SH Spotlight Why the new "LOUDNESS CRAZE" in digital mastering really robs music of life..

That is terrible, it's like all the craftsmanship is gone. It's paint by numbers for music.

It must be terrible for guys like you and Barry, Steve. I can only hear it; you can hear it and visualize what they are doing. Must be frustrating.

 

In terms of dynamics (and to appropriate a Police song title), it's more like Murder by Numbers.

 

My girlfriend doesn't "get it" about why it's worth caring about how a CD etc sounds. I just sent her an e-mail with this asking her to listen to it even if that's all she does for me for my B-day.

 

Re: Why the new "loudness" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

Oh yes they have, and I have examples of it in my collection to prove it.

 

eventually the loudness craze will have a reverse effect as they all will be deaf from the loud music!, and nothing will repair the damage...TURN IT UP will be the new rule

 

Here is a list of sorry excuses the industry and artists use for wanting louder (compressed) CDs:

They sound better (louder) on the radio-This is NOT true, because radio stations already compress everything to make their station loud. Also, When their compressor sees the already compressed CD, it will take the level of the whole CD down, which not only defeats the purpose, but makes the music sound worse.

We must have the CD louder so the music will be noticed by radio people, A&R people, and the consumer-Wrong again! Radio and A&R people will NOT take notice of a song because it's louder, and listeners tend to suffer from ear fatigue by listening to music without any dynamics. The ear needs those peaks and valleys. It need the rest. Listening to constantly sustained sound wears one out, and can cause physical ear pain.

We make them loud so that peiople don't have to change the volume on their stereos, especially if they use a carousel changer-yes, the sad fact is that people are lazy and can't be bothered to adjust the volume on their remote controls. All the more reason a switchable compressor should be built into the hardware and not the CD. However, most modern HT recievers DO have a compressor built in, called something like a "midnight" mode. this is different than the loudness button of old.

The details come out when the music is compressed-True, but it doesn't sound good, and the levels are out of balance. What's the use?

They sound better on boomboxes, cars, and cheap computrer speakers-This one has been debunked so many times that I won't even bother to answer this.

 

Re: Why the new "LOUDNESS" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

this response answers a question I was going to post, about 'undoing' a bad master...I recently got the David Crosby Box promo disc, sounds fine, except for the one CPR song, "breathless", which I rushed to turn down the volume on when I played the disc...all the other songs are much older, didn't have that awful compression to start with

 

This post is worthy of a sticky of its own.

An additional note on the "carousel changer" theory: Digital compression simply makes me unwilling to place newer CDs in a changer alongside less-compressed titles that made up more of my collection, and producers could just as easily standardize at a lower average volume level that didn't require compression if they so desired.

 

Thanks Dave, that was the closest one I could find as well. I guess we'll have to see if Steve can remember it. Steve?

 

I'm not sure that's completely true. But here's another consideration - as compression has increased over recent years, maybe some of those "people" above perceive that as a "modern" sound. They want that "sound".

 

Well, maybe if i'm allowed to correct my typos! But, thanks!

Bob Katz, Bob Ludwig, or someone, once proposed a standard for loudness on CDs. That standard would put most CD levels in a certain "ballpark".

 

Re: Why the new "LOUDNESS" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

... and from my experience, over-compressed CDs sound terrible on iPods; the difference from well-mastered CDs is as offensive as on any system.

 

That is right. Many small-time producer/engineers try to use compression to achieve that "pro" sound. The public is so conditioned to it that they consider compressed sound as sounding professional. Sad, isn't it? But, to be fair, compressed sound, as the kind you hear on FM radio, does give music a special charm. When I was a kid, i'd hear how great a song sounded on the radio, then get the album only to be disappointed. Forget that the sound was usually cleaner and more dynamic, it just didn't have the liveliness of that compression. If a person't first exposure to a song is from the radio or even an mp3/AAC file, they may want their CD to sound the same way.

Most people are NOT looking for that audiophile experience. But, CDs today sound much worse that FM radio ever did.

 

its sad to have the wave clip before it hits the amp.

 

Heck that sounded awful - I felt like putting a brick through my PC's 2.1 system.

I was listening to a favourite CD of mine late last night and that was just how it sounded

There was compression back in the day on some releases but nothing so sad as this.

Thanks for posting the link and putting it in the stickys, Steve.

 

If excessive compression is actually desired for certain playback conditions, the means should be built into the playback unit - car stereo, radio or whatever - so that it can be utilized as required or desired by the listener just like volume, bass and treble controls. The recordings and "music product" you buy shouldn't be intentionally degraded "for you" with no knowledge of the context you will be playing it in. How can someone in the music and / or audio fields not already understand that much?

A rich irony in the age where the beat is often of greater import than melody. Musical tastes and audio engineering and playback have an interesting interrelationship, but that's for another thread...

Actually they didn't usually brighten them per se; that would have required more costly components and circuitry. What they did, and often still do, is to misadjust the TV at the factory to raise the "color temperature." This skews the white to blue. It skews all of the colors, and most importantly the grey scale, out of spec as well so that the TV you bought is degraded and incapable of giving you accurate color or black and white. Good TVs (and PC monitors, not immune to this foolishness) do allow you to reset the "white" level to the correct 6500 degrees or something at least closer to it; check yours if you don't know. If the unit doesn't have a provision for the user to set this, sometimes it can be corrected but it takes a pro and $$ to do it.

The commonly held myth is that marketing research proved people want their TVs bluer than real color. I tested that: I had some non-discerning friends unfamiliar with TV technology see two TV sets showing the same signal, a good quality pic of a human face, one on a set adjusted to ~6500 degree white and the other at Sony's misadjusted ~8300. Everyone loved the ~6500 set ("wow it's so real!" to quote one) and thought the ~8300 set looked like, well, a junky TV. Everybody.

Making the whole affair sillier is the reality of most "showrooms" - go to a Walmart and you'll find the picture quality is down to sheer pot luck as to which is at the best angle getting the best feed etc. Their blue trick doesn't do squat. All their supposedly enlightened methodology does then is degrade the product you paid for and possibly force you to spend far more money to correct the adjustments the factory intentionally misadjusted. Maybe they could be sued for the unasked for degradation hehe...

I've used the color temp analogy to explain misguided sound "engineering" (both falsely "brighter digital sound" and excessive compression) when other attempts failed. The folks grasped the concept better after the analogy, I think as people today tend to be more attuned to noticing differences in picture than sound. No question the clip this thread is about is a better explanation, but there are many ways to explain these things if one doesn't work

That would be grand used as a "rule of thumb" but the music industry isn't that er... how do we say it politely...

 

Re: Why the new "LOUDNESS" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

yeah... very bad!!!

 

The funny thing is that it's not even a particularly extreme case by today's standards, yet the difference in clarity is instantly obvious on crappy little computer speakers!

 

Re: Why the new "LOUDNESS" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

I would really like the broad brush of corporate radio bashing to stop. I've worked in radio for 25 years and whether it was a corporation or a guy who lives 5 miles away that was the station owner, they have all wanted their stations to sound like "the big market stations" with the songs dancing on the dashboard. One of the stations I worked for that I still work for after it was bought by a large evil conglomerate actually sounds better now. In the old days we used the Orban 8100 and the Texar Audio Prisms and the modulation meter could have been painted in place at the max allowed by law. That is NOT the case now. I have seen just as many good and bad things come from small market individual owners and big market mega corporations so knock off the bashing of the big folks please.

 

Hi Grant,

I would say that some low level information is made louder, making it more apparent at low playback volumes. Details? They go out the window, never to return, since those details live in the little peaks that get wiped by compression.

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

 

I agree. "Details" can only be heard if there is something to compare something else to. Peaks and valleys allow you to hear details. A big compressed ball of goo makes it all samey. Like the difference between a caress and a punch.

 

Re: Why the new "LOUDNESS" craze in digital mastering really robs music of life..

I would blame the 5 cd changer as more the culprit. Really this has been going on before the mp3 era.

Record company executives hearing different volumes on different cds loaded on their changers in their offices and cars and voila, a problem was born, a quiet cd, hence the push to volume increases over time to the insanity we have now.

if "changers" were never invented, i dont think it would have gotten to this. Just my guess though, i'm no expert on this really.

 

It's not a cure-all by any means.

But a nice alternative, given the opportunity.

As far as making vinyl louder, there's only so much they can get away with v.s. CD's.

 

I've recently heard comments from non-audiophile music fans recently that CD's are just getting way too loud these days.

That should tell us a lot right there.

 

I wouldn't blame the iPod for the loudness war. Aim your hatred towards the car CD player. Road/tire noise, engine/exhaust noise, A/C vents and wind all made it difficult to listen to a CD in a car. With everything at equal volume, you don't need to adjust the volume with the music while you drive. My car CD player has a COMPRESS button on it and it sounded just like that YouTube clip.