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Loudness war
- Paperweight 7y agohttp://dr.loudness-war.info/ http://dr.loudness-war.info/
- zamadatix 7y agoSorting I noticed there were 2 that got "00 00 00" ratings. One basically sounded like white noise and the other lived up to my hopes and had me laughing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXY-ZQdKJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXY-ZQdKJg Unfortunate the site doesn't have a graph of loudness vs time.
- Paperweight 7y agoThat's actually amazing music, though will blow your speakers at 1% volume ;)
- lb1lf 7y agoSomewhere on the shelf I have the Erich Kunzel/Cincinnati Pops performance of the 1812 overture. They used real cannons, and the recording & mastering engineers did their best to reproduce them faithfully. It is one of very few albums I have with a prominent warning sticker on the album which is there for a good reason, not for bragging rights - it basically says that unless you are quite conservative with the volume knob, your speakers will die once the cannons do their thing.
- Paperweight 7y agoInteresting. The cannons would be so loud that, if they're at 0db, the rest of the orchestra would be waaay down there without substantial dynamic range compression. You'd have to crank the amplifier waaay up to listen to the orchestra at seemingly normal volume...
- lb1lf 7y ago-Obviously there must be some DR compression, however the recording goes to great lengths to ensure Tchaikovsky's intent is preserved - that the cannons drown out the orchestra and is more or less a physical experience. Your comment has prompted me to do something I've been thinking of doing since I got that album - open it in Aucacity and see what the DR actually is - during the 1812 crescendo, it peaks at -0.02dB[FS]; RMS is -24dB.
- nayuki 7y ago"ReplayGain is a proposed standard published by David Robinson in 2001 to measure the perceived loudness of audio in computer audio formats such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. It allows media players to normalize loudness for individual tracks or albums. This avoids the common problem of having to manually adjust volume levels between tracks when playing audio files from albums that have been mastered at different loudness levels." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain
- amarshall 7y agoThis doesn’t solve the problem that “louder” tracks typically have substantially reduced dynamic range Such tracks are often irreversibly worse than those with less compressed range.
- scep12 7y agoOf course not, it's a stick. If widely adopted, it eliminates the incentive for the extra compression in the first place.
- blunte 7y agoWhile I despise the loudness war and the loss of dynamic range, it's worth recognizing that where and how people listen to music has changed drastically in the last 20 years. Moreso than ever in the past, people listen to music in public or otherwise noisy environments. (worse yet) They listen with generally low quality headphones/earbuds. Basically, if the music isn't compressed, they won't hear most of it. Of course, this plus the crappy earbuds and the noisy surroundings means they listen at higher volumes and suffer more hearing damage, which leads to less human sensitivity to sound levels (and more desire for compressed, high volume music). It's very rare for most of us to get to sit in a good room with a good system and listen without interference... but it's really, really nice to do when you can.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoMusic in cars sounds absolutely terrible and the only stuff that sounds any good is generic pop music.
- Wistar 7y agoNot all cars. The optional B&O high-end systems found in higher-end Audi, Mercedes and BMW are quite amazing, especially if fed a FLAC, Apt-X HD or other quality signal. These systems are expensive options, ranging from $3500 to $7000.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoIts not just the speakers, its the loud rumble from the car moving. Maybe some cars have perfect sound insulation but I would say thats not very safe to be driving if you can't hear the outside.
- blunte 7y agoThe quality of the sound system in the car is possibly secondary to the amount/quality of sound deadening in the car. Road noise is a nasty thing unless there is a lot of well engineered sound deadening material and acoustic design. Once that's taken care of, then the audio can be appreciated. When I last owned a car, it was an enormous Lexus. The audio experience was sublime just with the premium factory system. But with the audio off, the cocoon was still so much better than what I've experienced in "regular" cars. Unless you're in a Rolls Royce or Maybach while driving, I seriously doubt you'll tell the difference between FLAC and MP3. There's just too much external interference to compete with the subtleties that a high end audio signal can offer compared to a more typical system.
- h2odragon 7y ago"Rage Against The Machine" exemplifies the victory in this war: they made clipping integral to the music. I wonder if they're still waiting for the world to get the joke.
- mrob 7y agoClipping individual parts doesn't sound the same as clipping in mastering. If you clip a single harmonic tone (in the musical sense, i.e. a fundamental + partials at integer multiples of its frequency) you only get harmonic distortion. All new partials generated are still integer multiple of the fundamental. The timbre changes but it doesn't sound dissonant. When you clip a more complex waveform, you can generate new partials with non-integer multiples of the fundamental frequencies, which sound dissonant. If it's simple enough (e.g. a guitar chord), the dissonance will be small enough that it still sounds musical, but if you clip something complex (e.g. an entire mixed-down track), it will just sound like noise. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodulation Clipping of individual parts is integral to RATM's music, but I don't think clipping of the whole thing at once is. See their entries in the Dynamic Range Database: http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=rage+against+the+machine&album= http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=rage+against+t... I haven't actually heard the SACD release of Evil Empire, but with those numbers I'd be surprised if it was noticeably clipped in mastering. (Note that vinyl mastering can increase the DR measurement without audible changes in sound, see: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Effect_of_vinyl_mastering_on_dynamic_range http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Eff... , so I'm much less confident about the vinyl releases with similar numbers.)
- enneff 7y agoPretty funny to listen to one of the lowest-rated albums in that database in terms of dynamic range, Gray Data by Five Star Hotel: https://open.spotify.com/album/6Q8hkb14PqvyLVEdmWXiD9?si=H5w4inY6SUWgMcQ3SsLOzQ https://open.spotify.com/album/6Q8hkb14PqvyLVEdmWXiD9?si=H5w... Makes RATM sound like easy listening. Which I suppose it is these days anyway.
- braindongle 7y agoIt's an interesting thing. When you participate in this war as a creator of recorded music, as I do, you're sacrificing dynamic range so that your track fits in with everyone else's. For some types of music, it's a trade-off worth making, for others, not so much. Getting close to what the pros do is pretty straightforward if you have experience and a real mastering tool. Those tools are getting smart about analyzing your track and building an eq/compressor/limiter/maximizer stack that rocks, but the gods of top-40, for example, can make real magic happen when it comes to loud-but-not-distorted.
- p1necone 7y agoIt's not a trade-off worth making at all from my perspective. I have a volume knob, pretty much all audio software has an option for volume normalization, radio DJs can apply something similar if they wish.
- IAmGraydon 7y agoI say this with all due respect, but your copy of Ozone is getting you nowhere near what the pros do. Not even the same planet.
- braindongle 7y agoWell, perceived loudness is a tough nut to crack for sure, but that's what's in question, and my evidence is here: https://soundcloud.com/willhaslett https://soundcloud.com/willhaslett Enjoy! Same "league", "planet", whatever. My work is plenty loud when I want it to be :)
- sramsay 7y agoAll he said is that the "tools are getting smart[er]," and he's right. I still can't bring myself to hit "Mastering Assistant" (still less, "Mix Assistant" in Neutron) and call it a day. But honestly, it's pretty spooky how good these tools are getting. I'm particularly impressed by the way it figures out where to set dynamic EQ points on problematic frequencies. I haven't played with Gullfoss yet, but the pros I talk to say it's even spookier. Of course, what you may mean is that there's no substitute for a $50,000 Neve console, a treated, isolated room, monitors that cost considerably more than your car, and an engineer with twenty years of experience. Sure. But honestly, it is reasonable to wonder whether this is a bit like when we used to say, "Well, a computer will never beat a human at chess." It's also not true that no professional mastering engineers use Ozone. Most big shops at least have it lying around (if only for that limiter, which many pros emphatically do use). It's also sometimes the right tool for the job. And there are a few serious pros for whom it's their main tool. Not many, granted. But interface aside, it's not clear that when it comes to "clean" processing, that FabFilter's stuff (which is very widely used) is any better.
- cthalupa 7y agoThe Loudness War is, thankfully, starting to taper off - largely because of YouTube ( https://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/ https://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/ ) and Spotify ( https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#what-is-loudness-normalization-and-why-is-it-used https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#what-... ) Since YT and Spotify are some of the predominant ways people listen to music these days, and they normalize loudness, music producers are starting to go back to more normal masters, thankfully.
- Nition 7y agoThe volume normalisation on Spotify is optional. I can't remember if it's on or not by default.
- ShroudedNight 7y agoFrom what I recall, it's on and set to 'medium' by default. It's become somewhat of a habit to set it to 'quiet' any time Spotify shows me a release announcement (which tells me the settings got reset to default)
- K0SM0S 7y agoI've always been curious about Spotify's approach on this, because truth be told the service on good quality speakers does sound rather good. I'm very pleased by everything I just read in this link — they really think of the user first, and favor music quality and the general experience. It's exactly how I did/do it myself, manually. Awesome, really awesome to learn that the loudness war is finally coming to a close.
- strictfp 7y agoI don't know how normalization is done, but I do know that Spotify are very professional when it comes to audio quality. They do double-blind testing with setups by audio engineers to evaluate end-to-end quality when evaluating changes.
- chiph 7y agoDaft Punk's Random Access Memories is mentioned in the article, and it really does have good dynamic range .. for the 2010's But compared to an album like Spies 1988 Music of Espionage which has a dynamic range that used the most of the CD format (especially track 3 - "Interlude" -- listen for the drum hits at 0:39 after the organ chords), it just isn't (technically) comparable. I have stopped buying older CDs off Amazon, switching to Discogs so that I can be sure to get an original pressing - made before it had been "remastered".
- dintech 7y agoI wonder if more dynamic music is actually worse for developing tinnitus and so on when listening on headphones. As the perceived loudness is lower for dynamic music, people turn it up to compensate. This means that the peaks in real terms are actually louder than the equivalent super-compressed stuff while achieving the same listening level.
- chiph 7y agoI dunno - I'd want to consult an audiologist or ENT doctor (otolaryngologist) before answering. But my uneducated opinion is that dynamic music gives the ear time to recover from the loud sections (given normal listening levels), while the compressed-to-all-hell music does not, since it's a constant high level sound. My tinnitus came from being around jets & equipment in the military, concerts (Rush's Presto tour in 1990 was super loud), and competitive shooting. I double-up on my hearing protection these days.
- brownbat 7y agoThe 20,000 Hz podcast provided a full history of this, discussing various samples along the way: https://www.20k.org/episodes/loudnesswars https://www.20k.org/episodes/loudnesswars It's pretty standard for that podcast, which features lots of stories about sound and sound engineering. There's another interesting article on creating the most silent possible room, and how eerie it feels to be in it. https://www.20k.org/episodes/silence https://www.20k.org/episodes/silence Another on how restaurants got louder and louder over time, that deep bass sound that's taken over film, another on scientific experiments trying to measure if the Stradivarius is as great a violin as everyone insists, another on the tangled history of the iconic Price is Right theme song... so many really. Great podcast, lots of range given the topic.
- zigzaggy 7y agoCame here to post this. One of my favorite podcasts! Highly recommended
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThis sounds interesting and I will listen to it, but for a podcast about sound engineering, I really resent that their website doesn't provide an option to download the bare mp3/m4a. I had to use Inspector. No subscribe via RSS option either, only Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. This is becoming depressingly common.
- guu 7y agoIt does, but it's buried in the player. Download: In the player click "share" and then click the "down arrow" icon. RSS feed: In the player click "subscribe" and then click the RSS icon (it's the first one)
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThank you. Wow. Why the heck would you put the download link in the Share menu?!?
- jperras 7y agoMy spouse's father is a well known (Grammy nominated) mastering engineer. He hated the loudness wars. It was, often times, bands and labels insisting that the albums be "louder" than whatever other comparable album they were trying to emulate, and thus it just escalated with no real sense until it just got ridiculous.
- mc3 7y agoWatching without headphones feels impossible nowadays. The talking volume is low, but the music is top whack. So you need to keep turning the volume down each time there is music otherwise it is embarrassingly/annoyingly loud.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoI think you're talking about TV/Movies, but the article is talking about music. Most home audio receivers have user-configurable dynamic range compression, which compensates for the "quiet voice, loud music" problem. You can often also boost only the center channel, which helps.
- jakobmi 7y agoWHY does this happen? Does loud music sell better than silent music? Nobody here, not even Wikipedia, mentions the reason WHY it happens.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rcar 7y agoFrom the History section of the Wikipedia page: Jukeboxes became popular in the 1940s and were often set to a predetermined level by the owner, so any record that was mastered louder than the others would stand out. Similarly, starting in the 1950s, producers would request louder 7-inch singles so that songs would stand out when auditioned by program directors for radio stations.[1] In particular, many Motown records pushed the limits of how loud records could be made; according to one of their engineers, they were "notorious for cutting some of the hottest 45s in the industry."[3] In the 1960s and 1970s, compilation albums of hits by multiple different artists became popular, and if artists and producers found their song was quieter than others on the compilation, they would insist that their song be remastered to be competitive.
- Moru 7y agoAnd if we go further back we find that there was a sort of brightness war in orchestra tuning going on a long time ago. Think they standardised on 440 Hz by now?
- Tsiklon 7y agoI remember watching a video by a music theorist on YouTube (12Tone) where he mentioned that laws were made to define what Concert A would be - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzznBt8tVnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzznBt8tVnI
- bookAlot 7y agoTurned out to be a gamma distraction forum. Epstein was one of the bigger proponents of that regime. You may notice that the arguments surround CDs byt never surround the possible failure of them. That led to induced bankruptcy.
- archi42 7y agoReminds me of "DJ Double R The Loudness King" aka Rick Rubin, probably one of the most famous producers these days/the last 20-30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin
- dunk010 7y agoI always loved this piece on this topic: http://ozzgod.com/dynamicrange/death.html http://ozzgod.com/dynamicrange/death.html, which has been moving around the internet (my old link was dead, and even it was a copy of the original) for as long as I can remember.
- neiman 7y agoWhere I was born it used to be dead silence at night till about a decade ago. Then the buses started announcing station names outloud. As the announcement is loud and the bus windows are open, I get woken up from it almost every night. Next street lights started to beep for blind people. While this is a great idea, in practice the level of sound they set makes sense for the day (when the street at busy), but for the night it is way too strong, going into people houses. I got used to sleep with a constant weak beeping sound. Then the e-scooters came, and created three sources of new noise during the night. One when someone touches them ("stealing alert!"), one when someone is looking for them ("location beep") and the last when the van of the company comes to pick them up around 3-4 am. sigh, I'm moving to a cabin in the desert.
- stinos 7y agoI totally get what you're saying, but there's some contradiction which I don't understand: you say a decade ago it was 'dead silence' but also that it ended when 'busses started announcing' which seems to imply the busses were there already before. So with 'dead silence' do you mean 'all the usual traffic noise' or ... ?
- mcny 7y agoI think I tend to forgive noise that isn’t abrupt, gradually increases /decreases in loudness, and isn’t high pitched, and never gets too loud.
- tobr 7y agoThat’s not strange at all. Most of the new noises you listed were specifically designed to catch your attention, while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.
- switch007 7y ago> while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible. The interior, perhaps. I live on a street which has a relatively low limit (30 mph) but cars accelerate as if they were about to join a freeway...they are not quiet at all.
- antfarm 7y agoA very detailed article about dynamic range and the Loudness War: https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loud...
- Timberwolf 7y agoThis is a consistent bugbear of mine, and I think a big factor in the resurgence of vinyl. I find it frustrating I can take a recording from a format with limited dynamic range and stereo separation, which is incredibly vulnerable to environmental contamination and vibration, where the playback device adds its own bundle of mechanical noise and unusual non-linear responses... and yet if I have a good pressing it will sound better than a "digital remaster" CD which has none of these inherent issues, because the digital copy has been compressed and limited to the point where it's fatiguing to listen to. That said, I've bought a few modern albums which have been really nicely mastered; they've got that rich, deep '70s LP sound but available on a FLAC download without all the surface noise and rumble. Also that section on the '60s loudness war underplays quite how LOUD some of those old mono 45s are... I typically set things up so my peaks are at -12dB when recording, and I have the odd mid-1960s single which will be pegged right up against the red if I don't adjust the levels. No wonder there were some pressings that were notorious for throwing the stylus out of the groove when people started chasing ultra-low tracking weights in the early '70s.
- davedx 7y agoDepends how recently the vinyl was pressed :P Dnb vinyl was very popular for a long time (still has its fans), and it was very much part of the loudness war. There are a couple of producers who were part of my record collection that I sometimes actually would not play because I couldn't be bothered dealing with the ridiculous over-mastered loudness in the track compared to what I was trying to mix them into.
- flippyhead 7y agoAt burning man and etc the last few years it's really seemed like some of the music makers are just trying to see what the speakers can do.
- boyadjian 7y agoOn Netflix, I found a trick to have the full dynamic range of sound: You have to keep the volume to a minimum in the netflix player, and to compensate, have the volume at maximum in your computer. I am very sensitive to the respect of the dynamic range, this is very important in order to have pleasure listening. It is the same problem with photos and video games : In an "HDR" treated image, the sky is much to dark, leading to a non realistic image.
- thirdsun 7y agoWait, are you saying that Netflix alters the dynamic range of its source content? That would be awful unless used as a clearly labeled option. I always felt that Netflix' audio quality was rather poor and lacked punch as well as dynamic range in a proper home cinema setup, but assumed it was due to their codec or streaming technology choice. However now that you mention it, it might as well be deliberate to optimize for subpar watching environments (laptop speakers, soundbars, etc.) - indeed it sounds as if their content was mastered for TV rather than cinema.
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoThe loudness war (or loudness race) refers to the trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music, which reduces audio fidelity, and according to many critics, listener enjoyment.
- davedx 7y agoNoisia (dnb producers) are notorious for this... I had a couple of Noisia records that sounded ridiculously louder than all my other music. I guess it's part of the "authentic" vinyl mixing experience to have to manually adjust a turntable trim mid-mix to avoid it sounding ridiculous.
- markus92 7y agoYou can say a lot about Noisia, but their mixes always sound perfectly clean (if you can even say that about neurofunk). Not like Metallica's Death Magnetic album for example, for which the compression artifacts really hamper the listening experience.
- davedx 7y agoTrue. Also their electro was also very colourful and vibrant sounding stuff. It's just annoying when you're in the middle of a mix, you don't check how the total mix sounds in your headphones, bring in the Noisia track and the other track is almost drowned out :D Of course a good DJ knows his music and will be ready to make adjustments, but it would be cool if the loudness war wasn't a thing
- jcims 7y agoI think there's another type of 'loudness war' going on with how we communicate. One of my peeves in particular the catastrophication of minor insults as 'hate', as I feel it's diluting our concern over the actual atrocities that happen on the other end of the spectrum.
- sramsay 7y agoIan Shepherd -- mentioned in the article as the founder of "Dynamic Range Day" -- is one of the great warriors in this battle. He's an extremely knowledgeable mastering engineer (among the darker arts in audio), and has really done a lot to help turn the tide on massively over-compressed audio. But I came here, actually, to put in a plug for a plug(in). He worked with some folks to create a VST called "Loundness Penalty." You throw that on your master channel, and it will tell you what the various streaming services will do to your audio (for example, by how many dB Spotify, Apple Music, You Tube, and so forth will turn your audio up or down based on the integrated LUFS reading). Even more impressive is a plugin he worked on called "Perception" that can avoid the inevitable psychoacoustic bias (to which we are all naturally subject) of thinking that because this track with this effect chain is louder than without it (or with another effect chain) it must be "better." These are commercial products, available from an outfit called MeterPlugs (https://www.meterplugs.com/ https://www.meterplugs.com/). I should say that I've never met Ian, and have no connection to this company. I do work with audio in a professional context, however. I should also say that I really think the tide is finally turning on all of this. I don't know that the "loudness wars" are absolutely in the rear-view mirror, but I think there's a lot more awareness of the issue. And I also think that fly-by-night mastering engineers who proceed to crush the hell out of your tracks with limiters and whatnot don't get as many repeat customers as they once did. And there's better metering in general for getting a track to have proper dynamics without having the listener feel the constant need to turn the volume up and down.
- winternett 7y agoI run a recording label that publishes Drum&Bass music (RuffAndTuffRecordings.Com), (Drum & Bass music currently is known as one of the loudest engineered music genres put out on the block right now). I went the other way in terms of our releases... Our music is only as loud as it needs to be. If a listener wants it louder, they can simply turn up the volume. Going to nights where these super-compressed tracks are often played at unimaginable volume levels, You must wear ear plugs, otherwise you're guaranteed to go deaf. When music is compressed, dynamic range is lost, and the actual elements in each track like bass and ambient sounds are limited in how they can create a mood in a track. These loud tracks are impressive in terms of grabbing attention, but over time they create fatigue for listeners, and people tend to not want to listen to additional music after a few loud tracks. There is a high price to pay for continuing down the path of loudness with music. The main driver for ending the race in music should be doing whats right, music should have dynamic range as the main focal points of audio engineering. Until that gets sorted out, bring your ear plugs.
- jopsen 7y agoReminds me of compiling ACCGain to normalize tracks from Apple store in Amarok: https://jonasfj.dk/2007/08/volume-normalization-with-amarok/ https://jonasfj.dk/2007/08/volume-normalization-with-amarok/ These days I just use Spotify :)
- gwbas1c 7y agoOne thing the article doesn't mention is mastering for listening environment context: Classical music that takes full advantage of dynamic range is very easy to listen to in a quiet room; but difficult to listen to in a car or airplane. This is because the quiet (delicate) parts get drowned out by road / air noise. Anyway, this is one of the concepts that is forgotten when people discuss music in 5.1: Part of the point is that a 5.1 mix can be a "living room" mix, where the engineer can make an uncompromised mix, and leave the compromises for listening in a car, or with crappy headphones, in the stereo mix.