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Re: mastering for cheap cd players

Subject: Re: mastering for cheap cd players
From: "Raimund Specht" <>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:34:41 -0000
Rob, you wrote:

> I believe the distortion is embedded in the loud call of Rich's 
field 
> original. Perhaps saturating -only to ~-15 dB in the field for 
sounds 
> with lots of high Hz energy would be safer practice for now. 

I also believe that there is already some distortion present in the 
original recording (in the first part of the file). I guess that 
there actually happened simple clipping while recording (at least at 
t= 2.91s, 3.17s and 3.36s). The ATRAC bit allocation algorithm then 
probably smeared the original clipping patterns and increased the 
distortion (because the broad-band structure of the clipped signals 
pushed the MiniDisk ATRAC encoder to its limits):

http://www.avisoft.com/scratch/0659.gif

It is the unnatural spectral distribution at the loudest points that 
let me think that clipping and/or an ATRAC artifact is the reason 
for the distortion. In a natural bird song, the intensities of the 
harmonics usually decrease monotonously towards higher frequencies
(the 1st harmonic is softer than the fundamental, the second 
harmonic is softer than first harmonic and so on). In this recording 
(at t=2.91s and 3.36s) however, the second harmonic at 16 kHz is 
stronger than the first harmonic at 11 kHz.

However, the previously mentioned slew rate distortion would cause 
similar effects.

Regards,
Raimund





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"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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