The Loudness Wars May Be Ending

Hugh Pickens writes "Mike Barthel reports on a technique called brick-wall limiting, where songs are engineered to seem louder by bringing the quiet parts to the same level as the loud parts and pushing the volume level of the entire song to the highest point possible. 'Because of the need to stand out on radio and other platforms, there's a strategic advantage to having a new song sound just a little louder than every other song. As a result, for a period, each new release came out a little louder than the last, and the average level of loudness on CDs crept up (YouTube) to such a degree that albums actually sounded distorted, as if they were being played through broken speakers.' But the loudness wars may be coming to an end. Taking advantage of the trend towards listening to music online — via services like Pandora, Spotify, and Apple's forthcoming iCloud — a proposal by audio engineer Thomas Lund, already adopted as a universal standard (PDF) by the International Telecommunications Union, would institute a volume limit on any songs downloaded from the cloud, effectively removing the strategic advantage of loudness. Lund's proposal would do the same thing for any music you could buy. 'Once a piece of music is ingested into this system, there is no longer any value in trying to make a recording louder just to stand out,' says legendary engineer Bob Ludwig, who has been working with Lund. 'There will be nothing to gain from a musical point of view. Louder will no longer be better!'"

Comments

Would a standard for loudness help?

[joeflies]

I thought that the overall issue is that the dynamic range of the highs & lows is being compressed. So even with a volume limit on the max loudness, would the engineers engineer the song any differently?

A second issue is that the listening environment is changing - music is being played on portable devices in noisy environments - this isn't a fine listening room. As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Draek]

I haven't read the proposed standard (mostly because, not being a sound engineer, I suspect I wouldn't understand a thing), but wouldn't the problem be solved by limiting not the maximum, but the average instead? us Classical fans get our cannon shots just as Tchaikovsky intended, while mainstream Rock music stops sounding like someone fucking your ear with an ice pick, it's win/win. And as a bonus, anyone wanting to have their music louder would have to have more quiet parts to compensate, meaning they'd be encouraged to utilize the full dynamic range instead of pushing everything to the maximum.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[show me altoids]

I thought that the overall issue is that the dynamic range of the highs & lows is being compressed. So even with a volume limit on the max loudness, would the engineers engineer the song any differently?

A second issue is that the listening environment is changing - music is being played on portable devices in noisy environments - this isn't a fine listening room. As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Exactly, and this applies even more to watching DVDs in cars without headphones*. My wife is constantly saying "turn it down!" during the loud parts and I have to turn it back up on the quiet parts. Rinse, repeat. *There are countless kids movies I have heard but never seen. Some are surprisingly enjoyable like that.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Pentium100]

As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Dolby Digital on DVD has the option to compress the dynamic range if you are in a noisy environment (or watching the movie at night). I don't see why this could not also be applied to music. Just have a setting on the player to turn on the compression (or even better - adjust how much compression to use).

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[mekkab]

YES. Fine, if these "amps no longer go to 12", then they go to 8. On all noises at all times.

You will then turn up your volume knob to compensate for your listening environment (think: car) and the mid-range noise will still be fatiguing as ever.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[adolf]

Such listeners should just change the dynamics themselves, then: The correct point at which to apply dynamic range compression to compensate for a noisy listening environment is within the playback chain for that particular environment.

It's not so hard. My first portable MP3 player had the ability to apply dynamic compression. My not-so-special Pioneer stereos have this ability as well. So does my Droid. So does even the lowly factory CD player in a 1993 Ford van. And my PC. (I'd go on, but why?)

One can always add more compression/limiting ("loudness"), but once applied it's impossible to take away.

Meanwhile, listening environments haven't changed substantially since the first confluence of the walkman, the portable radio ("boombox"), the home hi-fi, and the car stereo: People still listen variously on headphones, or with barely-adequate portable speakers, or in their home on a properly set-up system, or on ruddy computer speakers (not dissimilar from the discount "rack systems" of yesteryear), or in noisy car, with the same variety of background noise that has always existed when listening to recorded music.

All that has really changed in the past 30 years that it's currently very easy to carry a vast amount of high-quality music in a very portable and readily-retrievable fashion, which was previously impossible. I submit that this improved portability has nothing to do with the dynamic content of that music.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[sjames]

Any portable device can easily compress out dynamic range on a good recording as needed. However, a crappy pre-compressed recording cannot be re-expanded.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[TheGratefulNet]

that's one aspect (the static part).

you miss the compression (active) that they do in order to 'fit' the envelope 'up higher'.

changing the 'higher' point helps but there are other things going on, too.

its a shame, too. cd has about 90db of dyn range (and modern amps and preamps and easily do that, too) and yet they use a fraction of that. you have a spectrum of 'bit space' to use and you use very little. how sad! how wasteful.

shifting volume (replay gain) is doable. undoing compression is not and that is the real issue.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is offtopic, but I thought I'd mention... I tend to pay closer attention to what someone writes when they acknowledge up front that the topic is likely a bit over their heads.

Here on /. everyone acts like they're an expert on everything. I prefer to hear from people who have an intelligent, passing knowledge of many things, but can freely admit that they're not experts without all the bullshit posturing.

Good on ya. And my apologies for the tangent... that was all.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Zcar]

Effectively the maximum level is set by the format and is generally define as 0 dB. A format also has a dynamic range, which measures how much quieter a sound the format can capture compared to the maximum. For audio CDs this is -96 dB. The loudness wars refer to taking advantage of the fact the volume the human ear perceives is proportional to the mean level and that music would be recorded with the same maximum level but lower levels mapped higher (e.g. a -40 dB sound is compressed to -20 dB) will sound louder.

This proposal, presumably, addresses this by measuring the volume of a track by measuring the something similar to the mean level. It a little more complicated than that, but I think that's the thumbnail.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[JBMcB]

ReplayGain fixes average differences in volume between different tracks. It doesn't help when a single track was compressed/normalized so that is has no dynamic range. There's really no post-processing that can fix that.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

I thought that the overall issue is that the dynamic range of the highs & lows is being compressed. So even with a volume limit on the max loudness, would the engineers engineer the song any differently?

A second issue is that the listening environment is changing - music is being played on portable devices in noisy environments - this isn't a fine listening room. As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Then I propose that portable music players, and car stereos, grow a dynamic range compression algorithm. With digital media, the "compressor" has the ability to "look-ahead", thus being able to avoid the "pumping" effects of compressors that have to work in "real-time". This allows for not only much higher compression ratios; but also much, much "faster" attack and release times, So, with something like that (which really takes much less computing power than say, an EQ), the world could have its dynamic range when good listening conditions were available, and still be able to hear the "quiet parts" when on-the-go.

Of course, just like any other "effect", this would have to be switchable, and maybe even somewhat adjustable.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

mainstream Rock music...like someone fucking your ear with an ice pick

I love rock music from 10, 20, and 30 years ago. Not much from the last 10 years though. That quote made me feel warm and squishy inside.

Try some Porcupine Tree. And if you have a surround system, hunt up the 5.1 versions of their albums.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Beorytis]

...the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Portable music players have more than enough processing power to do that kind of volume leveling automatically. The artists/engineers/producers can make a product that will sound its best in a good listening environment, and leave the rest to playback.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hylandr]

There is actually, It's called a 'Concert'. There, I said it.

- Dan.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

Effectively the maximum level is set by the format and is generally define as 0 dB. A format also has a dynamic range, which measures how much quieter a sound the format can capture compared to the maximum. For audio CDs this is -96 dB. The loudness wars refer to taking advantage of the fact the volume the human ear perceives is proportional to the mean level and that music would be recorded with the same maximum level but lower levels mapped higher (e.g. a -40 dB sound is compressed to -20 dB) will sound louder.

This proposal, presumably, addresses this by measuring the volume of a track by measuring the something similar to the mean level. It a little more complicated than that, but I think that's the thumbnail.

Ah, yet another Slashdot "Engineer"...

First, your entire discussion of "dB" is meaningless without an additional "unit". dB, by and of itself, is a baseless unit. It's dBSPL, or dBm, or even the cheat-of-all-cheats, dBu. But NEVER just dB.

But I think you are attempting to equate dBm to "VU". But even those have a real-world signal-level equivalent. 0dBm (IIRC) is equivalent to 0.770VAC across a 600 ohm load.

So, perhaps you are talking about ATTENUATION. THAT would STILL need another unit from the dB (dBV, dBm, etc); but would at least fit your concept of the highest signal level attainable in the media as being expressed as 0dB(something)...

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

There are countless kids movies I have heard but never seen. Some are surprisingly enjoyable like that.

So is TV. It's like listening to Firesign Theatre.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[cayenne8]

A second issue is that the listening environment is changing - music is being played on portable devices in noisy environments - this isn't a fine listening room. As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Well, that's why I prefer to buy things in say, lossless formats...good for the good living room stereo, and I can also rip them to lossy formats for portable players in poor environments (gym,car, etc)....maybe they could give 2x versions..one for portable and one for proper home audio system?

Or, does NO one anymore care for quality home sound reproduction? Geez, when I was a kid...we all wanted to eventually have a good sound system...I've been building mine since I was a pre-teen saving money from neighborhood jobs...etc.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[cayenne8]

Try some Porcupine Tree. And if you have a surround system, hunt up the 5.1 versions of their albums.

What genre of rock are they? Bluesy rock? Metal?

What is the best album with the greatest number of good songs and less filler?

Hmm...I'll try a pandora channel and see if they're on there...but any advice on what you think is good is appreciated.

I have such a HARD time finding good new rock to listen too. Granted...I love the older 60's-70's guitar driven blues based harder rock (zeppelin, stones, claptons stuff, etc)...but am always wanting new stuff, but since radio isn't a viable option, and work won't let you stream...and no time to dedicate after work 'just' to sift through all the cruft to find stuff I like........I have a hard time finding good current stuff.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[cayenne8]

So is TV. It's like listening to Firesign Theatre.

Oh man...I gotta go find my Nick Danger now....

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hognoxious]

as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

s/to hear/force everyone else to listen to/ if you've been on public transport recently.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hognoxious]

Not quite sure how a concert, which is live, counts as postprocessing.

So it seems one of us is fucking stupid. In my defense I would like to point out that I generally read and comprehend things before responding to them.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[war4peace]

No intention to be offensive, but when I slam the CD in I don't give a shit about dBSPL or whatever. All I want to do is enjoy the music as INTENDED by its creators.
Take Electric Wizard, for example (hint: album, 2000). Their INTENTION was to distort the music and crank up the volume everywhere. And I love their music. But on the other hand, Metallica's latest whatever-the-album-name-is is CRAP. I listened to half a song at my "I'm a rocka', dude!" acquaintance and left in horror. That ugly composition set screams "we need MONIES!!!" before you even get to hear 4 full measures.

I ceased listening to mainstream radio years ago; also, before you jump "but CD albums sound the same!", yes, I know. I also ceased buying anything produced by any remotely known music label; and I regret nothing. My CDs contain excellent music, albeit produced by obscure bands and labels, and none of it suffers from all the shit that big labels push down our throats.
Mainstream bands? They make HUGE concessions for the greens. They fucking lost it, man, all they care for is greens and more greens.
Someone mentioned concerts above. Yeah, like sound ain't cranked up to the max because all those pubeless kids need it LOUD, dog!

And I ain't THAT old. I'm 31. But I can discern between good music that means something and that horrendous "doof-tsss, doof-tsss" that's EVERYWHERE nowadays.
Now get off MY lawn.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Zcar]

I never claimed to be an engineer. I'm, at best, a layman with a little bit of knowledge. AFAIK, dB is perfectly valid when talking about dynamic range, even in audio engineering literature. For example, Eargle, Handbook of Recording Engineering (2003): "Music in a concert hall is normally perceived over a range that doesn't exceed about 80 dB, and speech is normally perceived over and even narrower range of about 40 dB." And, even more importantly, I don't think it affects what I wrote qualitatively all that much.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[manicb]

"In Absentia" was their commercial breakthrough, you could do worse than that. Porcupine Tree are a leading "new prog" band, meaning that their rock music incorporates progressive ideas but is based on a modern sound rather than retro callbacks. Pure Reason Revolution are another great band in this area. Try Muse for something more digestible (Origin of Symmetry for guitar riffs, Absolution for epicness, Black Holes And Revelations for more experimental yet commercial anthemic stuff with synths.)

It's pretty hard to be a new band that sounds like 60s/70s rock without sounding like generic rubbish. There are a few bands that have sort of done it, like Wolfmother and arguably The Darkness. Clutch have pulled out a pretty solid string of blues/rock albums.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[cayenne8]

It's pretty hard to be a new band that sounds like 60s/70s rock without sounding like generic rubbish. There are a few bands that have sort of done it, like Wolfmother and arguably The Darkness. Clutch have pulled out a pretty solid string of blues/rock albums.

Thank you for the info!!

Yeah..I really liked wolfmother...but they stopped at one album...

:(

I saw them at Voodoo fest...and they tore the house down...really reminded me of the great rock concerts in my youth......I wish they would do more...will look at the other groups you mentioned along with them...and the others in your post!

Again...thank you!

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[nyctopterus]

You may have a point, but I'm no expert so I don't know, and you comment hasn't helped me to know. Try being less of an arsehole next time.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about dBFS, idiot. The FS stands for full scale; it's quite useful in the context of PCM data, precisely because it does not require defining an analog reference level.

And using just dB for dBFS when it's clearly indicated by context (as it was in GP's post -- how the hell you thought he was talking about VU is beyond me) is not uncommon among real engineers, so your "/. 'engineers'" drama is just silliness...

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Stormwatch]

What genre of rock are they? Bluesy rock? Metal?

Progressive/ psychedelic/ alternative rock. A lil' sample here.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Inner_Child]

I don't see why this could not also be applied to music. Just have a setting on the player to turn on the compression (or even better - adjust how much compression to use).

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but hasn't this been around for quite some time: the "Loudness" or "Loudness compensation" button on stereos/equalizers/amps from the 70s and 80s? Perhaps it's a concept whose time has come around again.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Pentium100]

That's different. It boosts low and high frequencies at low volumes so you hear them better. This is because human ear does not have a flat frequency response.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[russotto]

First, your entire discussion of "dB" is meaningless without an additional "unit". dB, by and of itself, is a baseless unit. It's dBSPL, or dBm, or even the cheat-of-all-cheats, dBu. But NEVER just dB.

When you're dealing strictly in the digital domain, dB on its own is pretty common, and is (as the original poster said) understood to be referenced to 0dB = the maximum signal level the format can produce. Some searching reveals this is sometimes called dBFS (for dB Full Scale), but when I was working on that stuff, I never ran into that term.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[jordan_robot]

First, your entire discussion of "dB" is meaningless without an additional "unit". dB, by and of itself, is a baseless unit. It's dBSPL, or dBm, or even the cheat-of-all-cheats, dBu. But NEVER just dB.

You're just plain wrong. In audio plain-jane decibels are useful as a relative measurement of levels. I'm a sound designer and my colleagues and I use them regularly. Even if 1dB and 120dB weren't already defined in an human aural context (which they are, look it up) -- he provides the dynamic range as -90 to 0. All of the sudden the unit-less dB is useful as a comparison of levels in reference to the stated range.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[jordan_robot]

Forgive me, I mistyped... I meant -96 to 0.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[epine]

the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds

Ah yes, nothing sells like the unslakable demand to not be inconvenienced by your own stupidity. Many of these same people just want to get drunk without being inconvenienced by flavour. Excess compression is the musical equivalent of macro-brew alcohol.

Last night I went to a new micro-brew down the street which was pretty good. The bitter and IPA were excellent. The Summer Ale wasn't quite right. I asked the bartender for a lime, and then it was pretty good. Some of DO want to play with the dials.

Since I don't believe in god, playing with the dials is pretty much what I live for.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Inner_Child]

Thank you for the clarification. I can see a "new loudness" button emerging, and as someone else said, portable players can do this automatically, it seems. It makes more sense to do the compression on the fly without damaging the original track than it does to master it in a way that makes one's ears bleed, so here's hoping the loudness war truly is over.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Try some Porcupine Tree. And if you have a surround system, hunt up the 5.1 versions of their albums.

What genre of rock are they? Bluesy rock? Metal?

What is the best album with the greatest number of good songs and less filler?

.

Ditto the thumbs-up on Porcupine Tree. Creative and disciplined musicians. I heard them in concert in Melbourne and they were as good as their albums. They've got talent, not a band puffed by post processing technology. I'd start with "In Absentia". Genera? They're one hell of a good rock band.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Pentium100]

Yes. With current technology it is easy to compress on the fly (as I said in another post, DVD players can already do that for Dolby Digital at least). On the other hand, once compressed it is almost impossible to expand back to the original dynamic range, this is why the recording (CD, record) should be in the full dynamic range (or at least as high as the medium allows).

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Nefarious Wheel]

There was an organisation who managed standards for this sort of thing once, but they've turned evil. I won't mention their initials because I don't want to Godwin this thread so early.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Nefarious Wheel]

So is TV. It's like listening to Firesign Theatre.

Oh man...I gotta go find my Nick Danger now....

"You can't put that there, that's our sacred mountain!"

"That's ok, this is our sacred antenna."

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Enahs]

How do I go about booking my favorite band for the evening commute, anyway? And how the hell do I fit them into a Honda Insight?

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

In Absentia would be a very good place to start. As for style, I'd put them somewhere between Progressive and.. well, Porcupine Tree. They aren't consistently "metal" enough to be "metal"; and they aren't consistenly "pop" enough to be "pop", and they aren't consistently "prog" enough to be "prog". But they have elements of all of those, and more.

Everyone in the band (it actually started out as a one-man project several years ago; but at this point, it's pretty much a "band") is a stupendous musician. Very, very very good vocals. And production that is second-to-none.

In Absentia won an award as the best 5.1 mix in 2008, and I think one of their later releases (Deadwing?) won a similar award when it came out.

Pick up In Absentia. I guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Enahs]

You know what irks me about that? Listen to Opeth albums from the last 10 years. I've never measured it, but it sounds like there's precious little dynamic range. And the kicker is that Porcupine Tree's Stephen Wilson is Opeth's producer.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[jshackney]

You're post makes me wistful for IUMA again. Anyone know of something similar these days?

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[arth1]

its a shame, too. cd has about 90db of dyn range (and modern amps and preamps and easily do that, too) and yet they use a fraction of that. you have a spectrum of 'bit space' to use and you use very little. how sad! how wasteful.

What's sadly ironic is that the same people who want 24-bit for their mixes appear to be the same ones who then compress the shit out of it. If they don't even use 8 bit dynamics, what do they need 24-bit for?

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[ceoyoyo]

I generally don't listen to classical in the car, but recently I popped in one of my favourites, Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. I noticed that, at the same volume I was listening to pop/rock immediately before, I couldn't hear anything. I had to turn it up to what would have been earsplitting for the rock CD just to hear anything over the road noise. And a while later it did become earsplitting and I had to turn it back down.

I know most pop/rock doesn't know what dynamics are, but still.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

Here are a few songs from "In Absentia". The audio on some of these YouTube posts doesn't do them justice; but you'll get idea of how wide their stylistic range is. You'll think a song is gonna be a straight-up rock-n-roll song; but then there's a bunch of maj7 and 6/9 chords (that don't appear in most "heavy" R&R), and what seem to be 6 and 7 part close vocal harmonies, and it's obvious these guys are pretty spectacular. And it wouldn't be anything without the musical and lyrical writing to match. It's one of the few bands I have really started to listen to the lyrics on. And the use of many different time signatures, without you even noticing...

Oh, and this music MUST be listened to LOUD! There is stuff in the mix down pretty deep, and if you just listen to PT in "muzak mode" (wallpaper level), you will miss half of the music (seriously!). Loud. Preferably alone (no distractions). It's good music. Very good. And keep in mind that I just picked a few tracks I especially like. There really isn't a stinker on "In Absentia". In fact, I've to to restrain myself from just posting links to all the tracks.

First Song on In Absentia: Blackest Eyes (as I said, the audio is kinda dull on these YouTube samples) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO3GQvye2bQ&feature=related


Then, the next song: Trains:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIM5M6FmnmY


"The Sound of Muzak" (yes, it's really a song about Muzak!). First, off In Absentia, then Live. You'll be amazed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvQ1PpZu634

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9DWtYvOuQ


Yes, I looked closely, and every single sound is accounted for. IMHO, the jury is out a bit about the backing vocals; but there seem to be no obvious "overdubs". The drum part you HEAR on the video, for example, is most definitely the one being played live.. I think with the vocals, it's real-time auto harmony. Or the "mellotron" part makes you think there are more vocal parts, because the notes all intertwine, pitch-wise.

Imagine the 5.1 mix of this next cut, "Lips of Ashes":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lczSfyeStuE&feature=related


Ok, time to wake back up! Here ya go; "Wedding Nails":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZn3u6XCsKs


And, last, but certainly not least, "Strip the Soul". Note the 4/4, 6/8, and 5/4 time signatures and extensive use of "non-rock" chords in this seemingly straight-up rocker...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiuyahjYrAU&feature=related

...and why not? Live::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBQnDNhq8Lg


Whew, that was a lotta cuttin' an' pastin'...

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

No intention to be offensive, but when I slam the CD in I don't give a shit about dBSPL or whatever. All I want to do is enjoy the music as INTENDED by its creators.

As a user, I would wholeheartedly agree! But the Poster I referred to in my previous post, was obviously trying to use those "Terms of Art", and thus, held HIMself out to a different standard.

And skipping over most of the rest, because I think you misunderstood that my response was to his words and views, not yours, I note that you DO seem to be an intelligent and thoughtful listener. Just keep that going, and who gives a sh** about the rest!

Seriously. I agree.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

I never claimed to be an engineer. I'm, at best, a layman with a little bit of knowledge. AFAIK, dB is perfectly valid when talking about dynamic range, even in audio engineering literature. For example, Eargle, Handbook of Recording Engineering (2003): "Music in a concert hall is normally perceived over a range that doesn't exceed about 80 dB, and speech is normally perceived over and even narrower range of about 40 dB." And, even more importantly, I don't think it affects what I wrote qualitatively all that much.

Although that sample is incorrect as well, I am reasonably sure that since Eargle (EAR-gle? Hehe!!) mentioned "perceived" (as in by humans), that the author in that case was referring to dBSPL (Sound Pressure Level). Which, believe it or not, can actually be traced to a "real-world" measurement.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

First, your entire discussion of "dB" is meaningless without an additional "unit". dB, by and of itself, is a baseless unit. It's dBSPL, or dBm, or even the cheat-of-all-cheats, dBu. But NEVER just dB.

When you're dealing strictly in the digital domain, dB on its own is pretty common, and is (as the original poster said) understood to be referenced to 0dB = the maximum signal level the format can produce. Some searching reveals this is sometimes called dBFS (for dB Full Scale), but when I was working on that stuff, I never ran into that term.

Precisely. I'm certainly not Mr. Digital Audio; and I have actually seen the term "dBFS", but it is (fortunately) not all that common to see outside of product spec sheets.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[macs4all]

First, your entire discussion of "dB" is meaningless without an additional "unit". dB, by and of itself, is a baseless unit. It's dBSPL, or dBm, or even the cheat-of-all-cheats, dBu. But NEVER just dB.

You're just plain wrong. In audio plain-jane decibels are useful as a relative measurement of levels. I'm a sound designer and my colleagues and I use them regularly. Even if 1dB and 120dB weren't already defined in an human aural context (which they are, look it up) -- he provides the dynamic range as -90 to 0. All of the sudden the unit-less dB is useful as a comparison of levels in reference to the stated range.

First, you did correct your typo of 90 to 96; so let's get that out of the way... ;-)

Yes, sound "pros" toss around dB without anything else all the time. But, everyone needs to know what "scale" you are talking about. Often it is obvious by context; but sometimes not.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[smellotron]

Well, that's why I prefer to buy things in say, lossless formats...good for the good living room stereo, and I can also rip them to lossy formats for portable players in poor environments

The format doesn't matter when you're discussing loudness, compression, and "brickwall limiting" as is discussed. The audio engineers (and sometimes the musicians) are distorting the signal somewhere along the path to the final master. Thus, what you have in your lossless audio is lossless garbage, and what you have in your lossey audio is lossey garbage.

For example, poke around the Internet for Muse's "Knights of Cydonia". The tracks used in Guitar Hero are cleaner than the mix used for the CD, so someone went through and actually remixed the song from the GH tracks and got a pleasant-sounding result. As a counterpoint, listen to pretty much anything from Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light". They have mp3-quality audio available on their website, and it is not difficult to hear the impact of a good recording/mastering process.

I wish Muse would release a properly-mastered version of Black Holes and Revelations. I think I would even pay for a SACD version of it, just knowing that the intended audience has a higher listening standard. It's sad that the CD just doesn't play well outside of a car stereo, and it paradoxically makes the CD rock less because it's unbearable to crank the volume.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Concerned Onlooker]

"Pull the wagons into a circle!"

"Why do they always do that?"

"Get better reception..."

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[soundguy]

mainstream Rock music...like someone fucking your ear with an ice pick

I love rock music from 10, 20, and 30 years ago. Not much from the last 10 years though. That quote made me feel warm and squishy inside.

Try going back about 40 years to the original vinyl of Deep Purple's "In Rock". Worst. Mastering. Ever. It's hands down the most compressed album release in the history of recording (literally a dynamic range of about 3db - worse than AM radio) until the loudness wars started in earnest in the mid 90's.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[soundguy]

Yes, sound "pros" toss around dB without anything else all the time. But, everyone needs to know what "scale" you are talking about. Often it is obvious by context; but sometimes not.

Read and learn - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Joce640k]

I don't think it will. The summery seems to be saying only limiting the maximum loudness, the average loudness of a song is still up for grabs.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Joce640k]

Meanwhile, listening environments haven't changed substantially since the first confluence of the walkman

What's changed is the proportion of people who listen on headphones while moving. Back then is was the exception, now it's the norm.

Also the expectations...when everything was uncompressed then you accepted the way music sounded on the car radio. When everything else is compressed and your song isn't then the marketing guys have a problem.

It's also to do with feature creep. Compressed music has become the norm so the ignorant masses think that's just the way it sounds.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[empty mind]

They started as a solo project of the guitarrist Steven Wilson. Early PT are psychedelic/ambient/prog rock (they were called the "new" Pink Floyd), now the music they make is more experimental metal. Stupid Dream and Lightsun Bulb are 2 albums from the first period I loved: I still like almost every song.

Beginning with In Absentia they started to sound much more metal and I like that too, but I know the general public doesn't enjoy "hard" stuff.

If you are into "calm" art/prog/psychedelic rock with ambient influences I recommend you nosound (albums: A Sense Of Loss, Lightdark). Also North Atlantic Oscillation are quite good, saw them live.

Btw, just check out Kscope (http://www.kscopemusic.com/). It's label for this kind of stuff and there are some really good bands signed to them (PT were with them before signing to Roadrunner Records, a big name in the metal scene).

I also recommend you the last Pain of Salvation's album... While I don't like it at all it's a lot into the '70 rock style. And, since you wrote you are always looking for new stuff, listen to their album BE or The Perfect Element. Also Novembre's last two albums (progressiver death/doom/gothic metal... but, really, don't be scared of these labels if you don't like metal, they are enjoyable also by the average listener).

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[adolf]

The norm? Really?

Strange place, this "norm" of yours.

I see folks with headphones from time to time, sure. But I see way, way more folks without. One might even take this simple observation and make the bold statement that, normally, people aren't wearing headphones.

I also saw folks with headphones on during the 80s and 90s from time to time, too, and it wasn't "the norm" then, either.

*shrug*

Meanwhile: A commercial radio station normally does so much dynamic compression on their own that that even wildly dynamic classics become just as dull and lifeless as the latest tripe from Nickelback. Whether the recorded material is purposefully compressed or not has vanishingly little to do with how the end result sounds in a typical modern broadcast environment.

This isn't a very new concept, either. The FCC places strict limits on modulation, and in order to stay in compliance with them, hard limiting is used for FM broadcast, and always has. Modern techniques are much fancier and complex due mostly to advances in DSP technology...but those advancements are far too often used to just squeeze even more perceived loudness out of a given amount of modulation.

It takes a rare combinations of sane management, good (read: minimalist) engineering practices, and skilled DJs who understand the material, know how to listen with their ears and watch output levels with their eyes to create a smooth mix that never runs into limiting.

So, as a practical matter: Completely uncompressed broadcast FM radio doesn't generally exist, and never really has.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[u38cg]

Yes. It's technically simple. Cinema has the exact same thing: sound levels are targeted to an average intensity and so you actually get a full range of dynamics.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[unitron]

Were you aiming that link specifically at macs4all?

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[unitron]

Well played, sir, well played.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[sydbarrett74]

A second issue is that the listening environment is changing - music is being played on portable devices in noisy environments - this isn't a fine listening room. As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.

Agreed. But I'd rather have a choice. The solution would be to offer music with all its HDR goodness, and have a compression setting on the playback device. That way, if I want to listen to a piece on a $50K system, it sounds great; conversely, if I want to listen to the same music on my iPod, I get the option to have it compressed and drown out the ambient noise.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hylandr]

Perhaps I should have spelled it out since some of us cannot process abstractions.

Perhaps we can use a quote from a movie to bring it to the consumer generation. "Best Block, Not be there" If you don't want to suffer the effects of post processing then place yourself in an environment where there is no post processing. Go to a concert.

Extra points for naming the movie.

- Dan.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[matt_2304]

Thanks for posting those links, I'd not heard these guys either.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hognoxious]

That wasn't an abstraction, it was a non sequitur and a false dichotomy to boot.

One, it's hardly practical to lug a symphony orchestra around all day.

Two, it's not like there isn't a cheaper, more practical, and proven alternative: recorded music that hasn't been fucked around with.

P.S. Shove your movie quote. I don't care, and it's probably shit if you like it.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hylandr]

Lol at the angry little man.

- Dan.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[bgspence]

The problem can easily be heard in a modern 'Digitally Remastered' release which has been caught up in this loudness mess. You are much better off with an older non compressed version of a release at 320 than a lossless remastered version which has been compressed. The compression tosses out way more acoustical information than lossy 320 encoding. You would be hard pressed to hear the difference between the 320 kb version and the original, but lossless compression really sucks.

You really need to pop a few comparison tracks into something like Audacity to see how bad things have become. Saving things as lossless may seem like a big deal, but you need to compare new and old versions when you are replacing the old with the remasters.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Drugmath]

No seriously though, you're retarded

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[kernelpanic99]

Actually he only produced a couple of their albums: Blackwater Park and Heritage (yet to be released). I'm pretty sure those are the only two out of ten so far.

As for dynamic range, have you listened to Watershed? A couple of songs on there have a surprisingly big dynamic range. I often find myself adjusting the volume mid-song on that album, which I very rarely have to do for other bands.

Re:Would a standard for loudness help?

[Hylandr]

Haters gonna hate. Guess I will hang out with all the other retards at the concert.

- Dan.

Eleven

[PPH]

Nigel: Exactly. One louder.

Marty: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel: These go to eleven.

Re:Eleven

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a world before xkcd, you know. It was a better world, in my opinion.

Re:Eleven

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a world before xkcd, you know. It was a better world, in my opinion.

Oh I know. I was like, totally reading xkcd before it was popular. Now it's soooo passe.

Re:Eleven

[SlippyToad]

My presonus has a headphone volume knob that DOES in fact go to 11. And they tell you in the documentation that it's PRETTY FUCKIN' LOUD.

Re:Eleven

[lucian1900]

BBC's iPlayer does in fact go up to 11.

Re:Eleven

[JBMcB]

Winamp gain goes to +1.

Re:Eleven

[smellotron]

PRETTY FUCKIN' LOUD

Their manual says that? I want to buy their products just to encourage that style of documentation!

Re:Eleven

[Tapewolf]

PRETTY FUCKIN' LOUD

Their manual says that? I want to buy their products just to encourage that style of documentation!

Well, the Caesar III manual is pretty famous for that:
http://i55.tinypic.com/33ldvv6.jpg ...But I am curious about the Presonus as well now.

Re:Eleven

[tbird81]

Try this:
http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/

It analyses why most of that Randall's jokes aren't funny.

Re:Eleven

[tbird81]

Futurama does the same thing. I watched an episode the other night. "See if we can prove it with maths!" It was very unfunny.

Moral of the story

[Dunbal]

Music industry finds yet another way to shoot itself in the foot. But yeah, blame the pirates.

Re:Moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with piracy. It has to do with bad engineering decisions made by marketing idiots.

Re:Moral of the story

[MightyMartian]

The pirates have forced producers to compress the dynamic range of most popular music mixed in the last decade?

Re:Moral of the story

[LynnwoodRooster]

Music industry finds yet another way to shoot itself in the foot. But yeah, blame the pirates.

Slashdot Knee-Jerk Logic:

If(MUSIC == story.type)
{
cout << "Pirates are a scapegoat; music industry hates self";
}

Re:Moral of the story

[Nefarious Wheel]

Ya, that's the way of it when you let people play with statistics. One man's median's another man's poisson.

I hope...

[AngryDeuce]

I hope this is able to transition to broadcast television broadcasts. I'm sick and tired of commercials being substantially louder than the program they're playing within. Every time a commercial break comes around I have to mute the fucking thing, which seems like the complete opposite of what they're supposed to be trying to accomplish.

Re:I hope...

[JBMcB]

I don't know what commercials sound like. My MythTV box skips them automatically. One of the algorithms looks at the volume of the audio to help find and eliminate them :)

Re:I hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in TV. The last station I worked at we had one advertiser that used to send us REALLY loud commercials. We had to dial them back about 10db to put them into the system at normal levels. The next batch of commercials they sent us were another 10db louder, so we had to dial them back 20db. The next batch was so recorded so hot they were distorted from the start so we rejected the tapes and sent them back to the ad agency. They couldn't get the hint that we couldn't air such loud content without overmodulating the transmitter, no to mention pissing off all the viewers.

That said, what makes the ads seem even louder is their average levels are very high - rarely is there anything quiet about a commercial.

Re:I hope...

[hedwards]

I wish manufacturers would provide some means of calibrating various components to deliver a similar amount of volume. It gets really annoying having to readjust the volume when I switch between the various devices hooked to my TV. It wouldn't be so bad if the range wasn't so large.

Re:I hope...

[maxume]

There's a law about that in the U.S. now. Who knows when or if it will start to matter (but I sort have the feeling that I have been less irritated about ad volume lately).

Re:I hope...

[skegg]

Amen brother. I too mute commercials because they are so much louder than the regular programme.

Further, I'm finding that, over the years, the stations are increasingly commencing programmes further and further off the hour / half-hour mark.
Why do they do this? Do they think they're preventing us from switching channels when we've finished watching a show on their network?

Also, I'm noticing that the stations are in flagrant disregard of limits on the frequency & length of commercial breaks. You'd be forgiven for thinking there's no government regulator.
(ACMA is such a waste of our tax dollars.)

End result --> I find myself increasingly using my PVR even when I could have watched the broadcast live.

Re:I hope...

[rschwa]

Dude, that's what the skip button is for!

Re:I hope...

[ceoyoyo]

They have to make it louder so you can hear it in the bathroom.

Re:I hope...

[AmiMoJo]

The EU is trying to pass legislation to prevent commercials being louder than the TV shows.

Dolby specify the loudness that audio must be mastered to in order to carry the logo. Since most HD TV shows and movies want to use Dolby 5.1 sound they have to keep the loudness sensible. That is one reason why DVD-Audio is often much better than a CD - ignoring the higher quality sampling the need to meet Dolby mandated recording levels forces the engineer to master the album properly.

I have pretty much given up on live TV for anything other than news and the BBC (which doesn't have commercials (except for its own shows)). Between adverts trying to perforate my eardrums and the tendency of every show I like to get cancelled just as it gets really good (Dollhouse, SG Universe...) nowadays I just wait for a few seasons of boxed sets to come out and then hit the torrents. If I really like it I'll go out and buy the discs (last purchase was the Wire) but I don't feel bad about using P2P to get shows for free. I'd happily watch them on TV so the channel can get ad revenue, except that they make the experience so bad I can't put up with it any more. At least with boxed sets and merchandise the creators get a bigger cut. And yeah, I know I am probably contributing to shows being cancelled, but when a show that gets 7m+ viewers in the US can't manage two whole seasons (Life) and I don't even live there so my eyeballs don't even count... Well, fuck 'em.

Already happens... why is a standard needed?

[Dynedain]

iTunes (and Spotify I think) already do this by automatically matching volume levels through the equalizer.

Re:Already happens... why is a standard needed?

[YodasEvilTwin]

So that we don't get distorted audio. Even when the amplitude itself isn't causing distortion, the perceived volume change of different pitches is not proportional to their change in amplitude. That is to say, if a song is mixed at high volume and then played at a low volume, the mix won't sound right. For badly mixed music it won't matter, but I'd rather the record labels didn't f*ck with masterpieces mixed by Tom and Chris Lord-Alge, for example.

Re:Already happens... why is a standard needed?

[Dynedain]

But considering how readily the record companies abused the standard of their cash cow (CDs) why would they adhere to a standard for the vaguely-defined "cloud" services?

Re:Already happens... why is a standard needed?

[SlippyToad]

say, if a song is mixed at high volume and then played at a low volume, the mix won't sound right

Then it wasn't mixed right. That's the whole point of using reference monitors and your ears. You are supposed to mix with loud, quiet, and in-between in your mind, and check your mixes at all of those levels.

At least, that's how I do it.

Re:Already happens... why is a standard needed?

[hedwards]

If they were concerned with quality they wouldn't be releasing garbage like Bieber. This isn't about artistry so much as it is about cramming garbage onto the radio and compelling folks to pay for it.

At no point does most of what's on the radio qualify as art and music is getting to be an increasing stretch.

bad assumption

[simoncpu was here]

Proposed solution: following a standard that limits loudness would remove the strategic advantage of loudness.
What will happen: the standard would be ignored.

Re:bad assumption

[danieltdp]

For the lazy, an actual link

Re:bad assumption

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Proposed solution: following a standard that limits loudness would remove the strategic advantage of loudness.
What will happen: the standard would be ignored.

Nah, instead the RIAA will use it as a marketing campaign to re-release their entire back-catalog with the original dynamic range as yet another "remastered" edition that every fan must buy. Meanwhile, they will screw something else up so that the new releases are still flawed in some other way, just so that they can go ahead and fix that problem in another 10 years and re-sell us all the same music again.

Re:bad assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard will not be ignored it it's REALLY LOUD!!!

Re:bad assumption

[thegarbz]

The loudness war is created by the labels, the standard is to be adopted by the broadcasters. It's not like the labels could simply ignore it, though they could create incentives for broadcasters to not adopt but thats kind of where it ends.

The entire theory is useless anyway and comes from marketing people who don't understand. Radio broadcasters already compression limit the songs for broadcast, a throwback to our analogue days gone by. The limiting will always leave a little room for dynamics so if you crank the volume of the song to a flat 0dB the dynamic compression will actually make it slightly quieter, the exact opposite of what they were trying to achieve.

Re:bad assumption

[unitron]

Limiting and compression are two different things.

Limiting, in broadcasting, exists to prevent overmodulation.

Overmodulation causes the signal to spread beyond the particular chunk of spectrum allocated by license to the particular station.

Overmodulation is therefore, de facto, against FCC regulations, and that's why radio stations buy limiters to put into their audio chain, rather than risk relying on someone at the control board "riding gain", although when excessive gain hits the limiter, the limiter's action distorts the audio so that, despite still being "legal", it's less pleasant to listen to, so they still need someone or something riding gain.

The FCC does not require broadcasters to compress.

Compression moves the floor of the dynamic range up closer to the ceiling imposed by limiting.

This makes the audio appear "louder", and "more lively", which makes it more likely (or did, back when) that the station will catch your ear as you tune across the dial.

Promo copies used to be "adjusted" by the record companies to compensate for the audio shortcomings of AM radio and the environment in which it was often listened to.

Re:bad assumption

[thegarbz]

While that is true I haven't seen a strict hard limiter used for any meaningful purposes in a long time because as you said it results in distorted audio. While compression is typically used (especially in the loudness war) to raise the volume level, the principles of it are also used to limit peaks acting as a limiter without chopping the wave off as a square wave. This is the type of equipment I have seen in broadcast studios to do the limiting.

Two different things yes, but can often be used to achieve the same purpose.

Re:bad assumption

[unitron]

Replacing an Audimax *and* a Volumax with an Optimod does not make limiting and compression the same thing.

yaeah

[ae1294]

This CD goes to eleven!

Great...

[mrquagmire]

Now apply it to advertising too.

Loud Music is painful

[AB3A]

If you don't have soft parts, how can the loud parts surprise you? Isn't that one of the elements of music that we're throwing away? The element of surprise?

Re:Loud Music is painful

[MightyMartian]

We're certainly throwing away the idea of subtlety, of creating music that has any kind of dynamic range. Instead it's all got to be blaring and blasting, bass parts sounding like they were done on slowed-down kazoos and the guitars just one big mash of chords, and singers who, if they're voices aren't completely digitally altered to sound like they're singing from a merry-go-round moving at 200RPM, sound pretty much like one of those WWI wireless sets.

Re:Loud Music is painful

[i kan reed]

That and so much more. Art should never have marketting, because that demands a complete lack of subtlety.

Re:Loud Music is painful

[eln]

Isn't that one of the elements of music that we're throwing away? The element of surprise?

Yes, which is why the standard calls for someone to shout "BOO" at 5x the maximum allowed volume at a random point in each song.

Re:Loud Music is painful

[djdanlib]

Fright-core metal is so totally in this year

Re:Loud Music is painful

[foobsr]

We're certainly throwing away the idea of subtlety ...

Tenses! Bigger, faster, in this case 'louder' — things of the past already.

The development will end when 'they' listen to a continuous 1000Hz signal at maximum 'undistorted' (10%?) level.

CC.

Re:Loud Music is painful

[MightyMartian]

Ah, so you've heard the next Cher album :)

Wait

[atari2600a]

Am I the only one that masters audio as loud as possible without more than .01clipping to take full advantage of the bit depth?

Re:Wait

[atari2600a]

derp, .01%

Re:Wait

[SlippyToad]

Well, #1 I think it is a delusion that you get more "bits" out of the music if you use all of them. I've never heard music get clearer or richer using that philosophy.

#2, this isn't about peak volume. It's about compressing so that the peaks are leveled out, and all sounds are nearly the same volume. If you overdo compression you start hearing this pumping thing where it sounds like the entire mix is flying into your face and then away again with every bass drum hit. It's very unpleasant if you care about anything but the drum hits (which take those peaks well above what the guitar and bass and vocal and whatever else do).

Music that has no valleys is tiresome on the ears, and eventually people just tune it out.

Re:Wait

[tibit]

Well, #1 I think it is a delusion that you get more "bits" out of the music if you use all of them. I've never heard music get clearer or richer using that philosophy.

Umm, what? Play any CD track after truncating it to 8 bits of resolution and tell me that using only 8 bits doesn't make it way less clearer. If you are playing a live concert where you should set your reproduction to give 90dB sound pressure peaks as if you were in the audience, and there's quiet stuff going on where the original sound pressure was around 40dB (quiet conversation), you're listening to it reproduced as if through an 8 bit D/A converter.

Re:Wait

[manicb]

That may be true, but the difference between 24-bit recording and a 16-bit master is much smaller. Diminishing returns...

Re:Wait

[manicb]

(Subjectively, that is)

Re:Wait

[SchMoops]

Dither

Re:Wait

[tibit]

Dither helps with converter differential nonlinearlity, and helps make discretization noise become less obvious, but does not help in improving resolution. Filtering does the latter. The CD is sampled at 44kHz. Using ideal brickwall reproduction filter set at, say 20kHz, you gain log2(sqrt(22/20)) = 0.07 bits of resolution. That's it. Dithering on top of it will make you lose resolution.

Re:Wait

[tibit]

It is not all that much smaller. 24 bits is what you need to listen to a 40dB conversation in 16 bits of resolution, duh. So, if you have a dynamic piece, you will appreciate the difference. Symphonic music recorded in 24 bits and played likewise, in a quiet room, sounds beautiful. The CD sounds worse, and I am no audiophile. It's easy to hear once you listen to the 24 bit system -- though the room has to be at least as quiet as a concert hall would be when they pause.

1812 Overture

[Danathar]

You mean the triangle ISN'T supposed to be as loud as the canon fire? :)

Re:1812 Overture

[djdanlib]

I have the 1812 Overture on DVD Audio, complete with cannons and fireworks. If you ever get the chance... listen to it! It will blow your socks off, so set the volume LOW at first.

Re:1812 Overture

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I have had a similar thing between an older CD of Carl Orfs Carmina Burana and a newer one. The older disk was of a 1940's or 1950's recording where as the newer one was a recent recording. Even with the recording artifacts of the original reel to reel or what ever the original medium was the older version is mush better. This is another one where set the volume low since it hits hard. The newer copy is much more uniform but because of it is so much less impressive to listen to.

Re:1812 Overture

[swalve]

A blank shotgun shell fired into a 55 gallon steel drum inside of a gymnasium does a nice job too. My ears are still bleeding.

Re:1812 Overture

[JBMcB]

Also:
Polka and Fugue by Weinberger
The Pines of Rome, last movement - by Resphighi (blew a circuit breaker playing this LOUD)

Also check out some of the old 90's Telarc samplers. Telarc is known for some fantastically clean, high dynamic range recordings. I have the Great Fantasy Adventure Album, with songs from various films along with sound effects, including the famous Jurassic Lunch track that will destroy your speakers if you're not careful - I'm not exaggerating.

Re:1812 Overture

[turgid]

This sounds interesting, More details please.

Re:1812 Overture

[rubycodez]

that was a school performance? gawd, didn't anyone think about damaging young people's ears for the rest of their lives? I love firearms, but I love my ears too, hearing protection is a must *outdoors*, in a fucking *gym*...!!?????

Re:1812 Overture

[ceoyoyo]

I wasn't playing this time, but I was at one (outdoor) performance of the 1812 where the armed forces brought in mobile field artillery and had WWII artillery regiment vet crews come in to fire them off. Sure, it wasn't technically the best performance ever, but seeing the veterans get to team up and fire off the big guns again made it my favourite.

Re:1812 Overture

[mvdwege]

Let me add Beethoven's Seventh Sympony.

The opener should go from enormous, room-filling, full-orchestra chords, to subtle quiet woodwind passages.

Mart

dynamic range is the real issue

[markjhood2003]

It doesn't matter to me how loud a song sounds; I can always turn the volume down or use something like ReplayGain to lower the overall level. The real issue is the compression of the dynamic range used to achieve louder sounding music. This proposal doesn't address that: a volume limit isn't going to provide an incentive to expand the dynamic range, since producers are just going to make sure every song bumps right up to the new brick wall.

Dynamic range simply isn't important to most producers and consumers of popular music now.

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[CannonballHead]

popular music

There's the problem! ;)

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[AikonMGB]

This. Exactly this. My entire library is ReplayGained, and that makes listening to it much easier on me, but when I choose to listen to my music on a high-quality sound system and turn it up, its because I want to get every detail out of the original composition that I can.

Incidentally, this is one of the main reasons die-hards still think vinyl sounds better -- its not that you have better audio density (you don't; but that's another discussion), its that often when albums are mastered for vinyl, the dynamic range compression is not applied. As a result, vinyls often come out with a more complete copy of the original than the digital copies (CDs, downloads, etc.).

Aikon-

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[mochan_s]

An RMS volume limit can I suppose to a degree.

There are purists who want dynamic range and all that and the rest of the people who want to listen to the music in cars or when walking. The solution should be simple - two masters - 16 bit, 44Khz CDs with loudness for the car/walking people and an HD version that is 24 bit, 96 Khz with full dynamic range that listen to music in their anechoic chambers.

Blu-rays now have that mode, Master-HD or something like that that does uncompressed 24/96 sound. I don't know why music recordings aren't released that way but crushed into a CD for general use.

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[thomst]

It doesn't matter to me how loud a song sounds; I can always turn the volume down or use something like ReplayGain to lower the overall level. The real issue is the compression of the dynamic range used to achieve louder sounding music. This proposal doesn't address that: a volume limit isn't going to provide an incentive to expand the dynamic range, since producers are just going to make sure every song bumps right up to the new brick wall.

Dynamic range simply isn't important to most producers and consumers of popular music now.

Maybe it's because I'm a dinosaur myself, but I can't stand over-compressed recordings. Few people are aware that terrestrial radio stations often limit and compress their signal before transmitting it - a technique that I think probably began as a way to let the sound stand out against road noise for those who listen to the radio in their cars. The problem is that not only does that limit the dynamic range (how much so depends on the level of compression), destroying the artist's intended contrast between quiet passages and loud ones, it also increases the noise level in the quiet passages (because any existing noise on the track is also amplified by compression) and distorts any subtleties in the loud ones (i.e. - a note can't die away organically, because high compression/limiting forces it to maintain a constant level until it's nearly silent). Compression/limiting also creates a "pumping" effect in songs that have been mixed using what's called an "exciter", the effect of which is difficult to explain, but quite easy to hear, if you have both a processed and unprocessed version of the same track to listen to.

I use compression/limiting in mastering my songs, but I do so in multiple passes, and I always use "soft knee" limiting, rather than a hard, clippy-sounding limiter. And I leave enough dynamic range for the quiet passages to actually contrast with the louder ones.

You can hear some of my latest stuff here, if you give a damn (Javascript and cookies required).

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[Bromskloss]

This proposal doesn't address that: a volume limit isn't going to provide an incentive to expand the dynamic range, since producers are just going to make sure every song bumps right up to the new brick wall.

Could an automatic gain system not make the average loudness (in some sense) equal for every song so that one with loud and soft parts is louder in its loud parts than a song that has an even loudness throughout?

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[thegarbz]

This proposal doesn't address that: a volume limit isn't going to provide an incentive to expand the dynamic range, since producers are just going to make sure every song bumps right up to the new brick wall.

Volume limits are not all defined equally. Admittedly I haven't read the proposal but if they propose a volume limit measured in RMS at a level below the hard limit of the media then effectively all songs will sound equally loud but still have space for dynamic range. Effectively dynamic kicks on the drum wouldn't affect the average volume. So the labels have their loudness limit, and the studio can still choose to retain some dynamics.

The saddest part is the best recording of many Metalica songs were actually mastered for Guitar Hero.

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[ceoyoyo]

You don't understand. Currently technology limits the maximum sound intensity. If your format (through software standards) instead limits the average sound intensity, no song sounds louder than any other. So applying compression only makes your song sound crappy, not louder. The brick wall automatically makes everyone equal in the loudness game, so the incentive for cheating goes away.

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[mvdwege]

Compression in radio broadcasts was originally done to make sure the quiet passages didn't get lost in the noise of the transmission. Radio has a limited dynamic range, so the choice was between missing parts, or compressing to get the sound into the range of the transmission.

Mart

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[unitron]

Limiting exists to prevent overmodulation, an FCC no-no.

Compression is what they do to be the loudest station on the dial.

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[unitron]

And then broadcasters discovered that compression made their station subjectively louder and stand out from the competition when tuning across the dial...

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[thomst]

Compression in radio broadcasts was originally done to make sure the quiet passages didn't get lost in the noise of the transmission. Radio has a limited dynamic range, so the choice was between missing parts, or compressing to get the sound into the range of the transmission.

That's mostly true of AM radio. FM has a much greater dynamic range than AM (about the same range as a cassette tape, in fact). The Wikipedia article on Dynamic Range Compression agrees (by implication) with my contention that FM stations began using compression to compensate for road noise in the late 60s and early 70s ("the so-called "album rock" stations of the 70s and classical music and "easy listening" stations of that era in particular, avoided heavy compression. Classical stations hardly use any, which explains why a classical listener, particularly in the car, must keep turning the volume up and down, constantly fighting the ambient noise prevalent in car listening.")

Of course, that's Wikipedia, where the issue of authority comes down to who last edited the article, but still ...

Re:dynamic range is the real issue

[thomst]

Limiting exists to prevent overmodulation, an FCC no-no.

Good point.

However, I think it's important to understand that limiting is a special-purpose application of audio dynamic range compression, not a separate technology (which I'd bet you know, but most non-audio-geek Slashdotters probably don't). Limiting prevents the audio signal being processed from exceeding a certain volume threshold, while compression, per se, sets both a ceiling and a floor to the total volume, and expanding affects only how low the volume of the processed signal can be (i.e. - it boosts the level of very quiet passages, but does not set an upper limit on the signal's volume). So, really, all three techniques are aspect of the same fundamental technology.

But, yeah: broadcast signal volume overmodulation. Not a good thing, FCC or no.

There's A Right And Wrong Way

[SplicerNYC]

I'm a production director of a radio station so I'm constantly working on commercials. Although I don't go so far as to brickwall things, I do use a variety of compressions, limiters, and EQ to balance out the sound of a commercial -- usually to even out a vocal performance or to make it work with music and sound effects better. There's a cookie cutter and hamfisted way to do it and then there is actually using your ears to do it correctly. That said, what was done with the 5.1 remasters of the Genesis catalog were a travesty. Any dynamism was lost because suddenly what was supposed to be a quieter acoustic section was as loud as the full band playing all out. That's not the way it's supposed to sound.

Re:There's A Right And Wrong Way

[MightyMartian]

I've only heard The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Foxtrot remasters, and it was, as you say, fucking awful. That is an album that has louder bits and quieter bits, and it's truly amazing to see how modern engineering and production techniques, despite the impressive new technology, can make a record sound worse than the original mix. Probably the most disappointing was Supper's Ready, which was turned into a muddy mess, whereas I have a first generation CD from the 1980s, which was nothing all that great, and it sounds better than the remaster.

I don't even know why there are recording engineers anymore. They've all gone to the Nigel Tuffnell School of 11. I think you could get an eight year old to engineer the last ten years worth of records.

I'm eagerly awaiting the remix of Rush's Vapor Trails, which will apparently back it off quite a bit. At the moment some of the live versions of Earthshine, even from bootlegs, sound better than the one on the album.

Re:There's A Right And Wrong Way

[hedwards]

Indeed, if I know that I want tracks normalized, it's trivial to do myself for the copy that I know I'm going to be listening to in a loud environment.

Who will step up and do this, though?

[djdanlib]

You can make all the recommendations and standards you want, but you can't force the studio engineers to obey them, nor can you change the studio executives who are demanding the loudness and writing the checks to the studios. There is a great deal of the attitude in the music industry that "I make a lot of money doing this, and you don't, so my way is clearly right!" So, this movement will probably involve a lot of independent artists. We need pop artists on board.

If we can somehow start a campaign to get people to enjoy an expanded dynamic range, maybe we can raise awareness of how much better music can sound. Maybe albums/tracks engineered correctly could have another small logo somewhere indicating such a thing - call it something like "HDR Audio" (High Dynamic Range) that makes people think.. "Ooh, HD, this one is better than the one without it" or "HDR is the popular thing in photography, so it's probably good with audio".

I'm all for more artists and engineers preserving the vitality of their music.

Re:Who will step up and do this, though?

[CastrTroy]

But what if Walmart, Target, iTunes, Amazon, Clear Channel, and others all got behind the standard and said they wouldn't sell/play the recordings if they didn't meet the standard. It probably won't happen, but if it did, I bet the studio engineers and executives would follow suit. However, I think the standard would have to not only include a volume limit, but also limit the ability for the engineers to compress the dynamic range. Not sure how easy it would be to police this as some music is loud throughout the entire song, but I'm something could be down about it. But it won't happen, because most people don't care.

Re:Who will step up and do this, though?

[matthiasvegh]

We need pop artists on board.

Why? Popular music uses the same four chords, in a 4/4 time sig at around 140BPM. Sure, it's dynamic range is next to non-existent, but considering the average listener, do you really think they will give a crap? I mean it's only music geeks that seem to, and the majority of music consumed by us/them are actually properly mixed. Look at Porcupine Tree's works for example. Popular stuff usually aren't any good. And good stuff aren't really any good. The only thing worth fighting for IMO is stopping artists being forced to have obscene ammounts of compression against their will. Considering however the ridiculously low costs of creating a semi descent album at home today, and the next to free distribution we have available, I'd say any artists having any integrity would just say "screw you guys, I'm going home." /rant

In ter net

[FrostedWheat]

would institute a volume limit on any songs downloaded from the cloud

Is "the Internet" really so difficult to say or type?

Re:In ter net

[maxwell demon]

The cloud is the new cyberspace.

Re:In ter net

[Anaerin]

And Cyberspace was the new Information Superhighway...

Re:In ter net

[LynnwoodRooster]

would institute a volume limit on any songs downloaded from the cloud

Is "the Internet" really so difficult to say or type?

Yes. Two extra syllables, 3 extra letters, and a total lack of hipsterness...

Radio???

[uvajed_ekil]

'Because of the need to stand out on radio and other platforms, there's a strategic advantage to having a new song sound just a little louder than every other song.

Wait, what? If they're all doing this, then how is one still louder than the previous song? And what is this talk of the "radio" platform? You mean the NPR/baseball machine in my car can be used for streaming music? How retro!

One more reason not to listen to shitty pop music.

Re:Radio???

[tepples]

And what is this talk of the "radio" platform? You mean the NPR/baseball machine in my car can be used for streaming music? How retro!

Yes. People without $70/mo smartphone plans tend to discover new music through FM radio instead of through, say, Pandora or Spotify.

Re:Radio???

[ceoyoyo]

It isn't. Now that they've all maxed everything out, if you DON'T compress your song will be quieter than everyone else. Not what you want.

The article suggests that now is a good time to implement this standard because with digital distribution if all the distributors (Apple, Pandora, etc.) adhere to it, applying compression at the studio will just make your music sound bad, instead of loud and bad.

Although ..

[n5vb]

"loudness" is subjective, and there's a lot of money invested in processing audio signals to not exceed a certain dB level but sound "louder" anyway. Some of this processing is quite sophisticated and dynamic, and high-end processors can have fairly noticeable effects on songs that both average exactly the same on signal meters.

My suspicion is that what will happen as a result of this is simply an arms race between processing gear used by music producers and the de-emphasis and normalization algorithms used by the cloud. There's just too much profit-making incentive at stake for the producers to give up quietly on this.

(and yes, some of the processing some of those cowboys inflict on perfectly good music turns my stomach..)

Volume limit?

[Adrian Lopez]

Pardon my ignorance, but where in Thomas Lund's proposed standard does it introduce a volume limit on "songs downloaded from the cloud", or indeed on any kind of song at all? A cursory glance suggests the document concerns a means of measuring loudness rather than a means of regulating it.

Re:Volume limit?

[gmueckl]

You are right - limits in the levels are missing, but the proposal explicitly states that it is intended as a groundwork for introducing those by defining a baseline algorithm for measurement.

In the long run, this might only limit clipping due to overly aggressive mixing. The true loudness war caused by compression of dynamic range in the mixing process might not go away as a result. And I don't know how that could even be regulated.

Re:Volume limit?

[ceoyoyo]

Exactly. And that's the key. If you sell MP3s, or stream them, normalize all of them to the new standard, which actually measures something approximating perceived loudness. Now everyone's music sounds the same in terms of loudness, whether or not it's compressed at the studio.

Because of a new Evil: Autotune.

[scorp1us]

Loudness just got replaced by something far worse.

We need to enact some kind of legislation against autotune. Or use the SAP channel for the non-auto-tuned version. I'm sure music is just going through a new synthesizer revolution like in the early 80s, and it'll eventually be used properly, but damn if pop music isn't insufferable right now.

Re:Because of a new Evil: Autotune.

[Amouth]

it's funny i actually take notice now when i hear a singer that ISN'T using autotune, funny how i'd rather listen to someone with talent.

Re:Because of a new Evil: Autotune.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Britney? Without Autotune? But that would sound...

Like the gates of Hell opened up and released countless demon-spawn upon the earth...

Re:Because of a new Evil: Autotune.

[ceoyoyo]

If they're using autotune in the first place, I really doubt you want to hear them not using it. Even in passing.

Re:Because of a new Evil: Autotune.

[gl4ss]

well, autotune is still a hell of a lot better than using studio singers to do the voices on the recording.

FYI: 12 is the new 11

[mekkab]

Nigel Tufnel got new amps, you see.

To fix it NOW, use audacious player windows/linux

[unity100]

what the article talks about is Dynamic range compression, where the loudness of the piece is bumped up, losing the less loud bits (generally thinner notes) in the process.

it causes 3 things :

- heavy bass/loud voices.

- lost clarity of the song

- ear tiredom over time by listening to such DRC pieces.

it can be amended by crystallizers, software or hardware to great extent - x-fi x-treme music cards have it in their driver, and it works to great extent. but not everyone may have x-fi. the solution comes in with the below software :

http://audacious-media-player.org/

audacious is free. it has linux and windows versions. works great. link to windows version here :

http://boards.audacious-media-player.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=491

download this, run it, and turn on crystallizer in the plugins. set it to 5 or 8 depending on your speaker setup. also turn on equalizer, and adjust it accordingly. (bump up middle ranges in between 100-800 hz, the human voice, and keep the 60 hz and down (bass) a bit low. you can bump up higher frequencies a bit more for clarity.

you will see that you were listening to music as if it was 'muddy' before. it makes that much difference.

on top of this, you can acquire srs labs audio sandbox, or hd audio sandbox ( or whatever they were calling it now) from srs labs. it is a postprocessor, and if you choose 'wow hd' in 'stereo' selections and then bump 'definition' slider all the way up, your music will be much much more clearer. dont forget to arrange your speaker size slider accordingly too.

Re:

[davide marney]

Mod parent up. Dynamic range (or lack thereof) is a matter of taste, and all this new standard does is give producers a new "brick wall" to run up against. However, since the new wall would be below the level of audio clipping, perhaps it's an improvement in that respect.

Eventually people will get tired of today's over-compressed sound, and will rediscover the joys of music dynamics. As a (very) small-time songwriter, I can appreciate the appeal of chest-thumping, all-11s sound, for a specific effect. But making EVERYTHING sound that way is like throwing away everything your crayon box except Magenta, and coloring everything one color.

The irony...

[Synerg1y]

is that we buy expensive equalizers to fix this and make it sound good again. It sucks because you could "clean" the music using programs, but then it's not longer the "original". Probably why people still listen to old pink floyd live albums.

Mod parent up

[PhrostyMcByte]

Simply limiting the volume is going to cause more problems without really solve anything. So you've limited me to 75% volume. I'm just going to put all my music right up at that 75%! But this time it will sound even worse because now I'll only be using 75% of my available dynamic range.

A system like ReplayGain is much better because it preserves all the dynamic range and fidelity of the original track. Instead of limiting the volume, it adjusts post-decode every album/track to have the same average volume. Overhead: a few tens of bytes for the proper ID3 tags.

The problem with the "Loudness Wars" is that it's not actually the loudness that we're complaining about, it's the lack of dynamic range. No volume limit or ReplayGain is going to solve this one. Dynamic range is awesome if you're listening in a quiet environment. You need low-volume parts for the louder ones to mean something. But in a car... not so much. Tracks with high dynamic range (example) can easily lose entire parts of a song if the environment is too loud for them to play over.

Perhaps some new tech is needed, similar to MP3Pro -- give a track with full dynamic range, and then some additional low-bandwidth bits that describe how to compress the dynamic range when you want it.

About f*cking time

[Just Brew It!]

Stop unconditionally compressing the sh*t out of everything, and record the dynamics the way the musicians meant it to be heard. Some music is just meant to be in-your-face loud, and that's fine if it is the artist's intent. But dynamic range is often a big part of the emotional impact of music, and to strip that out in post-production is no less egregious than arbitrarily lopping off part of the frequency spectrum, or editing out one of the original band members.

Re:About f*cking time

[Amouth]

for that you need musical artists not "singers"/"vocalists" who actually care about their music more than trying to make as much money as they can.

Solution?

[stealth_finger]

I always wondered why they didn't already have an average loudness or max loudness limit on everything in order to preserve optimum fidelity on cd's etc and have an arrangement with radio stations to play new songs a bit louder for a set period, or at least just send the radio stations a louder edit.

Hardware normaliser

[jago25_98]

We get this problem with adverts on TV too.

Amazingly there are no results on ebay for `normaliser`; no one has made a hardware dongle to plug inline of the speakers to fix the problem:

http://www.instructables.com/answers/I-need-a-hardware-volume-levellernormalizer-for-a/

Re:Hardware normaliser

[mochan_s]

Normalizing is different than loudness (as used in the context above).

If you really want uniform loudness, look for something called loudness maximizer ( compressors also will do the trick but you get way too many parameter knobs on those). It makes everything equally loud and so louder stuff doesn't have any advantage. In old school receivers, there used to be the magic loudness button that would render music listenable in noisy environments.

Loudness comes from dynamic compression (which is different than data compression and mechanical compression in engines). Some parts of the music are quieter than others and what dynamic compression does is normalization so that all parts of the music are equally loud. Of course, it's little more complicated than that because it might be quieter in a frequency range than others and so compression not only has to be done with time but with frequency also.

Re:Hardware normaliser

[ceoyoyo]

Because you can't, easily, at least not without introducing a delay into the audio stream and distorting it.

In order to properly correct perceived loudness you have to have the whole song/commercial/whatever. You can certainly do it easily enough for prerecorded shows and music.

Re:Hardware normaliser

[polymeris]

there used to be the magic loudness button that would render music listenable in noisy environments.

That button actually just bumped the basses a bit and was intended to be used when playing the music at low levels-- to compensate for the diminished auditory perception of basses at low levels. (see Fletcher-Munson curves)

This reminds me of...

[Anonymous Coward]

Metallca's album "Distortion Maximum" (or was it Death Magnetic? I can't remember.) and how absolutely terrible it sounded.

Luckily, somebody at Guitar Hero managed to get a non-distorted version of the album for GH:Metallica, which was promptly ripped and released online.

Great example of when a "pirated" version ends up being far superior to the retail release.

This blog post has a nice graphic showing the difference in dynamic range between the retail album and the GH version.

some people think this is great...

[phooka.de]

..they don't know what they're missing.

I recently listened to MP3s of a coworker, ripped at 320bit/sec but with the volume cranked up. With my 3-way-in-ears, I could hear accustic artifacts I couldn't explain given the nitrate. So I compared to the 30 second sample in iTunes... which was not as loud but had more detail and no artifacts.

Whoever did this *wanted* it that way, probably had lousy speakers and didn't know his MP3-player has a volume setting... *shudder* I like my music with lots of dynamic range. And yes, excellent earphones (I'm all for ultimate ears tipple.fi) tend to push you to old Pink Floyd recordings. ;-)

Night Clubs

[ShavedOrangutan]

Some of my college buddies were nightclub DJs and they had audio processors that would do this. They would also wire all the speakers in mono. The sound was horrible, but at 170dB with enough alcohol, it's impossible to tell the difference. No wonder I have tinnitus now.

Sounds like you want Dolby Volume

[swebster]

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/understand/volume-control/dolby-volume.html

Berlioz Requiem

[SarekOfVulcan]

It's the only CD I ever owned where I could hear the engineers turning the mikes down in the middle, because it had just gotten Way Too Loud. :-)

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

Almost every song, including ones that aren't "loud" are normalized to 0dBFS. The thing is that they have large dynamic range, so their average signal level might be -30dBFS thus making them "quiet" when played back at a given volume. If you limit the shit out of dynamics, it makes the whole thing louder at a given setting on the volume dial.

That is what people mean when they complain about the "loudness wars." Modern music can't force your system to be loud, I can set my receiver to -80dBref and no sound will be louder than 35dB since that is how it works. The song can't override the volume setting. The problem is that they have no dynamic range, and thus don't sound as good.

A song that has dynamic range you actually turn the volume dial up on. As the "ref" part implies my system is calibrated to a reference point, in particular the THX cinema reference of 105dBSPL for mains, 115dBSPL for the sub. So when I set my dial to 0dB, that is the limit. That is what I set it to for movies, and get a theater experience. However I don't blow out my ears since the average level in movies is usually 30-40dB below reference. So despite the limit being 105dBSPL, I am usually listening to things in the 65-75dBSPL range. That dynamic range is what makes it sound good, and is what lets big hits, well, hit.

Music is squashed down, so I have to listen to it at like -30dBref on the dial. ends up being about the same normal volume level, it just means there's no headroom, that everything is the same volume.

The solution is NOT a volume limit, the solution is to have dynamic range in the files themselves, and put a limiter in the playback device. That way if someone wants it limited, they can turn that on, but you can get full range when you wish.

Re:No kidding

[ceoyoyo]

"The solution is NOT a volume limit, the solution is to have dynamic range in the files themselves, and put a limiter in the playback device."

I think that's what they're proposing. Radio stations and streaming services adhering to the new standard will just normalize everything based on the average intensity rather than the max. Everything's average will be the same. There won't be any incentive to compress the dynamic range. Most playback devices already have adjustable compression.

And movies have too much

[ArchieBunker]

Ever since DVD movies came out the dynamic range became too great. I turn up the volume to hear dialog and then a car horn or dog barking blows me off the couch. The normalizer setting on VLC is not what I want. I want something like this:

The volume is set to a certain level, that is the level I want and nothing should ever go louder than it. Is that too much to ask for?

Compression

[RichM]

This isn't really "loudness", it's "compression".
And it's been done for years on commercial radio and, more recently, on TV adverts.
Every album you listen to has been mastered or mixed with compression of some sort on the master tracks.

A good example of how things have changed: listen to Violently Happy by Bjork for an example of when Compression is done correctly (i.e. subtle), then listen to any autotuned crap made within the last 2 years (Ke$ha) for an example of when not to do it.

Re:Yay

[cayenne8]

I'm all for this too...they've killed so much music I remembered in the new remixes.

Now..trouble is...if they remaster them properly...I'll have to buy the collection of many things ALL over again....

Oh well...its only money.

This is the real deal

[marcle]

In digital audio, nothing can be louder than 0dB. So, if you're an ambitious engineer, and want your song to sound louder than the rest, but you still can't go above 0dB, you employ tricks to make your song apparently louder. These tricks include compression (reducing dynamic range), but more sophisticated versions like multi-band compression where different frequency ranges are compressed differently, or look-ahead limiters that sample audio ahead of the playback to limit more smoothly. However, compression reduces dynamic range, throwing away information and resolution, and lessens fidelity. So if I'm an engineer and want to make a recording that sounds really good, with a wide dynamic range, it's not gonna sound very loud on the radio or CD player next to the other guy's highly compressed song. That means that in order to satisfy my client and have a song that's sufficiently "loud," I've got to compress the crap out of it. Of course, since no song can go over 0dB, that "loudness" is a subjective thing. Until now, it was difficult to come up with a way to measure it, and therefore a way to control it. Bob Ludwig is a famous mastering engineer, and to hear that he's involved with this effort tells me it's the real deal. I own a small recording studio, and I have to deal with clients all the time that want their music louder. Maybe I'll finally have some good tools to say "This is as loud as it's gonna get."

Never going to change.

[MaWeiTao]

Of course, the problem is that your average consumer has been trained to like garbage.

Have you ever gotten into a rental car and taken a look at the audio settings? Invariably bass and treble are turned way up. And what's the first thing people in stores do when trying out a sound system? They turn the volume way up. If it's loud it's good, even if the speakers are clipping.

And how much dynamic range does your average pop song have anyway? Not much, it's just a wall of noise. And then if you're listening to stuff like hip hop then you're also dealing with low quality samples.

Wasn't there are article here on Slashdot several months ago about some survey about audio? Researchers found that the majority actually preferred the inferior sound of compressed audio?

So there's no incentive to improve audio quality. The problem is when this sort of crap spills over to good music.

Re:Never going to change.

[Twinbee]

I hate the compression ramifications as much as anyone. However, it does make the sound more like a square wave, which is how the C64 SID chip sounds (I'm also a bit of a chip fan). You get particular harmonic overtones which help give richness to a sound. So maybe people are really responding to *that*.

Obviously the producers are going about it all wrong though, since they get the 'square wave' style, but also lose detail with most of the instruments.

You can get the best of both worlds.

Re:Never going to change.

[Legion303]

"And what's the first thing people in stores do when trying out a sound system? They turn the volume way up."

I thought they were just doing that because they're douchebags.

Another excuse to resell us the same music again?

[airfoobar]

So, they've been releasing crippled recordings for the last twenty years... but rejoice everyone, they are now planning on re-re-re-releasing the same music except without the awful mastering. And they wonder why everybody pirates their crap.

Monochrome music videos

[tepples]

But making EVERYTHING sound that way is like throwing away everything your crayon box except Magenta, and coloring everything one color.

Oh, you must mean like the video for "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails or "Blame It" by Jamie Foxx and T-Pain.

Encouraging the industry to self-regulate

[tepples]

A cursory glance suggests the document concerns a means of measuring loudness rather than a means of regulating it.

If each track comes with loudness measurements, listeners will use these measurements in their playback devices to give all songs the same loudness so as not to have to turn the volume up and down when playing different songs. (See for example players supporting Replay Gain.) Songs mastered near the clipping point will be played back with reduced volume compared to, say, "Money for Nothing" or other tracks off Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. The idea as I understand it is that labels will self-regulate because louder mastering no longer makes a track sound louder than other tracks in a playlist, and fewer albums will be destroyed like Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Easiest Way to Stand Out...

[stewbacca]

...from a bunch of loud songs is to make a quiet song.

Because of the need to stand out on radio and other platforms, there's a strategic advantage to having a new song sound just a little louder than every other song.

Seriously, this mentality is so stupid. It's like typing everything in caps and bold to "stand out", but when everything is caps and bold, the non caps and non bold is the only thing that stands out.

This is taught in every Design101 class under the topic of "contrast".

Re:The Easiest Way to Stand Out...

[turgid]

The late Hamish Park, Head of Department of Music at Ellon Academy, despite the fact that he loathed electric guitars, Slayer and Megadeth did teach me one thing about music: it's all about contrasts - loud and soft, high and low, major and minor...

He was pretty cool in a lot of ways. He liked his Glenn Miller and he taught me syncopation. But he didn't like Dave Mustaine.

let us hope

[speedlaw]

I got hung up on by a DJ in 1977 when the rock station went to a power format, and I asked why their signal suddenly became so distorted. Not much has changed. At least there is digital music that lives up to the promise, not all junky mp3

Missing the Point

[mdielmann]

A lot of posters are missing the point. Running this algorithm negates the 'benefit' derived by turning up the loudness (properly, compressing the dynamic range). Once that becomes the norm, the hope is that the record producers will stop compressing the dynamic range for marketing purposes, and we can get decent quality recordings again. Note that this may not improve the overall quality of the music.

help me believe the article

[roc97007]

I'm really hoping that the conclusion is correct, but I can't help thinking, if there is a standard maximum volume, wouldn't every song have the living, livid hell compressed out of it so that absolutely every sound was precisely at the maximum volume? I mean, doesn't this solution fundamentally misunderstand the problem?

Re:help me believe the article

[ceoyoyo]

That's what we've got now, because "maximum volume" is measured as maximum sound intensity. The proposal is to measure it as average sound intensity instead, and normalize everything appropriately. Since average sound intensity more closely approximates what we perceive as volume, everything sounds the same loudness, regardless of compression.

Re:Yay

[thogard]

The auto compression is yet another thing given to us by the RIAA... I can't think of any other industry group that goes to such lengths to destroy their own industry

Screwing around with the volume means music doesn't carry as much emotion so people are less likely to buy the music.

Re:portable devices is the real issue

[b4dc0d3r]

Most producers and consumers don't care because the music is intended to be consumed on portable devices. Car radios, iPods, phones... Listen to a well done classical recording in a typical car, or on an MP3 player, and you'll be adjusting the volume up and down all day just to hear it.

With compression, you don't have those louds and soft bits. At home on your nice stereo, it sounds terrible. But on the portable devices, they sound. Terrible or not, you can hear it. That's the whole point, and why no one cares.

Also why the standard will not catch on unless it differentiates audiophile settings vs. portable settings. Personally, I'd love to have automatic range compression in a car audio system to even out the highs and lows a bit. But I'd like the option to turn it off when i want it off. No producer will let this be up to a computer, so we're stuck the way it is, for now.

Re:absolutely

[ceoyoyo]

It doesn't prevent them from doing it, but it takes away the incentive. Compression got applied because you wanted your song to sound louder than the others playing on the radio. We perceive, more or less, the average sound pressure as the loudness. So if your average is higher, you sound louder. Since the max sound pressure is limited by the format (and the listener's volume knob), compressing the dynamic range lets you make your song sound louder.

Now, if the format limits average intensity instead of max (or normalizes to the average instead of the max), you can compress your song as much as you want but it won't sound any louder than anything else, just more monotonous and/or distorted.

Take away the incentive to be loud and artists and producers will probably prefer their music sound better.

Re:normalization

[smellotron]

i suppose i understand why some people might not want to use it.

I've heard some weird effects (crescendo/decrescendo behavior added or mucked up, or transitions between tracks) due to some volume normalization systems. In my home, I would use compression either for nighttime activities, TV (which is horribly normalized), or background music during a party / chore-day. I would never leave it on for any dedicated listening or a movie. On a portable player, I think I would find the volume normalizer exactly once and just leave it on "heavy".

Re:WHAT?

[Hognoxious]

It's not that they go up to 11, it's that they only go down to 10.

The latter, on both fronts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Home user: most people don't care anymore about sound quality. All they care about is CONVENIENCE. Whether it is brick wall limited or not, all they care is about whether iTunes has it, and that they can listen to it RIGHT NOW. Yes, audiophiles exist, but they are rarer than honest lawyers. I would conservatively guess that 1 in 100,000 music listeners actually care or are interested in quality audio.

Music producers: yes the interest in "natural" dynamic range doesn't exist anymore in non-classical (or classic jazz). There almost is no point is having 24 bit depth interfaces or 64 bit internal processing, since most producers will then compress the shit out of it to fit a 2 bit dynamic range. Classical/jazz producers might lightly compress, but it would be a technical concession only to be able to get above the noise floor of a certain format.

So yes Virginia, there no longer is no interest in quality audio. The fact that iTunes is the biggest retailer proves this. Like I said, convenience is king now.

A different solution for the loudness wars

[tinkerton]

Compressors in the amplifier. We've got these oldfashioned equalizer controls or their predecessor, the treble knob. If we had a dramatic improvement in those, with a compressor technology becoming available in the form of a few presets for the listener, and maybe combined with an appropriate music format, then there would be no need to compress the music upfront.

We do want compression. It makes perfect sense when you're listening in the car or with your lofi portable, otherwise a lot of the music is unintelligible. But now you have the same compression in the car and with your highend set at home. And that sucks.

Re:Yay

[Joce640k]

OTOH if they don't do it you wouldn't be able to hear it on headphones in the street or on some cheap PC speakers - which is how most people listen to music these days.

The music industry isn't there to make audiophiles happy.

LQ youtube Video

[MrL0G1C]

Stupid article poster points to a video with 47kbit sound to point out the difference between high quality and low quality, well Duh - that's not going to work is it.

everthing louder than everyone else

[Ginger Unicorn]

'There will be nothing to gain from a musical point of view

Motorhead would disagree with that sentiment

Re:WHAT?

[unitron]

Beautifully succinct.

Re:Yay

[toddestan]

Many devices have a "Loud" button on them that reduces the dynamic range for this reason. Or at least they used to, I haven't seen it on many newer devices, probably because the manufacturers don't think it's needed anymore.

Re:Wrong explanation

[Twinbee]

Yes I know what you mean, but often they don't just adjust the 'gamma' of the sound like you describe, but also truncate the floor and ceiling to make a more square-wave like sound. That's what I meant when I said 'compression' (I meant clipping), and many CDs do just that. They also do what you said of course.

Re:Yay

[sixsixtysix]

nah, just download them. you've already paid for the fucked up version, so they owe you the good version.

Who'se going to repair all those ruined remasters

[doccus]

Unfortunately, the damage is already done.. the remaster campaign has already been in full swing ,, destroying (er,... 'remastering') all those classics that *Used* to have dynamic passages.. Hows about 'The Who' remasters ( 'A Quick One' will blow out your speakers it so bad ;=(. Unfortunately Steve Hoffman simply couldn't save more than a few albums compared to the amount out there that were attacked by those grubby handed 'crank it mate'. producers/ engineers... so many will be lost to history.. at least the concept of dynamics , in them

Re:Yay

[troon]

That isn't what the "loud" button did. It boosted the bass and the treble to compensate for the human hearing system's natural roll-off of highs and lows at lower volumes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation

Brick-wall limiting

[polymeris]

Brick-wall limiting. Can you call that a technique if it isn't used to protect equipment (and ears)? It's more like they are abusing the (in principle soft, long-attack-time, look-ahead) compressor used in mastering and getting close to it.

One option:

[Unnamed Chickenheart]

Producers and publishers could produce and sell two-tier CDs:

One CD with compression though not as vile as today. It's ok for poor soundsystems and noisy enviroments. Car, iPod, work(?) etc.

Two: A well-mastered record. Preferably a DVD or Blu-ray with higher sample depth (24 bit) and frequency.

And in addition they can give the radio-stations a super-compressed version.

This requires more work of the Audio Demeneers, though.