4 ms·

I read about the loudness wars, got super upset about the injustice of lost dynamic range, posted something about it on my dorm room door... 15 years ago. NOTHI

I read about the loudness wars, got super upset about the injustice of lost dynamic range, posted something about it on my dorm room door... 15 years ago. NOTHING has changed. The article notes that Spotify, but originally it was terrestrial radio, that hyper compresses their music -- it makes listening in the car far less annoying. But to see the dynamic range destroyed on the album itself, that is tough. This quote from the article "It is a super-discouraging situation." summarizes it quite well.

skybrian 8y ago
It's a problem when it's baked into the recording. In Spotify or in audio equipment, compression often makes sense. It's user-adjustable, and there are times where compression is useful, such as listening to music in a car, where the quiet moments would get washed out by road noise.
- baddox 8y ago
  And how about movies. I am as much a fan as anyone of having the highest quality home theater experience possible, but some movies (generally the ones with the highest quality audio mixes) are impossible to listen to in my apartment (while being a decent neighbor) without using dynamic range compression.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Good point. What works great in the cinema gives a home play needing subtitles for the quiet parts or it'll take the windows out later.
  - tremon 8y ago
    But as the parent says, these can be applied after-the-fact (in most modern movie players it's called "night mode"). This doesn't mean the original recording has to be shipped with deteriorated sound. In a way, loudness compression is like a hash function: the operation itself is largely mechanical, but destroys information in the process. Shipping with good-quality audio should be the default, and let compression be applied on playback. In fact, most home theatre systems already do sound post-processing in the form of room correction anyway (Audyssey, Dirac), so why not the let player do the compression?
    - baddox 8y ago
      I don’t disagree, although I wish movies would ship with a professional audio mix with lower dynamic range, since that would be a lot better than the often noticeable compression built into receivers and playback devices.
  - meawaythrow 8y ago
    I might be part of the problem but I agree. I find it disconcerting having to turn the volume on my headphones up to 50% or higher just to hear a movie when that amount of amplification on music or standard Youtube content would blow my eardrums out... and occasionally almost does when I forget I had my volume turned up.

skybrian 8y ago

It's a problem when it's baked into the recording. In Spotify or in audio equipment, compression often makes sense. It's user-adjustable, and there are times where compression is useful, such as listening to music in a car, where the quiet moments would get washed out by road noise.

baddox 8y ago
And how about movies. I am as much a fan as anyone of having the highest quality home theater experience possible, but some movies (generally the ones with the highest quality audio mixes) are impossible to listen to in my apartment (while being a decent neighbor) without using dynamic range compression.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Good point. What works great in the cinema gives a home play needing subtitles for the quiet parts or it'll take the windows out later.
- tremon 8y ago
  But as the parent says, these can be applied after-the-fact (in most modern movie players it's called "night mode"). This doesn't mean the original recording has to be shipped with deteriorated sound. In a way, loudness compression is like a hash function: the operation itself is largely mechanical, but destroys information in the process. Shipping with good-quality audio should be the default, and let compression be applied on playback. In fact, most home theatre systems already do sound post-processing in the form of room correction anyway (Audyssey, Dirac), so why not the let player do the compression?
  - baddox 8y ago
    I don’t disagree, although I wish movies would ship with a professional audio mix with lower dynamic range, since that would be a lot better than the often noticeable compression built into receivers and playback devices.
- meawaythrow 8y ago
  I might be part of the problem but I agree. I find it disconcerting having to turn the volume on my headphones up to 50% or higher just to hear a movie when that amount of amplification on music or standard Youtube content would blow my eardrums out... and occasionally almost does when I forget I had my volume turned up.