I'm probably not the only person that has noticed it. It's been sitting at the back of my mind and I haven't been able to really articulate it until now.

Trance alongside modern dance has aspired to look more and more like a brick type of waveform, so that just in case you only listen to a snippet of a track you will be forced to ask yourself, "What the hell is that noise?"

Using a limiters and compressors to make tracks louder is a funny thing; it makes things appear to sound louder, but they can also make a mix as a whole have much less clarity.

Some key points about clarity and masking:

-The louder a mix sounds, the harder it is to achieve clarity.
-The further away sounds are in regard to frequency and time, the easier it is to achieve clarity.
-The thicker the timbre, the greater the effect of masking
-A thin sound would be a sine wave(only one frequency[the fundamental]), and a thick sound would be noise(every frequency represented)
-When a sound's volume increases, it's masking effect in terms of the width of frequencies it affects also grows
-Sounds do not have to be playing simultaneously to mask each other(premasking and postmasking)

Why does clarity get reduced when you compress and limit a track to make it sound louder?

Let's take a simple closed hihat as an example. Typically it'll look like a pointy peak that swoops down. So you have a sound that is loud for a very short time, and then drops down in volume very quickly. But if you apply a limiter to it, it won't look like a pointy anymore, it'll look more like a plateau. So now it sounds louder, which also means it sounds better for the moment. At this point, the hihat is spending more time at it's peak level. It sounds louder and it is louder, but now that loudness has a much higher potential to mask other sounds. Take this idea of masking and apply to everything in the mix. Everything that has been made louder is now a much more effective masker.

I stumbled across an article by Bob Katz that is sobering concerning the use of a compressor and limiter. I took the liberty of bolding what I thought was especially important.

quote:

COMPRESSION: Yes, Compression can certainly affect the apparent "power" of music, and I have no objections to the use of compression to affect material's "sound"---that's all to taste. Just (in my not so humble opinion), please do yourself and your clients and the future of the audio world a favor by carefully comparing the compressed versus the bypassed version at equal apparent loudness. Adjust the makeup gain of the compressor so that in bypass, the apparent loudness is the same. Now listen again... is there really a subjective improvement? At least 5 times out of 10 you will be very sobered to realize that what you had thought was an improvement in "power" or "punch" was really just a loudness difference, and at least 2-3 times out of 10 you will also be sobered to realize that what you thought was an improvement was actually a degradation, at least to some aspects of a sound. I don't often find even the best multiband compression to be totally a win-win situation, and yes, I use it, but I'm much too honest with myself to think it's always a win-win situation. LIMITING: 2 to 3 dB of digital limiting (carefully designed as a sample-accurate, razor-sharp limiter, not a "fast compressor") does nothing but raise the apparent loudness while also subtlely or seriously screwing up the transient response, depth, imaging, or tonal characteristics of the music. Please, do the world a favor. Next time you want to limit to impress yourself, try this test: Try 1 dB of limiting, thus raising the gain by 1 dB. Now, A/B compare the limited versus the unlimited version. First impression: Oh boy! The limited version sounds more impressive, more powerful, doesn't it? Second impression: Well, here's a very sobering thought. While comparing the limited versus the unlimited version, move your volume control up when you bypass the limiter and back down when limiting is in, by that same exact 1 dB. Hmmmm.... what did the limiter do, exactly? Did it really make your material sound more powerful, or did it just make it sound hotter (louder)? And in the process of making it louder, what did it do to the sound? Better, or is it really worse? When that fact sinks in, then it might be possible to extrapolate to: if the client is there, and you want to impress him with what you've done, instead of patching in a limiter, why not just turn the volume up and say, "OK, here's the mastered version. Gee, doesn't that sound better?" It certainly would be no more dishonest than just patching in the limiter without giving him the attendant lecture about the possible negatives of what it may do to the sound. When was the last time you did mention to your client what limiting actually does? And whether it accomplishes anything, even in a 6 CD carousel player. For every 6 CDs you pick to go with your new CD, I can pick 6 others that are either louder or softer.

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Originally posted by dj_alfi change your avatar for fucks sake.