Factory CD recordings

Can anyone explain why the volume of the Factory recordings are quite low, compared to other CDs. Im not sure if its the case for all Factory products, but its definately the case for Low-Life and Electronics debut.

It really shows when I produce compliation CDs of different artists or when Ive got my Sony Walkman mobile phone on random.

Wish I knew - it's been the bane of my life for several years now! Always have to normalise any compilation. Luckily iPods and iTunes sort it out.

Maybe its just down to technology-Factory were putting them out in the 80's-two decades ago.

Maybe no one CARED!Just found this article which some may be aware of but interesting to someone like me who cherished the SLEEVE artwork.Peter Saville has retold the story at a talk he gave just before XMAS.On NEW ORDER ........ The most enthusiastic reaction I got to any of the covers was “they don’t much mind it”. The worse was for Lowlife: when they saw it, they all said, in unison, ‘You fucking bastard’. Regret they liked because it was colourful and shiny. Bernard said ‘We might fucking sell something with this one Peter. How long has it taken?’ But they never asked me about any of them, they weren’t interested.” Thus proving that some of the stuff that gets people like me fawning over means fcuk all to our beloved group.Or does it?

But interesting too about the sound of the CD's.They are BLOODY low.WEAR EAR PROTECTION indeed!

blame Nimbus.

I have been buying CDs since 1984 when I blew my first Student Grant cheque on a new fangled Phillips CD150 CD Player. I figured I could always live on beans and get my books from the library instead of buying them! To be honest most CDs back in those days were a similar volume level as Low-Life etc.

Over the last 10 years Cds having been getting steadily louder eg. New Order "Singles". In fact the sound quality on "Singles" is appalling - it's to do with modern mastering techniques - the so called "loudness war". Of course louder does not necessarily mean better (despite Spinal Tap's assertion that they are One Louder than everyone else!)

However, "Low-Life" does also sound dreadful on CD especially compared to the original vinyl. Strangely PCL and Movement are nowhere near as bad as Low-Life. Technique maybe the best sounding New Order CD (released in 1989 before the Loudness War started).

I just hope they make a decent job of the forthcoming Joy Division remastering.

oldmonkey wrote: Wish I knew - it's been the bane of my life for several years now! Always have to normalise any compilation. Luckily iPods and iTunes sort it out.

Yeah, sort of: iTunes doesn't really improved 'Low-life's volume . When will we get a chance to see this masterpiece rereleased?

Back in the 80's cd's were "less loud" because they were normalized to a value which lies well beneath the digital maximum (0 dB), because some equipment (speakers, amplifiers) back then couldn't handle values near 0 dB, AND the music wasn't compressed. Now everything is normalized to 0 dB AND heavily compressed in order to achieve maximum loudness (in order to "sound louder on the radio", which is of course pointless since radio stations use heavy compression as well). It is believed that "louder" music sells better, and it seems to increase the audio quality on low end systems (computer speakers, mini-stereo's, ipods, car speakers,...). Of course compression doesn't increase sound quality. On the contrary, if the music is pushed to the limit, clipping and flattening of the waveforms occur, which will make the music sound much worse.

No idea why they are so low, it's not that the tracks are wildly dynamic and not mastered in the moderen "slammed and held on 0dB" approach.

Rip your cd's normalize them, re burn them.

Of course by under recording on CD, you not only piss your signal to noise ratio up the wall like you do on analogue media, you also reduce the fidelity as there are less bits being used to encode the music....so normalizing these tracks will help make them louder, but will not give them the quality that's missing.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1992325,00.html

interesting feature here about the loudness wars.

I really hope they don't fall into this trap on the JD remasters, though since WFTSC and Singles were prime examples of exactly this 'phenomenon' I fear they will.

Don't sell your Factory originals just yet.

johnny james wrote: Don't sell your Factory originals just yet.

Then again, how many of us would do that anyway?

johnny james wrote: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1992325,00.html I really hope they don't fall into this trap on the JD remasters, though since WFTSC and Singles were prime examples of exactly this 'phenomenon' I fear they will.

There's an sense of space and detail in the JD material that will die at the hands of overcompression and limiting. The sad thing is that most casual listeners won't even care, especially when it's crammed into an mp3 devoid of full fidelity and turned up to 11 through someone's ipoop headphones.

But alas, I'm guilty as well. Overcompression, clipping converters, and extreme limiting all for the sake of being competitive.

probably to cut the cost of printing and manufacturing the cds... heck, if i know...really..

NO Regret wrote: Can anyone explain why the volume of the Factory recordings are quite low, compared to other CDs. Im not sure if its the case for all Factory products, but its definately the case for Low-Life and Electronics debut.

Also, the New Order Discography has this to say regarding the volume on Low-Life:

Q: Why does my Factory Low-Life CD have less low-frequency and more high-frequency sounds (volume wise) than my US Best Of CD? A: [Darren Prior] "The reason for this is that the whole of Low-Life has the emphasis flag set. It was recorded the way you hear it now and your cd player turns on a filter when it sees the flag. The way to get round this is to use something like CDRWin where you can set the flag manually for each track, or to use a wav editor and filter the file - for that you would need to know the filter characteristics (which I don't.)"

/TLV

Nice one TLV.You LEARN something NEW each day.

ROCKET MICK wrote: Nice one TLV.You LEARN something NEW each day.

Or to put it another way,can you repeat that in english please...

Bentley wrote:

johnny james wrote: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1992325,00.html I really hope they don't fall into this trap on the JD remasters, though since WFTSC and Singles were prime examples of exactly this 'phenomenon' I fear they will.

There's an sense of space and detail in the JD material that will die at the hands of overcompression and limiting. The sad thing is that most casual listeners won't even care, especially when it's crammed into an mp3 devoid of full fidelity and turned up to 11 through someone's ipoop headphones.

But alas, I'm guilty as well. Overcompression, clipping converters, and extreme limiting all for the sake of being competitive.

The JD back-catalogue was remastered for the Heart & Soul box set. Are this year's releases going to be fiddled with again, or will they be the Heart & Soul remasters in new packaging?

Pash.

they are being 'fiddled' with all over again.

TLV wrote:

Also, the New Order Discography has this to say regarding the volume on Low-Life:

Q: Why does my Factory Low-Life CD have less low-frequency and more high-frequency sounds (volume wise) than my US Best Of CD? A: [Darren Prior] "The reason for this is that the whole of Low-Life has the emphasis flag set. It was recorded the way you hear it now and your cd player turns on a filter when it sees the flag. The way to get round this is to use something like CDRWin where you can set the flag manually for each track, or to use a wav editor and filter the file - for that you would need to know the filter characteristics (which I don't.)"

/TLV

This pre-emphasis stuff is really interesting TLV - thanks. My Cambridge Audio DacMagic has a light that shows when a CD contains Pre-Emphasis. I had never noticed before that this light comes on for "Low-Life" but not for "Movement" or "PCL" (kinda confirms my theory that PCL and Movement sound better). If I remember rightly Low-Life was the first New Order CD available when I bought it (maybe they changed their mind about pre-emphasis on later releases).

I extracted WAV files from my Low-Life CD using ITunes and then burned these back to a CDR. When I put the CDR of Low-Life into my CD Player I no longer get the Pre-emphasis Light on my DAC. Does this mean I should expect better sound from the CDR or have I just not got the light because the CDR does not include the Flags?

I don't claim to know all the technical details regarding the flag, but a quick search turned up some links that may be of interest:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=97574 http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-88541.html

/TLV

Thanks for the Links TLV - the CDFreaks forum seems to indicate my methodology for getting rid of Pre-Emphasis was correct. However, I am not sure whether my DAC employs a Filter on seeing the Flag.

Given that my DAC has a Pre-Emphasis Light my guess is that it does filter the sound on seeing the flag. I maybe imagining it but the CDR I burnt appears to sound better than the original.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_War is a useful start as is this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remasters.. and for a really clear example, here we go..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ which, aside from using a 1989 Paul McCartney track, seems to explain it in a nutshell.