i'm having a problem with digital brick wall mastering


sam here and my problem is simple? all the digital albums that i download have a lot of brick wall mastering applied and it make the audio sound distorted and lifeless? i was able to find an allpass filter that removed the brick wall mastering however for some unknown reason after the brick wall mastering was removed the dynamic range is now too high on average 8db increase and i have to reduce the digital volume to prevent clipping. also now the audio sounds to analog like with all the digital sound gone? it’s like vintage vinyl on steroids? is there a filter that can remove only half of the brick wall mastering. all my digital audio now sounds like a live studio performance?
guitarsam

Showing 3 responses by kijanki

I'm not sure what you mean by "allpass filter".  The function of "allpass filter" is to delay phase without affecting amplitude (flat frequency response).  Clipping might be caused by intersample peaks/overs. They happen when filtering of the DAC's output staircase waveform produces amplitude slightly higher than highest unfiltered step.  Recording engineers should leave some headroom for that, but it is usually less than 1dB.  It is possible that with loudness wars they failed to do it.  Still, I doubt that it would be so audible on many records.  My Benchmark DAC3 processes data to provide extra 3dB of headroom for intersample overs, but 3dB is probably overkill.  You can find info here:   https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/intersample-overs-in-cd-recordings
Delay should not make any difference unless filter does something else to reduce peaks.  At this point we don't know what this filter does, but if it works then use it.

It doesn't have to be compressed to sound distorted.  Brick wall filtering might affect sound negatively but not by compressing the sound.