Faces of The Loudness War

[ironically] See, you guys don't understand, in this way we are getting more music for the money we pay. Who'd want to pay for a bag of potato chips that was half full? In this case you get a CD that is filled to the top.[/ironically]

 

Full of something.

 

Mike Petrini at Vortex Studios in Boston.

 

Wow, they cut the dynamic range but didn't normalize so no loudness gain. This is just plain sabotage.

 

Look at all the pretty colors!

These are tracks from a Dungen album I've been listening to recently. Cool music despite the square waves.

 

Hi Metoo,

Good analogy!
By smashing the chips into little crumbs, we can stuff more in the bag.
More "chip", less air.
That is just what happens with audio... more crumbs, less air.
;-}

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

A few random waveforms of sonic excrement I happened to have uploaded already:


Better Than Ezra - How Does Your Garden Grow; "At the Stars"


Third Eye Blind - Blue; "10 Days Late"


Incubus - Morning View; "Nice to Know You"


U2 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb; "Vertigo"

 

I haven't seen any dedicated threads..

 

Did you search for "loudness war" or "compression"?

But wait a second - you were the last poster on this thread

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=103890

Just revive it.

 

But this thread is for posting screen caps of waveforms..

Once in a while I come across a good example and I'd like a dedicated place to post it. Now I've got one.

 

Trust your ears! I truly belive that. (If it sounds good to YOU on YOUR system, then that's all that matters)

 

No, I cut the levels on the CD to match the levels of Steve's LP so that they are the same average loudness. It shows what extreme compression is really doing to the music.

 

"This CD was packed by weight, and not by volume. Some settling of contents may have occured during mastering."

 

I don't see an indicator of compression during mastering in the picture of the waveform that I posted.. Am I missing something? Could you clue me in?

 

That's what you would call a 'crumby' sound.

 

That's because, as per your avatar, you are still too young.

 

A good 'second part' for this thread could be called "Phases of the Loudness Wars."

Then we'd be able to see the progression and you wouldn't be able to tell if the last post was a post of a waveform or the dividing line between posts.

 

That's what's so good about that pic, it can show you what's lost by this dumb "loudness" habit. The signal can only get so loud; in order to "maximize" the whole signal, you have to squish it all into a tiny dynamic range. Turn it back down to the same listening level, as everyone does, and all you've done was to limit everything. So it's not actually louder, just severely limited. Sinatra's 1940's Columbias have much more dynamic range than many new CDs. The Capitols, while they were aiming for pleasurable sound and not a wide dynamic range, are Telarcs by comparison. It's dumb, it negates CDs, it's intentionally degrading the product, it's bad for music listening, it's sabotage. That's why Steve and many here harp and moan about it...

Of course you knew all that. It's just that it's not a complete week without getting the rant in. Thanks for the set-up

 

The peaks are almost at the same level. Tracks with no or little compression look more like the edge of a saw blade with mountains and valleys.

Here's Fire And Water from the original Island CD (1db volume boosted) and the remaster. I think the difference is discernible.

 

This an even better analogy!

 

That is the funniest thing I've seen on the internet in WEEKS.

 

OUCH! You can keep that one, Jam-bo.

 

When I read the thread title, I thought of mug-shots of all our favorite (and least-favorite) mastering engineers, producers, releases...

 

Me too.

 

Hehe - Sorry about that. I wrestled with what to call the thread when I first started it. I wanted it to have a "Faces Of Death" kind of feel.