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Loudness Wars in 2020


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@Tubularbells    @furtherpale    Thanks Boys.

 

I'll just watch the first five minutes now, that's what I thought.  Before I knew it he was wrapping up.

 

Furtherpale tagged me in here as I require some tuition in this area.  I've never really bothered with understanding clipping, compression or the Loudness War.

Definitely something that is being highlighted with my visits around the block.

In my early days of training my ears and knowing what to listen for has already changed the way I listen to music.

 

I can't see myself streaming music anytime soon.  Old Skool.

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11 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

Interesting,  but didn't his advice break down to simply "stop using compression/limiters" ?   Of course this is a great thing for hifi :) 

Sometimes mastering engineer used digital frequency band limiter use processing  Not Good  example stems mastering 

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So in summary, streaming services due to their level matching should put an end to the loudness war and instead encourage recordings with more rich dynamic range? Recordings with more dynamic range can actually sound louder on these services? If so this all sounds pretty good!

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Just watched the whole thing and thanks for sharing it. There's a lot more going on in our music than I was ever aware of. This seems like a good thing to me and we should start getting more range and emotion back into recordings. If you're not into science though, don't spend too much time viewing it. It's fairly full on technical.

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On 14/02/2020 at 9:38 AM, aussievintage said:

Interesting,  but didn't his advice break down to simply "stop using compression/limiters" ?   Of course this is a great thing for hifi :) 

Yes but it is interesting as to why.

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40 minutes ago, crisis said:

Yes but it is interesting as to why.

Yes, the reason being that through streaming compressed music simply sounds quiter, whereas more dynamic music actually sounds louder. The opposite of prior physical mediums.  Fantastic news  :)

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An interesting presentation, and one that presents concepts that I have wondered about (but maybe not as precisely as presented in the video).  It would be wonderful if mastering could become sensible again.  I think that even music that traditionally is highly compressed (rap, metal) could benefit from more dynamics than is currently given. 

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The basic premise of this to me is quite obvious, and I have been frustrated that it has taken so long to get here.  What started the loudness wars was to compress quieter music so it would sound equally as loud as other compressed music - to make everything compressed/loud/a similar volume. 

 

This - better solution - is to make the average volume equal - lowering the volume of the compressed music - so everything is at a similar volume.  Basically, it's turning down the level of compressed music so it's as generally loud as other less compressed music.  Uncompressed music remains pure, nothing is destroyed in the process. 

 

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Enjoyed the video and agree with overall sentiments of the above posters.

What I found particularly interesting was the observation that the mastering engineers were under pressure from the artists themselves to "make it louder" in order to try and make the track stand out against everyone else.  So blame the musicians as well, not just the engineers, for the mass abuse of compression

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2 hours ago, RoHo said:

Enjoyed the video and agree with overall sentiments of the above posters.

What I found particularly interesting was the observation that the mastering engineers were under pressure from the artists themselves to "make it louder" in order to try and make the track stand out against everyone else.  So blame the musicians as well, not just the engineers, for the mass abuse of compression

I'm sure that some ignorant musicians put pressure on the engineers to make it louder (I read the Gallagher's were responsible for the high compression on Oasis' Morning Glory CD).  However, I thought a lot of it came from the marketing people (who have commercial perspecitives, not artistic ones), who wanted tracks to sound louder than others when played on the radio, for dancefloors, and in multi-disk changers.

 

 

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1 hour ago, audiofeline said:

However, I thought a lot of it came from the marketing people (who have commercial perspecitives, not artistic ones), who wanted tracks to sound louder than others when played on the radio, for dancefloors, and in multi-disk changers.

 

They have been doing it forever.  I remember the Columbia/Parlophone 45s were always cut very hot, compared to, say, RCA.  One Dave Clark Five single was so hot it actually made many players skip when the bass drum hits came along.

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  • 1 year later...
Guest Old Man Rubber

I really hope this means they go back and undo all the "remastering" that went on in the peak of the CD era.  Plus just about every 1990s britpop releases that are just about unlistenable (i.e. Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers etc).

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