
Loudness (2007) - mjgoins
http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html
======
chrismealy
It's not just about volume. Tracks mastered with a ton of compression trick
your brain into sounding louder than they really are, which is great for a
song or two (or if you want pay people to pay attention to your tv
commercial), but for listening to a whole album it wears you out. If you have
an album you love but somehow never make it all the way through this is
probably why. The perception of full volume gets your lizard brain aroused,
which is great if you're in the club, but not if you're in the mood to listen
to the first three Led Zeppelin records in a row.

On the other hand, older recordings with more dynamic range might sound thin
at low volume, but are much richer at higher volumes (you can hear the
individual instruments better and feel the space in the sound). If you try
comparing older and newer masterings at a good volume the newer mastering
usually sounds kinda mushy.

~~~
elmar
Today if you want dynamic range you have to buy Vinyl or lossless downloads.

[http://dr.loudness-
war.info/album/list?artist=Roger+Waters&a...](http://dr.loudness-
war.info/album/list?artist=Roger+Waters&album=is+this+the)

[http://dr.loudness-
war.info/album/list?artist=Roger%20Waters](http://dr.loudness-
war.info/album/list?artist=Roger%20Waters)

~~~
cr1895
No, it still depends how it was mastered. You can have crap sounding vinyl and
lossless, too.

~~~
elmar
yes you are right you can have very crappy sounding vinyl, your best bet is
vinyl but you always do your research.

Unfortunately SACD is dead and even on SACD the CD tracks can be a diferent
mastering and very diferent from the SACD track.

~~~
elmar
39 essential albums for audiophiles

[https://www.stuff.tv/features/39-essential-albums-
audiophile...](https://www.stuff.tv/features/39-essential-albums-audiophiles)

------
mortenjorck
For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering
techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one
reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the
listener" I would consider the opposite.

With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust
the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or
to make louder sections more comfortable to the ears, depending on the
listening environment. With a "loud," low dynamic range, however, the listener
need only adjust the volume once, as the whole track is roughly the same
volume. In other words, the listener is in control of the volume, rather than
the engineer.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
It's easier to remove dynamic range on playback than to add it back in...
don't many stereos have a "loudness" function which brickwalls the audio?

~~~
Fice
The "loudness" switch on stereo amplifiers is for loudness compensation [1],
not compression.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation)

~~~
pizza
Shouldn't it be called quietness compensation, then? :P

------
thatswrong0
This is pretty funny to me because I mostly listen to (and produce) electronic
music.. and there are pretty much no rules when it comes to electronic music
and loudness. Stupidly loud music can actually sound pretty dang good [0][1].
The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS.

If you have the right source material, you can brickwall the hell out of
tracks and not notice the distortion.. or perhaps the distortion will even add
pleasant artifacts. One of the more prominent issues with making things stupid
loud is intermodulation distortion, but that really only becomes noticeable
when you have pure tones or vocals being mashed into the limiter. If the
source material is already distorted (think screechy dubstep synths), then it
probably don't matter.

But yeah, when you're dealing with more traditional kinds of music, which
often times involves vocals or a lot more subtlety to the timbre of the
instruments, brickwalling is probably not the best call. It seems that the
Search and Destroy "remaster" sounding terribly distorted was intentional..
but IMO it's not very listenable nor does the distortion really bring the
grungy character than I think they were going for. It just sounds bad.

[0] [https://soundcloud.com/moodygood/mtgfyt-
vol1](https://soundcloud.com/moodygood/mtgfyt-vol1)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I (only half jokingly) think (music like) that Bassnectar track _Into The Sun_
is Lorin Ashton's attempt at hitting The Brown Note when played on a big rig
sound system. It's just constant rolling thunder, break down around 2 mins in,
followed by more rolling thunder. Sounds like the melody is playing on a
different sound system half a kilometer away at the same festival.

Ah, music is weird because even the stuff I _like_ is fun to criticise.

On that note, have you come across Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music?[1] It
hasn't been updated in a long time, but still highly amusing.

1\. [http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic-
music-guide/)

------
ttoinou
Theses mastering techniques have their legitimate use ! Some notes :

* it's a step in musical production where having experience, skills and contact with the artist matters. Not all compressor and limiter are created equal and the default value you use in your media player may not sound as good as what an audio engineer might have done..

* Not everyone have good hardware and a good environment to listen to high dynamic range music like thoses listening to classical music / jazz / Philip Glass, so theses business decision to increase volume for the market made sense at that time I think. Audio engineer simply took profit of having a technically better medium (CD) to make audio sound better (from what I've read theses techniques did not work well on vinyl)

* Loudness wars didn't have an effect on old records since as one can see in this article, we could find the old dynamic ones (and so we actually have the choice of listening to the old untouched record, or the new compressed-for-the-market record, and that is a good thing !)

* Theses music stats (mean RMS, peak RMS, max mean RMS) look at instantaneous dynamic, but a look at the overall dynamic of a song is also very important ! A good article on this topic stating that songs did not lose overall dynamic range that much : ['Dynamic Range' & The Loudness War, 2011] [http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudn...](http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war)

~~~
bhj
Also see SoS's "follow-up" article from 2014:
[http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-
war](http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war)

------
morecoffee
Tangential, but for the longest time I couldn't figure out why VLC always
played music / DVDs at such low volume. Setting the system volume to max and
overdriving VLC's volume slider was the only way I could actually hear the
soft parts.

Recently I found out about the volume compressor, which with a single check
box does exactly the right thing. I asked myself "why the heck isn't this box
checked by default?" I think the answer is with audio purists wanting to stem
the loudness war.

When reading about CD mastering maxing out the volume, It seems like it is the
right decision. _Most_ people do want the loudest setting, no mess with the
EQ, compressors, etc. Only a tiny population wants to preserve the fidelity of
the amplitude.

~~~
trevyn
Movies generally have a wide dynamic range so that loud action scenes are very
loud. You don't want your normal dialogue to be at the same volume as your
explosions, unless you're watching at home with the volume down.

~~~
ryandrake
Much to the chagrin of people like my wife, who, during scenes with just
dialog will remark, "I can't hear it, turn it up!" and then when the action
starts, "Too loud!" I end up adjusting the volume up and down over and over
throughout a 2-1/2 hour film. As much as I appreciate good dynamic range in
recordings, I wish my sound system had a "constant loudness" function that I
could just engage and put the remote down.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
That function exists generally in audio, and is called dynamic compression or
just compression. I've seen some TVs with that functionality and I know Apple
TV can do it, so I would guess you might have that option lurking somewhere in
your system. When you turn that on, you're taking a wide dynamic range and
squishing it, which essentially just pulls up quieter content, so you have to
consider how pure and accurate you like your content playback to be when doing
that. Well-crafted films in particular occasionally play with audio level for
effect ( _Interstellar_ being a dramatic example of that), so you might subtly
suck a bit of air from a director's intention which might matter to you.

If you have a nice 5.1 setup, try boosting your center channel, too. That
might help.

------
golergka
Since Youtube and most streaming services started to automatically balance
tracks based on their average perceived loudness (not all of them use the same
metric, but the purpose is the same), loudness war is almost dead. If you
brickwall your song, it will not be played louder than competition anymore.

~~~
copperx
The algorithms that determine perceptual loudness are very inaccurate, so it's
still possible to game them.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Fortunately many audio providers now have been fighting back against this. For
instance YouTube will punish video uploads that are louder than -13 LUFS by
attenuating the level. This will provide a somewhat level playing field and
encourage people to upload with a reasonable dynamic range.

~~~
hashmal
And some others are going full retard. Some streaming services actually add
compression to everything…

~~~
rocqua
Which ones?

~~~
ubercow13
Spotify: [http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-
loudness/](http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-loudness/)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
I got 403 Error. Could you post a public link?

~~~
ubercow13
Sorry, try again!

------
cromon
This is something I have battled with for a long time, personally I master to
make the music sound good, sometimes that is loud (new dance music) sometimes
not so much (old African recordings remasters).

Coupled with the data from this page [1] there is no point in going too loud
anyways, that's why you have gain / volume control. I'm not sure how I feel
about streaming services implementing extra processing tbh. Spotify is the
worst culprit adding limiting which can significantly change the sound of a
recording.

I just wish other engineers would have more pragmatism in this industry, way
too much overcooked and distorted music around.

[1] [http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-
loudness/](http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-loudness/)

------
quakenul
Mastering is in a way comparable to capitalism. You can certainly try and be
nice about it but pushing harder will usually get you further, because most
people care more about one aspect than all the others aspects combined. In
capitalism it is getting a great product for a great price. In mastering, it
is loudness.

Loudness is a bastard. There is a reason, why all the pros are usually very,
_very_ careful about level matching when doing any sort of audio comparisons.
Even when you _know_ that louder can easily fool you into thinking something
is better (which most listeners don't), you're still susceptible, if you don't
counter act it. Wanna convince a recording artist in the studio it's great?
Turn up those big speakers. Instant gratification.

When it comes to music consumption I like to think this is not really a
problem: The sound of compression and distortion is the sound of current music
and there is nothing inherently bad about it. Older generations will tend to
oppose any new musical trend for various reasons, which all end up being
subjective. The younger generations that grow up on this new sound do not care
about brickwall limiting, because there is nothing to fucking care about.

Music production has been and forever will a mix of mostly people copying
other people and flowing with the stylistic currents while adding a little
something themselves. Sometimes something radical will happen. Mostly not. If
you wanna stay relevant you go with the former and keep reaching for the
later. Pretty much the same, as with coding or design.

------
amelius
Was there any way we could have prevented the "loudness war"?

~~~
santoshalper
There is research that shows that on a casual listen, people believe louder
music sounds better. Similarly, people tend to find brighter pictures more
appealing at a glance, even though both of these can be fatiguing and cause
discomfort. That's why stereo stores (in so much as they still exist) crank up
the music to very loud volumes and all the TVs at Best Buy are grossly mis-
calibrated.

Unfortunately, most musicians are just hoping you will notice their song when
it comes up on the radio, pandora, a friends iPhone and so everyone is
incentivized to crank their song to the max.

The thing that bums me out is that there were really good records released in
the 2000's that are mastered terribly, and we may never hear a better version.
It's one thing when a stooges album is fucked up on re-release, I can always
grab the original, there may never be another version of "Is This It".

~~~
digi_owl
I found myself pondering this in relation to the resurgence of LPs.

I wonder if the lower dynamic range of LPs restricts music released on them
from being overly loud, and thus not as fatiguing to listen to as more modern
formats.

~~~
microcolonel
Not exactly.

It is technically the case that vinyls have less frequency response (basically
a low pass filter) than good (really effectively perfect) reproduction formats
like CD. That certainly means that the maximum loudness value is lower, but
dynamic range is not required for loudness, gain and frequency response are.

If anything, having less dynamic range would encourage people to make louder
records.

~~~
cromon
A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this
limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample
rate achievable by some sound cards.

~~~
microcolonel
> A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this
> limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample
> rate achievable by some sound cards.

The only reason to sample at 96/192k is to make cheaper analog filter
hardware. While technically vinyl can reproduce frequencies in excess of
50kHz, it has limits on amplitudes at high (audible) frequencies because of
the physics of the needle and groove, especially on less-than-excellent
cartridges. Nobody wants to listen to something with that much energy in the
highest audible frequencies (16-20kHz) anyway, so it's a moot point.

There is absolutely no point in representing frequencies in excess of
22.05kHz. Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be
capable of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to
manifest and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous
years in their life and never return.

There is no difference between discrete signals sampled at 44.1kHz, and
continuous signals, that has any bearing on human hearing. In addition, 14
bits is about enough to represent all discernible dynamic range in human
hearing, 16 bits is more than enough. Vinyl has considerably less dynamic
range than this. Any vinyl on any record player has poor performance for
reproducing audible signals when compared to an about-average CD player. LP
vinyl is an excellent final form of the phonograph, but a mere intermediate to
poor form in all of audio reproduction, especially considering that CD is
essentially perfect.

~~~
jsjohnst
> Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be capable
> of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to manifest
> and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous years
> in their life and never return.

When I was in my twenties, I could easily identify sounds in the 23-26k range
(tested using professional gear more than once). When I was younger it was
quite painful to hear as my ears were so sensitive to it (as a young teen, I
would wince in pain when a monitor was left on without an input signal even in
a room of people yelling noisily at each other). Even now in my late 30s I can
still readily hear in the low 20k hz easily.

------
__x0x__
I'm a self-described audioweenie who has a dedicated listening room with a
decent setup. It does make me sad that much new music is mastered so loud
because information is lost when you "brickwall master". For older music, a
lot of audiophiles will seek out original non-remastered releases of music
made before the "Loudness Wars" (early 90s and before) where, as I understand
it, it was generally considered taboo to have a "digital over" in a mastering.
However some "Loud" masterings still sound quite good. It depends a lot on the
type of music and how the compression was applied. I mean, someone overdriving
a tube guitar amp into soft clipping is essentially compressing the sound in
the analogue domain - that's what makes guitars sound so awesome.

I wish to make one main observation about the vinyl resurgence. Vinyl (which I
enjoy, mostly for nostalgia because I'm old enough to remember when it was the
main format) is on the rise for the wrong reasons. One reason is that it has
become trendy - and I have no problem with this, but it's a real thing.
Another more frustrating reason is the perception that vinyl masters cannot
have the same amount of compression as digital masters, hence the perception
is that vinyl version of a modern master will less compressed. Many, many
audiophiles believe this. However I can tell you that the vast majority of
modern vinyl releases are the same exact mastering as the digital version. The
digital tracks have already been "squashed" and that mastering is fed to the
cutting head after applying the RIAA curve.

However, the "dynamic range database" (results from a piece of free software
that applies an algorithm to digital music and assigns a number related to the
ratio between peak and RMS energy in the music) will regularly indicate vinyl
versions of music (recorded and digitized by someone on their home setup) with
more dynamic range. The problem is that this "extra" dynamic range arises from
the inability to reproduce square waves (those flat-topped 0 dBFS regions in
the article) in the analogue domain... there are overshoots that "add" peak
energy that didn't exist on the squashed digital master. So you have people
who think squashed music that has gone through all of the processing that is
required to make a vinyl record magically comes out on the other end with more
dynamic range, sounding better, when it's added a bunch of additional
distortion. It's part of what makes the audio hobby so much.... fun.

------
mrlucax
>but for listening to a whole album it wears you out.

Looking at you, Death Magnetic.....

------
krallja
2007, if Internet Archive is to be believed
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070808082932/http://www.chicag...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070808082932/http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html)

~~~
dang
Thanks, added.

