Good article about the 'loudness' war.

[Wolfeman]

Thought you guys might like to read this, I found the comments interesting. It's an article from the first issue of the new 'M Music & Musicians' magazine.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2033066/loudness_war.zip

I couldn't find a website for the magazine so I had to do a shitty scan of the pages, sorry.

 

[ahjteam]

first google result for "M Music & Musicians":

http://www.mmusicmag.com/

 

[Wolfeman]

first google result for "M Music & Musicians":

http://www.mmusicmag.com/

Lol no shit when I searched it came up with some womens magazine.

 

[Plankis]

I read it. Kinda good, nothing really new to me though. Except the thing about Spotify and their normalizer. It surely doesn't just lower the loudness, if it hasn't been upgraded since I turned it off?

 

[Kazrog]

Seems interesting, but what you're linking to is most likely copyrighted. Might want to take this down ASAP...

 

[Wolfeman]

Seems interesting, but what you're linking to is most likely copyrighted. Might want to take this down ASAP...

They were giving the first issue out for free, I don't think they will mind.

 

[-Noodles-]

Plus, he's linking to the official source - and it IS for educational purposes.

 

[AeternusEternus]

Haha nobody understands copyright

 

[Harry Hughes]

People keep talking about this whole "fatiguing on the ear" thing but personally , I don't get this fatigue even with most modern records and I know a lot of people don't get this problem either.
There are some exceptions, like the Hypocrisy's "Virus" album, Death Magnetic etc that truly sound horrible and really give me a headache.
Really, if it's not clipping, I couldn't give two fucks if it's "loud" or not. As long as it sounds good, that's what matters IMO.

 

[Morgan C]

People keep talking about this whole "fatiguing on the ear" thing but personally , I don't get this fatigue even with most modern records and I know a lot of people don't get this problem either.
There are some exceptions, like the Hypocrisy's "Virus" album, Death Magnetic etc that truly sound horrible and really give me a headache.
Really, if it's not clipping, I couldn't give two fucks if it's "loud" or not. As long as it sounds good, that's what matters IMO.

I definitely hear it on some albums (eg. latest Alice in Chains).. but honestly pushing to about -11RMS sounds pretty good, even -10 can sound good. Past there stuff usually starts sounding bad and crushed and there's audible clipping.

The one thing now is that everyone knows about the 'Loudness Wars' from all this media coverage, and you see people complaining who clearly have no idea what they are talking about.
I saw one guy on a forum talking about an album where the bass was kinda boomy on certain notes (inherent in bass guitars for anyone who's recorded one, this guy obviously hadn't), and he said
"man the bass is terrible, so boomy. It sounds like it was compressed way too much in mixing and they had to fix it in mastering." What the FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

And don't even get me started on the people who can't differentiate between mp3 and dynamic compression. Or the people that look at the graphics instead of listening (and don't even understand what they're looking at). I saw some post attacking one of Andy's mixes saying "Look man its like -4db RMS wtf are you doing to your mixes?".. Andy pretty much completely shut him down which was awesome.

 

[John_C]

As long as it sounds good, that's what matters IMO.

An album might still sound good ridiculously compressed, but in general it could sound so much better if it wasn't

 

[John_C]

I saw some post attacking one of Andy's mixes saying "Look man its like -4db RMS wtf are you doing to your mixes?".. Andy pretty much completely shut him down which was awesome.

I'm pretty certain that was me
don't think it was his mix, but i do remember posting about a zoomed out waveform saying it looked like it was clipping and andy posted saying that there was no way to tell when something's that zoomed out. My bad for not engaging brain before posting

 

[Harry Hughes]

An album might still sound good ridiculously compressed, but in general it could sound so much better if it wasn't

In general meaning what?
With most metal I listen to (obviously other music than metal exists, but I say metal because it's what I like most and listen to most), I like the fact it's fairly squashed. I don't want a super dynamic Planetary Duality or the entire album of The Way of All Flesh to be ultra dynamic.

 

[John_C]

In general meaning what?
With most metal I listen to (obviously other music than metal exists, but I say metal because it's what I like most and listen to most), I like the fact it's fairly squashed. I don't want a super dynamic Planetary Duality or the entire album of The Way of All Flesh to be ultra dynamic.

the lack of difference between loud and soft doesn't really bother me with metal. The problem is the complete crushing of transients so everything just becomes a wash of noise as opposed to having real punch. Neither planetary duality or the way of flesh suffer too greatly from overcompressing. The way of all flesh in fact sounds very natural to me.

edit: planetary duality has nasty cymbal pumping from the kick, but that could easily be on the drum bus, not the master

 

[MetalJonesy]

i'll be sure to have a god read of this later on, cheers for linking it up!

 

[kev]

nice article, largely the same old same old of course!