Sound quality of Kalafina and FictionJunction

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Squall Leonhart

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I thought it would be an interesting idea for a thread where we can discuss various things concerning sound quality of Yuki Kajiura's music like the mastering and mixing of the music, sound systems people use to listen to it, loudness wars, compression, distortion and other things.

I listen to the music on a pretty revealing hifi system and while the sound is generally clear I sometimes hear distortion in vocals and some of the music has to much compression. For example in the song Eternal Blue the drums lack a satisfying impact and usually this problem is attributed to being overly compressed to make a song louder or to string the instruments together. The problem with this is to compress a song you effectively cut of the lowest and highest frequencies.

That impactful sound you get from drums I read is the result of low frequencies and good hifi systems and studio monitors are able to reproduce those frequencies. But if the song has been robbed of those frequencies the drums will sound hollow and will lack that satisfying impact.

Yuki Kajiura likes to use compression in her music for style reasons. Here is a quote from another site I found:

"An interesting example, she makes particular (not universal) use of dynamic range compression as a deliberate artistic choice and accounts for it in the rest of the production. Sometimes she brickwalls whole albums but with different songs adjusted to different volumes. Sometimes she only brickwalls a few songs, or the choruses within a song. Sometimes she doesn't do it at all."

I am no expert but I assume there is a balance to be struck so that the music can still retain a satisfying amount of dynamics. For example I believe Marilyn Manson uses compression but on his latest album drums still have plenty of impact to them. Same with Daft Punk Random Access Memories. Which has me thinking that the overuse of compression is the fault of 'loudness wars'.

The reason this is an issue is Yuki Kajiura's music is brilliant and I don't want such great music to be negatively affected by the 'loudness wars'. The sound quality is still better then average though and while it's not got a wide dynamic range it is far from the worst offenders. The loudness wars database score for Kalafina and FictionJunction albums shows a dynamic range score on the low side but it is no worse then the majority of other modern music.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=fictionjunction&album=
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Kalafina


The live albums of Fictionjunction has better scores for some reason. Maybe because live tracks are not used on radio so loud mastering wasn't as important but it's just a guess.

I hear the sound engineer is really good which is probably why Kalafina and FictionJunction is so clear sounding. I guess the overly compressed nature is pressure from the label to master loud.

I would love it if all Kalafina and Fictionjunction albums got remastered and released on hi res flac and SACD. Also would great if they were all rereleased on vinyl to make then widely available rather then keeping the vinyl releases a limited thing. I can always dream.
 
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Squall Leonhart said:
I would love it if all Kalafina and Fictionjunction albums got remastered and released on hi res flac and SACD. Also would great if they were all rereleased on vinyl to make then widely available rather then keeping the vinyl releases a limited thing. I can always dream.
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Hi and welcome, will say hello properly when I don't have to work in a few hours.

The Elemental album, which combined tracks recorded for different projects was remastered by Bernie Grundman (sp), mentioned in twitter at the time.
 
Kalafina CD releases are clipped (edt: see below, hurr). The hi-rez versions fair much better.
 
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Sorry for the not-directly-YK-related rant here. Why on earth would anyone deliberately make an official CD release where the sound is clipped? I assume they have not completely incompetent staff who can recognize that there's clipping when they see it, yet several (non-YK) releases are so bad that they make my ears bleed.

@Squall Leonhart suggested it's because of radio. Isn't there some person at the radio station checking the loudness of the next track and compensating anyway?
 
Actually I guess I did mean overcompressed in Kalafina's case but whatevur. ("guess" cause I can't be bothered to look if it's actually just hard limited).. (And as I said the hi-rez downloads fair better in that aspect.)
 
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Dynamic range compression? At least that doesn't remove that much information. But there are still several releases with clipping out there.
 
I have looked into this with Kalafina before actually. Sad to see a lot of their stuff is pretty badly affected by the loudness war issues, but at least it's better than many releases.

I've been waiting for vinyl releases of the other Kalafina albums for ages. After the FotW vinyl seemingly sold well I thought it'd be an opportunity for them to a) give the fans some cool stuff and b) make more money for Sony. Yet, nothing.

God damn it SME, give me my vinyl albums.
 
Squall Leonhart said:
I hear the sound engineer is really good which is probably why Kalafina and FictionJunction is so clear sounding. I guess the overly compressed nature is pressure from the label to master loud.
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Yes, the sound engineer is really good. And in Kalafina's case at least, there is seriously nothing to complain about. Because by far they are the best sounding (mastering wise) modern Jpop group/artist I've ever heard. The thing is that with these big labels there is ALWAYS going to be pressure for them to master loud. No matter what the sound engineers think. But there are some who, clearly, bend this rule as much as they can, and we get what we get.

I wouldn't worry about those DR levels - if something sounds good and if you have a good system - you'll hear it. Because if something is released by a big label (especially if it's modern pop music), it's always going to have those compression standards. All of it is overcompressed and there's nothing we can do about it because no one really cares besides a few people. Some of Kalafina's tracks sound worse, some sound even amazing, but all in all they have great value when it comes to that stuff compared to any other big label artist in Japan probably. Only other Jpop artist that fares similarly is Miliyah Kato (there are probably more artists who are similar with mastering standards but I've never listened to them), which is no surprise seeing as she's also signed to Sony and ALSO has the same mastering engineer as Kalafina.

Note also that whenever you check for DR of songs, the slower songs are almost always going to have a higher DR, even if they sound as shitty. It's just not really a great measuring tool to which you should always turn to in order to figure out what is a good sound and what is not.

Also, if you guys want to know what really bad mastering sounds like, and what clipping really is - try listening to any album of the artist named "lecca". When you hear how her music sounds, you'll realize that Kalafina's music sounds heavenly, lmao.
 
I know this thread is focusing on Kalafina (mainly) and FJ, but I'm curious if similar practices with mastering loud took place with her work in See-Saw.
 
I find her music to be heavily compressed. There are parts where the mix goes to utter mush because all the character has been squashed out of it.
 
Kugayama said:
The Elemental album, which combined tracks recorded for different projects was remastered by Bernie Grundman (sp), mentioned in twitter at the time.
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Thanks for info I had no idea Elemental album was remastered. It still has a little distortion on parts so maybe it is some kind of feedback from recording equipment. I just wish they were able to have a wider dynamic range. It is only the CD version that I have listened to so not sure if there is other versions that are any better. It is strange that even Bernie Grundman mastered it with low dynamic range.


grunty said:
Kalafina CD releases are clipped (edt: see below, hurr). The hi-rez versions fair much better.
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I am not sure but I thought the hi res versions were the same. I think I read somewhere that they were simply up sampled from CD version so they were not natively hi res

yuki.n said:
Sorry for the not-directly-YK-related rant here. Why on earth would anyone deliberately make an official CD release where the sound is clipped? I assume they have not completely incompetent staff who can recognize that there's clipping when they see it, yet several (non-YK) releases are so bad that they make my ears bleed.

@Squall Leonhart suggested it's because of radio. Isn't there some person at the radio station checking the loudness of the next track and compensating anyway?
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I am not sure about radio but I remember reading somewhere that radio stations are partly to blame but I cant remember where I read it and if it was accurate.

Seasonreaper said:
I have looked into this with Kalafina before actually. Sad to see a lot of their stuff is pretty badly affected by the loudness war issues, but at least it's better than many releases.

I've been waiting for vinyl releases of the other Kalafina albums for ages. After the FotW vinyl seemingly sold well I thought it'd be an opportunity for them to a) give the fans some cool stuff and b) make more money for Sony. Yet, nothing.

God damn it SME, give me my vinyl albums.
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I don't currently have a turntable but if Kalafina suddenly rereleases them then I will be very tempted.

Mace63 said:
Yes, the sound engineer is really good. And in Kalafina's case at least, there is seriously nothing to complain about. Because by far they are the best sounding (mastering wise) modern Jpop group/artist I've ever heard. The thing is that with these big labels there is ALWAYS going to be pressure for them to master loud. No matter what the sound engineers think. But there are some who, clearly, bend this rule as much as they can, and we get what we get.

I wouldn't worry about those DR levels - if something sounds good and if you have a good system - you'll hear it. Because if something is released by a big label (especially if it's modern pop music), it's always going to have those compression standards. All of it is overcompressed and there's nothing we can do about it because no one really cares besides a few people. Some of Kalafina's tracks sound worse, some sound even amazing, but all in all they have great value when it comes to that stuff compared to any other big label artist in Japan probably. Only other Jpop artist that fares similarly is Miliyah Kato (there are probably more artists who are similar with mastering standards but I've never listened to them), which is no surprise seeing as she's also signed to Sony and ALSO has the same mastering engineer as Kalafina.

Note also that whenever you check for DR of songs, the slower songs are almost always going to have a higher DR, even if they sound as shitty. It's just not really a great measuring tool to which you should always turn to in order to figure out what is a good sound and what is not.

Also, if you guys want to know what really bad mastering sounds like, and what clipping really is - try listening to any album of the artist named "lecca". When you hear how her music sounds, you'll realize that Kalafina's music sounds heavenly, lmao.
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Great points. Yeah Kalafina and Fictionjunction still sound better the 99% of other recordings. It's very clean and clear sounding and they use stereo imaging to good effect on several tracks.

I just wish that drums would sound like real drums. The drummer for Kalafina and Fictionjunction is very talented.
 
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MedChemist said:
I know this thread is focusing on Kalafina (mainly) and FJ, but I'm curious if similar practices with mastering loud took place with her work in See-Saw.
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You should also have a listen to Chiaki Ishikawa's Inner Garden album, it sounds very good.
 
Squall Leonhart said:
I am not sure but I thought the hi res versions were the same. I think I read somewhere that they were simply up sampled from CD version so they were not natively hi res
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I don't know about them being natively hi res but they are definitely not "the same" as CD versions.
 
grunty said:
I don't know about them being natively hi res but they are definitely not "the same" as CD versions.
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In that case I definitely want to hear them. Problem is my hifi only accepts mp3 from usb port. If I get a new cd player down the line that supports flac files I am going to try out these versions.
 
Squall Leonhart said:
I just wish that drums would sound like real drums. The drummer for Kalafina and Fictionjunction is very talented.
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Yeah, I've noticed that too. I can't tell you how many instances there were when I was listening to (any kind of, really) music and imagined how much better certain things, or just the whole songs overall would sound if x was different, or if it used just a little bit less of compression. But sadly, most people don't care or even notice, or listen on their earbuds where they can't even hear everything that's going on - so it doesn't matter to them (which is understandable). Could you tell me what's your audio setup? I'm just curious.

grunty said:
I don't know about them being natively hi res but they are definitely not "the same" as CD versions.
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They are just a bit less compressed than the CD versions. Even so, it's not some kind of grandiose difference worth it, IMO.
 
grunty said:
Just pointing out it's not the same as CD.
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Certainly not, you're right there. But I'm curious - why do you think so? I mean, what were the differences you noticed exactly? If it's about compression, what did jump out to you at most?

I really like that this kind of thread was opened. I was always curious to hear other people's opinions when ti comes to sound production of Kalafina's stuff.
 
grunty said:
I guess. If anyone cares about this shit, here's a quick waveform comparision for the ending part of One Light on its single. I made the CD version 2dB quieter just because.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/193780
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:omg: That's ... visible... but not as bad as it could have been. I have mixed feelings here.

EDIT: For comparison, here's the CD version of See-Saw's Suhada from the Early Best CD.

35TGdbmPKA5v.png


EDIT2: If you zoom in enough, it's actually not clipped. Just very compressed.
 
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@yuki.n considering that Suhada, was an ending theme for 「○I○I TOKYO TASTE Rooms」 (Fuji TV) one would almost expect a more compressed mix, compared with say Chiaki Ishikawa's "Inner Garden" album.

I wonder if the single version and Early Best versions of Suhada have identical compression?
 
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