I want to explain a little more about the music you hear and how it's engineered.
Compression is perhaps the most significant process that music undergoes.
To begin, have you noticed that when you hear loud music, there comes a point when as you turn up the volume, your ears seem to register less and less increase. This is because your ears naturally compress the sound beyond a certain decibel threshold - they push down the perceived volume. But in a certain way - it doesn't just reduce the volume, it tends to 'saturate' the sound.
The same applies to every component in recording of music, from the microphone to the cables, to the recording equipment - every part of the journey adds compression, and so an engineer's task is to find the threshold that each component has, and then to ask how far above or below should the signal be, for the desired effect.
What we commonly know of now as 'compression' really began with tape recorders. Tape had the strange effect of saturating when it records 'into the red', ie, beyond it's threshold. That threshold changed depending on the use of Dolby and other noise reduction methods.
The thing is, if you reduce the volume, the base noise level of the medium creeps closer to the 'desired' hearing level. So to have a clean background noise base, you try to record as loud as possible. Natural tape saturation was often a desired effect - it is still considered the best effect for recording drums.
Then they built analogue compressors. There were different methods, essentially replicating the tape process, but added many parameters and effects. It has been said that the one piece of equipment a recording engineer would take to a desert island would be the compressor - it was an instrument in itself.
You can set the attack, the release, the threshold at which it cuts in and the slope or degree of compression. This enables you to contour the sound with precise control. Unfortunately, compression had a serious drawback - loss of sound quality. This means all the fine nuances of tonal colour the instrument gives off, get lost in compression. That is why it is never used in recording classical music - listeners are too keen to hear the full richness of high quality instruments.
In electric guitars, it is most commonly used, esp before the distortion unit, so that an electric distorted guitar sounds more like a cello than an acoustic guitar which has a percussive attack and a very quick release sound shape - compression changes that by reducing the level of initial attack and elongating the tail to give a wailing effect.
High quality analogue compressors were often also valve units, which had it's own compression tonality - resulting in much even overtones, perceived as 'fatness' and 'warmth' in the sound. Quite a beautiful effect, which compensated for the loss of tonal dynamics. (Digital music is characterised by odd overtones, which give a brittle harshness and 'edgy' sound.)
But the primary use of compression in popular music, was not aesthetic sound shaping, but it's end use. Listening to the radio in the motor car.
Have you ever tried to listen to classical music in your car (unless you own one of those ultra quiet cars). It is nearly impossible - you have to keep fiddling the volume knob.
The music comes through the radio at a consistent volume, so if an engineer can raise the volume of the whole piece, not only does it jump out at you, but it also has no quiet sections, that you can't hear against background noise. And we have come to expect that quality in our music - unfortunately it's not quality.
To achieve this, engineers compressed the shit out of their produced music - squeezing as much of the music as possible all up to the threshold limit (and beyond in analogue recordings). So you get a punchy sound, but a flat timbre, with little of the original instrument's tonal colouring.
Then came digital recording, and so appeared digital compressors, which tried to replicate the effects of analogue compressors. (Just to clarify - analogue processors played with the actual signal itself, whereas with digital, the analogue sound travels through the air, mic and cable to the unit, where it hits what they call a 'truth table' which tries to digitally represent every aspect of sound that technology knows about. Then it processes that representation. At the end, it re-transforms the music, from digital representations into analogue sound so your ear can hear it.)
But digital compressors have never been able to match the quality of analogue compressors. So what is a case of shit-squeezing - this process of 'maximization' - moved from an analogue effect that was quite tolerable from high quality units, to a digital process that robs the music of much more of its character. Audible consequence - although the volume is higher, the music seems to be set back in the speakers. With low compressed and high quality recordings, the music extends out of the speakers and seems to have real physical body in the room. This is also the effect of records. It is rare to find this quality in digital music.
Digital music has the advantage of 'spread' of sound. It seems to expand horizontally (eg the synthesizer), but not out into the room. It is more like wall paper.
As a result I gave up on maximizing compression, as I sought more and more the tonality of the original instrument. This puts my music at a disadvantage in the public sphere - for a start, it has to be turned up louder to get the equivalent volume mean of other commercial recordings. But also it has more dynamics, meaning it rises and falls much more within the sound itself - this causes what I see psychologically as a 'failure to sustain the universe'.
High compression creates a sense of claiming the perimeters of the universe. It fills the universe, reaching to its limit, then holding that consistently to the end. This gives a sense of security to the listener. Music less compressed, has an expanding and contracting perimeter, which tends to betray the security expected psychologically. It is a little subtly uncertain and unpredictable - not qualities much appreciated in our modern world.
I do something else to replicate this maximisation process. I go into the wave form itself, find the extremes, and manually decrease their volume - this is a micro management of the sound, and can only have limited results, else I would have to work on a piece for years to create the same effect as a maximiser compressor.
But also I have come to appreciate the changing dynamics in sound - which is placing me perceptually outside the main stream (again
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Just be aware that when you hear music that jumps out at you in comparison to other pieces, and sustains that volume - you are hearing that at the cost of quality of sound. Best to be aware of the choice that has been made for you.
The reason I want to explain this, is because there is a phenomenon well known to audiophiles. Most audiophiles will tell you how their ears changed over time and in accord with their closer involvement with sound. Speakers are a good example. When young, we like bass boost - like to feel the bass in our chests or whatever. Later, as one learns more about sound appreciation, the next phase is the discovery of treble. The quality of treble is a thing of great delight - much treble is harsh, but a sweet and vibrant treble, is truly a thing of beauty.
Last, after more development of the appreciative faculties, we move to mid-range. This is where all the texture and colour of sound exists. Very good speakers focus on this area, the mid-range.
Another example I read only recently by a man and his friend testing lightpipe cables, which transfer the sound between units. His friend liked the cheaper cable's sound because it was more punchy. But when the author listened, he saw immediately what his friend was talking about, but to his ears, the more expensive (read very expensive) cable had a purity of sound, which he was far keener to seek out than the punch of the other cable. He commented on this, by referring to the way experienced listeners seek a different sound experience to the inexperienced listener.
This is all about what I said earlier, how sound timbre is the earliest, or deepest layer of our soul (the OM). Structure aspects come later. This means that the quality of sound has a more powerful influence on our souls, and as such we should seek it out as a priority.
Structure is a characteristic of the 2nd and 1st attention. Pure sound is from the 3rd attention. By structure I mean relationships - one aspect to another. Pure sound is endless and amorphous. The first structure is rhythm - the purest form of which is the pulse. It is a relationship of one point of emphasis to the next, and is the beginning of movement. Thus it is the Damaru of Shiva.
The next level of structure is harmony. One note blends with another in a special way, that can be built upon to create a tapestry of sound - it is really a 'community' of sound. Then comes melody which is really 'personality'. Highly intricate relationships of notes to form a flow of meaning to our emotional bodies.
So to enter into the pure sound experience, you should not look to popular music. The best music is chamber classical music. This is because the engineers have become expert in capturing the heart of truly beautifully made instruments - up close. You can hear the colour and texture of each instrument's sound. Orchestras are too big to indulge in this intimate sound that one instrument makes in the hands of a good musician.
