All about producing and mastering audio for disc, the web and beyond

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The hype in Hypebot.com? "Compression Rules! Rick Rubin Masters Red Hot Chili Peppers Just For iTunes"

www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/08/compression-rules-rick-rubin-masters-red-hot-chili-peppers-just-for-itunes.html

If you take the announcement about a track being mastered specifically for itunes at face value the idea is intriguing. So we know fidelity and itunes are somewhat at odds with each other. mp3/aac just don't sound great....so how could they make it sound better? Has Rick Rubin got some secret sauce?

So let's take a look at what might make an aac/mp3 sound 'better'. FIrst ff lossy encoders generate distortion, so to have a better sounding mp3, turn it down...what's the likelihood that that happened in this case? Also consider that RIck Rubin and his team are renowned for creating very very compressed masters. The comment from the audiophile website "...but considering this production Trio's history of sonic destruction it did not shock me." goes to the point. So do we think they would compress less, and turn the level down to make it sound better on itunes? What are the chances? It remains to be heard I suppose but really I wonder, Is this mostly an attention grab aka hype?

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