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The Loudness War

Came across this today - pretty cool

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

cheerz!

I saw this a while back, and I agree completely.. I find that when I'm happy with how one of my mixes sound - I realize it's nowhere near as loud as most tracks out there.

Too bad it has come to this.

just looks to me like they didn't record the drums right from the get go :P

but yeah, loudness isn't going away, especially in our field. everything is maximized and it won't go away because the perception from mixing a loud track into a quieter track would kill a dance floor.

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0729 but yeah, loudness isn't going away, especially in our field. everything is maximized and it won't go away because the perception from mixing a loud track into a quieter track would kill a dance floor.

Shame that DJs can't be relied upon to use those things called "gain knobs."

Ask not what you can do to dynmaics, but what they can do for you.. ;-)

Man this is soooooooooooooo true. Definitely need to ease up on the volume.

quote:

Originally posted by Diginerd Ask not what you can do to dynmaics, but what they can do for you.. ;-)

In a crazy way this could be construed as being actually true.

If you peak at 0dB you have the most dynamic range. It makes no sense to record with peak level anything significantly less than that because you have less dynamic range, and the listener can solve that problem by turning the volume down on their hifi.

also, if you mixdown a track and it is extremely quiet compared to professional releases then you technically fucked up the mixdown or at the very least wasted a load of headroom. There is a margin where professional releases will have a loudness maximiser close to or at the end of the signal chain for the final push in RMS peak level. But if you are miles off, then thats an indicator that you should remix your track and have another stab.

Its the compressor thing that bothers people and I just don't get that. There is almost no such thing as overcompression or too much compression in professionally released music.

To hear overcompression you would have to get your own compressor and run a tune through it with 10:1 ratio and -60dB threshold, normalised to 0dB at the output. That is indescriminate, overbearing compression. I have never heard a professionally released tune that approached anywhere near that degree - it would be painful to listen to.

So when people point to that typical wave editor window showing a full stereo track looking like 2 blue brick walls as evidence of a loudness war, I am reminded of that scene in Amadeus when Mozart is told that one of his peices has 'too many notes'. To which he replies perplexedly 'but the peice neither has too many nor too few notes - it has exactly the number of notes that are required'.

People cite Oasis - 'Definitely Maybe' as an example of the Loudness War in application. But really - when you listen to Oasis what do you expect? Noel Gallagher divulges on the video documentary 'There we were, now here we are' that he used to just turn everything up to 10 on his amp because that was no messing around.

How do you expect an Oasis record to be mixed? peak level normalised to 3 decibels below zero, no loudness maximisation and all the meters green? Hah! Oasis is loud and brash and rude (though for different reasons now compared to then). 'Definitely Maybe' for it to be true to the spirit of the people that created it, needed to be loud and brash and rude. And it took something like 10 engineers before they got a mixdown they were happy with. And that engineer tried to brickwall every track and confessed as much on the same fucking documentary.

Its an issue of appropriateness and inappropriateness. Nothing else. So if people think its inappropriate - especially on the engineering front in a field which, lets be honest, always chooses what sounds subjectively better over what is mathematically correct - the only correct answer is this:

Shut up and write your own damn music to your own arbitrary standard of excellence, mixeddown to 3 decibels below zero and every meter in the green. Or to whatever arbitrary standard one feels is appropriate and right about music production that modern popular music 'lacks'.

I'd respect that if not agree with the fact that it proves nothing - only that its an example of different strokes.

I suppose the same reasoning could be used to suggest that Pollock used 'too much paint' or Rothko didn't use 'enough colours' or that Faulkner didn't use 'enough punctuation' but there you go.

There are good examples of brickwalled music, good examples of highly dynamic music. And bad examples of each as well, naturally.

Trance would sound quite different if it didn't have such a prominent kick (well, duh!). If that was a chunk quieter we could all push our songs up heaps more, to Rock levels. The kick would sound tiny but the tracks would be hot as can be.

I don't really listen to modern rock so I can't really comment on the loudness wars. I don't mind some heavy music from time to time. But some of it, like Static X, which sounds like it could be really good, is crazy brickwalled and I can only listen to half a track. From the first note, through the verse, the chorus, all of it, it's right in your face and never backs down for a second. There's no tension, no "man, they're really coming at me here in this bit", none of that at all. They're an example I can think of where they could've knocked 3 to 5 dbs off the average RMS and it'd sound heaps better.

This is prolly why the older trance music has a different feeling to it.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Shame that DJs can't be relied upon to use those things called "gain knobs."

Oh, they can use 'em alright - by turning them all the way to max the second they start their sets. DJs are willing participants in the war, always wanting their sets to be the loudest of the night.

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0729 just looks to me like they didn't record the drums right from the get go :P

how were those drums incorrectly recorded?

quote:

Originally posted by meDina how were those drums incorrectly recorded?

its tough to say but it looks as if the mic was too close on the snare hit, registering it way higher in dynamics than most snares are recorded. go look at your sample cds of any acoustic snares and you won't see that spike on the initial strike.

probably on purpose but i never see it on any of my cds

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0729 its tough to say but it looks as if the mic was too close on the snare hit, registering it way higher in dynamics than most snares are recorded. go look at your sample cds of any acoustic snares and you won't see that spike on the initial strike. probably on purpose but i never see it on any of my cds

everytime i ever recorded a snare drum it generally looked like that before compression

quote:

Originally posted by meDina everytime i ever recorded a snare drum it generally looked like that before compression

could be, i'm not working with a live drum kit so i dunno

quote:

Originally posted by meDina everytime i ever recorded a snare drum it generally looked like that before compression

Thats right. Obviously the extent of it depends on how hard the drummer twats the snare and how much rim said drummer takes with it. The initial spike will have a very high dynamic range in a very short space of time (a few milliseconds at most). If its particularly great compared to the decay phase of the snare, then theres a very good chance it hasnt been compressed - at least not to any meaningful degree.

Another telltale sign that the output from your drum mics hasn't been compressed is if you open the drumtrack in a wave editor. If all the transient peaks are inconsistant then it probably hasn't been compressed.

I only figured out how essential it was to compress your drumtracks when I first mic'ed a kit. And the drummer wasn't hitting anything with regular velocity so 1 snare hit might on occassion be way louder than the one that follows it. With a bit of smart compression though, you can bring all the peaks in line so you don't get that sudden disparity in volume where one snare hit is significantly louder than any other.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut Oh, they can use 'em alright - by turning them all the way to max the second they start their sets. DJs are willing participants in the war, always wanting their sets to be the loudest of the night.

Thats why some of the new mixers have digital volume locks..you have to enter the correct password to increase the volume. So now the engineer can set the max volume for the night. One guy I worked with (we set up sound and lighting for raves) had his mixers soldered and taped so the DJ's couldn't crank it higher.

quote:

Originally posted by Limit Thats why some of the new mixers have digital volume locks..you have to enter the correct password to increase the volume. So now the engineer can set the max volume for the night. One guy I worked with (we set up sound and lighting for raves) had his mixers soldered and taped so the DJ's couldn't crank it higher.

haha thats funny, but genious.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative How do you expect an Oasis record to be mixed? peak level normalised to 3 decibels below zero, no loudness maximisation and all the meters green? Hah! Oasis is loud and brash and rude (though for different reasons now compared to then). 'Definitely Maybe' for it to be true to the spirit of the people that created it, needed to be loud and brash and rude. And it took something like 10 engineers before they got a mixdown they were happy with. And that engineer tried to brickwall every track and confessed as much on the same fucking documentary. Its an issue of appropriateness and inappropriateness. Nothing else.

This is totally true. I think that full-on EDM and screaming metal/rock really profit from this "loudness war". Stuff like that must be loud and proud IMO.
It is true however that some mastering engineers think that if it worked for club music, it works for any style, which is simply a mistake... No one really needs ambient music or a Pop ballad totally distorted and pushed to the limit.

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