The Loudness War ...

PaulBrewer

I joined this lot -

http://dynamicrange.de/

Anyone tried it yet ?

http://dynamicrange.de/en/our-aim

jtsuited

oh the loudness war. so two years ago.

BumbleB

I think the song which totally ott concerning this is "pokerface " the drums have no dynamics at all.

kfoltman

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I joined this lot -

http://dynamicrange.de/

Anyone tried it yet ?

Another useless petition, I guess.

Anyway, I think the purpose of the loudness wars is to sell the "remastered" versions of the same albums in 10 years for double (or quadruple) the price.

And by "remastered" versions I mean "the mix as it left the studio prior to being ruined by aggressive mastering".

SACD/DVD-Audio have failed, so record companies must have some other way of doing their usual "planned obsolescence" thing.

PaulBrewer

kfoltman wrote: »

Another useless petition, I guess.

Anyway, I think the purpose of the loudness wars is to sell the "remastered" versions of the same albums in 10 years for double (or quadruple) the price.

And by "remastered" versions I mean "the mix as it left the studio prior to being ruined by aggressive mastering".

SACD/DVD-Audio have failed, so record companies must have some other way of doing their usual "planned obsolescence" thing.

True !
The Beatles re-issues are a case in point, much more dynamic and 'relaxing' than before.
However if you look at the site they have an interesting dynamic range meter that one can use on one's own tracks.

PaulBrewer

I was talking to Graham Bonnet who worked with Rupert Cobb on the 'Live at Abbey Road' stuff.

He was saying he uses the plugin in times of 'crisis' i.e. maybe at the end of a long day or when up against a deadline to 'clarify' his thoughts on the level of compression.

He was saying that he feels a lot of his mixes are right in the 8 range on the DR metre as opposed to the 4 of a lot of commercial recordings.

krd

This is the Radiohead Nude example for those who haven't heard it.

He took the stems from radioheads website. The difference is really shocking


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEFyNdB13vg

It's amazing after putting in so much work in on their music they go and destroy it like this.

krd

But there is an upside to all this.

People like me, who don't have expensive equipment, and don't really know what they're doing with the equipment they have. Can produced lo fidelity material - people won't be able to tell the difference because their ears have so become used to listening to audio sludge.

PaulBrewer

krd wrote: »

But there is an upside to all this.

People like me, who don't have expensive equipment, and don't really know what they're doing with the equipment they have. Can produced lo fidelity material - people won't be able to tell the difference because their ears have so become used to listening to audio sludge.

Good Point KRD!

shayleon

Isn't it basically Bob Katz's K12/14 system? I've been using it for years.
Great stuff!

studiorat

If it sounds good leaving me I don't care if they put it through the digestive tract of a cow. If people want to ruin a track for so it sounds good on FM radio or on something like myspace leave them too it. Frankly I've never been pleased with mastering to anything decent I've done, I've always prefered the original, if it's not loud enough turn it up.

In fact I'm going to start putting stuff out in formats that no-one has even heard of and let them sort it out themselves. Trying to please Joe Public never made me much money anyway so he can go f*ck himself, it'll get released the way I want it too and no other.

PaulBrewer

studiorat wrote: »

Frankly I've never been pleased with mastering to anything decent I've done

Why do you think that is 'Rat ?

krd

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Good Point KRD!

As they say ,, To every cloud there's a silver lining.

krd

studiorat wrote: »

If it sounds good leaving me I don't care if they put it through the digestive tract of a cow. If people want to ruin a track for so it sounds good on FM radio or on something like myspace leave them too it. Frankly I've never been pleased with mastering to anything decent I've done, I've always prefered the original, if it's not loud enough turn it up.

In fact I'm going to start putting stuff out in formats that no-one has even heard of and let them sort it out themselves. Trying to please Joe Public never made me much money anyway so he can go f*ck himself, it'll get released the way I want it too and no other.

There's actually two things that I think are ruining music - Hammering the sound through a limiter set on infinity - and the over use of stereo effects.

If might sound 'good' when people listen to it in the studio or play it back in their cars - but it's really uncomfortable to listen to that kind of music for any length of time.

Recordings are completely losing their characteristics - even the radio is hammering the stuff to **** - Hammering stuff that's already been hammered.

I haven't heard it yet but I've heard the Mono re-issues of the early beatles records that have just come out - and they supposedly sound great because the original main mixes were done for Mono not for stereo.

Older records used to be so different - instruments and different pieces would be buried down in the mix - it would take several listens to start hearing things - A record should be a little bit of strip tease, to slowly grow on you - not some fish wife sticking her flange directly into your face, without even an introduction.

To many stereo panning tricks - at first they're impressive, but then they become really distracting and annoying. - It should sound good in Mono first

PaulBrewer

krd wrote: »

not some fish wife sticking her flange directly into your face, without even an introduction.

There are times that's all I want ....

studiorat

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Why do you think that is 'Rat ?

I've always felt a bit weird with how upfront it sounds for want of a better word. And it always seems just a bit sterilized or something. I never been too pushed about lots of top end in a mix either. Maybe next time I'll tell them not to touch anything over 5khz!!!

I'd agree with krd too, I was listening to some mixes from a guy have worked with for years. We do a lot of stuff together and we joke that his stuff is always panned really heavily, where if I go more than say quarter past it's getting real out there. And I do really like when you spot something in a mix that you never noticed before. Particularly if it's not one of your own mixes;)

krd

PaulBrewer wrote: »

There are times that's all I want ....

Fish , once a week on a Friday. If you had to eat it everyday you'd get pretty sick of it.

krd

studiorat wrote: »

I've always felt a bit weird with how upfront it sounds for want of a better word. And it always seems just a bit sterilized or something. I never been too pushed about lots of top end in a mix either. Maybe next time I'll tell them not to touch anything over 5khz!!!

I'd agree with krd too, I was listening to some mixes from a guy have worked with for years. We do a lot of stuff together and we joke that his stuff is always panned really heavily, where if I go more than say quarter past it's getting real out there. And I do really like when you spot something in a mix that you never noticed before. Particularly if it's not one of your own mixes;)

Thank you for bringing that up - now I can saw there are 3 things destroying music at the minute.

1. Louderizers - Why pay a studio thousands to master your track when you can just give a 12 yearold a limiter with one of the knobs broken off - give the child a bag of glue to sniff while they're at their work.

2. Stereo abuse - Just because you can use a pencil tool to make it sound like the guitarist - the bass player - the Key board player - Are jumping around the room like demons. (Rapid hard panning is fun to play with - but for me, listening back to some stuff I did, that I thought was clever at the time, on my laptop speakers, the only thing that they do reasonbly well is stereo. So I find my eyes being distracted and poping from speaker to the other speaker - and I wish I hadn't done it)
- Paning adds excitement - but I think you have to do it at a subconious level - just a slight bit off centre - never enough that you can hear something pop speaker to speaker - Unless your doing the soundtrack for Rambo IXX, and you need a rockter propellered grenade to sound like it's crossing over someone's left shoulder and crashing 50 yards ahead in to some unfortunate South East Asian. Or a book I saw years ago (just googled it and found nothing) - suggested keeping everything in the centre and just using drums and percusion to create stereo colour.

And the third devil - suggested by studiorat

3. Frequency abuse - (I'll just say. I studied Electronics and Physics - which was an incredible waste of time for someone for me to do ,, but)


With computers and handling sound in the digital domain - things can be done with frequency that were absolutely impossible before using analogue desks (and that is using an analogue desk, just with a tape machine - no digital boxes along the way)

This great Trevor Horn interview (That I don't have a link to - but it's about an hour long) - he said the biggest problem for him using the analogue desks, like the legendary Neves, was trying to keep the top end.

Without going into the very complicated detail - there are particular reasons why the analogue consoles couldn't have the kind of top that Trevor Horn wanted. (Just to say the analogue ciruit will always have a sharper decay on a higher frequency than a lower one)


Digital filters allow you to absolutely cut frequency ranges or raise them. With Analogue you can't do that.

With Frequency abuse - it's not the use of high frequency that's the problem - it's sustaining high frequencys.


If you look at a Hi hat hit waveform - from an untreated natural Hi-hat or old drum machine - You'll see the Attack is very sharp and high - but the decay is also very sharp. You get a quick spike - you see it on other instruements like guitar and even voice - the high frequencies are hit only for a very short time.

This being because in nature - high frequencies are high energy - the high frequencies in percussion lose their energy very quickly - Importantly if a human hears a high frequency unnatural prolonged it causes anxiety. - It's how our hearing evolved

Computers make serious frequency abuse possible - High frequency attacks can be prolonged - this is fine on occasion - but not on everything. But it's got to the point where people are expecting to hear it. FM Car Stereo Radio adds slight extended high frequency attacks to give it that crunchy ever so slightly distorted feel.

studiorat wrote: »

Maybe next time I'll tell them not to touch anything over 5khz!!!

it's not simply a case of filtering out what's over 5k or 10k - To have the frequency range in the first place is great - and speakers, for the range they can cover have never been better. Playing an old recording through them sounds fantastic.

People listening back to playbacks of their music, get excited by the three demons Louderization, Stereo pan abuse, and frequency abuse - not because their music has been made more exciting in a real sense - it's because it causes a sensation of anxiety - not an emotional kick.

That's why that crispy exciting sound, sounds so great when you first hear it - but you don't really fancy going back to listening to the recordings again - because they give you a little anxiety when you hear them. - The excitement has to be in the melodies and performance to draw you back.

An analogue console like a Neve, can't hold a high frequency in the circuit for long (It will saturated the transitor, distorting, same with a Tube) - DACs have no problem taking in whatever sample rate they've been designed to. - this is why people say the old desks sounded warmer - they didn't have the anxiety feeling of the high frequencies being prolonged.

jtsuited

great post krd.

particularly about high stuff causing anxiety.

I've always maintained that Neve stuff sounds gorgeous because it really is quite mellow and dark sounding compared to SSL stuff which is far too bright for my tastes.

When I'm mastering stuff (and I do smash the fook out of it) I always stick the UAD neve 88rs at the end of my chain just to get rid of the exhausting high frequencies.

The whole Loudness war thing is a bit old at this stage though. If you don't like the way modern mainstream commercial music is mastered, then don't buy it. End of story really.

PaulBrewer

krd wrote: »

This great Trevor Horn interview (That I don't have a link to - but it's about an hour long) - he said the biggest problem for him using the analogue desks, like the legendary Neves, was trying to keep the top end.

That was from Mike Banks Recordproduction.com site -

http://www.recordproduction.com/trevor-horn-record-producer.html

I think what he actually said was that Neve's weren't bright enough for their requirements at the time (hyped top) which he was now laughing at himself for.

gerborg

Would it be fair to say that the loudness war is the defining sound of the late 90s and noughties and that it is just a fad that will eventually go away?
Would it compare to the how we might view 80s music now, where a lot of 80s music has a really distinctive snare sound and kinda electro feel that seems almost laughable now?
Will the general public be laughing at how todays music sounds in 10 years time or are we stuck with this!?
As producers, if you are doing a project for a small band where you are acting as producer/engineer and mastering engineer, how would you advice a band at the mastering stage?
Do any of you encourage high compression/limiting to achieve a "modern" sound??

PaulBrewer

I never thought of that before but you're right.

I guess the problem is Louder is perceived as Better - we've now hit the stops ...

r3nu4l

I know nothing about music production. Can someone explain this to me in real layman's terms?

Am I right in thinking that in newer and remastered music, all of the sounds from different layers are brought to the same level, whereas in older and unmastered originals different layers of sound rise and fall at different points in a song and you have to listen out for them?

No clue, sorry

EDIT: I like this example...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UjQc0dM4H4