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>In recent decades, mastering engineers have been tasked with making studio albums louder via the application of something called dynamic range compression; ess

>In recent decades, mastering engineers have been tasked with making studio albums louder via the application of something called dynamic range compression; essentially, the volume gets turned up on the quiet bits, and turned down on the loud bits. The cumulative effect is a song that sounds bigger and punchier The writer doesn't seem to understand loudness here. This is exactly the opposite effect of DRC (dynamic range compression). Music gets less punchier and sounds smaller, as transients are pushed down in the mix. Listening to music with less DRC is more damaging to your ears (although it sounds better), if you are comparing two tracks with equal loudness. Keeping loudness constant in this comparison is valid because we will adjust the volume knob based on the track's psychoacoustic loudness. Example: https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=10 https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=10 and https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=70 https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=70 have roughly the same loudness. The first has less DRC and is more damaging to your hearing. This misunderstanding breaks down half of the article's argument. The other half---that loud music is cooler than it was decades ago---is probably valid I guess.

S_A_P 9y ago
It also isn’t really compression that’s being used but brick wall limiting. While many compressors can do a form of this, there are still the usual suspects that started the loudness wars-like waves L2 ultramaximizer. For the most part the egregious over limiting has fallen out of fashion but things way more compressed than they used to be. Light soft knee compression can make things sound a bit punchier since they don’t affect the initial attack transient but boost volume of the remander of the sound.
- mortenjorck 9y ago
  Further, most modern streaming services actually apply a normalization to playback by default. Spotify, for example, normalizes all tracks to -11 LUFS (a scale for perceptual loudness): https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mastering-streaming-services https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mastering-streaming-... So something from the peak of the loudness wars (like the Metallica album cited by the author) will actually sound a bit quieter and duller on Spotify than something with -11 LUFS of dynamic range.
- vortico 9y ago
  Yes, I shouldn't be stealing the term dynamic range compression from the article since that's inaccurate. Hard dynamics would be a better term to describe overcompression, brick wall limiting, and maximizing. Slow-attack compression certainly makes things sound punchier, but do they increase transients relative to the loudness of the track? No, I still think they can only decrease them. Hearing is damaged by large absolute volumes of transients, with the small exception that your ears are able to become slightly temporarily desensitized around high levels of loudness. Since higher loudness causes listeners to turn down music, they will also turn down the transients, so loudness makes tracks safer. Possibly the worst thing to do to your hearing music-wise, is to listen to uncompressed kick drums for half and hour. They might even not sound loud at all, but the pain will start kicking in before you know it.
jasode 9y ago
>The writer doesn't seem to understand loudness here. I don't think it's about scientific understanding but rather about using the same descriptive words as everyone else in the audio world. >This is exactly the opposite effect of DRC (dynamic range compression). Music gets less punchier Yes, you're right (scientifically), but "punchier" as a description for less dynamic range already has a long standing and widespread use. E.g. See numerous examples about adding more compression to reduce the dynamic range to get a punchier sound: https://www.google.com/search?q=more+compression+punchier https://www.google.com/search?q=more+compression+punchier

S_A_P 9y ago

It also isn’t really compression that’s being used but brick wall limiting. While many compressors can do a form of this, there are still the usual suspects that started the loudness wars-like waves L2 ultramaximizer. For the most part the egregious over limiting has fallen out of fashion but things way more compressed than they used to be. Light soft knee compression can make things sound a bit punchier since they don’t affect the initial attack transient but boost volume of the remander of the sound.

mortenjorck 9y ago
Further, most modern streaming services actually apply a normalization to playback by default. Spotify, for example, normalizes all tracks to -11 LUFS (a scale for perceptual loudness): https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mastering-streaming-services https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mastering-streaming-... So something from the peak of the loudness wars (like the Metallica album cited by the author) will actually sound a bit quieter and duller on Spotify than something with -11 LUFS of dynamic range.
vortico 9y ago
Yes, I shouldn't be stealing the term dynamic range compression from the article since that's inaccurate. Hard dynamics would be a better term to describe overcompression, brick wall limiting, and maximizing. Slow-attack compression certainly makes things sound punchier, but do they increase transients relative to the loudness of the track? No, I still think they can only decrease them. Hearing is damaged by large absolute volumes of transients, with the small exception that your ears are able to become slightly temporarily desensitized around high levels of loudness. Since higher loudness causes listeners to turn down music, they will also turn down the transients, so loudness makes tracks safer. Possibly the worst thing to do to your hearing music-wise, is to listen to uncompressed kick drums for half and hour. They might even not sound loud at all, but the pain will start kicking in before you know it.

jasode 9y ago

>The writer doesn't seem to understand loudness here. I don't think it's about scientific understanding but rather about using the same descriptive words as everyone else in the audio world. >This is exactly the opposite effect of DRC (dynamic range compression). Music gets less punchier Yes, you're right (scientifically), but "punchier" as a description for less dynamic range already has a long standing and widespread use. E.g. See numerous examples about adding more compression to reduce the dynamic range to get a punchier sound: https://www.google.com/search?q=more+compression+punchier https://www.google.com/search?q=more+compression+punchier