The Loudness War

[MrHope]

YouTube - The Loudness War

Sorry if this has been posted up here before, but this is interesting.

[big country]

makes me wanna go out and buy a compresor... JK

AW, why you gotta love the new realm of digital

more head room scotty, give me more head room, its getting clusterfobic
in hear...

thanks for the link

[Bob Yordan]

Yup, but if you loose the smack in the drums you are probably using the wrong tools or use them in the wrong way.

I hate loudness maximizers.

[drakewire]

Yeah but.....
Loudness is definately not always better... But Stick in a Green Day CD, you can still make out every instrument even at a negative -8db... I guess thats where phenomenal mixing and mastering come into play other than just force feeding a Limiter..

[quantumpsych]

Originally Posted by drakewire

Yeah but.....
Loudness is definately not always better... But Stick in a Green Day CD, you can still make out every instrument even at a negative -8db... I guess thats where phenomenal mixing and mastering come into play other than just force feeding a Limiter..

thank you sir. for anyone that believes "flat footed" masters, average RMS between -12dbFs and -8dbFs, cannot sound GREAT, i have an experiment for you;

- buy any record mastered by the great Bob Ludwig in the last 10 years...

- rip it to your DAW...

- listen to playback at low volume while you analyze the waveform in amplitude view at multiple zoom levels...

- allow your jaw to smack your desk as you gape in aww of his majesties work...

- clean up the drool...

- load any pre-master mix of yours and bust your ass trying to duplicate that...

- thank me later

[Adam Dempsey]

Not one to usually jump into what I feel is a tired topic (just heard a hard rock track at -4dB RMS - true! - and mastered as the client wished) but check out the latest Beastie Boys album "The Mix Up". Kudos to the Boys (& Greg Calbi who mastered this & I'm sure if it weren't him on this one it would've been Chris Athens as before) - sounds great, even "vinyl-eske" due to some fat analogue rec/mix staging and an RMS average of....


-14 to -15dB.

[allencollins]

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3 hours ago
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Maybe we can get them to end the loudness war too........

[807Recordings]

Originally Posted by Boomshanka

Not one to usually jump into what I feel is a tired topic (just heard a hard rock track at -4dB RMS - true! - and mastered as the client wished) but check out the latest Beastie Boys album "The Mix Up". Kudos to the Boys (& Greg Calbi who mastered this & I'm sure if it weren't him on this one it would've been Chris Athens as before) - sounds great, even "vinyl-eske" due to some fat analogue rec/mix staging and an RMS average of....


-14 to -15dB.

I wonder if they still got to tape. I have a couple of their albums on both CD and vinyl and the vinyl smokes the CD. Actually lots of my older hip hop LP's came right off the tape and they sound way better than the CD.

[quantumpsych]

Originally Posted by 807Recordings

I wonder if they still got to tape. I have a couple of their albums on both CD and vinyl and the vinyl smokes the CD. Actually lots of my older hip hop LP's came right off the tape and they sound way better than the CD.

that doesn't have to be though. in my experience, any artist or group that hits a certain critical mass will track to tape. if not exclusively, they will mix down to at least 1/2" tape. my brother, who doesn't give a shit about gear but loves music, asked me if the new fall out boy was recorded to tape. i said, "i don't know but it's almost impossible to tell anymore." point being that we live in an age where boutique gear isn't necessary.

[heathen]

Getting a master to sit nicely at -14 to -12 rms is quite easy without any digital brick wall limiting, it's when you start pushing things much harder you almost always need a brick wall limiter of some sort. To me this is where the wheels start to fall off, when is enough actually enough. Every db above - 12 with a brick wall limiter is 1 db less of usually drum transients and an extra db of mess.

I'm glad to see more restraint in levels on some new records, they sound great at a high volume. Anyone can make a loud master these days, making a master which will sound great everywhere is a little more difficult.

[Unity1888]

What is the best method for analyzing RMS and Peak values. Is it usually a mater of simply watching meters or is there some software that is will analyze an entire file and spit out peak and RMS figures?

-Mark

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by heathen

Getting a master to sit nicely at -14 to -12 rms is quite easy without any digital brick wall limiting, it's when you start pushing things much harder you almost always need a brick wall limiter of some sort. To me this is where the wheels start to fall off, when is enough actually enough. Every db above - 12 with a brick wall limiter is 1 db less of usually drum transients and an extra db of mess.

I'm glad to see more restraint in levels on some new records, they sound great at a high volume. Anyone can make a loud master these days, making a master which will sound great everywhere is a little more difficult.

A lot of stuff I see coming in has an RMS value of -8 to -6 dBFS. It is already smashed. Not much can be done to make it more dynamic.

[rufus13]

Even among the folks protesting "too much loudness/clipping", I see the yardsticks come out. The only digital number that matters is the horrid distortion when too many samples get recorded as 0dB FS because the input blasted past the limiter and past zero dB FS.

"Loudness" is in our ears and in our heads, and varies from hour-to-hour/day-to-day. Machine-levels (VU, Peak meters, peak sample value, overall RMS value of a track ) and their display are to assist us in not overloading amplifiers and recorders. People don't hear like that.

Listen, don't measure. Leave lots of headroom. Make good recordings. Best wishes.

[filthyrich]

Most people I record never get their stuff professionally mastered. It's something I have come to realize. When I "master," here's how I do it.
I take the L-R wave that I dumped out into 16 bit from the actual Sonar file. I import them back into a sonar file and then clone that track to add fullness/loudness. I did this because I've noticed that when I import that new doubled track back into Soundforge it seems bigger and louder than before. If I keep adding cloned versions of the exact same L-R wave track and then export it out; will it keep getting louder without sounding phased etc?

I'm asking because I want to avoid normalizing; yet need to get it louder to make clients happy. I'm used to seeing square looking top ends if I import a professionally mastered cd track. Is this all done with brick wall limiters? Could I keep stacking the same track to get the absolute loudest hit, line etc. to come in just under digital zero?

Thanks much.
Sorry if this is stupid and the exact reason why mastering people hate when mixing people try to master.

[Unity1888]

By adding more tracks of the same thing, you are causing positive interference for the entire frequency spectrum. Depending on the program's summing algorithm, it isn't very different than turning up the volume of the original track.

[pinwale]

Originally Posted by filthyrich

Most people I record never get their stuff professionally mastered. It's something I have come to realize. When I "master," here's how I do it.
I take the L-R wave that I dumped out into 16 bit from the actual Sonar file. I import them back into a sonar file and then clone that track to add fullness/loudness. I did this because I've noticed that when I import that new doubled track back into Soundforge it seems bigger and louder than before. If I keep adding cloned versions of the exact same L-R wave track and then export it out; will it keep getting louder without sounding phased etc?

I'm asking because I want to avoid normalizing; yet need to get it louder to make clients happy. I'm used to seeing square looking top ends if I import a professionally mastered cd track. Is this all done with brick wall limiters? Could I keep stacking the same track to get the absolute loudest hit, line etc. to come in just under digital zero?

Thanks much.
Sorry if this is stupid and the exact reason why mastering people hate when mixing people try to master.

I hereby nominate this post to the Hall of Fame.

*trumpets*

[scraggs]

*seconds nomination*

[RichT]

Thirded.

Also whenever I see his name I mentally keep adding 'and cat flap'...

Doubt many will know what I'm on about

[filthyrich]

My stupidity has finally won me something!!

Thanks for all the help.

Remember, the only stupid questions are the ones that I ask.

[Unity1888]

Only one way to learn...

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by filthyrich

Sorry if this is stupid and the exact reason why mastering people hate when mixing people try to master.

You got that part right....

[Kiwiburger]

- buy any record mastered by the great Bob Ludwig in the last 10 years...

Like McCartney's last album ... ?

[pinwale]

Originally Posted by filthyrich

My stupidity has finally won me something!! Thanks for all the help. Remember, the only stupid questions are the ones that I ask.

Just a quick tip of my hat to you for having a good sense of humor while gits like me take sarcastic shots at you. Nice to see some thicker skin on the forums. Learn well, Mr. Filthy. Cheers!

[scraggs]

yeah i second that cheers as well.

[filthyrich]

Yeah. Quite often, my sense of humor has gone a long way to help clients forget that I'm not very good at engineering.

[TheNoize]

“The Loudness War”: Oh Please… | Moozek

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by rufus13

Even among the folks protesting "too much loudness/clipping", I see the yardsticks come out. The only digital number that matters is the horrid distortion when too many samples get recorded as 0dBU FS because the input blasted past the limiter and past zero dB FS.

"Loudness" is in our ears and in our heads, and varies from hour-to-hour/day-to-day. Machine-levels (VU, Peak meters, peak sample value, overall RMS value of a track ) and their display are to assist us in not overloading amplifiers and recorders. People don't hear like that.

Listen, don't measure. Leave lots of headroom. Make good recordings. Best wishes.

In the old days we did not have all the pretty waveform displays, the peak meters, the waterfall displays of frequency versus time or any of the display tools of the modern DAW and we got along just fine with a VU meter and our ears. Today too many people mix or master to the visual representations instead of using their ears or a simple VU meter. Maybe if they turned all that stuff off and use the best measuring tools around (your ears) music would start to sound better. It is, after all, what our ears were designed to do and that is listen. When you confuse the aural/visual cortex you start to get all kind of weird and wacky things happening.

Maybe in the old days, the ones everyone seems to want to return to, it was that way because both musicians and engineers used their ears more than they do today. Before the advent of guitar tuners musicians had to learn to hear the tunings on their guitars and know how to correct it. Today many musicians couldn't tune a guitar without a tuner and that is very scary. Many recording and mastering engineers have way too much visual stimulation going on when they are recording and or mastering and that may be what is driving the loudness wars.

I had a hip hop client it and he was watching my DORROUGH Meters and noticed that all of the LED lights were not on all of the time. He turns to me and says "Hey I is paying you for making this sound good and LOUD and I wants all the lights on all the time" I tried to explain to him what was going on but in the end I did what he requested and kept all the lights on all the time. Maybe that is the audio mastering mantra for the beginning of this millennium "KEEP ALL THE LIGHTS ON ALL THE TIME"

FWIW

[EstateMatt]

All I know is those deftones records are murdered and I absolutely adore the way they sound. every time I listen to them, I think of this debate. I heard greg calbi talk about those records and his best guess was the mastering guy just covered his eyes and turned all the knobs up.

[soundsundergroun]

Why hasn't there been a standard RMS? Like an RIAA suggested standard?

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by soundsundergroun

Why hasn't there been a standard RMS? Like an RIAA suggested standard?

Because no one would follow it.

I had a client that was upset because I could not get his stuff louder than everyone else's material. I told him that 0 dBFS was a loud as I could go and he says "who do I have to talk to so I can can get more DBs I want to tell them to raise the level so we can have louder CDs" when I tried to explain to him the 0 dBFS level his eyes glazed over and I knew I was losing him.

Everyone today wants everything LOUDER than everything else and they cannot understand why mastering engineer cannot do what they want. So if a few laws of physics and electronics have to be broken to give them what they want why not break them??????