Loudness Wars get New York Times coverage

[wgscott]

Quote

By “too loud,” I don’t mean you can’t crank the Eagles, if that’s your thing. I’m talking about loudness as a measure of sound within a particular recording. Our ears perceive loudness in an environment by reflexively noting the dynamic range — the difference between the softest and loudest sounds (in this case, the environment is the recording itself, not the room you are playing it in). A blaring television commercial may make us turn down the volume of our sets, but its sonic peaks are no higher than the regular programming preceding it. The commercial just hits those peaks more often. A radio station playing classical music may be broadcasting a signal with the same maximum strength as one playing hip-hop, but the classical station broadcast will hit that peak perhaps once every few minutes, while the hip-hop station’s signal may peak several times per second.

 

 

A loud environment in this sense is one with a limited dynamic range — highs that peak very high, and lows that aren’t much lower. For decades, musicians and engineers have employed dynamic range compression to make recordings sound fuller. Compression boosts the quieter parts and tamps down louder ones to create a narrower range. Historically, compression was usually applied during the mastering stage, the final steps through which a finished recording becomes a commercial release.

 

Link to article

 

 

[RunHomeSlow]

If it was only for new albums in the 20xx years, i wouldn’t mind. They should have demonstrate that even good dynamics on albums in the older days are crushed now with remasters and new boxset and even now with hires downloads, like all talking heads CDs were like at 12, 13, 14 and with their 24-96 Brick remastered box now like at 5, 6, 7 !! So sad. SHM-CD from Japan are pretty good at that too, bad DR.

[NOMBEDES]

What can a poor boy do?  (Rolling Stones)

 

Maybe we need an audio reproduction council, which could issue warning labels for media listing DR, etc.  Tax record companies to pay for it.  

[Samuel T Cogley]

The closest thing we ever had here to an advocate for absurd levels of dynamic range compression was Brian Lucey.  He rather predictably dismissed anyone complaining about the practice as out of touch and used the term "audiophile" pejoratively.  For me, it perfectly encapsulates the major record companies' contempt for any consumer feedback on the quality of their products.  Oh, and don't get me started on the audible watermarking that has pretty much destroyed the entire Deutsche Grammophon catalog (and much more) on streaming services.

 

HDTracks is allegedly catering to audiophiles while being silent but willing co-conspirators in the Loudness Wars.  And those brickwalled HDTracks files are not cheap.

 

What over 20 years of the Loudness Wars has taught me is that the major record labels don't really care about their back catalogs.  If they don't, neither do I.  I'm done buying remasters unless I can sample one before I buy.

[bluesman]

Unless I've missed it in there somewhere, Milner (along with those who have commented on his piece here and elsewhere) completely ignore both the original reason for this practice and the fascinating fact that it's now also done for different reasons.  Compression for increased loudness started as a way to maximize audible presence and perceived enjoyment of pop music on AM radio.  The FCC tightly controlled and monitored broadcast parameters, so stations couldn't increase their peak signal.  Compression by raising the bottom of the DR was the industry's solution.  

 

The practice later spread to commercials to make them grab your attention, and this spilled over from radio to TV.  In 2009, analog TV was officially dead and 5.1 became the audio format for all TV - the main audio track was front and center, but the engineers had 4 more to fill with energy, and fill they did.  This article by Michael Coyle explains what happened next. The stand-out sound bite is "Generally, we kept the center audio channel, which contained the announcer, hovering around 0VU. That left four additional channels we could load up with sound – and load ‘em up we did!   On one particular commercial for Porsche, the center channel announcer was so stomped on by an L3 mastering compressor, you could have shaved with the sharp edge of the waveform! I considered it my job to make the commercial mixes as loud as possible.  But as a viewer at home, sitting on the couch watching my big screen TV in surround sound, I had to lunge for the remote during commercial breaks because the loudness of the spots varied so greatly. And I wasn’t the only one to notice this".

 

This segment of NPR's All Things Considered is a great précis on the subject.  Robert Siegel interviews Bob Ludwig, who explains it very well.  Here's another interesting and informative piece that includes the thread connecting broadcast radio with streaming. This piece (seemingly unintentionally) puts the ends of the temporal spectrum together elegantly by connecting the origins in analog radio with the digital present and future:

• "[N]o discussion about audio loudness would be complete without a mention of the loudness wars, where music is “hyper-compressed” to make a track as loud as possible in order to make it stand out, or at least compete with other tracks in a playlist. With many music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music Radio now also employing loudness normalization protocols, radio is perhaps the final link in the chain to give the average consumer a consistent, loudness-normalized listening environment."

John Schorah ends this piece with the observation that "...perhaps the removal of the so-called 'loudness advantage' in radio [by which I assume he means internet radio] could finally see audio compression becoming a universal matter of taste rather than driving the commercial imperative to be 'louder than the previous song' ".  We live in hope! 

[Ralf11]

want a real war?

 

https://www.livescience.com/65519-loudest-underwater-sound.html