Almost forensic recovery of raw studio quality (updated)

I was listening to the mp3s that I translated from the 96k/24bit flacs that the processor produces, and was disappointed, even with the reprocessed & improved .mp3s.  A lot of the detail is smudged over -- especially when one is used to the hyper compressed versions normally available on recent distributions.   In general, the results coming from my processor are very close to the original vinyl albums (sometimes even less compressed than some of the album recordings.)  There are a few songs that are even moderatly compressed on the vinyl copies.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with artful compression.
The results that I have presented aren't meant to do anything but demonstrate what ABBA sounds like when it doesn't have nearly as much processing as what is normally on a recent CD.   I promise you, that my processing is purely a decoding operation ONLY, and also I do bandwith limit even the .flac versions at high sample rates.  For material like ABBA, I do a sharp linear phase filter at 20k.   But what I describe here is the limit to the processing from leaked DolbyA source material.  (Maybe about 1/3 of the ABBA releases appear to be DolbyA encoded on the consumer CDs/digital downloads/etc.)

So, first -- I have reprocessed the examples where it would make a significant difference.  The .mp3s are encoded with the best available mp3 encoder, and also at a bitrate of 320k.  Even then, the .mp3s sound a bit crunchy to me, also with missing detail.
Secondly, since the .mp3s are really not as good as I had expected, I have produced some 48k/16bit flac examples -- directly translated from my higher quality material.  I find this hard to believe, but it seems that even the .flac results have lost a bit of detail, and I am an advocate that 96k/24bit isn't needed, but something psychologically or whatever is telling me that the 48k/16bit copies really do not sound as good.  However, 48k/16bit is as good as I can show as demos.

I have made improved mp3 examples, and flac examples -- can be played directly online, no need to download or anything like that.  I only had enough space for a few flac examples, but they do sound okay (better than the .mp3s.)

One more thing -- I did a survey of the normal consumer copies - and my memory was very faulty -- the ABBA stuff really does loose a lot of impact and detail with all of the final processing.

I do hope that you enjoy the examples, and they'll probably disappear by Friday 7Dec -- maybe a day after, as I need to reclaim the space and don't mean to permanently distribute anything,
but trying to help with a listening experience:

Improved mp3 repo: spaces.hightail.com/space/QecbMZKnWh
Small (clear sounding) flac repo: spaces.hightail.com/space/IGsGMA6iiU

I had to free up the space for the decoding examples. Just wanted to show how 'nice' ABBA could sound if properly handled. In some cases, by DolbyA decoding some of the old CDs that I had i my collection -- the sound of the old vinyl (or better) could be retrieved. In a way, the lazy record labels gave us a 'diamond in the rough', it is just a matter of further processing some of the old leaked-DolbyA material.

The sad news is that more recent CDs tend to be hyper compressed -- for example, it isn't uncommon on the old CDs to get a peak-RMS dynamic range of approx 20dB (pretty tolerable for pop music), but the 'The Complete Studio Recordings' tend to have a peak-RMS of 13dB (terribly compressed), or the crest factor differences of perhaps 7-10 for the old CDs vs. the hyper compressed recent stuff of 4-5 at best.

Admittedly, the hyper compressed stuff can sound 'okay', but loses some of the music.

I am not claiming that the decoding operations that I did were perfect -- I am not a recording engineer, but an EE/DSP/Software person, so I don't have the skills or equipment to pull a full release together, but we (as listeners) are being subjected to inferior quality material in the name of 'louder is better'.

For example, some of the recent releases appear to be 6-10dB louder, even though electrically the signal peaks are the same!!! That is a HUGE amount of compression. I have a simple 3 band RMS compressor that tightens up the sound a little, and might add 1-3dB of loudness, and even then -- the music is damaged by doing that simple/small amount of processing.

What can we (as listeners) do? I don't know, but (for example), my DolbyA compatible decoder is the first software decoder that comes really close to a real DolbyA unit, and previously the distributors would have to convert from digital (dolbyA encoded) to pass through a DolbyA unit in real time, then convert back to digital again. That is an expensive operation, when they could just get by with copying the digital master (perhaps sometimes with a little bit of tone control...) ABBA is compressed anyway, right? So, why not add a little bit of DolbyA compression on top? (DolbyA compression tends to sound ugly, and isn't really meant to be listened to directly.)

Oh well, I have just been trying to help -- and intend to keep work on decoding projects, including DBX type I and type II, DolbyB, and DolbyC. We are considering C4 and SR, but those are more complex devices and even though DolbySR was used for a while -- it is exceedingly complex. DolbyA was complex enough!!! Additionally, DolbySR does so much of the wrong type of compression, I doubt that much SR material has leaked to the consumer.

John

My repository contains some redecoded examples -- with the correct distortion sideband removed.

You should notice a significantly more mellow sound, but still ABBA.  The 'S' sound is cleaner, and generally the voices come through more clearly.  This examples will probably be up for a few days - am intending only to show examples of what ABBA can sound like.  My previous examples WERE improvements, but these go a few steps further.  This is exactly the same processing, but with corrected parameters.  Absolutely no compression/expansion/ambience recovery.
My repo only has a few samples that I have space only for a few days.  Please enjoy and compare with the distributed copies.  In some cases, mine might be much naturally clearer, but sometimes the distributed copies did get it right.  I wish that they treated the ABBA material better, but nowadays 'LOUDER IS BETTER'.  I don't think so, but seems like everyone else does.   I do wish that there was a *legal* & *ethical* way to distribute the 100+ ABBA recordings in my posession, but cannot because it just isnt practical.  My DolbyA compatible decoder is also too complex for the average listener, and is not meant to work in a HiFi system.  So, letting people use the software  for themselves is also not practical.  If it would be beneficial or useful, I would offer free consumer versions of the decoder(without some of the advanced quality) -- however, again, it is too complicated to use.  It IS being used by some recording pros -- interest is developing, but even then -- I will NOT be able to make money, and it is even not convienient for them to use. (I have started working on a GUI, but it would be foolish to believe that the DolbyA compatible decoder will be adopted by very many pros either.)   I did this decoder effort for the love of the music and the listener.

Hopefully, the recording distributors will start taking better care of their product!!!
I'll have to clean out this repo by Tuesday, but I really hope that this somehow opens eyes to improve what we buy.  (I am working on some other projects and need the space.) I have spent mucho money over the years for my collection, and ABBA has been hundreds of dollars.  I want to help the ABBA people and the listeners both.  Maybe I am just being silly -- I just don't know!!!

Repo:  spaces.hightail.com/space/yDG3L339Rn

I got some feedback that the sound was a bit dead -- so instead of showing some experiments, and also simply decoding.  I just did a not-quite full remaster (I didn't do frequency response limits withn the audible range -- nothing like that.)
The results are bright like people normally expect -- maybe too bright, and the vocals are as clear as can be done.  I did find out that in some cases, there were multiple passes of DolbyA (or other extreme compression) for effect, and I was going to demo that -- but most people here are mostly just interested in the listening experience.

Youll notice that the material is very clear -- and even during 'honey honey', when one of the guys says 'high' -- the voice actually seems to move 'high' when on phones.

So -- I put up some really clear, as-expected examples.   They are effectively 'remastered' this time, rather than experiments.
Have fun.  (One warning -- the material is very bright -- you might want to be ready for a slight tone control -- maybe about 1.5dB of treble cut...  The material is a 'kind of' full remaster, but I didn't do a final contour of frequency response (I'd actually do about 1.5-2.5 dB of a 20kHz cut with a Q of 0.500 -- which is a very mild/smooth cut.)  I did NOT 'tweak' the results beyond my planned results.

Here is my repo that I listen to:  spaces.hightail.com/space/yDG3L339Rn