The Loudness Wars

What's Hot
JezWyndJezWynd Frets: 6021
Interesting op ed piece in the NYT about modern music and how it's made -

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars.html?
0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom

Comments

  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited February 2019
    Rip Rowan wrote about this as far back as 2002 for the Pro Rec magazine:

    https://riprowan.com/over-the-limit/

    People doing the mastering challenge should have a read of both articles.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    Nice article!

    I think you can't take the question of loudness in isolation - it's totally down to the production and aesthetic of the recording.

    An example is What's the Story Morning Glory by Oasis. It's absolutely smashed. Further than I think it needed to be, but not as far as the numbers might tell you. The drums are deliberately mixed quietly, and every song is a wall of distorted guitar layers. Distorted guitar doesn't have much dynamics, few transient peaks, the drums aren't the main point so they're not mixed loud... that means that even if it wasn't mastered loud, it wouldn't have as much dynamic range as "What's Going On" purely on the basis of the arrangement as an artistic choice.

    On the other hand... if the style of music was acoustic guitar, or a Tool record where the drums are mixed loud because they're the interesting bit, or a song the has quiet verses and loud choruses... then trying to make that as loud as Morning Glory would totally fuck it up, because the dynamics are playing an important musical purpose and removing them demeans the artistic intent of the song.

    Same with Skrillex - those records have to be loud, because if you take away the smashed lack of dynamics and obvious distortion, it's just bleeps and boops and sounds weak as fuck (showing my biases here, but hopefully you get the point).


    Taken a level further, artists, songwriters, recordists, producers, mixers, all are making their decisions on the assumption that the final result will have low dynamic range & peak-to-average levels. Decisions about tones, arrangements, mic placement, where to place overdubs... often they're trying to create contrast and quality and tension/release that doesn't rely on big dynamic changes.


    So, if you take a record that's been conceived from the offset to be loud, and try to force it to be more dynamic... you might make it sound weaker, and subjectively worse, than if you just accept that it's designed to be smashed flat. I don't disagree for a second that commercial music as a whole should be more dynamic, but you've got to follow that right back to the initial songwriting phase and follow all the way through the production.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 3reaction image Wisdom
  • StuckfastStuckfast Frets: 2393
    Strange that the article doesn't get into the current situation with streaming services and loudness normalisation, though.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
Sign In or Register to comment.