4 ms·

I don't understand why they still release super compressed and loud masterings when most of the modern headphones are so good you don't really need to master fo

• esikich 4mo ago
  It's much less of a problem than it used to be because streaming platforms normalize the tracks anyway so it's been fading away for a while now.
  • breezybottom 4mo ago
    I don't know where you're getting this. For rock/pop music, it's as bad as it's ever been.
    • pier25 4mo ago
      Yep many current pop songs are commonly mastered at around -8 LUFS even peaking at -5 LUFS which is quite loud.
  • globular-toast 4mo ago
    All things being equal, the compressed tracks will still sound louder even after normalisation, unfortunately. I haven't seen any sign of dynamics returning to pop music since Spotify/YouTube.
• entropicdrifter 4mo ago
  Most people listen to music in their car. More compressed audio means less fiddling with the volume knob as you drive, regardless of normalization done by Spotify et al. Anyhow that's my theory
  • hex4def6 4mo ago
    Yep. Most people aren't in a quiet environment when they listen to music these days. Compression helps significantly with this. What would be neat would be to have a compression metadata 'guide' that would allow a compressor on-device to perform the compression, rather than baked into the audio track. This would allow the user to tune 'severity' of compression. In a car / fancy headphones, you could sample the ambient noise level and adjust accordingly.
    • Melatonic 4mo ago
      Or just have the default to be some level of acceptable compression turned on and then an advanced mode to turn it off (or tune it)
    • Capricorn2481 4mo ago
      You are very off here. People have been playing music in their cars and in clubs for decades, and a lot of them play tracks that predate the loudness wars. If anything, people are more isolated than ever and have much better headphones and speakers than even 10 years ago. You're conflating regular compression with the insanely over the top mastering people started doing. This goes way beyond keeping people off the volume knob. You do not need that much compression to keep your volume in a listenable range, and you certainly don't have to slam the entire master bus through a limiter. The loudness wars really was just about having a louder track than everyone else. So much so that the whole process of mastering became how to make it sound as loud as possible without sounding compressed. If it were just about keeping volume consistent, they would not do it through the master bus. There are so many interviews with mastering engineers who are frustrated with the pointless chase for volume. Arguably, listeners have heard it so long that they've gotten used to the exaggerated compression, and they just like it now stylistically. Some of my favorite records are very loud.
      • ConceptJunkie 4mo ago
        > how to make it sound as loud as possible without sounding compressed. .. which is ironic, because the end result usually sounded terrible. You know, overly compressed.
  • Capricorn2481 4mo ago
    Compression can definitely help with that, but so can automating the volume knob. If it were just about keeping volume consistent, they would compress different tracks differently (which they do). They overly compress the master channel specifically to make it very loud, and there's dozens of interviews with engineers that are frustrated with it.
  • netdevphoenix 4mo ago
    > Most people listen to music in their car. Most people don't have cars
    • maldusiecle 4mo ago
      In the US, they do.
      • otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
        Most people aren't in the US.
      • netdevphoenix 4mo ago
        That isn't relevant
        • maldusiecle 4mo ago
          50% of global streaming revenue, you bet it its
• asdff 4mo ago
  Most headphones people actually use are crap. Yes you can buy studio monitors from sony. That isn't what people are listening to. They are using airpods which sound like earpods have always sounded: crap, absent lows, terrible separation. So you compress the hell out of the audio and make it loud so you can actually hear something with those headphones.
  • Demiurge 4mo ago
    What AirPods are you talking about? The wired AirPods that sound pretty bad have been overtaken by wireless Bluetooth AirPods for many years now. The AirPod Pro 2 sound quality is a world of difference from the wired earbud style AirPods. In fact, most of the most popular TWS Bluetooth Earbuds have fantastic sound quality. The main issue with them is that they have a V shaped tuning, with various levels of bad. However, Apple and Samsung tunings are quite decent.
    • asdff 4mo ago
      All of them, compared to over ear monitors. You can't out engineer physics advantages of a larger speaker. Airpods fall short of other in ear monitors too fwiw, so they are a poor choice in class.
      • mrob 4mo ago
        Physics doesn't prevent reproduction of bass in IEMs. Thanks to inverse square scaling of sound pressure with distance, putting the driver within the ear canal greatly reduces the required output level to the point where even tiny drivers can handle it. Lots of IEMs can reproduce loud, deep bass with low distortion. You of course miss the whole-body tactile vibration effect of loud bass played on speakers, but the sound itself is there.
      • Demiurge 4mo ago
        There is no such thing as over the ear monitoring. There good headphones like HD600. It has good mids and great highs, however the base rolls off towards 20hz. Many AirPods, include AirPod Pro 2 have better low end than what people use for monitoring, which is what, by the way? I play electric guitar, and use different types of audio equipment, and I really wouldn’t care if I use BD DT770 for tracking, despite the fact that it has absolute terribly inaccurate response curve. Just because they call it “studio” on the box, doesn’t mean that it’s the pinnacle of audio fidelity. There are many IEMs, including Bluetooth ones that are better for listening to music for music sake, as opposed to trying to hear some exaggerated spikes in 8khz. Given that the highly vague cliche reference of your comments, this conversation is probably concluded, all the best. To all other readers, please enjoy your IEMs and TWS but make sure they have an EQ and try to turn down the boomy base and piercing highs of some manufacturers like Bose and Sony.
• atoav 4mo ago
  As a mixing engineer: 1. Compressed sound can be an integral (wanted) part of different genre aesthetics. I personally love dynamic mixes, but if you let your customers A/B mixes they will often chose the more compressed/louder one. If your song sounds weak after another bands song, that is an issue. 2. For reasons of health/liability there are maximum levels on headphones and mobile playback devices. That means if my mix has a high dynamic range the bulk of it may really just be too low when played back on the majority of headphones. If I mix my own music this is a bargain I can make if I mix other peoples music I would try to be a little more on the cautious side if the musicians didn't demand a highly dynamic mix. 3. Compressed sound works better in noisy environments and as background music. 90% of people who listen to music do not listen to it actively, they just let it run in the background or are passively exposed to it. Try listening to a good dynamic recording of Beethovens fith in your car with the window rolled down. You will hear some strong phrases then inbetween nothing as it is below the ambient noise floor. Vinyl has the benefit, that I as the mixing engineer can assume that the listener will be much more likely actively involved with the music than say in a radio mix.
  • bigbuppo 4mo ago
    And just wait until they find out that compressor/limiters came about for reasons other than shaping the dynamics of music. If you're not slammed against the wall, your AM broadcast signal isn't going far.
    • breezybottom 4mo ago
      Why the snark? Who expects high quality audio from AM radio?
      • GuinansEyebrows 4mo ago
        i didn't read that as snark. they're just saying compressors were/are used to maximize the broadcast range of a source over AM radio. without them, the broadcast range is shorter, which means fewer people hear the ads on the radio show, which means fewer dollars for the radio station producing or broadcasting the show.
• Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
  There's still plenty of crappy headphones, as others have pointed out, but consider also listening from a phone's speaker, a cheap bluetooth speaker, with just one earbud/headphone on, etc. Speaking of, I think the sound quality of modern-day bluetooth speakers is really good.
  • bob1029 4mo ago
    > I think the sound quality of modern-day bluetooth speakers is really good. The sound quality out of the speakers of some Apple products seems borderline impossible to me. The MacBook in particular makes me feel like I missed an important DSP lecture at university.
• puzzlingcaptcha 4mo ago
  People consistently perceive louder music as better quality. That's why volume matching is critical in any audio equipment testing.