

The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse - bugs
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058&sc=fb&cc=fp

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keyist
First heard of the Loudness War in IEEE:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-future-of-
mu...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-future-of-music/0)

Didn't know it's turned into an entire meme by now:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war>. Lots more links here for those
who want to find out more.

Illustrative list of waveform and peak level examples:
<http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm>. This page really goes
to town on graphs of various popular songs to show how and where the clipping
occurs.

Death Magnetic is definitely one of the best recent examples especially due to
the contrast with the GH version.

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ynniv
While they explained audio compression well enough, they really botched the
explanation of uncompressed PCM and MP3, and failed to mention 24-bit/192khz
at all. The result is that one means of information compression used in MP3
(masking) is posited as an improvement over uncompressed PCM. Here's a quick
summary of why your music sounds like crap tho:

reality -> microphone -> pre-amp -> digital conversion -> mixing -> mastering
-> compression -- MP3 -- decompression -> analog conversion -> EQ and/or
"enhancement" -> amp -> headphones -> ear

Every single arrow is a loss of quality. The studio makes sure that everything
from reality to mixing uses the best equipment. Then they purposely butcher
the quality to make it "pop". Next is where you muck it up based on the format
you buy. MP3 has terrible detail reproduction (most obvious in cymbals), CD is
okay and by far the most common, and DVD-audio is best but rare (vinyl is the
most rare, and comparison with digital audio is complicated). Then, shoddy MP3
decompression aside, most consumers elect to reproduce their music using
underpowered amplifiers and cheap headphones or cheaper speakers.

So, half of it is the studio's fault, and half is yours. I bet most people
don't even notice that an iPod has better analog sound reproduction than any
computer. But the studio's errors are more damaging, because there is nothing
we can do about them. No matter how much you learn to love your music, or how
much equipment you buy, you can never undo the one step in which they destroy
the quality of the product.

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JairusKhan
They've confused digital compression and dynamic compression. Death Magnetic
sounds worse on CD because of dynamic compression, not digital compression.

~~~
pieceofpeace
No, The 2nd para of TFA: We're talking about compression here, the dynamic
compression that's used a lot in popular music. There's actually another kind
of compression going on today one that allows us to carry hundreds of songs in
our iPods...

~~~
JairusKhan
Right, but then they quote someone saying that the video game version is
better because of "digital domain compression", followed by a statement that
"Digital compression is the process that allows a song to go from being a very
big sound file in its natural state to a very small file in your iPod"

~~~
wgj
They are still talking about dynamic compression there. The music went through
a different mastering process for the CD than for the game, and the game
version was left with more dynamic range. His use of the phrase "digital
domain compression" is misleading here, as it refers to dynamic compression
performed in the digital domain.

~~~
JairusKhan
Which is why I said it's confused.

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spooneybarger
The problem here is how musicians ( I myself am one ) tend to listen to tracks
after mastering.

The 'loudness wars' tend to lead to listener fatigue because of the lack of
dynamic range over the course of many songs. Most musicians don't listen to
masters this way. They listen to the same track repeatedly to see if it is
what they want before moving on to the next mastered track.

The number of musicians I know who listen to an entire mastered album all the
way through multiple times before it goes to press is 0. 1, maybe 2 times at
most for the entire album.

For individual songs, that big loudness boost sounds REALLY good. Its the over
an entire album that is sounds bad. And especially with the return of a
singles culture via iTunes et al, can you blame the many musicians who
maximize for the single song experience rather than the album experience?

~~~
Goladus
Frankly, albums never really advanced very far as an art form. Most albums are
just a loose collection of singles tied together by fairly coincidental
thematic elements.

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GavinB
I suspect that at this point, a somewhat dynamically crushed sound just comes
across as "right" for listeners. I'm surprised that no one has launched a
study to see how listeners _actually react_ to the crushed sound, once the
apparent loudness is neutralized.

~~~
Semiapies
For some listeners, yes.

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tfh
Some of the last metallica album sounded really bad because of this.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regard...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regarding_production)

~~~
dazzawazza
As a long standing heavy metal fan I can tell you that all of the album
sounded pretty bad and the compression was the least of their worries :)

It just goes to show that even VERY rich and VERY powerful bands are making a
basic mistake of not listening to their masters before turning on the presses.

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tybris
I've been buying more and more vinyl. It's a little expensive, but sound
quality is simply superb. I spent some time trying to recognize sounds in Pink
Floyd music on MP3/CD/Vinyl and realized that current technology is not yet
suitable for music as sophisticated as Pink Floyd. If they could find a
material that's a little harder, gramophone records might just be the medium
of the future.

~~~
ams6110
Actually LPs have much less dynamic range potential than CDs. It's just that
most producers do not utilize that range, they instead push all the levels to
the top.

I used to have a link to a study that claimed that many "long term" popular
hits (music that has remained popular for decades) has a common thread of
being produced with a wide dynamic range. I can't find it now...

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ugh
This article also contains a very good and easy to understand explanation of
the basic principle behind lossy audio compression.

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msg
George Graham reviews AAA for NPR, and always includes a note about the
dynamic compression at the end of the review. Highly recommended if you like
this genre.

<http://georgegraham.com/reviews.html>

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IgorPartola
Unfortunately, MP3's are here to stay. While some open source folks are
pushing OGG Vorbis and FLAC, these technologies do not have the convenience
and universal support of MP3's. The only thing that can sort of compete is
AAC, but only while iPods are in majority.

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lallysingh
More than a few of my friends have been switching to good-quality, noise
blocking headphones (like etymotics HF-2s). We can turn the music _way_ down
and enjoy it more.

~~~
tybris
That's not really what they mean by loudness, but that's a good way to prevent
ear damage.

