Been using some ABBA as software test subjects

Well, I for one would be fascinated to hear what you've come up with.

just curious, what are you using? a DAW like pro-tools or Sonar or cubase or Reaper or something like that?

Or a free one like Audacity or Audition, using VST plug-ins... or something completely different?

Yes, let's hear it!

Sorry that I forgot that I posted to this forum... 

I'll try to find a download site to send a copy of a current test -- I have SuperTrouper without essentially no audible intermod at the beginning...  Also -- I am going to try to decide which other I plan to send -- maybe Name of the Game or some other.   For legal reasons I might have to limit to 20-30 seconds, but I certainly willing to do so simply to show how good they can sound (from a standard HiFi standpoint.)  Maybe 'the powers that be' might be motivated to produce a little better quality (no more extreme compression or other games.)

One minor bit of trouble that I have with listening is that the 'beat' is a little more intense than one would normally expect...   They seem to have done a good job in providing fake bass in some songs so that the bass is more compatible with casual radio listening.   That issue is gone also -- but again, the sound is a little different than most of the other CDs that I have heard.   Maybe my versions sound something (very, very approximately) like the Polar versions with less compression???

An techie issue that I find to be vexing  (and seem to be almost intractible problem without doing some kind of matrix operation to pull the voices out of the chorus), is that during 'SuperTrouper', they have this insidious chorus effect that I have tried several times to cancel out to bring forward the voices.  Some of the voices can be brought forward by doing a matrix (I forget if it is m/s or something between m/s and l+r), but I don't like doing that kind of thing (one copy of SuperTrouper that I have -- they actually seem to change the matrix during the song!!!)  You can hear the shift if you listen carefully.  After tying to cancel with a simple echo cancellation and an ad-hoc reverb cancellation - I think that they might be using an early reverb unit or some other effect that is almost impossible to undo.)   If I had the patience, I might be able to find a matrix combination to extract the voices and then merge them with some kind of time or phase shift -- but that is too complicated...  Everything that I am doing is special purpose software -- I haven't found any plugins that do anything like what I really want to do.)

I do wish that all of the songs were done in a way that the beauty of their voices would be clearer.

So -- I am going to look around for a site to deposit some examples and make that available very soon.

My current working versions use little/no compression and are all expansion oriented (but not simple dB linear expansion per-se.)   The only reasons that my tests currently use any compression oriented techniques is that sometimes my tests produce insane loudness and I like for my ears to live another day.  I doubt that anyone with normal ears could hear the effects of my AGC systems under normal conditions (no audible pumping/ducking or anything like that -- and generally no extreme increase in density.)  However -- that isn't the subject of this discussion.

I do enjoy ABBA and wish they were still doing really new stuff.   Will try to get back with this group within a few days at most.

John Dyson

I have have sent a link to two samples -- been in the hospital for a few days - so no chance to prepare something perfect (I mean, properly finalized.)  I feel like I owe you some samples, however.   The SuperTrouper and Name of the Game samples have only had minor amounts of processing added, and need some tweaking.   I didn''t add the more complete expansion and matrix (against l+r, m+s and in between)  and minor recompression yet in this case only due to the fact I am still under the weather and it will take a few hours of work to do correctly.

The best sounding copy I believe is name of the game, but you'll find that super trouper is missing the terrible intermod at the beginning that exists on most copies.   I don't have the DolbyA decoding thresholds set right (oops -- gave something away) -- because my DolbyA decoder is still being tuned up.

Also, these copies are in DESPERATE need for eq -- so you are hearing fairly raw stuff.

One thing that you'll notice -- no matter some of the defects is real dynamic range.   It is still abba-squashed, and no where near the real dynamic range in the samples elsewhere in this forum -- but these are copies that are close to what would be finalized into a CD or music file.

Here is the URL:

spaces.hightail.com/space/bOPBXTkeeT

nog.mp3 is Name of the Game
st.mp3 is SuperTrouper.

All of the processing was done at 96k and there was some lost quality in conversion to 44.1k mp3 at fairly middle bitrate, but not much.  Some of the other songs that I have are much clearer to begin with, but these are two of the more famous songs that I have copies of.

Give me feedback.   I plan to do better when I get my strength back.   I have had better versions -- but I have redone some of the work and it got a lilttle messed up.

John Dyson

Fantastic, Sir Dyson. Frida's voice is as equal to Rutger Gunnarsson's bass on your version of Super Trouper, and the hi-hats aren't irritating like those crass tapes are in the Name of the Game.
Looking forward to your take on one of Agnetha's Cupol and/or Frida's EMI (or Frida Ensam; that always seem to be the victim of the corrupt dynamic range, despite the excellent reinterpretation covers Frida made) songs, they seemed to be rather muddy and quite processed; at some point they may be drenched with unnecessary reverbs..

ANOTHER MAYBE kind of cool thing...

I looked around for something truly interesting --- did a cleanup of my best copy of 'dreamworld.'  It resides on the previously stated repository.

Alll of the examples that I am showing have the least possible processing that will clean up the sound as well as I can.  I have other kinds of expanders and carefully crafted compressors available (self-written), but don't want to taint anything very much.

John

I have added a potentially interesting program to the repository.   It works only on Intel Linux boxes -- but I am providing both a 32bit and 64bit version.   The best one is meant for recent CPUS, but I did build a 32bit Pentium4 version.   I don't normally do windows, but do have a windows64 build that I can produce within a day or so (if REALLY desired.)

It is a DolbyA decoder that is doing 75% of the work on the music that I have been showing...  I have LOTS more stuff with sophisticated algorithms, so giving this away is meant as a helpful gesture (hope it doesn't waste anyones time.)   IT ONLY WORKS ON DolbyA encoded material, and most ABBA stuff is not DolbyA encoded, but some stuff that I have purchased online is decodable by the decoder.

It is a Linux command line program, and takes several standard wav file types in and out.   There is a short blurb on the site that shows how to use it. (damanual.txt)

Names: da-avx, da-sse3, da32-p4, damanual.txt.

This version of the code is literally only about 4Hrs old -- so can be quite buggy.   ONLY THE da-avx version is well tested.  This is BY FAR the best version that I have produced (you can hear the results), even though earlier versions did help.

It resides on the same site.

Good luck.  Hope you enjoy.

John

Regarding the MacOS thingie -- oddly, I wrote much of the original FreeBSD kernel whose associated userland was a basis for early versions of the MAC stuff.   I haven't done much OS work in the last 15yrs though (too much Testosterone in the kernel-kiddies like Linus who was writing a competing piece of software). My nerves just could not stand it anymore.  My life was never 100% FreeBSD even though I had often been making lots of money while being one of the original authors of the code.

The best that I can do is to strip down the code enough that you could port it to MAC OS.   The DolbyA decoder isn't objective-C, but instead C++.   Current version has LOTS AND LOTS of extra stuff left over when I used the infrastructure for my finalizer to produce the DolbyA decoder (a lot of the needed infrastructure is theoretically similar.)  Then, I removed the multi-thread support because it isn't needed.  Also, the finalizer uses 8 bands of audio, yet the DolbyA only needs 4 bands -- so I had to change some variable sizes/etc.   As it is now, with a half day of work, I can probably get the program down to 2-5k lines of code.  Right now, it contains lots of stuff not needed (e.g my dynamic attack/release classes, and unneeded linear filter classes, and even my multi-threading communcations classes.)   Stripping that stuff out might make a porting effort for someone who hasn't worked with the code for years much easier.

Probably the biggest challenge for even an expert C++ programmer is dealing with all of the vector math.   Luckily, the main DolbyA decoder code is actually quite short once the support infrastructure is in place.   Let me start an effort of shrinking the code down to the necessary bits (which needs to be done anyway), and I'll let you (or someone who wants to) do a port to MAC/OS.

John Dyson

Thanks for the interest and your positive feedback!!!  I happily accept criticism also -- we all need feedback to learn...

Anyway -- have downloaded a few new fun examples onto the same site.  The 'dreamworld' one uses more of my technology.

As you know, my copy of 'dreamworld' is fairly mangled.   I applied my full processor (very judiciously) to help correct some of the defects.   My processor (this is the full one -- NOT just the DolbyA program) has several capabilities, including 3 full expanders, several compressors of different types, and several kinds of limiters.  Not going into a lot of detail except to talk about the expanders (and 4 of the various limiters are kicking in, but I doubt that you will notice them.)   The expanders probably need further description, because they are NOT simple expanders.
(one of the dreamworld defects either appears to be TOO MUCH mp3 type compression or maybe mag tape saturation -- not sure -- it has been 20yrs since I have heard reel-to-reel.  I cannot fix the 'swirls' in the freq response, but can help the dynamics a bit.)

These expanders which are helping to clean up the over compression in 'Dreamworld' have both 'linear-in-dB' and also a nonlinear expander that mathematically (PARTIALLY) undo normal linear compressors and some kinds of limiters with time varying characteristics calculated from a Volterra series kind of math._  So, the expanders have a normal longer term gainup/gaindown capability, but also boost-up and reach-down the gain very aggressively without distortion.   The goal is to maximize the expansion without the ear being able to hear 'SURGING.'   Surging is one of the common defects of expanders, but these expanders can have EFFECTIVE expansion ratios beyond 1:1.5 or greater without surging.  This copy of 'Dreamworld' is getting a peak of perhaps 1:1.8 dB/dB expansion, but a base of about 1:1.3dB/dB or so.   (the expansion isn't really dB/dB, but the numbers are approximate.)   The total amount of dB gain increase/decrease over a couple of seconds often repeatedly have a 7-10dB range.   Some of the changes are several dB UP&DOWN both within a 10msec timeframe for midrange on up.

The name for this new 'Dreamworld' demo is dreamworld-fix.mp3.

Also, there are a few more morsels in the repository, all might be fun and interesting to listen to.   Have fun hearing somewhat better dynamic range and clarity.  I am actually enjoying the music without being critical for a change, because the cleaned-up music MUCH BETTER MEETS MY OWN STANDARDS.   Some of the songs are prettier than I had ever thought that I would ever get a chance to listen to.

If you have ideas for improvement, I'll certainly try to figure out how to convert the suggestions into software.

John

I'll consider the plugin thing.  Previously, I hadn't been thinking 'plugin' because my other (main) project is incredibly more complex and uses LOTS AND LOTS more CPU.  The pseudo-DolbyA 'expander' on the other hand might be using perhaps 1/10 of one Intel Haswell CPU core (Intel 4770) and is single threaded (for real-time.)   My other project uses approx 3 CPU cores (it is highly multi-threaded.)  Used to be the psuedo-DolbyA expander was part of the bigger project -- but I realized that there would be a lot of use for those who don't want or need the 'monster.' :-).  I'll look into what is needed to do the plug-in thing.   I was also thinking about Java - even though it is 4X slower in this case than the C++ vector oriented code that I wrote.  (Normally, Java is not that much slower, but Java doesn't know much about SIMD/vectors yet.)  Java would give access to those who aren't running on Intel.

Thanks for the input, and I am (right now) thinking it through.
John

Just for fun, I added some compressed/enhanced versions of some songs (filenames ending with -enh). This is simply an extension of the Decoding/recovery effort. I added in some additional stages of my processor/finalizer including a few different kinds of compression/limiting stages. (my compressor/limiters don't sound quite the same as most.) The results sound like 'ABBA' -- but the changes are MUCH MUCH more conservative than some of the real CD releases. (Some of the real CD releases then went to heroic efforts, but mine are simple mods to make them more listenable.) Frankly, some of the real releases are 'prettier' than mine, but mine are more 'real.'

The reside on the same site -- so far I have mmia-enh and nog-enh.

John Dyson

I have re-configured the processors (still in progress -- approx 3wks before I can release it.) I have done a good amount of clarification/seperation of the voices. I know that supertrouper is notorious for the chorus being a little too dense. This demo really clears it up -- but it still sounds like the same song!!! Filename: abba-106-st-voicesclearer.mp3. The repository location: spaces.hightail.com/space/KzA53ZKeFc

Let me know how it sounds to you. I have almost all of AbbaGold and Abba GoldII processed this way, and so far my listening hasn't detected many major mistakes yet.

John

I'll put together some of the results. Because of where i am on other things, might be a few weeks (well, I think that I can promise under two weeks.) Much progress has been made -- I have been focusing only on DolbyA-style decode and general expansion project right now. So, the results of 'undoing' some excess compression are the most prominent right now. The 'advanced' mild recompression phase is on hold -- which is mostly not really needed. I have been searching out all of the very best copies of ABBA music that I can find, and then starting with those. Havent been just focusing on ABBA, but ABBA is one of my most important (and VERY challenging) test subjects. They did a really good job of tightening up the music so that it is very difficult to seperate (definitely sounds like much was done as a radio mix.) On the other hand, others of my test subjects 'Brasil'66', and Carpenters 1971 album, the results are fantastic. (You can actually see the tape hiss/noise reduction on the spectrograms, while also achieving tasteful amounts of transient improvement.) The ABBA stuff is beautiful as it is, but definitely a bit eccentric to clean up so as to sound like a more current production. I do wish that they (B&B) could muster up the energy to get into their master tapes and bring up the results to something that we'd normally expect to be done today. When I critically (VERY critically) listen to a few sources that are pre-commercial-distribution, I can hear that there is A LOT of 20XX's quality in there, and I am afraid that it will be lost to eternity. Again, as it is, the ABBA stuff is beautiful in its own right, and alot of good could be done (I believe) by doing a pristine remix and remastering. Even though I am pure techie, I do know that if I had the 20-40 tracks of music (say, 20 songs with 16-32 track master tape on computer media), and a year of time, I could do a pretty damned clean job of it... As it is, I have a few copies of Polar releases, Polydor releases, US releases, and a few bootleg copies to work with (I very honestly forget where I got them, but it was from many years ago -- in my later years and greater experience might guess that some might be two track DolbyA copies.) My goal has been to produce an optimized listening experience of what I have found to be available. (This is beyond my interest in generally cleaning up old recordings -- removing hiss, truly replacing damaged transients, etc.) All of my software actually reconstructs and doesn't just 'transient enhance' or whatever -- so it takes lots of CPU, but the results are amazingly uneventful, but music sounds like it should (not over-enhanced, but just 'cleaner.')