TY - JOUR
T1 - The Perception of Hyper-Compression by Mastering Engineers
AU - Ronan, Malachy
AU - Ward, Nicholas
AU - Sazdov, Robert
AU - Lee, Hyunkook
N1 - Publisher actively disallows archiving of AAM (see Sherpa).
PY - 2017/7/1
Y1 - 2017/7/1
N2 - Hyper-compressed popular music is the product of a behavior associated with the over-use of dynamic range processing in an effort to gain a competitive advantage in music production. This behavior is unnecessary given the introduction of loudness normalization algorithms across the industry and has been denounced by mastering engineers as generating audible sound quality artifacts. However, the audibility of these sound quality artifacts to mastering engineers has not been examined. This study probes this question using an ABX listening experiment with 20 mastering engineers. On average, mastering engineers correctly discriminated 17 out of 24 conditions suggesting that the sound quality artifacts generated by hyper-compression are difficult to perceive. The findings in the study suggest that audibility depends on the Crest Factor (CF) of the music rather than the amount of CF reduction thus proposing the existence of a threshold of audibility. Further work focusing on education initiatives are offered.
AB - Hyper-compressed popular music is the product of a behavior associated with the over-use of dynamic range processing in an effort to gain a competitive advantage in music production. This behavior is unnecessary given the introduction of loudness normalization algorithms across the industry and has been denounced by mastering engineers as generating audible sound quality artifacts. However, the audibility of these sound quality artifacts to mastering engineers has not been examined. This study probes this question using an ABX listening experiment with 20 mastering engineers. On average, mastering engineers correctly discriminated 17 out of 24 conditions suggesting that the sound quality artifacts generated by hyper-compression are difficult to perceive. The findings in the study suggest that audibility depends on the Crest Factor (CF) of the music rather than the amount of CF reduction thus proposing the existence of a threshold of audibility. Further work focusing on education initiatives are offered.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85028560380&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.aes.org/journal/
U2 - 10.17743/jaes.2017.0023
DO - 10.17743/jaes.2017.0023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85028560380
VL - 65
SP - 613
EP - 621
JO - AES: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
JF - AES: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
SN - 0004-7554
IS - 7/8
ER -