was BOC: Spectres, now OFF: Loudness wars

[Keith Henderson]

Paul said...

    >I read an article recently that complained about the dire quality of 
contemporary mastered CDs. Mastering engineers put the blame on 
record companies (and even artists) pressuring them into mastering 
CDs to sound "loud." Basically, this meant destroying the dynamics 
of the original recording and compressing it severely to raise the 
levels. Not only did this ruin the sound quality, but it also ruined 
the listening experience by making the recording very tiring on the 
ears.

Yeah, I've heard about these so-called "loudness wars" for years, but figured it was probably mostly hype, as I couldn't remember much of a difference in recording level between one CD and the next.  And I don't know that my ears are sensitive enough to actually hear "clipping" in all but the most extreme cases.  And anyway, I thought, the problem couldn't possibly persist past a certain point, because at some level it would simply get ridiculous and nothing could possibly go "one higher" except perhaps Nigel's amp.  But recently, I've come to the conclusion that something is definitely up, as the Wolfmother CD is WAY WAY loud, and that's a band obviously supported by a big-money marketing deal and so the power of this "loundess" effect may well have been used intentionally.  (Whereas our favorite indie-type bands are probably semi-immune from the peer pressue?)
   
  So now I *am* finding myself having to go change the volume setting on my stereo when the disc switches and I go from a recent one to a 1980's era disc, and so I'm starting to believe that the major record companies are finding one more way to ruin music for all of us.  Although now that CDs will start dying off in favor of online music (and louder recording volume of MP3s probably won't be an advantage once they're pumping it directly into people's brains via ear-buds), maybe the practice will become anachronistic in short order.  (Plus, the compression limitation of MP3/online music would supercede the "loudness-compression" wouldn't it?)
   
  Grakkl

  
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