# The Loudness Wars: Discuss



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

ngarjuna said:


> Another question:
> 
> What's your take on the "Loudness Wars" in mastering and how they've particularly impacted your genre?


Thats a very good question, Its been so hard to get nice dynamic recordings these days particularly with Pop Rock and some Country. Everything is so maxed out and there is no headroom left in recordings.


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

*Re: Questions for Jacob Hansen*



tonyvdb said:


> Thats a very good question, Its been so hard to get nice dynamic recordings these days particularly with Pop Rock and some Country. Everything is so maxed out and there is no headroom left in recordings.


I'm probably one of the few people who is currently vocalizing against the loudness wars and informing people publicly about the issues with it all lol. It's one thing to tell clients and musicians not to squash things but when everyone can understand it, it will make things better. /dreamer


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

*Re: Questions for Jacob Hansen*

My take on it is why push everything to the roof and then have to use compression to squeeze it all back down. It just takes all the full range out of it and to me its just noise.
If you still use something with level meters on it you can see it plain as day, On jazz and classical for example you get lots of movement in the meters but with most pop its right in the 0 to +4 area and stays there.


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## ngarjuna (Mar 29, 2010)

I've moved these comments out of the Interview thread; please leave that thread only for questions to and answers from Mr. Hansen.

Use this thread to discuss the Loudness Wars (which is, indeed, an interesting and discussion worthy topic).

APS: There are currently many organizations and well known engineers fighting actively against the so-called Loudness Wars (Bob Katz certainly being one of them). The problem with "informing the public" is that by and large the public doesn't care about quality issues in music and they basically never have. Take a look at double blind studies where uninformed people can't tell the difference between low bit rate MP3s and lossless files. The fact is that few people (engineers, musicians and audiophiles basically) listen with a degree of detail that makes quality any sort of issue at all; compounded by the fact that the brain inherently wants to compensate for various audible irregularities.

This is why engineers are going to have to be the ones to stop the escalating compression levels. The public quite simply doesn't care. Death Magnetic, despite getting somewhat bad press for its "mastering" (even Ted Jensen, the mastering engineer, sought to distance himself from it) debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, won Rick Rubin a Grammy (despite Jensen's claim that the premaster he received was already "brickwalled") and the band two Grammys. And that's the most "public" indictment of the loudness problem yet.


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

You have a ton of points there, but I see things a little differently. If the public can grasp a simple understanding of dynamics and compression, what it does and why it's over use is bad and fatiguing, they might understand and say "oooohhhh, okay" the points I make are generalized and not overly technical. Whether they care or not is up to them, it's the edumucation (lol) to get people thinking that matters.

Squishing = baaaaad .


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## ngarjuna (Mar 29, 2010)

Well I don't begrudge you for trying but I think trying to win the public over is a truly lost cause.

Quality is practically the least important variable in buying decisions today. How many people are buying up 256k MP3s? The audiophiles squeak and squawk and beg for DVD-A/SACD but the fact is that the vast majority of consumers simply don't care at all. You could sell them 192kbps files and they'd be perfectly satisfied. I'm not saying we should do that, I'm saying that the only reason we don't is because we, the engineers, know better and, to a certain degree, protect them from their own lack of taste. Taste, when it comes to audio quality, is indeed something you develop.

I recently commented on a thread on Lifehacker which was essentially advising that people could (if they were willing to spend the time) destructively normalize and/or compress their entire digital music libraries and providing links to some of the tools to accomplish this. Naturally, I (and several others) commented on the article that this was not any kind of improvement (and actually quite dangerous to their fidelity). Comment after comment made it clear that *they found it more acceptable to listen to ruined music files than walk across a room to adjust a volume control*. While I agree it's a sad statement about how art is enjoyed in this day and age, it quickly became clear to me that the consumer was largely a deaf ear when it comes to any kind of quality discussion.

The Loudness War won't be won until we convince the musicians (first and foremost) to stop insisting that everything be "LOUDER!!". Read Lars' comments about Death Magnetic and how awesome he thought it sounded. It wasn't something the label forced on everyone, Metallica probably played just as large a role in that trainwreck as anybody. If the engineers (who largely don't like this trend) could get the musicians on board then we could at least begin to make some demands for more reasonable levels with the labels (who seem to care less than the unwashed masses if it sounds good or not because they also know that it doesn't really impact buying decisions and, sadly, those are the only considerations they care about).

The problem now is that all too commonly you'll hear musicians exclaim "But I like loud mixes!" If engineers can't get the musicians to understand how castrating all of their transients actually makes for less impacting music then we're definitely going to lose.


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

I agree with you, I'm not aiming for the entire world when i say that, just people who are willing to listen and think logically (even that's a stretch LOL).

Musicians should definitely be number one though and every time I have a discussion with any client about these things, they generally let me do whatever I like and give me free reign with their tracks (which is a good thing) and when I deliver a mix that isn't loud, they're not so shocked. I've convinced a few people to mix and master for dynamics and whatnot and I think as long as us engineers keep doing so things will change.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

The thing is is should it not be up to the listener as to how loud that want it? Mastering at high levels just makes the entire track hot but even if the musicians cry for it to be hot why do they not understand that in the end it will just be compressed so that everything is the same level. 
I like it when a recording has a bass line that has some serious punch or when the drummer has a nice deep kick and that is the driving rhythm. Why squish it all down so it looses all the dynamics and depth. Even 196kb mp3's sound better if the original recording has not been compressed.


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## spacedout (Dec 17, 2007)

To (loosely) quote Bob Katz: do you want to make a record that people want to turn up, or one that they want to turn down?

Not sure whether I saw that in his book or an online post, but it's a great line


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

LOL. I love Bob. That was pretty good.


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## maikol (Nov 7, 2008)

Interesting subject!

All the mastering engineers I've talked with about the loudness war told me that they were fighting against it.
They also often said that mixes coming in from young "engineers" doing one of their first records were often already loudest than what they would master them! :gulp:

Most of the ME's really try to do that educational work with their customers, but the problem still remains...

It's pretty much always the same scenario : "Man you were right, the sound is great like you mastered it, could you just add 3 dB to the overall level, so that we're as loud as other records?"

I also agree that mp3s do sound alot worse when they're made from a crushed master.

Another point is that most of the D/A's in cheap boomboxes or mp3 players do crush those masters even more because they don't have enough analog headroom to be able to cope for the reconstructed waveform. Which means that most of the time it is even more distorted at the consumer's end than in the mastering studio!:yikes:


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

maikol said:


> Interesting subject!
> 
> All the mastering engineers I've talked with about the loudness war told me that they were fighting against it.
> They also often said that mixes coming in from young "engineers" doing one of their first records were often already loudest than what they would master them! :gulp:


I am so glad I'm not one of THOSE newbies. lol. I just accomplished something really big as well. I just got done with a mix that has been sent off to Capitol Records. I'm stoked and hope that the label will enjoy my mix as much as the client. I'd love to be associated with Capitol and other majors.


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## spacedout (Dec 17, 2007)

AstralPlaneStudios said:


> I just got done with a mix that has been sent off to Capitol Records.


 :T:T:T

Hope it leads on... and on!


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## goyop (May 4, 2010)

One could dissect the many aspects of this situation and end up dizzy and still dissatisfied. For me some things come to mind like, if I am an average musician trying to sell lots of records then louder is better. If I am a trained or serious artist then my music is not just notes and lyrics but dynamics. One of the premier rock bands in the universe, Led Zeppelin, had unbelievable dynamics in their music.

What I am saying is that for most genres of current music, there is so little musicianship that it isn't worth fighting about. However, there are some true musicians/writers/artists that will demand quality sound. And every once in a while a shooting star comes out that catches everyone's attention. If this star is a high level artist/musician then they will pave the way for high quality that their music demands.

The average Joe with an MP3 player welded to his head won't necessarily care because he won't. But there is a segment of music buyers that is not the 14-25 year olds who do have some clout. And if a hot band or performer puts out quality music and recording/mastering to that market then perhaps the mindless bodies at the record companies will selfishly try to copy the sound and we will all benefit.

My two cents.


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## torceador (Sep 8, 2010)

Compressed, loud mixes have been around for about as long as compressors have been around. They are just getting to be far too mushed into the top end. That brings up an interesting point:

I just answered an email about recording an orchestra and how important it was to set the level for the maximum loudness of the piece, and resist the urge to ride the fader during the performance. I also stated that this is where the difference between 24 bit and 16 bit sampling really shows, in reproducing a large dynamic range.

Since a compressor can 'ride the fader' dozens of times in a measure, you are really forcing all of the music material into a smaller range than the media has available to you. It would be fun to do a bit value analysis of recordings of loud mixes. 24 bits can have over 16 million discrete values. 16 bits only about 65 thousand. If we're cramming all the music into the top 16 bits worth (or less) of data, why are we all rushing to buy 24 bit equipment? I would suspect the only time lower values would be present would be in intros and outros.

I'm using an AVID 888 16 bit unit in stand alone A/D mode for a little project I have. I got it for NINETY NINE CENTS on ebay, with 10 bucks shipping, because everybody is dumping 16 bit equipment for 24 bit, with the motivation of increased QUALITY. I myself think that what you are really getting with more bit depth is more dynamic range, and here we are disposing dynamic range with compressors as fast as all of the 16 bit stuff like it was useless.

We all have more computing power on our desk and in our phones than our parents can fathom as necessary, and we use it for useful tasks all day, right?

You want a real test? Put one of those super compressed mixes into EIGHT bits and see if average Joe/Jane can tell.

torceador


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## Sir Terrence (Jun 8, 2006)

torceador said:


> Compressed, loud mixes have been around for about as long as compressors have been around. They are just getting to be far too mushed into the top end. That brings up an interesting point:
> 
> I just answered an email about recording an orchestra and how important it was to set the level for the maximum loudness of the piece, and resist the urge to ride the fader during the performance. I also stated that this is where the difference between 24 bit and 16 bit sampling really shows, in reproducing a large dynamic range.


I think you mean 24 bit depth. A sample rate that low means there would be an extremely narrow bandwidth of audio recorded. 

You are correct though, 24 bit means you don't have to ride the fader during the performance. It also leaves you headroom for EQ and gain changes. 



> Since a compressor can 'ride the fader' dozens of times in a measure, you are really forcing all of the music material into a smaller range than the media has available to you. It would be fun to do a bit value analysis of recordings of loud mixes. 24 bits can have over 16 million discrete values. 16 bits only about 65 thousand. If we're cramming all the music into the top 16 bits worth (or less) of data, why are we all rushing to buy 24 bit equipment? I would suspect the only time lower values would be present would be in intros and outros.


I can explain this, even if I don't like the practice. The logic for going 24bit is that during recording, you don't have to ride the fader. After that, then you crush the audio until you are getting 16bit performance from the 24bit recording. This does not make any sense to me, but since its the marketing or producer that is in charge, you do what you are told, or turn the job away. 



> I'm using an AVID 888 16 bit unit in stand alone A/D mode for a little project I have. I got it for NINETY NINE CENTS on ebay, with 10 bucks shipping, because everybody is dumping 16 bit equipment for 24 bit, with the motivation of increased QUALITY. I myself think that what you are really getting with more bit depth is more dynamic range, and here we are disposing dynamic range with compressors as fast as all of the 16 bit stuff like it was useless.


The problem is now that they are pushing levels to the hilt, you cannot use 16bits anymore. There is not enough headroom for EQ or correcting balancing issues. 



> We all have more computing power on our desk and in our phones than our parents can fathom as necessary, and we use it for useful tasks all day, right?
> 
> You want a real test? Put one of those super compressed mixes into EIGHT bits and see if average Joe/Jane can tell.
> 
> torceador


In some of the worst cases of compression I have seen, I'll bet there is only 8bit worth of resolution anyway.


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