4 ms·

I'm an amateur musician. One of the more common pieces of advice you'll see floating around in the community is to make your music "louder", especially if you'r

I'm an amateur musician. One of the more common pieces of advice you'll see floating around in the community is to make your music "louder", especially if you're creating electronic music of any form. Two reasons for this: 1. More and more people are listening to music through equipment that is significantly inferior. Mobile phones, cheap Bluetooth speakers, cheap earphones - they're all subpar in their ability to render sound faithfully. 2. There is a constant "war for loudness". Once you've listened to a David Guetta song that can be ferociously loud, anything not as loud will be perceived as "soft" that "kills the vibe".

dagw 8y ago
More and more people are listening to music through equipment that is significantly inferior. I cannot imagine that this is true. Even listening to Spotify on a cheap phone using the headphones that came with the phone offers far better sound quality than listening to the nth generation tape copies on the cheap tape players or the bad reception of the tinny radios that we used to have.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Yeah but most people had some stack system or separates at home as well as the walkman or tinny radio. Often horrible by hifi standards, almost always better than the tiny bluetooth speaker, or included headphones. When you went out you knew the walkman or car was second best, but enough background noise that it was still OK.
  - benj111 8y ago
    Parents had separates, they wouldn't take kindly to me blasting out whatever in the living room though.
- puranjay 8y ago
  You're forgetting that the vast majority of consumers use cheap Android phones and the earphones packaged with them. This gear usually has very poor mid-range response. Hence, producers crowd tracks in the bottom-end (bass) and treble ranges. Try listening to a track with a cheap $15 earphones and then with a set of studio headphones like ATH-M50x and you'll hear what I mean.
  - doctorpangloss 8y ago
    Ha! If even the packaged earphones. Forget Spotify. People are listening to music on throttled YouTube. Compression wasn't the antagonist of music. Not even the consumer's general cheapness is the antagonist. The website that pirated it all, and then got bought by a parent company larger than the market value of the entire music industry combined, is the antagonist of music.
    - puranjay 8y ago
      It makes my life miserable. I love writing music but mixing is just a boring, unsexy grind. And it's a skill that takes way too much time to develop - you can't "hack it". I've produced tracks that sound incredible to me on my 6" Yamaha monitors. Then I send them over to friends who listen to them on their tinny laptop speakers and wonder what the big deal is.
      - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
        Your 6" Yamahas are not a neutral reference. Studios deliberately use bad speakers (NS10s, Auratones) to check for this. In the business it's called "translation" - a good mix sounds good on everything from earbuds to a car stereo to $$$$$$ hifi. It's almost impossible to make a mix that translates without spending a lot of money on neutral monitors and acoustic treatment. But there are tricks you can use to make a mix translate better. E.g. You can cut the lowest octave or two in the bass, because no one (outside of a club) can hear it anyway, and use bass sounds with plenty of mids, so you can hear the line even when the low bass isn't there.
        puranjay 8y ago
        Yeah, I'm learning this along the way. Mixing is just a completely different skill set than production or composition. I've realized that it's better to let professionals handle it than learning it - it requires too much investment in equipment and far too much time in training to do it by yourself.
        8y ago
dashmatte 8y ago
Music used to be a shared experience with others with MTV as the hub. And music also was the fuel for coolness. Now we all have our personal music and rarely discuss music with others anymore. This has to have a huge impact on the kind of music being made today.
thosakwe 8y ago
Yes. This. Compress and EQ everything, if you're trying to get a lot of listeners. You'll have to sacrifice dynamic range for it, but sometimes you have to make a trade-off. Link up with a producer if you don't know how to do it yourself, if you want a fighting chance.

dagw 8y ago

More and more people are listening to music through equipment that is significantly inferior. I cannot imagine that this is true. Even listening to Spotify on a cheap phone using the headphones that came with the phone offers far better sound quality than listening to the nth generation tape copies on the cheap tape players or the bad reception of the tinny radios that we used to have.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Yeah but most people had some stack system or separates at home as well as the walkman or tinny radio. Often horrible by hifi standards, almost always better than the tiny bluetooth speaker, or included headphones. When you went out you knew the walkman or car was second best, but enough background noise that it was still OK.
- benj111 8y ago
  Parents had separates, they wouldn't take kindly to me blasting out whatever in the living room though.
puranjay 8y ago
You're forgetting that the vast majority of consumers use cheap Android phones and the earphones packaged with them. This gear usually has very poor mid-range response. Hence, producers crowd tracks in the bottom-end (bass) and treble ranges. Try listening to a track with a cheap $15 earphones and then with a set of studio headphones like ATH-M50x and you'll hear what I mean.
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  Ha! If even the packaged earphones. Forget Spotify. People are listening to music on throttled YouTube. Compression wasn't the antagonist of music. Not even the consumer's general cheapness is the antagonist. The website that pirated it all, and then got bought by a parent company larger than the market value of the entire music industry combined, is the antagonist of music.
  - puranjay 8y ago
    It makes my life miserable. I love writing music but mixing is just a boring, unsexy grind. And it's a skill that takes way too much time to develop - you can't "hack it". I've produced tracks that sound incredible to me on my 6" Yamaha monitors. Then I send them over to friends who listen to them on their tinny laptop speakers and wonder what the big deal is.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Your 6" Yamahas are not a neutral reference. Studios deliberately use bad speakers (NS10s, Auratones) to check for this. In the business it's called "translation" - a good mix sounds good on everything from earbuds to a car stereo to $$$$$$ hifi. It's almost impossible to make a mix that translates without spending a lot of money on neutral monitors and acoustic treatment. But there are tricks you can use to make a mix translate better. E.g. You can cut the lowest octave or two in the bass, because no one (outside of a club) can hear it anyway, and use bass sounds with plenty of mids, so you can hear the line even when the low bass isn't there.
      - puranjay 8y ago
        Yeah, I'm learning this along the way. Mixing is just a completely different skill set than production or composition. I've realized that it's better to let professionals handle it than learning it - it requires too much investment in equipment and far too much time in training to do it by yourself.
      - 8y ago

dashmatte 8y ago

Music used to be a shared experience with others with MTV as the hub. And music also was the fuel for coolness. Now we all have our personal music and rarely discuss music with others anymore. This has to have a huge impact on the kind of music being made today.

thosakwe 8y ago

Yes. This. Compress and EQ everything, if you're trying to get a lot of listeners. You'll have to sacrifice dynamic range for it, but sometimes you have to make a trade-off. Link up with a producer if you don't know how to do it yourself, if you want a fighting chance.