Just recently I’ve had the opportunity to directly compare Apple Music, Qobuz and Amazon Music Unlimited on my Sonos speakers (Beam 2, Move 2 and Roam).
I listen to a lot of music and am really frustrated by the poor audio quality on a lot of albums which have been mastered to compete in “the loudness war”.
This affects a lot of recent albums and re-masters of older albums.
The dynamic range of a multitude of albums can be viewed by Googling: Loudness War Database. There are usually several different versions of many albums in this database: original issues, re-masters, Spatial Audio, vinyl, blu-ray audio etc. The dynamic range of each version can vary considerably. High dynamic range is generally thought to give a more natural sound and a more satisfying listening experience.
Yesterday I compared listening to various versions of the track “Thriller” by Michael Jackson.
All the Apple Music versions were very loud, including the Atmos (Spatial Audio) version. I also thought they sounded quite “muddy” and a bit “bland”.
The Amazon Music and Qobuz versions were noticeably quieter, but when turned up, I think sounded better than the Apple Music versions. In fact I thought the Qobuz version sounded very slightly superior to the Amazon Music Version.
So when it comes to Hi-Res music, I think the potential increase in sound quality is often wasted unless the most dynamic version of the master is used.
Vinyl often has the largest dynamic range (for various reasons) and many people prefer the sound of vinyl to that of CD’s, in fact vinyl is apparently outselling CD - so why are we not offered the option of a vinyl master file version by the music streaming companies, or should I ask why are the record companies not supplying the vinyl master files to them?
Also why would anybody think they can produce one version of an album master which would be suitable for listening on a high quality Hi-Fi system in a quiet room or on quality headphones and at the same time be suitable for listening to in a noisy car or pub or as part of a play list? Surely giving people a choice of listening masters would be a great idea.
Alternatively could all playback equipment have 3 playback options such as:-
“Album” where there would be no dynamic range compression or volume levelling applied. Spatial Audio would not have to compete with volume levels of normal albums. This setting would be for someone wanting to listen to tracks from one particular album with the highest possible sound quality.
“Play List” where all tracks would be “normalised” in volume level which would obviously be great for playlists. There would hopefully be no loss in sound quality.
“Car” dynamic range compression would be applied as well as volume levelling (similar to FM radio). This would be great for playing music in any noisy environment or if the listener just preferred a squashed dynamic range for some reason.
We spend a lot of money on our music playing equipment, but I think we are currently not getting the best quality music files to play on that equipment.
In my opinion the dynamic range and mastering quality is of far more relevance than Hi-Res and Spatial Audio and the Loudness War is having a really negative effect on listening enjoyment of music.
I would very much like to hear other people’s experiences and opinions on this.