Episode 32 - Bob Ludwig | The Mastering Show Podcast
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- Bob Ludwig is a mastering superstar. This show starts out with the interview I did with him for this year’s Dynamic Range Day, after which Jon and I dig a little deeper into some of the topics we touched on:
Why some of Bob’s clients ignore his advice (!)
The #1 problem with many of the mixes being sent to him lately
How he used to cut really hot masters for vinyl
Plus we branch out into a few other subjects, including:
Bob’s approach to client requests for loud masters
What is Loudness FUD ?
How to use a loudness meter in mixing
Published April 25 2017
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Love this show. Awesome that you had Bob on! keep it up fellas
Bob Ludwig...nice work
Oh I love this interview!!! Stick with Bob and you get ear candy. :)
Awesome!
Ian says he finds it "staggering" that even pros want loudness nowadays. I'm curious about the reasoning behind those decisions. Why do many pros (artists, labels, whatever) want loudness in times of loudness normalization?? Isn't it obvious that you can now only stand out with dynamics? Are we missing something here?
How is it possible for one (Bob Ludwig) to be a mastering superstar, yet be so wrong on the sound quality of MQA? Considering that the youtube video "Bob Ludwig on MQA" has the comments section disabled brings questions to surface what Ludwig's motives for selling out to the inferior MQA format might be.
Because there's companies and people that are against MQA and not necessarily for the best reasons.
I was watching a video by Hans Beekhuyzen that discusses MQA and he's a pretty honest reviewer. What he said is that he has listened to a large catalog of albums, some didn't sound as good and some he claims sounds better than LossLess. What he said to do before you pass judgement is to listen to ONLY MQA tracks for a few months to get used to it and then go back to listening to Lossless.
Personally, I have not heard MQA because I don't have an MQA enabled DAC. Now, I do know that a lot of DAC mfg's are apprehensive is because they don't want to have to pay a licensing fee, which BTW, is really minimal.
Here's something to think about. Meridian has been making DACs probably longer than practically any other company and the engineers behind MQA are very well versed in digital recordings. So please don't discount that..
Part of the negative thing is Lossy, but why is it lossy? To remove unwanted noise. What noise they get rid of might be different than the noise that is removed with MP3 and AAC. Also, we know that AAC does sound better than MP3 an both are Lossy. The newer AAC files that are mastered with Apple's Mastered for iTunes software that come from a 24/96 file do sound a lot better and are getting close to Lossless.
the benefits of MQA is for streaming audio, which is for the "masses". The "masses" are used to MP3, and AAC and if MQA sounds better than both of those, then what's the problem? If you want lossless, then stick with Lossless. Right now, there isn't that much content available on Lossless. Sure, there is Qubuz that streams Lossless, but the amount of content they have to stream isn't that much.
It does boil down to available content.
From MY point of view is this. I have a relatively big catalog of digital files and most of them are either AIFF uncompressed, some are Lossless, and some are AAC files and some are MP3 files. NO, my current DAC doesn't support MQA and in retrospect, I wish I had waited and bought a nice DAC that does support MQA just for the fact that it gives me one more file format that I can listen to. It doesn't mean I am, it just means that if there is content that is only available in MQA then my DAC could properly handle it. Does MP3 sound very good? NOPE. Some files don't necessarily sound bad, but the issue is CONTENT. Some content is ONLY available in MP3, so we don't have any choice In which format to pick.
Yes, I know, it sucks to have to buy a new DAC and that's the ONLY reason why I don't listen to MQA. Is MQA going to last? The Big 3 record companies are supporting it and as long as they are, then it will last the test of time, primarily for streaming services. Remember, streaming a MQA file is a lot cheaper than streaming Lossless, which the streaming companies have to consider, and we, the consumer have to consider that too. When Tidal first came out streaming Lossless, I tried it and it sucked. Why? Because the bandwidth on my end wasn't high enough. Sometimes I don't have enough bandwidth to stream Lossless, so what good is a format if you don't have the bandwidth?
Now, going back to Bob Ludwig, if he heard MQA files and to him, they sounded fine, then that's what he's going by. the real question is does he even Master MQA? I don't know if he does or doesn't because judging from his equipment, he can't. He needs to have MQA enabled AD/DA converters, so if he can't master MQA, then it's not for monetary reasons.
How much time have to spent listening to MQA? I personally have no position because I haven't compared the sound quality of MQA to Lossless or uncompressed.
Oh, I've heard great recordings in practically all formats, and I've heard lousy recordings in all formats too. So, I'm not 100% convinced that the problem is just with the format alone. I think it depends on how the recording was tracked, mixed and mastered in ALL formats will dictate if it's going to sound good or not. Sure if it was badly recorded/mixed/mastered originally, chances are it doesn't matter on the format. :-)