The End of Loudness Wars?

[The Listener]

I tried to check what are the respected opinions about this latest initiative that sounds really ambitious, but found no mention of it around here.

So, are you familiar with this: Our Aim | DYNAMIC RANGE | pleasurize music! ?

I hope they will succeed. This could be a possible and reasonable solution to the end of loudness wars and the insane results of degrading audio in the last years.

I can't stand the drum-machine like drums on the last Metallica album, neither the overall distorted sound of it... Are they joking? This has gone too far.

I support this initiative. Hope everyone else will, too!

Sign in: Welcome | DYNAMIC RANGE | pleasurize music! and make it happen!

[Lagerfeldt]

I welcome the initiative too but they really should make a decent website first.

[MASSIVE Master]

I think a nice multi-band pleasurizer plugin could be pretty cool...

[bob katz]

I'm all for initiatives like this. I'm a "member".

Increasing the public (including artists) awareness can help but initiatives like this won't end the loudness wars by themselves. What WILL end the loudness wars will be:

a combination of

-----increasing public awareness (artists, producers, radio, A&R, listeners)

-----the use of servers with intelligent loudness algorithms in the consumer's home, replacing the CD player. This includes those stupid distorted Blu-Ray concerts that are 10 dB too loud already. This would replace dialnorm. No, dialnorm is not helping.

Then, when producers begin to realize that they have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over the listener's volume, they may begin to pull back and replace quantity with quality.

[The Listener]

Well, everything must start somehow... even establishing new standards.

And if the film industry could do it, why could not the music industry?

I see George Massenburg signed in and also Bob Olhsson... so...

Some encouragement could help, if we don't do anything, who will?

[The Listener]

Originally Posted by bob katz

I'm all for initiatives like this. I'm a "member".

Increasing the public (including artists) awareness can help but initiatives like this won't end the loudness wars by themselves. What WILL end the loudness wars will be:

a combination of

-----increasing public awareness (artists, producers, radio, A&R, listeners)

-----the use of servers with intelligent loudness algorithms in the consumer's home, replacing the CD player. This includes those stupid distorted Blu-Ray concerts that are 10 dB too loud already. This would replace dialnorm. No, dialnorm is not helping.

Then, when producers begin to realize that they have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over the listener's volume, they may begin to pull back and replace quantity with quality.

Great and thank you for all the audio wisdom.

[Doughboy]

Please succeed!!

[Table Of Tone]

There will always be an idiot at the back of the room going "Can you get it even louder?"
You need to say "Look, you f*****g idiot!"
Who's name is gonna end up on the cover?
1. The artist.
2. The producer.
3. The engineer/mix engineer.
4. The mastering engineer.
Not the idiot!

I really don't think the problem will completely go away.
It's nothing new!
Just look at the arrival of the 12" single back in the late 70's!
The difference is that you could cut that with serious headroom.
The shorter the song, the louder you could get it until "BANG"!
You've just shafted the cutting head!

Doh!

[bcgood]

Gr8 idea and as usual, interesting comments from Bob.

[Thysta]

All of the big artists at major labels have to put out dynamic songs in order to make this change happen.


plus, a lot of mp3 players are CALIBRATED to overcompressed stuff. On a bus, or in the street, you have NO VOLUME without loud masters in a lot of them.

[thermos]

Originally Posted by T Prod.

All of the big artists at major labels have to put out dynamic songs in order to make this change happen.


plus, a lot of mp3 players are CALIBRATED to overcompressed stuff. On a bus, or in the street, you have NO VOLUME without loud masters in a lot of them.

No, not true. Thats why ipods have the "sound check" feature which averages out the level of the tracks you are listening to. You can turn it off thank god, but this alone should end the "my song is quieter than others on my ipod" argument.

[JSummer]

the loudness wars will never end, in fact, music will get much louder in the future, it's a one way road...

[Russell Dawkins]

I think the advantages of less compression and lower average level need to be sold to the client, whether the "client" is the producer, the musician or the label.

The logical salesperson is the mixing or mastering engineer.

One pitch I use is that you can actually turn a less compressed recording up louder on playback than a more compressed version and still enjoy listening to it.

Maybe we can make progress in this thread by discussing ways to sell less compression / more dynamics to clients, and how to demonstrate the advantages.

[Ciozzi]

Originally Posted by Table Of Tone

There will always be an idiot at the back of the room going "Can you get it even louder?"
You need to say "Look, you f*****g idiot!"
Who's name is gonna end up on the cover?
1. The artist.
2. The producer.
3. The engineer/mix engineer.
4. The mastering engineer.
Not the idiot!

I really don't think the problem will completely go away.
It's nothing new!
Just look at the arrival of the 12" single back in the late 70's!
The difference is that you could cut that with serious headroom.
The shorter the song, the louder you could get it until "BANG"!
You've just shafted the cutting head!

Doh!

The Idiot is your client, I would respect them.

[Ciozzi]

Originally Posted by T Prod.

plus, a lot of mp3 players are CALIBRATED to overcompressed stuff. On a bus, or in the street, you have NO VOLUME without loud masters in a lot of them.

This is true, I'm used to listening to music on my iPod every day when I walk to work and old records (the ones with dynamic range) are not loud enough... cars passing by are much louder.

[azo]

Loudness war is for people who don't know how to use volume knob that's somewhere in the front panel of their stereo...

[azo]

Originally Posted by Ciozzi

cars passing by are much louder.

Yeah I find that really annoying when crossing the road, fire department passes with sirens on and I CAN'T HEAR MUSIC ON MY IPOD! =)

[sanddigger1]

One of the firsts records I mastered was pretty squashed (at this time, I thought that my job was to make things LOUD). Once, I had to listen to it in a car (with open windows), at this moment, it seemed not to be squashed enough. The few dynamics left were too much for this environment...
It was disturbing...
I decided then not to care about those noisy environments. Except for special cases, I do my job with home stereos in mind, not car stereos or ipods...

[Amun Ra]

Great initiative!

I'm signing up

[ddp]

Originally Posted by JSummer

the loudness wars will never end, in fact, music will get much louder in the future, it's a one way road...

Perhaps not. But nothing will change as long as the mp3 is the standard for consumer audio. This will change though, bandwidth will increase, new formats will come out.

[wado1942]

I can't stand the drum-machine like drums on the last Metallica album, neither the overall distorted sound of it... Are they joking? This has gone too far.

We need to end editing for the sake of editing to fix that drum sound. Lars is a good drummer, he doesn't need his performances to be constructed for him on a computer. And sample replacement. I've said it in the past but I'll say it again. I don't care what people's excuse is for using sample replacement (to create drum sounds that can't exist in the real world), sample replacement is just a bandaid for bad engineering. If I were in a band and they replaced me with samples created by somebody else in another studio with a different engineer, I'd be pissed. In fact, I was recently hired to replace a "SAMPLE ENHANCED" drum part with real drums!
In regards to loud distorted masters, people have been complaining for years about it. Metallica isn't responsible for the tables turning. As soon as a manufacturer stops listening to its customer base, they lose sales. They're probably starting to realize that people complaining about loud distorted messes for albums are a bad thing.

Thats why ipods have the "sound check" feature which averages out the level of the tracks you are listening to. You can turn it off thank god, but this alone should end the "my song is quieter than others on my ipod" argument.

All though it's my experience that turning on ANY kind of internal processor in an iPod just adds to the distortion. I sold mine ages ago and got a Sansa. It supports a much wider variety of formats including PCM WAV and as a side plus, the built-in processing won't kill the sound if I ever decided to use it.

Maybe we can make progress in this thread by discussing ways to sell less compression / more dynamics to clients, and how to demonstrate the advantages.

When my client asks to make a master really loud (when I already think it's reached its limit), I boost up the limiter and turn down the monitor gain by equal amount so they can tell what it would sound like to the end user. They usually agree with the level I determined to be the loudest tolerable. If they still want it louder, I charge double and ask them not to hire me again.

Loudness war is for people who don't know how to use volume knob that's somewhere in the front panel of their stereo.

Do you mean program directors or A&R mooks?

Once, I had to listen to it in a car (with open windows), at this moment, it seemed not to be squashed enough.

One of my first masters was over the top distorted and squashed to my ears. Today it's extremely conservative. Never-the-less, we can't master for the lowest common demoninator. It needs to sound good on all systems, not the cheapest in the noisiest environments.

But nothing will change as long as the mp3 is the standard for consumer audio.

Nothing will change as long as record companies hire people that don't belong in the music industry. The medium is almost inconsequential. I thought SACD and DVD-A would be at least somewhat immune. I was REALLY wrong. I got an album on DVD-A and it was so heavily compressed, the loudness actually dropped when the music really got going. This was a remastered release of an album that was one of the most open and dynamic albums I've ever heard. I thought there may have been something wrong with how it was authored so I got another copy on SACD and it was even louder!


Anyways, there's been organizations all over the world trying to kill the loudness war (I don't like the term loudness race because that suggests there's an end and there can be a winner) and none of them have amounted to a hill of beans. I signed up for an organization similar to this one that was supposedly meant to get mastering engineers to agree on a certain loudness limit for certain kinds of music. They would only list names of studios that would err on the side of caution. That was two years ago and I never heard anything about it since. The levels have gotten an average of 2dB HIGHER since then. It ultimately will come down to people who are willing to buy music (of which there are fewer and fewer). If hot distorted records sell, the average loudness will continue getting higher and higher. Since those are pretty much the only kind of records available, they're the only kind that can sell.

[Table Of Tone]

The idiot is not the client!
The idiot is normally a record company guy with a drug induced breathing difficulty who actually thinks you can make this record, the loudest record on the planet!

The idiot is responsible for the loudness wars!

The kids get used to the sound of -5 Db RMS and the distortion that can go with it and the damage has already been done!

The answer is for mastering engineers to sneak levels down.
Not too much, just a little!

Brian Gardner's levels are pretty spot on these days, in my opinion!
Just listen to the latest Foo Fighters offering, among others!
That record does have great dynamics but still hits the spot for the kids in the loud sections.

Greg Calbi is also great at keeping just the right balance.

This is what great mastering is all about!

[Bob Olhsson]

I've seen an awful lot of artists' managers push for more volume and know folks at the labels who are not happy at all with where this has gone. The bottom-line remains that it is the artist's choice under most contemporary recording contracts. The label has to choose between eating their investment and rejecting the final product outright or going along with whatever the artist wants their CD to sound like.

There is also a very real downside to not being as loud as the competition when it comes to influencing airplay decisions. It's important for folks to do their homework about what's being pitched to radio and make sure they are loud enough as opposed to being as loud as possible. If it isn't being pitched to radio, there's little point in loudness for loudness' sake. Likewise any artist who is important enough to be assured air play doesn't need to play the loudness game.

[wado1942]

Interesting. It was my impression that once the actual recording is done, the artist has very little say in what happens. I've read some interviews with bands about the loudness wars and how they hate it but don't have control over even their own records often. The material doesn't belong to the artists. They pay for all the costs out of pocket (through recoupable royalties) and do most of the work but the record company OWNs the material and the band. So a lot of the time, the A&R guys, producers & managers are the ones pushing for super-loud.

But I agree with Bob O. Program directors are stereotypically pretty lazy and stupid about music. They'll only listen to 20 seconds of a song before they make their decision and if they have to take the time to reach for the volume control, it's already too late. I know of a program director that didn't even turn on his monitors to make the decision, he just watched the meters on the console for a few seconds and based his decision on THAT! The solution is to gradually bring down the levels over time.

That organization that gives out the free loudness meter with the average peak to RMS analysis has a good idea but it won't work either. For starters, you have to AGREE with their program first. The people that would agree to it are not the guys who are perpetuating the problem. But more than that, their meter doesn't measure actual dynamic range, just crest factor. But some music (like a lot of new age music & chamber orchestras) naturally has a low crest factor so that would rate poorly on their system while in fact it may have NO compression.

[TranscendingM]

My opinion is it could end once people understand why they want to make things loud; the more psychological "why" which is never really addressed. Once it's understood and put into a trend, the "fool" element takes over, and nobody likes to feel foolish.

[Lemonsqueezer]

Originally Posted by Ciozzi

This is true, I'm used to listening to music on my iPod every day when I walk to work and old records (the ones with dynamic range) are not loud enough... cars passing by are much louder.

With earbuds? I couldn't do that to my ears.

[wado1942]

I'm used to listening to music on my iPod every day when I walk to work and old records (the ones with dynamic range) are not loud enough... cars passing by are much louder.

Everything I load onto my Sansa or keep in my car is around 10dBfs +- 1.5dB. That keeps a level playing field so everything is the right volume. I KNOW when my car stereo is at "24", it's about 83dB which is plenty to overcome most driving noise and that's the loudest I turn it.

[Storyville]

Overcompression has become the standard marker for "industry" sound. Not to you and me, but to the average listener. I had a client (I posted about this cause I'm all sorts of backwards about it) come in with a bunch of tracks. We compared two of them. The one he thought sounded "best" and the one he thought sounded "worst." The one he thought sounded worst certainly had some issues, but nothing intolerable. The one he thought was best was so distorted the different elements were barely discernable (-6db rms, no limiting, crowded mix). What he thought was good, was loud. loud=good, quiet=bad.

On top of that, I take the subway pretty frequently. I can't hear my favorite mixes because my mp3 player won't get loud enough to combat the sound of the subway. That sucks.

[Lemonsqueezer]

Originally Posted by Storyville

On top of that, I take the subway pretty frequently. I can't hear my favorite mixes because my mp3 player won't get loud enough to combat the sound of the subway. That sucks.

I use the tube as we call it over here. Never a problem though as I use closed back headphones.

[wado1942]

On top of that, I take the subway pretty frequently. I can't hear my favorite mixes because my mp3 player won't get loud enough to combat the sound of the subway. That sucks.

Good grief, I'd be surprised if I turned up my MP3 player much more than half way. Though I admit when I'm doing something noisy (like mowing the lawn), I switch from regular earbuds to my in-ear stage monitors which are well sealed. It protects my ears AND makes it easier to hear the music.