Loudness war
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The trend of increasing loudness as shown by waveform images of "Something" by The Beatles mastered on CD four times since 1983.The loudness war, also referred to as the loudness race, is a publicized criticism of the recording industry's practice of digitally mastering albums with progressively increasing levels of loudness and reduced dynamic range.
The phenomenon developed as the result of the widespread adoption of the compact disc digital music format. The recording process of early CD releases differed from prior analog methods that had no set ratio of minimum to maximum level of perceived loudness. Dynamic range was dictated by the playback limitations of analog equipment, including vinyl record and cassette players. With the advent of CDs, music was encoded to a digital format with a clearly defined 16 bit dynamic range, equal roughly to 96 dB. Since most musical performances have a smaller dynamic range than that afforded by CDs, their recordings rarely approached the maximum possible levels. The loudest parts of a musical performance, the peak levels, serve to contrast with quieter passages which determine the initial volume setting chosen by the listener. With time, members of the music industry sought to promote their recordings by amplifying the average volume of a performance to fit a greater portion of the overall dynamic range of CDs. This method set recordings apart by offering listeners a subjectively "louder" listening experience.[1]
However, once the maximum amplitude of a CD is reached, the perception of loudness can be increased only by a combination of dynamic range compression and make-up gain[citation needed]. This is achieved by applying an increasingly high ratio of compression to the dynamic range of the recording and then increasing the gain of the recording until the peaks have reached maximum. Extreme uses of dynamic range compression can introduce audible distortion or clipping to the waveform of the recording. Modern albums that utilize dynamic range compression therefore sacrifice the quality of musical reproduction in favor of the illusion of loudness. The competitive escalation of volume has led music fans and members of the musical press to refer to the affected albums as victims of a "loudness war".
[edit] Introduction
[edit] Definition
When comparing two recordings with different levels, it is likely that the louder one will be regarded as sounding better.[2] This can be attributed to the way the human ear responds to different sound pressure levels: our ability to respond to sound frequencies changes according to differences in sound pressure level, or SPL; the more the SPL increases,[3] the greater the amount of low and high frequency content we perceive.[4] Music with higher levels is easily heard and understood in noisy environments such as a car, train, or busy city street. It can, on lower quality systems, also sound better because of a higher signal to noise ratio. Because of competition for listeners between radio stations and competition for clients between recording studios, this results in a volume "arms race".[5] Furthermore, artists and A&R people are usually inclined to request that their mastered music releases match the loudness level of other current contemporary music releases of similar genres.[1]
[edit] Effect
Waveform image of a snare drum transient from a 1990 audio recording
Clipping resulting from above waveform boosted by 9dB to achieve average volume level of recent popular music
Waveform processed with distortion plugin and boosted by 9dB to achieve average volume level of recent popular music
Waveform processed with a limiter plugin and boosted by 9dB to achieve average volume level of recent popular music
The practice of increasing music release's loudness to be louder than competing releases can have two effects. Since there is a maximum loudness level available to recording (as opposed to playback, in which the loudness is limited by the playback speakers and amplifiers), boosting the overall loudness of a song or track eventually creates a piece that is maximally and uniformly loud from beginning to end. This creates music with a small dynamic range (i.e., little difference between loud and quiet sections), rendering it fatiguing and robbing it of emotional power, according to Robert Levine of Rolling Stone.[6]
The other possible effect is distortion. In the digital realm, this is usually referred to as clipping. Digital media cannot output signals higher than digital full scale (0 dBFS), so whenever the peak of a signal is pushed past this point, it results in the wave form becoming clipped. When this occurs, it can sometimes produce an audible click. However, certain sounds like drum hits will reach their peak for only a very short time, and if that peak is much louder than the rest of the signal, this click will be heard. In many cases, the peaks of drum hits are clipped but are not noticeable to the casual listener. However, if clipping occurs too much in a recording, it can make the recording sound distorted, a sound which some listeners find harsh and fatiguing to listen to. How much is too much is a matter of taste, but most pop and rock releases, and many jazz, have some amount of digital clipping.
Analog media, on the other hand, dynamically compress the signal as it exceeds its saturation point. Such distortion can be utilized in the digital realm as well, either by transferring audio processed with tape or valve saturation to a digital recording medium, or by using computer software to emulate the effect (this process is usually referred to as "saturation"). Analog distortion, real or emulated, results in harmonics that can appear to the listener as a slight "crackle" or "fuzz" within the sound. The effect can vary depending on the sound itself, as well as the amount and kind of distortion used. Because analog distortion does not flatline to the extent that digital clipping does, the results are less harsh-sounding and can result in a desirable warmth to the recording, at the cost of slightly less transient response. The amount of distortion increases the more a signal is overdriven, ranging from transparent to highly audible, and just like digital clipping, certain instruments or musical arrangements can better mask distortion than others[citation needed].
In other cases, compression or limiting is used. While the resulting distortion is lessened from the final product this way, it has the side effect of significantly reducing transient response (most often heard as lessened drum impact), and, when taken to severe levels, can reduce the natural dynamics of other instruments within the recording. Loudness increasing techniques, however, do not always affect macrodynamics (the difference in volume between sections of a song) if used with care and detail[citation needed]. Multi-band compression is commonly used to make a mix more uniform and easier to balance, more compatible with low-end equipment, or to achieve a certain sound or artistic effect[citation needed].
Dynamic range or broadcast-style compression, on the other hand, will be applied to the music to make the volume in different song sections more uniform.[6] This can make the recording more suitable for background listening or noisy environments but can also reduce the dynamic expressiveness of the song as a whole. Applied in the extreme, however, very aggressive compression or automatic gain control can cause "pumping" and "breathing" artifacts as the gain changes rapidly. In FM stereo broadcasting, so-called composite clippers have also been employed that provide a hard limit to the FM stereo composite signal.[7] The first versions of these actually clipped the entire stereo composite signal, which negatively affected the stereo pilot signal in violation of FCC regulations. Subsequent versions clipped the composite signal before the addition of the stereo pilot.[8]
[edit] History
The practice of focusing on loudness in mastering can be traced back to the introduction of the compact disc itself but also existed to some extent when vinyl was the primary released recording medium and when 7" singles were played on jukebox machines in clubs and bars. Jukeboxes were often set to a pre-determined level by the bar owner, yet any record that was mastered "hotter" than the others before or after it would gain the attention of the crowd. The song would stand out. Also many record companies would print compilation records, and when artists and producers found their song was quieter than others on the compilation, they would insist that their song be remastered to be competitive. Also, many Motown records pushed the limits of how loud records could be made, and record labels there were "notorious for cutting some of the hottest 45s in the industry."[1] However, because of the limitations of the vinyl format, loudness and compression on a released recording were restricted in order to make the physical medium playable—restrictions which do not exist on digital media such as CDs—and as a result, increasing loudness levels never reached the significance that they have in the CD era.[9] In addition, modern computer-based digital audio effects processing allows mastering engineers to have greater control over the loudness of a song; for example, it gives them the ability to use a "brick wall" limiter which limits the volume level of an audio signal with no delay (hardware equivalents have a short delay caused by processing time).[2]
The stages of the CDs loudness increase are often split over the two-and-a-half decades of the medium's existence. Since CDs were not the primary medium for popular music until the tail end of the 1980s, there was little motivation for competitive loudness practices then. CD players were also very expensive and thus commonly exclusive to high-end systems that would show the shortcomings of higher recording levels.
As a result, the common practice of mastering music involved matching the highest peak of a recording at, or close to, digital full scale, and referring to digital levels along the lines of more familiar analog VU meters. When using VU meters, a certain point (usually -14 dBFS, or about 20% of the disc's amplitude on a linear scale) was used in the same way as the saturation point (signified as 0 dB) of analog recording, with several dB of the CD's recording level reserved for amplitude exceeding the saturation point (often referred to as the "red zone", signified by a red bar in the meter display), because digital media cannot exceed 0 dB. The average level of the average rock song during most of the decade was around -18 dBFS[citation needed].
At the turn of the decade, CDs with music louder than this level began to surface, and CD volumes became more and more likely to exceed the digital limit as long as such amplification would not involve clipping more than approximately two to four digital samples, resulting in recordings where the peaks on an average rock or beat-heavy pop CD hovered near (usually in the range of -3 dB) 0 dB but only occasionally reached it. The Guns N' Roses album Appetite for Destruction from 1987 is an early example of this, with levels averaging -15 dB for all the tracks.[10]
In the early 1990s, some mastering engineers decided to take this a step further and treat the music's levels exactly as they would the levels of an analog tape and equate digital full scale with the analog saturation point, with the recording just loud enough so that each (or almost every) beat would peak at or close to 0 dBFS. Though there were some early cases (such as Metallica's Black Album in 1991), albums mastered in this fashion generally did not appear until 1992. Dirt by Alice In Chains and Faith No More's Angel Dust are some examples from this year. The loudness of releases during this period varied greatly depending on the philosophies of the engineer and others involved in the mastering process. This style of "hot" mastering became commonplace in 1994, though exceptions, such as the album Superunknown by Soundgarden from the same year, still existed. The most common loudness for a rock release in terms of average power was around -12 dBFS. Overall, most rock and pop music released in the 1990s followed this method to a certain extent[citation needed].
The concept of making music releases "hotter" began to appeal to people within the industry, in part because of how noticeably louder releases had become and also in part to the notion that customers preferred louder sounding CDs.[citation needed] Engineers, musicians and labels each developed their own ideas of how CDs could be made louder[citation needed]. In 1994, the digital brickwall limiter with look-ahead (to pull down peak levels before they happened) was first mass-produced. While the increase in CD loudness was gradual throughout the 1990s, some opted to push the format to the limit, such as on Oasis's widely popular album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, which averaged -8 dBFS on many of its tracks[10]—a rare occurrence, especially in the year it was released (1995). In 1997, Iggy Pop assisted in the remix and remaster of the 1973 album Raw Power by his former band The Stooges, creating an album that, to this day, is arguably the loudest rock CD ever recorded. It has an average of -4 dBFS in places,[10] which is rare even by today's standards[citation needed], though getting more and more common.
The standards of loudness would reach their limit in the 2000s. -10 dB had been the standard for the past several years, but this was often pushed to -9 dB. However, -6 to -5 dBFS is common in rock, contemporary R&B, pop, and hip hop music. Quieter exceptions to today's standards are rare. The latest releases as of 2008 have reached average levels as high as -3 dBFS, such as Angels & Airwaves' I-Empire, which yields almost 30 times the loudness of a THX standard recording (-20 dBFS).
Loud mastering practices caught media attention in 2008 with the release of Metallica's Death Magnetic album. The CD version of the recording has a high average loudness that pushes peaks beyond the point of digital clipping, resulting in distortion. These findings were reported by customers and music industry professionals. These findings were later covered in multiple international publications, including The Rolling Stone[11] The Wall Street Journal,[12] BBC Radio,[13] Wired[14] and The Guardian.[15] Ted Jensen, a mastering engineer involved in the Death Magnetic recordings, offered recalcitrant commentary that criticized the approach employed during the production process.[16] An online petition calling for the album to be remixed or remastered[17] was endorsed by over 20,000 people. (over 20000 as of 13 June 2009). A version of the release without dynamic range compression was included in the downloadable content for Guitar Hero III.[18]
[edit] Criticism
This practice has been condemned by several recording industry professionals including Alan Parsons, Geoff Emerick[19][20] (noted for his work with The Beatles from Revolver to Abbey Road), and mastering engineers Doug Sax,[1] Steve Hoffman, and many others, including music audiophiles and hi-fi enthusiasts. Musician Bob Dylan has also condemned the practice, saying, "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like—static."[20][9]
Jay Graydon puts it this way:
Do you want it louder? You've got a volume control, don'tcha? Did somebody think that people would no longer want to reach over to their volume control to turn it up? If you want it louder you turn it up. If you want it quieter you turn it down. If you buss compress everything, when the kick drum hits it's sucking back everything from the mix. I don't want to hear stuff pump. I want my dynamics intact that I recorded. I don't want everything to be one dynamic.[21]
When music is broadcast by a radio station, the station will apply its own signal processing, which further reduces the dynamic range of the broadcast material to closely match levels of absolute amplitude, regardless of the original record loudness.[22]
Opponents have also called for immediate changes in the music industry regarding the level of loudness. In August 2006, the vice-president of A&R for One Haven Music, a Sony Music company, in an open letter decrying the loudness war, claimed that mastering engineers are being forced against their will or are preemptively making releases louder in order to get the attention of industry heads.[9] Some bands are being petitioned by the public to re-release their music with less distortion.[20]
Many bands have their records made louder against their will.[citation needed] Several organizations have been founded to attempt to put the choice back in the hands of the bands.[citation needed]
In a comment on the loudness war, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree mentioned how he considered placing a message on record sleeves that reads as follows: "Please note that this record may not be mastered as loudly as some of the other records in your collection. This is in order to retain the dynamic range and subtlety of the music. Please, use your volume knob." Subsequent releases Fear of a Blank Planet and Nil Recurring are mastered at even lower levels, preserving more of their original dynamic range.
The nonprofit organization Turn Me Up! was created by Charles Dye, John Ralston and Allen Wagner to certify albums that contain a suitable level of dynamic range.[23] and encourage the sale of quieter records by placing a "Turn Me Up!" sticker on albums that have a larger dynamic range.[24] The group has not yet arrived at an objective method for determining what will be certified.[25]
In January 2009, the Pleasurize Music Foundation was launched to promote high fidelity in music by defining the quality level of recordings. The group offers an offline software application for the PC which determines the average dynamic range of a song, in integers. A rating of DR4 would indicate a distorted recording with a dynamic range of only 4 dB, and a rating of DR14 would indicate a pleasantly listenable and natural recording with 14 dB of dynamic range. One of the goals of the organization is to have the DR tag visible on all new CD releases, and the ones with less than 14 dB of dynamic range would be released with their overall level turned down until their average level is the same as an album rated at DR14.[26]
Hearing experts, such as a hearing researcher at House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, are also concerned that the loudness of new albums could possibly harm listeners' hearing, particularly that of children.[24]
A 2-minute YouTube video addressing this issue by audio engineer Matt Mayfield has been referenced by The Wall Street Journal[27] and The Chicago Tribune.[28]
[edit] Examples of "loud" albums
Some of the albums that have been criticized for their sound quality include the following:
Artist Album Comments
Metallica Death Magnetic [29]
Christina Aguilera Back to Basics [9]
Lily Allen Alright, Still [30]
Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not [10]
The Flaming Lips At War with the Mystics Won Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical[10]
Miranda Lambert Revolution [31][32]
Los Lonely Boys Sacred [9]
Paul McCartney Memory Almost Full [23]
Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf [10]
Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication [9][10]
Rush Vapor Trails [33]
Alice in Chains Black Gives Way to Blue [34]
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