Loudness race or loudness war

[Peter]

A topic for gathering loudness race articles/sites/...

http://shattered-room.net/index.php?topic=965.msg19993#msg19993
http://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/
http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/ = http://dynamicrange.de/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122228767729272339.html?mod=todays_us_page_one <- very good read
http://www.turnmeup.org/

[erik]

Thanks Peter, I will be doing some reading there. Hadn't really noticed it with Rush, but some time ago I heard Metallica's Death Magnetic at a friend's house who has a really good sound system and it sounded plain awful.

[Peter]

Old topic, but sadly enough, this is still common practice, as can be seen on this website:

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/
they've got a database on the dynamic range of albums...

wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[Peter]

For those who care: I came back to this topic because of Alter Bridge's "Fortress". This album is basically dead, dynamics-wise. I really like the music, but listeining to the album for more than 20mins in a row simply makes me wan to turn it off, because it gets on my nerves. This in turn makes me totally angry, about the dumbheads in the studios who, some 25 years ago, found out that cranking up every channel in the mix to 0db makes music sound like super on cheap stereos... which then became how albums are mixed. Damn it. Damn the guy who invented the dynamic compressor.

[Peter]

Even Clive's technicians do it :/ jUst search for ARENA on the database I posted earlier.

http://dynamicrangeday.co.uk/about/


Oh, and all you record producers out there, just give this article a good and thorough read. Please.

"Even heavy metal fans Complain That Today's Music Is Too Loud!!!" : http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122228767729272339

[maddox]

Personally I don't consider it as too loud.
Except for heavy doom/thrash/black metal etc. that is.

With the techniques they use nowadays you can discover so much more in the music.
There are several albums that I listen to where you can hear new things every time you listen to it.

In the 'old days' you could hear the band and that's it, basically.

[Peter]

Hey maddie,

this topic is seriously old, but it still bothers me, it's also one of the reasons I listen to very little music nowadays.

To what you wrote:
It's not about "what you consider", no offense here. It's about facts. The thing you said about the "old days" is nothing more than a feeling, maybe also driven by the factor that in the pre 90s or 80s not a gazillion of tracks were used, but only a single-digit.

Take the 90125 album by Yes, for example. I own one of the originals. It's excellently mixed.
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=yes&album=90125

Just give it a few spins, you will discover new things every time