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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 Spoti

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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
      Yes it was a race to the bottom that nobody was winning. A lot of plugin developers were marketing Limiters around how transparent they sounded. It was a weird time.
Capricorn2481 5mo 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 5mo ago
> Most people listen to music in their car. Most people don't have cars
- maldusiecle 5mo ago
  In the US, they do.
  - otabdeveloper4 5mo ago
    Most people aren't in the US.
  - netdevphoenix 5mo ago
    That isn't relevant
    - maldusiecle 5mo ago
      50% of global streaming revenue, you bet it its

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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
    Yes it was a race to the bottom that nobody was winning. A lot of plugin developers were marketing Limiters around how transparent they sounded. It was a weird time.

Capricorn2481 5mo 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 5mo ago

> Most people listen to music in their car. Most people don't have cars

maldusiecle 5mo ago
In the US, they do.
- otabdeveloper4 5mo ago
  Most people aren't in the US.
- netdevphoenix 5mo ago
  That isn't relevant
  - maldusiecle 5mo ago
    50% of global streaming revenue, you bet it its