I think music has changed, and accesability is a contributing factor.

As said before, the "good EDM of years ago" was made only by serious people because it took a huge investment (both time, expertise and money) to make tracks, for little or no reward - just to be in the scene or do it for the love of it, and hence an abundance of quality of production that is more difficult to find in a sea of very average tracks.

I may be in the minority, but I've always thought Armin et al sound was so fake, concentrated on a theme too heavily (for commercial reasons), and in many respects, just plain formulaic.

However, one thing that has changed very heavily is the types of PA systems used for club/edm events.....namely the use of line arrays, rather than traditional stacks.

Every wannabe start up PA manufacturer now has a line array system as their star product, and while they may be fine for rock, jazz or classical I've never heard one I really liked (by itself) or compared to the sound of a well stacked system, be it outdoor or in a venue.

Think about it - all the early raves/clubs/events used to use nearly exclusively stacks and now when you even go to a medium size club they've line arrays. Why? becuase they're easier to setup, smaller and are better for placement for large crowds (i.e. less speakers for more reach). Yes, I think they have their place and the funktion1 line array is very close to amazing but I still think you need traditional reinforcement as well.

Combine this with a general lessening in quality of composition and production, then play it out as an mp3...well you get the point.

quote:

Originally posted by Tarpex That's mostly pissing against the wind, compression itself is a powerful sound level control tool, which normalizes the dynamics against a set level, which is actually needed in EDM to bang properly in clubs. Of course it sounds retarded with classical, jazz, or most other real instrument oriented genres, but in EDM, where huge dynamic ranges would leave people wandering "wtf" on the dancefloors when they'd hear massive differences in volume on each sound, that's the only option.

Well, I'm not against all compression, I'm against the (IMO) ludicrous overuse of it in a lot of today's dance music. There were plenty of tracks that "banged properly" in the 1980s and 1990s, but the "loudness war" wasn't fully on yet, so they still had some breathing room.

quote:

You're confusing compression with hard-ducking (or sidechaining, though it's not the proper expression for this case) of everything against the kick, and poor limiting jobs, which are two totally different worlds.

No, I am not. I'm talking about tracks that are almost totally flat in level and sound ear-splittingly noisy because none of the elements have any breathing room. "Limiting" is simply a specific type of compression btw.

And again, I'm not against all compression, just the current use of it to get this ear-splitting "maxed-out" sound in dance music.

quote:

Originally posted by Tarpex That's mostly pissing against the wind, compression itself is a powerful sound level control tool, which normalizes the dynamics against a set level, which is actually needed in EDM to bang properly in clubs.

As Mr JBJ has already said, songs used to bang excellently in the mid 90s. They didn't have basses which fluctuated volume-wise, it wasn't a case of the songs sounding uneven/fragile. They used compression and limiting, but generally only for musical means.

Absolutely, today a lot of compression and limiting is also done for musical means. But it's fair to say that these days there is a lot more usage of these tools for the sake of purely driving the level up as high as possible before it distorts.

That's fine if you're wearing in-ear headphones at the gym trying to compete with the gym's music. But it's not needed for the songs to "bang properly in clubs".

quote:

Originally posted by david.michael I thought the sound at DEMF this year was pretty darn good.

You were there? Too bad I didn't know, I still haven't met any of the regs on the production forum.

___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

I hear you there, it's just the way stuff works these days.
The grand irony of the loudness war is, that highly overpumped tracks have to be played at a lower volume than the rest, but there's only so much we can do about it!
Industry standard has shifted towards huge rms power, and indeed derail, most of the compression tools nowadays are used to provide as high volume levels as possible.

We could discuss in depth as to what the widespread of mp3 has done to further fuel the issue, and get it to the stage we are today, but it'd be kinda pointless, wouldn't it?

I like listening to 80's music that was well engineered and I agree, it sounds good. But I also enjoy listening today's material that's been carefully mastered to 0 db, and when done right, it sounds great too. Of course just slapping an L2 on the master and taking the threshold slider way down doesn't account as careful mastering, but there's some really good music, that's still heavily limited, but sounds good, we have to agree on that.
Besides, if EDM was such crap to listen in clubs, they'd be empty, wouldn't they?

___________________
www.myspace.com/retrackd

quote:

Originally posted by Tarpex I like listening to 80's music that was well engineered and I agree, it sounds good. But I also enjoy listening today's material that's been carefully mastered to 0 db, and when done right, it sounds great too.

I think the highly compressed stuff can still sound good, of course, it can still have great synth sounds, melodies, or effects, but it doesn't take long before I get tired of listening to it simply because it's so "noisy."

quote:

Besides, if EDM was such crap to listen in clubs, they'd be empty, wouldn't they?

I dunno, people go out and dance to crappy music all the time, don't they? It seems to me that as long as something is loud and has a catchy beat or gimmick, people will dance to it...

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I dunno, people go out and dance to crappy music all the time, don't they? It seems to me that as long as something is loud and has a catchy beat or gimmick, people will dance to it...

I also don't know that people have a choice between a "high average RMS" club and a "lower average RMS" club. If they're out looking to dance, they'll dance to whatever's playing. Of course, if a song is catchy, that will help. But the catchy song doesn't need to be limited to within an inch of it's life.

I wonder if we've gone as far as we can go, loudness-wise. It would be amusing (if it weren't so sad) to see all these new loudness-maximizing tools come out and for us to be talking in ten years about the dynamic range we had back in 2009.

If we are at the limit, maybe there is space for music to start moving towards lower RMS values, for the sake of differentiation. The marketing people will start pointing out attack transients and bring to people's attention that these are non-existent on a lot of today's music.

Well, If they are going to be at a club, RMS hardly means anything other than a songs volume relation to another song. If a song has an RMS of -2db. [Yes, RMS, not peak], but its coming out of a PA system at 40 decibles. And you have a song with an RMS of -10, but its coming out of a PA at 60 decibles. The song with the lower RMS will still hurt more and fatigue you. Because its louder.

I doubt it will get much more louder, humans have a limited range of hearing. And increasing that range doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

As for the future of EDM, and will it go to lower average RMS levels, I don't know. I don't see the grid being up that long. [What with the apocalypse happening any year now] Me being the pessemist that I am, Id say its only going downhill.

___________________
E = mc²/2

E = mc² is the optical illusion of E = mc²/2

Click me to find out why.

quote:

Originally posted by derail I wonder if we've gone as far as we can go, loudness-wise. It would be amusing (if it weren't so sad) to see all these new loudness-maximizing tools come out and for us to be talking in ten years about the dynamic range we had back in 2009.

I think we're basically there. You have people on production forums now talking about clipping the track in order to "gain headroom," i.e. loudness. And this is when they're already exhausting all the other avenues like compression and EQ.

quote:

If we are at the limit, maybe there is space for music to start moving towards lower RMS values, for the sake of differentiation. The marketing people will start pointing out attack transients and bring to people's attention that these are non-existent on a lot of today's music.

I don't know, I think you only notice that stuff if you pay good attention to the music, whereas it's instantaneous to notice that something is really loud. People flailing around with a few drinks or pills in them aren't going to care about attack transients.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I don't know, I think you only notice that stuff if you pay good attention to the music, whereas it's instantaneous to notice that something is really loud. People flailing around with a few drinks or pills in them aren't going to care about attack transients.

It's likely wishful thinking on my part.

I wonder if any kids who want to get into drums do a double take when they first hear a live drum kit in a music store?

"No, I want the kit that sounds like my heavy metal mp3s".

Maybe the store assistant can take them to a set of electronic drums which contains samples which already have the attack transients handily removed.

quote:

Originally posted by derail I wonder if any kids who want to get into drums do a double take when they first hear a live drum kit in a music store? "No, I want the kit that sounds like my heavy metal mp3s". Maybe the store assistant can take them to a set of electronic drums which contains samples which already have the attack transients handily removed.

LOL.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm ...and a hardware vs. software debate begins. if we're lucky, we might even get to mac vs. pc and cd vs. vinyl.

how do I sound like tiesto with fl studio and what are some good plug ins?

___________________