Audio compression (loudness) of Japanese album

[Dave]

Jun 28, 2008 20:57:44 GMT martindn said:

Hi Maya,

That is quite something, designing and building your own amplifier just to listen to Hayley's new album. It is many many years since I designed and built an amplifier, in fact back in my student days over 40 years ago.
If you read elsewhere however, you will find that some of us have issues with the way that the dynamic range of the music has been compressed on this album. Whatever you might do with the amplification, you cannot do anything about the source. That is whatever it is, and even if you manage to eliminate all distortion from the amplification process, you are still left with that which is inherent in the recording and mixing processes.
Most of the time I listen to this album in my car, which has Peugeot's standard stereo. I have just spent a fair bit of money upgrading the unacceptably poor sound system in my new motorhome, and it is now excellent, I also have a half decent hi-fi separates system, which I intend to listen to this album on again tonight to see if I can still hear the distortion due to dynamic range compression.
Martin

Hi Martin, further to your above comments in the main Japanese album thread, I should perhaps clarify my thoughts on distortion a bit.

I'm not saying there was any distortion in its commonly accepted meaning (total harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion etc.,) introduced by the compressing and limiting, just that the relative sound levels were changed by too great an amount and unecessarily. The pure voice is still pure and technically undistorted - but it doesn''t exhibit the full dynamic range.

Although, some people would argue that dynamically compressing the sound levels is tantamount to distorting the original sound - but you won't measure it with the standard distortion meters. Maya's low distortion amplifier will indeed make Hayley's voice sound clearer - but if you like a wide dynamic range (not everyone!), it can't unfortunately bring that back.

And if you like listening to Hayley in the car at 70 mph on a motorway, Japanese Album compression is probably just what you need to hear it all! i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif Given the choice though, you can probably guess what I prefer...

Cheers, Dave

[grant]

Jun 28, 2008 21:12:00 GMT martindn said:

[glow=red,2,300][/glow]Congratulations on your 4000th post.

Thank you Martin

It's nice that someone noticed - I suspect most viewers are glued to Marks report from Aberglaslyn!

Best wishes
Grant

[maya]

Hi everyone and Good after noon from Japan.

Today, I just have finished my lunch and came back to my audio room again where a computer to analyze audio signals is set on. My new digital audio amplifier is also set on from the morning listening to different Hayley's CDs.

The new amplifier provides me more details of the sounds and I can clearly notice that the new CD “Hayley sings Japanese Songs”is compressed more compared with those her CDs sold in Japan in the past except one. What Dave reported for the first time was pointing out exactly what was controlled by Universal Japan, I found.

Analyzing No.1 recording “Amazing Grace “ with Minako Honda, I almost got the reason why the whole CD has a bit higher compression.

Minako's part is compressed too much.

This can be seen by a software called Gold Wave. I wish I could post the screen shot of analyzed wave form, but I do not know how to do it here in HWI's forum. I am still a new member and I do not know the system very well. I'd be happy if any one could help me to post the pictures in plain English.

Because of too much of compression on Minako's part, the audio engineer in Universal Japan must have needed to match the level on Hayley's part too. But still compared with Minako's part, Hayley's part is not compressed too much. I must say, “Seeing is believing”. And I'd better show you guys the screen shot. I can easily assume how the engineer in Universal must had struggled to make the balance better.

Since “Amazing Grace “ is set at the first part of the CD, the rest of the songs were also needed to compress to make ends meet. This may be the reason why the whole CD is compressed a bit more than before. Last time when Japanese version of Treasure was released with a bonus track of Nada Sousou, people complained the level of Nada Sousou is too high. Compared with this, Nada Sousou in “Hayley sings Japanese Songs” version is better and quieter although the source is just the same.

Minako Honda had been belonged to Columbia Record Company and she has passed away 3+ years ago. There is no way to let her sing together with Hayley. What Columbia Record Company provided for Universal was already compressed a bit too much and this must be the root cause of the compression of whole CD, I assume.

Any comments will be appreciated.

Best wishes from Far East..
Maya

[pjrcorreia]

Jun 29, 2008 4:55:18 GMT maya said:

This can be seen by a software called Gold Wave. I wish I could post the screen shot of analyzed wave form, but I do not know how to do it here in HWI's forum. I am still a new member and I do not know the system very well. I'd be happy if any one could help me to post the pictures in plain English.

Hi Maya,

I think this could help:
hwi.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Support&action=display&thread=1764

greetings,
Paulo correia

[Dave]

Jun 29, 2008 4:55:18 GMT maya said:

I wish I could post the screen shot of analyzed wave form...

Any comments will be appreciated.

Hi Maya and thanks for your interesting analysis. Yes, the difference in the audio wave form of Amazing Grace on "Pure" and the Japanese Album is dramatic - I should have posted it before but i didn't think of that. So here they are:

Amazing Grace from "Pure" by Hayley Westenra (left audio channel)



Amazing Grace from "Hayley sings Japanese Songs" by Hayley and Minako Honda (left audio channel).

Both images are to the same scale as you can see from the times along the top (minutes:seconds) and the sound levels along the left (dB). In both cases, the "quiet" intro lasts 25 to 30 seconds then Hayley starts to sing solo. Each of the small marks at the top represents 5 seconds.

The loudest note (there's only one!) on the Pure recording is only 0.5 decibels lower than the loudest notes (there are many!) on the duet, such a difference is inaudible. But as you can see, the Japanese version is considerably louder everywhere else in the song. You can also see the audio limiting that occurred during several of the loudest passages in the japanese version. Both songs are typical of what is seen throughout each album.

But I don't think having to do this with one song (the duet, for understandable reasons) is a good reason to do it with all the others - there are other ways to "solve" the problem (mixing the duet a little quieter overall, for example).

I still love the album; but it would have been even better if it had been put on the CD as it was originally recorded (with the possible exception of Amazing Grace duet, as explained by Maya). And it has to be said, there are far worse examples of excessive dynamic compression out there, on pop albums by other singers!

Cheers, Dave

[pjrcorreia]

Hi Maya and Dave,

Thanks to both for your analysis, they are quite interesting.

Greetings,
Paulo correia

[maya]

Thank you pjrcorreia and Dave for supporting me.

Already Dave did it and I do not think my additional post will be almost meaningless but to show Mikako's part clearly, let me try to this. Bright part is Minako's part.

s279.photobucket.com/albums/kk122/Yamaestro/?action=view¤t=AmazingGracewholepart1.jpg

I hope this works.
Incidentally, are you an audio engineer, Dave?
I am a video engineer.

Best wishes.
Maya

I removed the image tags to leave a clickable link.
Richard

[maya]

This is maya. Let me try again.

[maya]

This is Maya again.

Seemed it worked.
I do thank you Pjrcorreia for you kind support.
My first try to show the photo was through Mozilla Ver. 3.0 and it didn't work.
So I tried IE and it's OK to show the photo.

Anyway thank you guys for reading and seeing my posts. I had a little hard time explaining technical affairs by my limited English.

All the best.
Maya

[Richard]

Hello Maya!

Your first attempt was unsuccessful because you tried to display the whole page instead of just the image. I removed the tags to leave a clickable link.

Richard

[maya]

Thank you Richard for fixing it.

I am getting a little better in this site.
May be I should add my family photo with Hayley next time if my family says OK.

Maya.

[pjrcorreia]

Jun 29, 2008 14:52:17 GMT maya said:

Thank you Richard for fixing it.

I am getting a little better in this site.
May be I should add my family photo with Hayley next time if my family says OK.

Maya.

Hi Maya,

WOW! You have your own photo with Hayley, that's great, I'm sure we all here would like to see it, if your family says OK.

PS: I hope one day to meet Hayley and have my photo taken with her.

Greetings from Portugal,
Paulo Correia

[pjrcorreia]

Jun 29, 2008 15:07:53 GMT pjrcorreia said:

PS: I hope one day to meet Hayley and have my photo taken with her.

Sorry everyone at HWI!

...and also hoping to meet some of HWI members.


Greetings,
Paulo Correia

[howard]

Hello Maya,

First of all welcome to HWI and your technical imput. I am looking forward to more of your posts and your picture with Hayley.
I now have a better understanding about this CD.

And thanks again Dave...wow, when you bring up a subject at HWI you get a complete answer.
I am just glad that I wasn't having a hearing problem.

My Very Best,
Howard

[martindn]

Well, I did get round to listening to the album again on my hifi, using a pair of cheapish headphones (well about 30 quid, bought for the computer, but they beat the pants of my 30 year old set of "proper" hifi stereo headphones). I enjoyed the album rather more than I do in the car, which suggests that the improvement in sound quality has not made the compression any more of a problem.
Maya, thank you for your analysis of Amazing Grace, that is very interesting. It is clear that this track was recorded as four separate clips, one for each verse, which were then stuck together. It certainly sounds like that when you listen to it, and from your trace you can clearly see that different amounts of compression were used on each of the verses, with Minako's third verse having the most, and Hayley's first verse the least. The second verse, Hayley's solo Japanese one, is intermediate between verse 1 and verse 3, and Verse 4, with both singers, seems less compressed than Verse 3.
There is another clear join in Time, where the verse that Hayley sings in Japanese seems to be a separate clip. I wonder if more compression was used on that too.

Martin