Loudness Wars
- Thread starter MylesBAstor
- Start date
I have been following this theme for weeks from different respected sources, there are even some radical voices claiming to get two copies of a recording (with and w/o compression).... What can we do as consumers to change this recording technique trend?, or is this a lost cause?
Hi
I am also annoyed by this trend. The more one is aware of it the more bothersome it becomes... Grrrr
I was listening to a faulous album of African music and ALL the tracks were loud , very loud and obviously compressed... Musi is so good you put it aside still, I couldn't stop wondering how this album would have sounded had they not applied so much compression to it?
Will today's youth ever find real dynamics appealing? Is this a lost cause? That would be sad, I am interested in new music and seem that all new releases seem to be overly compressed and loud
I am also annoyed by this trend. The more one is aware of it the more bothersome it becomes... Grrrr
I was listening to a faulous album of African music and ALL the tracks were loud , very loud and obviously compressed... Musi is so good you put it aside still, I couldn't stop wondering how this album would have sounded had they not applied so much compression to it?
Will today's youth ever find real dynamics appealing? Is this a lost cause? That would be sad, I am interested in new music and seem that all new releases seem to be overly compressed and loud
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Mastering engineers would probably be the first to buy them! I've gotten mixes so compressed/limited from studios that I've had to send them back. If no remix or bounce was available, the first thing I'd do is a gain attenuation of about 6dB and start from there.
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I really would like to know what is behind this .. Seems to me the music no longer breathes. You don't have to be an audiophile to appreciate the change in levels that makes music alive. no soft passage in a song? Only loud? All instruments at the same level?
This is a real problem for me. Once in a while I find treasures of my youth, I tend to go toward the "re-mastered" version which usually means brutal compression and crazy EQ. Even so-called Audiophile labels are not immune.. MFSL for example is hit and miss ... to be fair more hits than misses...
They should implement a scheme like replay gain in all portable player and maybe a flag to compress and another one to leave it alone.. it is doable with current technology ... Seems ALL pop albums are overly compressed and this is very apparent , even on a portable mp3 player..
Question to Bruce: Are they also recorded this way?
This is a real problem for me. Once in a while I find treasures of my youth, I tend to go toward the "re-mastered" version which usually means brutal compression and crazy EQ. Even so-called Audiophile labels are not immune.. MFSL for example is hit and miss ... to be fair more hits than misses...
They should implement a scheme like replay gain in all portable player and maybe a flag to compress and another one to leave it alone.. it is doable with current technology ... Seems ALL pop albums are overly compressed and this is very apparent , even on a portable mp3 player..
Question to Bruce: Are they also recorded this way?
Frantz-I think what is behind it is the recording executives wanting to make their records jump from your car radio. I’ve said this before, I find it highly ironic that digital has the capability of having great dynamic range and yet the trend is to throw it all way for the sake of loudness. This trend is setting the quality of music backwards.
The other irony is that LPs are for the most part escaping the loudness wars because the record labels know that people who are buying LPs are buying them because they prefer them to digital and they are trying to give the best sound possible to people who are buying LPs. It seems that record labels don’t consider the customers who buy their digital products as audiophiles.
The other irony is that LPs are for the most part escaping the loudness wars because the record labels know that people who are buying LPs are buying them because they prefer them to digital and they are trying to give the best sound possible to people who are buying LPs. It seems that record labels don’t consider the customers who buy their digital products as audiophiles.
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
These days.. they mostly are. There are a lot of newbies out there recording and don't know about proper recording/mixing techniques and fall prey to improper gain staging and such. Since most recording budgets are near $0 these days, one stop recording/mixing/mastering looks pretty good to them. You wouldn't believe how many recording/mixing studios now offer "mastering", to keep all the business in-house. The usual excuse from the mixing engineer is "I don't trust anyone with my mixes".
Hi
I mostly go to Classical and Jazz concerts. Rarely to Rock and even less to Pop... Is that the way it is in pop concerts, i-e loud and compressed? Say a Britney Spears concert? For the record I consider Britney Spears the epitomy of an entirely fabricated artist. Her normal voice is atrocious, its range microscopic. She is made by extraordinary skillful PR and abundance of technology ...
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Most rock/pop concerts nowadays have hugely compressed/limited sonics. It's more prevalent now because of the newer digital mixing boards. Take the Avid/Digidesign Venue for example. This board can emulate a recording/mixing studio by using Pro Tools and all the artist's favorite plug-ins. (think AutoTune). You can read Mix magazine and see what all your favorite artists are using. The artist wants to sound just like the studio album and the guy behind the mixing console with oblige.
Not really ...We are doomed
It's part of the human condition that the pendulum always swings too far in one direction, and then there is a reaction to that, and it heads the other way. When digital started, the magazines speculated on how quickly vinyl would completely die, and whether a particular new TT would be the last good one to be designed ...
Frank
I think this can be traced to the increase in environmental noise pollution. Don't hold me to it, it's just a theory. Mep mentioned sound jumping out at you in your car. A car is one of the noisiest listening environments around. The same can be said of modern dwellings. Population density and light construction is a nasty combination. High environmental noise coupled with high sound transmission. Add to that, household items like HVACs, refrigerator compressors, fans, water pumps, dish washers, range hoods, microwave ovens. No wonder that we all like to listen late in the evenings or early in the morning. It's also no wonder that the new generation is getting hip to the loudness wars, the age of the boom box is gone, it's the age of the headphone, IEMs and circumaurals with good isolation being the weapons of choice. Maybe we aren't doomed. The iPod generation just might save us all.
But how do you account for the fact that in the glorious 50's and 60's that music very often specifically targeted for listeners in vehicles conspicuously lacking in anything you would call NVH is now often regarded as being at the top of the tree? Apart from the fact that the technology to compress at the time would have been "primitive" ?
Frank
But how do you account for the fact that in the glorious 50's and 60's that music very often specifically targeted for listeners in vehicles conspicuously lacking in anything you would call NVH is now often regarded as being at the top of the tree? Apart from the fact that the technology to compress at the time would have been "primitive" ?
Frank
You wearing rose colored glasses Frank?
The 50's and 60's may have been the golden years but there were still more bad recordings than good ones. The devil just wore different dresses. Carbon Mics anyone?Just pointing out, as Mark mentioned, that compressors were around, and cars were very nasty environments as far as audio was concerned but no-one at the time thought to join the dots. Hence great dynamic range compared to current muck; bad in other ways perhaps, but they did understand dynamic contrasts ...You wearing rose colored glasses Frank?
Frank
You wearing rose colored glasses Frank?
There was a ton of compression in the pop recordings of the 50s and 60s, precisely because much of it was listened to on car radios. Phil Spector'r records are pretty severely compressed, or they sound that way to me. Jump forward a decade or two, and a couple of Springsteen's early records come to mind. Born To Run is pretty badly compressed. It was analog compression, though, so I'm sure it was more musical. Point is, this is a repeat trend. We just weren't audiophiles for the last one. Yep they had noisy listening environments in the good old days, and they had compressors. And they used them. We just have some photogenic memory going on here.
Tim
Radio was also the main carrier medium. By nature AM and FM are inherently compressed at high ratios. So from an automotive perspective recordings didn't need as much compression. Things changed when people started owning cars that had tape decks and started playing their own music bypassing the AM/FM chain.
