A world filled with LUF – the loudness war revisited

Fretwired

Interesting blog on the loudness war in music ...

http://blog.reddogmusic.co.uk/2014/02/14/a-world-filled-with-luf-the-loudness-war-revisited/

Phil_aka_Pip

Interesting indeed. I'm aware that mastering engineers would have to nobble music so that it could be cut to vinyl and have it playable afterwards, but apart from that I always thought the loud bits, the quiet bits, and the difference between the two were down to the musicians and the producer.

johnnyurq

As I understand the main drivers behind it are the record companies wanting their artists material sound loud and punchy on TV and Radio who use their own little compression for the same reason. Although there are signs that the TV standards are now hopefully changing back to sense so that the volume differences between shows and shows and adverts are less mental.

Hence the loudness wars as they race was on to make your artist as loud a s fook. Because louder is better no?

Not really I prefer dynamics and brickwall compression and mastering these day makes for ear fatigue from a constant loud unchanging noise, to me to it is the equivalent to a very loud monotone voice.

Of course artists and others in the chain also bought into it and it just went from bad to worse. Most mastering type dudes just did what they were paid to do by the client. So it would see, from the debate over the years most seemed to be ambivalent to it or outright dislike it.

There are some genres of music who may benefit from the technique but its ubiquity made it over used and it got a bit silly.

Me I prefer the dynamics so you can have the different lifts and more/less powerful parts in context.

stickyfiddle

I'm guessing major factors are (in no particular order) low-rate mp3s, shit in-ear headphones, laptop speakers and YouTube videos.

Rocker

stickyfiddle said:

I'm guessing major factors are (in no particular order) low-rate mp3s, shit in-ear headphones, laptop speakers and YouTube videos.

Got it in one my friend.  Also playing a CD in a car needs a lot of compression if the music is to rise above the high ambient sound level. I could never understand why the CD is compressed rather than the playback machine compressing the sound to suit the application. If the playback machine did the compressing, the CD will sound lovely on your hi-fi system and listenable in the car. Rather than rubbish on the hi-fi and tolerable in the car.

Grunfeld

Fretwired said:

Interesting blog on the loudness war in music ...

I like the idea.  Just been looking at that loudness meter plugin... oops $400!

KVR have at least one free one though.  No idea what it's like yet obviously.

ToneControl

turns out the loudness war actually makes playback on the radio worse for the main offenders, here's the tech detail from the guy who makes the radio processors that do the final compression stuff:

http://www.masterdigital.com/24bit/mastering/radio.htm

Clarky

it's not rare to cut different masters of the same material so that they work as best they can via different media..

like a radio master, the CD master.. and even a different one that'll make it sound as good as it can / as close to the CD as it can when played on youtube..

another phenomena of a loud mix is that it exploits the Fletcher Munson effect..

so having listened to two pieces of music [of comparable style and without changing the volume of the hifi etc] the louder one will sound bigger, more energetic, brighter, deeper and generally more exciting.. which is the whole point of hotter mastering..