burned the clipping into the master. I haven't found any classical disks with severe clipping myself.


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## Albert7

Weston said:


> I don't think it is available on iTunes or other mp3 sellers. At least I haven't found it.
> 
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> Now that I have calmed down, I can't say it sounds horrible. It's still pretty awesome in fact. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. But I will be wary of Deutsche Grammophon going forward.
> 
> Also now that I have calmed down, I see the Hi-Fi subforum. My apologies for posting here.


I think that DG is fine ... but Levine tends to overconduct a lot.

have you tried the Karajan recording of this piece?


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## bigshot

Mehta / LAPO...


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## Azol

This is what they call "*loudness wars*" - Google it and you'll get the picture.

Same story with Berlioz Requiem (Levine) on DGG. I can see a trend here.


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## Triplets

Early digital recordings can sound pretty awful. The engineers had a an increased in dynamic range to play with compared to older formats and would tweak the dials to accentuate quiet passages and and this would frequently overload climaxes. 
Or this may be a victim of the "loudness wars" used primarily in pop music, the idea being that the sound is suppossed to jump out at you in a store, or the car, rise above the rest of the clamor, but then sound bad on a home system or with decent headphones. The Planets might have been mixed like a pop recording, because it does tend to draw some non classical listeners.


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## ptr

Have You tried a different ripping software? Could be that the settings in your Audacity are of?

/ptr


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## quack

It's certainly much rarer in classical music but a quick search suggests that DG are one of the worst offenders. I suppose _The Planets_ is one of the most metal works in the repertoire so they are wont to give it as much punch as possible. A lazy edit that boosts the quiet ending of Neptune but applied across the work will damage Mars like this.

Here is an up to date case. Philip Glass's _Complete Piano Etudes_ recorded 2014 by Maki Namekawa. It's a solo piano recording, but still it is recorded far too loud, like an orchestral work, to give it impact.










http://www.mcelhearn.com/the-loudness-wars-and-classical-music/


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## Weston

ptr said:


> Have You tried a different ripping software? Could be that the settings in your Audacity are of?
> 
> /ptr


Well, my OP was misleading. I'm actually ripping to wav in Roxio something-or-other -- then using Audacity because I like to splice together tracks that run on into the next track before I encode in mp3. This is the first time I've seen this on a classical album.



quack said:


> It's certainly much rarer in classical music but a quick search suggests that DG are one of the worst offenders. I suppose _The Planets_ is one of the most metal works in the repertoire so they are wont to give it as much punch as possible. A lazy edit that boosts the quiet ending of Neptune but applied across the work will damage Mars like this.
> 
> Here is an up to date case. Philip Glass's _Complete Piano Etudes_ recorded 2014 by Maki Namekawa. It's a solo piano recording, but still it is recorded far too loud, like an orchestral work, to give it impact.


Wow. I think this is exactly what I'm seeing and what is happening. It must indeed be the loudness wars as Azol mentioned above too. I'd never heard of those before.

I guess I'm stuck with it. It seems a weird thing for engineers to want to do. I listen totally at random at work with a good chance a Haydn string quartet movement will play immediately after Black Sabbath. My brain makes the transition just fine, often without even fiddling with the volume, in the same way my eyes make a transition from stepping out of bright sun into a darker room. (That's is kind of a backward analogy in the context of Black Sabbath and Haydn, but you get my meaning.)

It's good to know this is something that happens and I'm not imagining it. Thanks for the replies.


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## Mahlerian

Interestingly, the DG Abbado/Berlin live Mahler Sixth is one of the quietest-recorded discs I know, because the whole thing is tied to the loudness of the first hammerblow in the finale.


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## Vaneyes

Re 1980's CDs, of the so-called major labels (Philips, Decca, DG, EMI, Sony), I found DG and Sony to be the worst, with Philips and Decca being the best. EMI, mixed bag, with EMI France often godawful.

Re others 1980's CDs, RCA LP transfers could be awful. Their later stuff, often good. Warner Teldec, mixed bag, though they prided themselves on superior sound.

The 1990's saw an influx of good and bad re-remasterings. That's when I noticed some of the bad ones juicing up the volume.

Sony's 20-bit re-remasterings were a refreshing intro into their catalog. How they had managed to screw up so many original issues, like DG (and RCA some years before them), is beyond my realm of reasoning.


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## Azol

The thing is - the loudness war rages during mastering of the actual CD, not during the recording process itself (or you should probably kill the sound engineer on the spot). Later remasterings tend to be louder, but sometimes (rarely) it's other way around.

Wait till you see a real LOUD recording (this is a rock one and only a section of it but you will get the picture):









But here is another example: initially loud recording (top) was remixed and remastered and got pretty decent sound (bottom):









Here is a DGG recording of Berlioz Requiem (Levine), Tuba Mirum section:


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## bigshot

I think you probably need to shoot the recording engineer on the spot. In the analogue era, it was common to "juice up" the climaxes by pushing into the red, because analogue tape had the headroom to accept the peaks without objectionable clipping. In the early days of digital, engineers continued to do this until they realized that the top of digital is a wall, and the noise floor is low enough that you never need to push it like tape. It looks like the engineer in Chicago recording Levine back in the day hadn't gotten the message yet.


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## Weston

Azol said:


> But here is another example: initially loud recording (top) was remixed and remastered and got pretty decent sound (bottom):
> 
> View attachment 63901


Interesting to see Roine Stolt's name appear here. He is a multitalented progressive powerhouse, perhaps not so well known in my part of the world but I am a big fan.



Azol said:


> Here is a DGG recording of Berlioz Requiem (Levine), Tuba Mirum section:
> 
> View attachment 63902


This looks even worse than mine! I don't feel so bad.


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