Digital Distress Syndrome

Whether you prefer the sound of digital or analogue music, it is all about how it makes you feel and when it comes to listening to music, the emotions and feelings you experience are completely subjective and unique to the listener in that we all interpret what we hear slightly differently and tend to develop a preference for a particular type of sound. Given all the digital technology we have today you would think we should be living in audio heaven, but it appears we are all suffering from digital distress syndrome!

Loss of Excitement and Emotion in the music?

The dynamic structure of sounds we hear as music are an infusion and interaction of complex harmonic structures from instruments and vocalists that ebb and flow in the performance, arising from interplay and variation in timbre, pitch, rhythm and loudness. This is the essence and what gives feeling to the music. If you take away any of these aspects the sound can become flat, lifeless and boring.
Current audio industry research has proven beyond doubt that the increasingly complex processes (as used in digital recording and mastering), such as multiband compression, are masking and blurring key audio artefacts that make music engaging. These processes can flatten the dramatic and emotional impact of the music, creating a musical clutter with reduced depth and texture of instruments and vocalists, resulting in a cold wall of sound with little dynamic range and at the same time robbing the music of its excitement and emotional power.
Increasing numbers of music Industry professionals, critics and audiophiles share the opinion that modern digitally recorded music is becoming more fatiguing and less engaging due to increasingly complex digital processing used in music recording/mastering and streaming. This is having a huge effect on your listening experience and as a result the undeniable popularity of real natural analogue sound continues to soar.


How Audio Multiband Compression effects your music:

There two main types of compression ranging from “Fast” to “Slow”:
Fast dynamic compression can lead to a “squashed” sound, with a loss of “punch” on transients resulting in a “busy, cluttered sound” where the listener is increasingly unable to distinguish instrument detail and timbre with any clarity.
Slow dynamic compression can produce a reduced “dynamic contrast” and “loss of expressiveness”. A good example being musical crescendos appearing to sound “flattened” and choruses becoming no louder than the verses. For some people, these effects may not be immediately obvious but soon become apparent during the song.

These multiband compression effects are especially true for some re-mastered recordings and digitally streamed music, where record companies have forsaken sound quality for perceived loudness, where audio levels are lifted excessively, and the dynamic range vastly reduced as a result of the excessive processing. The GLVC EQ1-S is unique in putting back what modern digital processing takes away – the essence of music, the feeling & emotive involvement in the performance.


Read more on what the EQ1-S can do, click below…

EQ1-S Features