
Loudness war - luketheobscure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
======
brownbat
The 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.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This 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
It 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
Thank you. Wow. Why the heck would you put the download link in the Share
menu?!?

~~~
tmoravec
This is a standard iOS pattern. Agreed that it's all but intuitive but that's
how iOS is these days.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
And, to complete the circle, the iOS way is the audio engineers like. Even
these days, audio engineers are tied to Apple - definitely macOS, but
increasingly iOS as well.

~~~
reom_tobit
Pro Tools is a large part of the industry market and that’s multi-platform.

What do you mean by “audio engineers are tied to apple”?

~~~
hexteria
Not sure if it's still the case but for many years Apple's Core Audio was a
big draw for people running audio software due to it's stability, performance
and compatibility with various devices. I've used Windows with ASIO drivers
for many years and always found it a bit buggy with occasional random drop-
outs that can only be fixed by reinstalling the drivers. Pulse Audio on Linux
can be even more of a nightmare to get working with your equipment, but I've
heard it's improving recently.

~~~
reom_tobit
That’s a good point. In my experience in studios (from around 5 years ago)
windows is just about as prevalent as OS X at this point. I’m sure whatever
niche you’re in does affect this however.

------
cthalupa
The 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-...](https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-
loudness#what-is-loudness-normalization-and-why-is-it-used) )

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.

~~~
K0SM0S
I'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
I 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.

~~~
K0SM0S
The double-blind scientific approach to audio testing ("ABX") has long been a
major point of contention between "objectivists" and "subjectivists"[1]. This
has been a godsend for the marketing marketing of some snake-oil companies in
audiophile circles.

Really glad to know Spotify is on the side of science, here.

[1]: This blog has got to be the most interesting I ever read on whatever
topic it touches, including the objective vs subjective debate:
[http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/subjective-vs-
objective-...](http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/subjective-vs-objective-
debate.html)

~~~
sangnoir
Do you mean double-blind testing benefits snake-oil companies? If so, may you
expound on that? To my understanding, double-blind tests are meant to avoid
un/conscious bias during testing.

~~~
K0SM0S
No, on the contrary! Sorry for my ambiguous writing. Indeed double-blind is
the only way to go.

What I meant is that there is a sizeable chunk of the audiophile industry (a
certain press, electronics brands, stores and even studios themselves) that
conveniently avoids any and all scientific testing, and promotes typical
snake-oil "features" and "specs". Quite sadly for their abused customers.

One of the worst trends in my opinion was faking technical format quality by
using different masters on each — with the shitty master on CD/MP3 and the
good one, more dynamic, on DVD/SACD/vinyl etc. The latter always sounded
better simply because it wasn't the same source!

In such matters, I guess we can trust Spotify based on their claims, and
anecdotally I tend to believe them.

------
neiman
Where 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.

~~~
mcny
Speaking of lights, are there no laws in the US about how bright headlights
can be? At the risk of being too dramatic, I have had cars behind mine with
their lights so bright I thought they had their high beams on.

~~~
dingo454
That's the idiocy in general of modern car design.

A bright-blue headlight of a modern car will actually make everything
surrounding the headlights darker. A light which is slightly dimmer and more
shifted towards red works much better for your peripheral vision. If you drive
in rural areas the difference is very apparent.

Not only that, but street lights seem to be doing that as well.

Cross-walks here are now illuminated along the path with a strong shaped
light. But the light is so bright that during night they just blind the
observer: the pedestrian looks like ghost in a black background. IMHO this is
even more dangerous, I frequently cannot see past the crosswalk, so a
pedestrian which is passing behind it is risking much more than before. Go
figure.

There are a couple of intersections which I pass frequently where the green
light is too bright already during day. During the night, as soon as you get
the green light you get blinded, which is _awesome_ since the light is
guarding a cross-walk in this case as well. By night you cannot see
pedestrians when you have the green.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The police are the biggest offenders when it comes to unnecessarily blinding
drivers at night.

The construction companies (who have to pay their own insurance premiums and
generally avoid unnecessarily risking injury to people by blinding drivers)
have long since toned down the lights they used (there was a short time period
where they all had super bright lights because LEDs were new and cool so why
not have a 1000W flasher), switched to the non-glaring light plants that use
the canvas bags.

------
blunte
While 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.

~~~
p1necone
I don't see why this needs to be done at the track mastering level though. If
audio device manufacturers know their users are primarily going to be
listening in noisy environments with cheap headphones they can compress the
track at playtime.

~~~
oskenso
As a person studying music production, this can't be done easily without
having to mix and then master again. Certainly there could be varying edits of
a track, though this is already common practice. The music you hear o the
radio, or even Spotify, will usually be mastered differently than what you'll
hear on a CD or DVD

~~~
mstade
It'd be cool if there was something akin to Dolby Atmos where you don't
deliver a master, but rather individual tracks and associated metadata, such
that it can then be mastered on the fly depending on the output equipment.

Many games let you specify the audio output, and then adjusts the mixing
accordingly. This would be something similar I guess, but the mixing is
probably best done at the streaming provider, to save bandwidth and other
resources. (For static content like music it only really has to be done once
per output type.)

I'd like something like this, I have a vastly different sound setup at home
than on the go, but listen to mostly the same tracks. Most sound pretty good
on my home setup, but on the go I often find myself adjusting volume up and
down between tracks, despite things like normalization being on.

~~~
other_herbert
I think this is one of the things driving the vinyl resurgence. Albums that
release on vinyl tend to less alteration to the dynamic range... Ymmv I've not
listened to everything out there :-]

~~~
chungus_khan
The real reason for that is because of the physical limitations of the medium.
You have to be very careful when mastering for vinyl that you aren't knocking
the stylus out of the groove by making things too loud (especially sudden
changes are dangerous). Even for less proactively mastered stuff, if a master
is received too loud, the factory will reduce the volume before pressing so
that it is playable.

------
sramsay
Ian 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
I 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.

~~~
sramsay
I think your point about "listener fatigue" is important, because that's a big
part of this. It's not just about the way a squashed track won't sound as good
or as interesting (though it won't, of course).

And yeah, that's a famously "loud" genre. What drives me insane is going to,
say, a mostly acoustic live show and having the person behind the desk mix it
as if it's Drum & Bass. I never ever go to a show without earplugs, because
you just never know.

------
chiph
Daft 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
I 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
I 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.

------
jperras
My 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.

~~~
dboreham
Eventually this gets us to here:
[https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area)

~~~
jacquesm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq_cmaFSD4k&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq_cmaFSD4k&feature=youtu.be)

------
nayuki
"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
This 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
Of course not, it's a stick. If widely adopted, it eliminates the incentive
for the extra compression in the first place.

------
mc3
Watching 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
I 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.

------
Timberwolf
This 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
Depends 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.

------
h2odragon
"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
Clipping 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+t...](http://dr.loudness-
war.info/album/list?artist=rage+against+the+machine&album=)

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)#Eff...](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_\(Vinyl\)#Effect_of_vinyl_mastering_on_dynamic_range)
, so I'm much less confident about the vinyl releases with similar numbers.)

~~~
enneff
Pretty 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=H5w...](https://open.spotify.com/album/6Q8hkb14PqvyLVEdmWXiD9?si=H5w4inY6SUWgMcQ3SsLOzQ)

Makes RATM sound like easy listening. Which I suppose it is these days anyway.

~~~
lb1lf
...my go-to-album when the perils of excessive dynamic range is to be avoided
(cough) is Neil Young's 'Weld' live album.

It basically has two states: 'on' and 'off'.

However, it DOES serve an artistic purpose.

If you get a decent pressing of Motörhead's 'No Sleep 'til Hammersmith',
though, you'd be surprised at the dynamic range actually offered, contrary to
popular (mis)conceptions about the Motörhead sound... :)

------
Paperweight
[http://dr.loudness-war.info/](http://dr.loudness-war.info/)

~~~
zamadatix
Sorting 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
That's actually amazing music, though will blow your speakers at 1% volume ;)

~~~
lb1lf
Somewhere 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
Interesting. 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
-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.

------
braindongle
It'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.

~~~
IAmGraydon
I 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.

~~~
sramsay
All 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.

~~~
braindongle
Thanks for mentioning those other plugins. I'm not serious about mastering
(it's about the tune!), but now I'm curious, and the FabFilter mastering
bundle may have to go on the wish list.

------
sebastianconcpt
_The 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._

------
jakobmi
WHY does this happen? Does loud music sell better than silent music? Nobody
here, not even Wikipedia, mentions the reason WHY it happens.

~~~
rcar
From 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
And 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
I 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)

------
davedx
Noisia (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
You 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
True. 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

------
antfarm
A very detailed article about dynamic range and the Loudness War:
[https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-
loud...](https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war)

------
gwbas1c
One 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.

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boyadjian
On 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
Wait, 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.

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dunk010
I 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.

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jopsen
Reminds 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 :)

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archi42
Reminds 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)

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jcims
I 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.

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flippyhead
At 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.

