Slashdot Mirror
The "Loudness War" and the Future of Music
An anonymous reader notes an article up at IEEE Spectrum outlining the history and dangers of the accelerating tendency of music producers to increase the loudness and reduce the dynamic range of CDs. "The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudness thanks to advances in digital technology. The 'war' refers to the competition among record companies to make louder and louder albums by compressing the dynamic range. But the loudness war could be doing more than simply pumping up the volume and angering aficionados — it could be responsible for halting technological advances in sound quality for years to come... From the mid 1980s to now, the average loudness of CDs increased by a factor of 10, and the peaks of songs are now one-tenth of what they used to be."
I have a few CDs that I just can't listen to, because it's just a continuous blast of noise from one end to the other. All concept of light and shade is lost. It just sounds horrible.
If I want it to sound loud, I'll turn the volume up.
Just releasing tracks that are much quieter than the current standard is going to be annoying for a lot of listeners.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
For the tin-eared masses. The bar of quality for audio/music/telephony has never been lower. We now accept crap MP3 audio as "acceptable", stuttering vocoders and dropped calls as "tolerable", and reduced/compressed bandwidth as "louder (hence better)". We are now getting spoon-fed the worst quality audio since wax recordings and the Western Electric "Noiseless" recording system of movies from the 30-40's. And like everything else around us that continues to suck worse and worse, we take it in stride, shrug and say "well, it sounds good enough, I guess."
Don't get me wrong - I'm not a Luddite, and I love the Digital revolution of music. I am just sickened by it's apparent side-effects, and AMAZED at the tolerance we the "consuming public" have for getting fed shit. As long as we accept this as the standard of quality we find acceptable, the various producers and manufacturers will keep feeding us more and crappier garbage.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Ah, that's what "mute" is for. I say if they're going to assault my eardrums with their crap, I'm not going to pay it a bit of attention. If they were considerate and interesting (far too many incredibly stupid commercials out there, and far too many ambiguous ones where you have no idea what they're advertising), I might actually consider buying their product, if it seemed to meet my needs. As it is, sometimes I decide NOT to buy a product based on their shoddy advertising.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Doing this makes most popular music sound much "better" at low-fi audio equipment such as portable cd players, mp3 players, $100 home "mini" stereo sets and cheap surround sets.
When I say "better", I mean that these devices cannot play the full dynamic range that an expensive HiFi set could, which means you'd miss part of the music if a CD is mastered the "old" way, as compared to a CD that is mastered using dynamic range compression.
Now you may guess how many people these days spend $3000 (or even $1000 for that matter) to buy just an amplifier, a CD player and 2 speakers, as compared to the amount of people who listen several hours a day to MP3 players, cheap (portable) sets etc.
That's why "they" are doing this.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Show me what 'finer detail' a listener needs (or wants) in the latest Jay-Z or Sluttany Spears album and maybe that will justify the additional costs...
The amount of compression they apply to do this may not be noticeable on portable radios, car radios, and mini hifis and the like, but I know that I can't play the Oasis album "What's the story (Morning Glory)" on my main hifi as the compression sounds just too strange when played thru a proper amplifier and set of speakers.
Explains why people listen to awful demos in department stores (those horrible tinny Bose cube things with terrible hissy fizzy treble and booming vague bass) and think they sound good simply because it's turned up loud for the midrange.
And no, I don't have "exotic cables", just quality speakers and a hefty power amp with plenty of headroom to spare.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
- too much dynamic range.
Scenes with explosions, traffic, etc are way too loud while the dialogue is way too soft.I solved the DVD problem by inserting a compressor on the audio out of the DVD player before it reaches my stereo - precisely what the network station did before the era of DVD when everybody watched movies on HBO, Turner Classics, ABC, NBC, etc. I did the same to my parents' TV so they wouldn't get blasted by commercials on cable TV. We are all much happier.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution to "squashed" CDs. Once the dynamic range is compressed to oblivion, you cannot get it back without the source material (IE master multitrack). In the last five years I have bought 10x more DVDs than CDs.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
That is a bunch of B.S. An $80000 Canon digital camera would be a high end EOS 1d with some really nice lenses. Right now they have 20 megapixels and can have the picture blown up to poster size while remaining photo quality. I know of no 35 mm camera that can do that at the same ASA range. Now my medium format and full-format camera can blow the EOS 1-D out of the water, but that is only because a large amount of film real-estate. Digital cameras also have greater color range and flexibility from any single film I can think of.
If you think that super8 film is astounding, you probably aren't paying attention to the substantial color shifting you are observing, or haven't bothered to check out any of the HD-quality video cameras they have out for shooting news items now.
Your in-laws probably have a REALLY bad digital satellite TV setup, because my HD satellite setup blows anything else I have seen out of the water. And waxing nostalgic about how awesome old VHS tapes look is just foolish.
I see no reason to complain about how a DVD player you buy today (which you can get for around 25 dollars) will not last as long as the 200 dollar one you bought 5 years ago, especially since HD players like Blue Ray are going to be what you really want a few years from now. I rather buy a 25 dollar dvd player and replace it every 4 years or so than buy a 200 dollar one and replace it every 10 years. But that is just me.
The market is in the middle of large changes and shifts in video technology. Video technology is progressing forward with ever greater quality. If you don't believe me watch any sitcom from 20 years ago and compare it with one from last year. You, my friend are either delusional or making things up for effect.
The thing we are complaining about is the fact that audio quality is not progressing forward but going backward even as video and image quality improves. Go back and watch your precious Charles in Charge VHS tapes with their amazing video and audio quality.
Did you try a blind test? If you play the CD with the expectation that it will sound better and be less tiring, that's most likely what you will experience. You need to get two copies of the same song (an older one and a modern, squashed remastering), sample them to lossless audio files and get a friend to adjust the volume so that the newer remastering is not obviously louder. Then write a short program to play one of the two at random and ask you which one you think it is. Then you will find out whether you can reliably distinguish between them.
Many people experienced improved sound quality from using a special pen to draw round the outside of their CDs. They expected it to sound better and so it did.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Don't you think that if the volume is low in a part of a song, it is because it was made so that it is low ? Maybe there is a motivation, you know, like an artistic one. I do not think that a single violin should be as loud as a full fledged orchestra, and that a whisper should be as loud as a shout.
If you do not like to turn the knob, stop listening to music. Each album has its own volume, each song too.
The issue is not much about turning the volume knob. The problem is that you cannot *unturn* the dynamic range knob. I can use replaygain to have constant album volume, while I can only cry about bringing back the lost dynamics.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
You know...I've often wondered why kids of today, aren't as into getting good sound reproduction, as they were when I grew up.
My friends and I would drool at the gear in the higher end audio shops. I knew at age 12 when I heard my first McIntosh tube amp running through a pair of Klipschorns, that that was what I wanted someday. I don't have the Mc yet, but, using a decware SET amp, but I do have the 50th anniversary K-horns.
I mean, none of us were wealthy back growing up, we all worked jobs we could get as we grew up, buying a piece at a time...upgrading over the years...etc.
But, if the music being put out the past few years....doesn't sound good due to over compression, etc....well, why get anything good to play it on....and I guess, over the past few years with this, youths of today don't even KNOW what good sound reproduction is supposed to be.
I guess that kind of explains the reactions I see here when I comment I'd not be interested in buying music online until it is available in at least CD quality....much of what I like is older, and with greater dynamic range, does sound better on good gear?
I dunno...but, I think it is sad that so many people don't care about really good sound repro...and maybe it is that music put out today (regarless of content, that's another argument) just doesn't sound as good....and all they know is to drive in a car with all subs vibrating the neighborhood, and no tweeter at all in the car.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Two things to consider.
1) The kids with their overpriced and overpowered subs are the behavioral equivalent of you in your youth. The goal is different but the mindset of lusting over ever better and more unattainable with your friends is the same. Sadly the technology is far too affordable and effective at producing nothing but bass and that's why I have less distraction living next to the airport than living across from the high school. 2) Low end sound quality has also improved. The gap between absolute crap and super high end still exists, but most people aren't working with the lower extreme. Mid-range systems that are just fine for casual listening are cheap and readily available.
I don't _quite_ agree, although you're close.
Consumer's don't want shit, they just accept it. The real problem is that they don't particularly want or care about quality. The studios work hard to promote shit because it's cheaper to create, and (more to the point) REALLY cheap to keep repackaging and reselling. Why write new songs that will take effort to sell, when you can resell the macarena as a country song (Achey Breaky Heart) or some other such crap?
I think the two biggest reasons that shit has become so prevalent in the past decade are that (a) rap music and (b) pitch correctors have removed all necessity for talent or ability. Now all the studios need to create and sell an album is a misogynist thug with bad fashion sense, or a half-naked slut with no clothes.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The real layman's description of how mp3s work is the black box model: CD goes in here, mp3 comes out there. It's smaller now.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Mute buttons (or, even better, the skip forward 30 seconds button on your VCR or DVR) are for people who are actually focused on the TV set. The parent poster is probably one of those people (who, I suspect, form a majority of viewers) who just leave the TV on while they do other stuff, and only seriously watch when something catches their attention. So when you're playing cards or cooking or cuddling your significant other, and the TV suddenly starts shouting at you about McNuggets or erectile dysfunction, it can be pretty irritating.
But you might be right. After all, Google made its fortune serving up advertisements that were easy to ignore. And I often suspect that most advertising dollars spent on traditional media (print, broadcasting) are wasted, since they don't really have a reliable way of measuring their effect.
On the other hand, there's a school of thought that says that obnoxious ads are more effective. The whole point of advertising is to plant a product meme in your head. Long after you've forgotten which advertisers you're pissed of at, you'll have their trademarks floating in your subconscious. That's why folks don't go out for a burger any more (they go to McDonalds), don't by markers (they buy Sharpies), etc.
Why don't you just teach him not to watch TV?