[atlantaprog] Re: The Loudness War

And this is why my old man and I still love our large horn loaded speakers
and tiny little tube amps and vinyl records.
It's amazing how much easier it is to listen to a good uncompressed album
really loud without it hurting.

-Josh

On Jan 10, 2008 9:04 AM, Simon Jester <dreamchaos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The Loudness War continues.
>
>
> http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print
>
> The Death of High Fidelity
> In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever
>
> ROBERT LEVINE
>
> Posted Dec 26, 2007 1:27 PM
>
> Advertisement
>
> David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne
> Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played
> through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the
> Internet. So he's not surprised when record labels ask the mastering
> engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high
> that even the soft parts sound loud.
>
> Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology
> has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost
> always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners']
> attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range
> compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and
> softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes
> that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob
> music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers
> call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too
> loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume
> contest."
>
> Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has
> changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume
> isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let
> audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text,
> make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners
> consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of
> the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny
> or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse,"
> says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some
> of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But
> there are no details anymore."
>
> The idea that engineers make albums louder might seem strange: Isn't
> volume controlled by that knob on the stereo? Yes, but every setting
> on that dial delivers a range of loudness, from a hushed vocal to a
> kick drum — and pushing sounds toward the top of that range makes
> music seem louder. It's the same technique used to make television
> commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners'
> attention — but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone
> that modern albums "have sound all over them. There's no definition of
> nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static."
>
> In 2004, Jeff Buckley's mom, Mary Guibert, listened to the original
> three-quarter-inch tape of her son's recordings as she was preparing
> the tenth-anniversary reissue of Grace. "We were hearing instruments
> you've never heard on that album, like finger cymbals and the sound of
> viola strings being plucked," she remembers. "It blew me away because
> it was exactly what he heard in the studio."
>
> To Guibert's disappointment, the remastered 2004 version failed to
> capture these details. So last year, when Guibert assembled the
> best-of collection So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley, she insisted on
> an independent A&R consultant to oversee the reissue process and a
> mastering engineer who would reproduce the sound Buckley made in the
> studio. "You can hear the distinct instruments and the sound of the
> room," she says of the new release. "Compression smudges things
> together."
>
> Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic
> Monkeys' debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By
> maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional
> peaks that usually stand out in a song. "You lose the power of the
> chorus, because it's not louder than the verses," Bendeth says. "You
> lose emotion."
>
> The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to
> protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness, says Daniel
> Levitin, a professor of music and neuroscience at McGill University
> and author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human
> Obsession. Human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to
> loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But
> the effect doesn't last. "The excitement in music comes from variation
> in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness," Levitin says. "If you hold one
> of those constant, it can seem monotonous." After a few minutes,
> research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though
> few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to
> another song.
>
> "If you limit range, it's just an assault on the body," says Tom
> Coyne, a mastering engineer who has worked with Mary J. Blige and Nas.
> "When you're fifteen, it's the greatest thing — you're being hammered.
> But do you want that on a whole album?"
>
> To an average listener, a wide dynamic range creates a sense of
> spaciousness and makes it easier to pick out individual instruments —
> as you can hear on recent albums such as Dylan's Modern Times and
> Norah Jones' Not Too Late. "When people have the courage and the
> vision to do a record that way, it sets them apart," says Joe Boyd,
> who produced albums by Richard Thompson and R.E.M.'s Fables of the
> Reconstruction. "It sounds warm, it sounds three-dimensional, it
> sounds different. Analog sound to me is more emotionally affecting."
>
> Want to continue the sound quality conversation? Click here to discuss
> this story in the comments section of our Rock & Roll Daily Blog.
>
> Advertisement
>
> Rock and pop producers have always used compression to balance the
> sounds of different instruments and to make music sound more exciting,
> and radio stations apply compression for technical reasons. In the
> days of vinyl rec- ords, there was a physical limit to how high the
> bass levels could go before the needle skipped a groove. CDs can
> handle higher levels of loudness, although they, too, have a limit
> that engineers call "digital zero dB," above which sounds begin to
> distort. Pop albums rarely got close to the zero-dB mark until the
> mid-1990s, when digital compressors and limiters, which cut off the
> peaks of sound waves, made it easier to manipulate loudness levels.
> Intensely compressed albums like Oasis' 1995 (What's the Story)
> Morning Glory? set a new bar for loudness; the songs were well-suited
> for bars, cars and other noisy environments. "In the Seventies and
> Eighties, you were expected to pay attention," says Matt Serletic, the
> former chief executive of Virgin Records USA, who also produced albums
> by Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul. "Modern music should be able
> to get your attention." Adds Rob Cavallo, who produced Green Day's
> American Idiot and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, "It's a
> style that started post-grunge, to get that intensity. The idea was to
> slam someone's face against the wall. You can set your CD to stun."
>
> It's not just new music that's too loud. Many remastered recordings
> suffer the same problem as engineers apply compression to bring them
> into line with modern tastes. The new Led Zeppelin collection,
> Mothership, is louder than the band's original albums, and Bendeth,
> who mixed Elvis Presley's 30 #1 Hits, says that the album was mastered
> too loud for his taste. "A lot of audiophiles hate that record," he
> says, "but people can play it in the car and it's competitive with the
> new Foo Fighters record."
>
> Just as cds supplanted vinyl and cassettes, MP3 and other
> digital-music formats are quickly replacing CDs as the most popular
> way to listen to music. That means more conven- ience but worse sound.
> To create an MP3, a computer samples the music on a CD and compresses
> it into a smaller file by excluding the musical information that the
> human ear is less likely to notice. Much of the information left out
> is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat.
> Cavallo says that MP3s don't reproduce reverb well, and the lack of
> high-end detail makes them sound brittle. Without enough low end, he
> says, "you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the
> kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a
> power chord."
>
> But not all digital-music files are created equal. Levitin says that
> most people find MP3s ripped at a rate above 224 kbps virtually
> indistinguishable from CDs. (iTunes sells music as either 128 or 256
> kbps AAC files — AAC is slightly superior to MP3 at an equivalent bit
> rate. Amazon sells MP3s at 256 kbps.) Still, "it's like going to the
> Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there's a 10-megapixel image of
> it," he says. "I always want to listen to music the way the artists
> wanted me to hear it. I wouldn't look at a Kandinsky painting with
> sunglasses on."
>
> Producers also now alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the
> limitations of MP3 sound. "You have to be aware of how people will
> hear music, and pretty much everyone is listening to MP3," says
> producer Butch Vig, a member of Garbage and the producer of Nirvana's
> Never- mind. "Some of the effects get lost. So you sometimes have to
> over-exaggerate things." Other producers believe that intensely
> compressed CDs make for better MP3s, since the loudness of the music
> will compensate for the flatness of the digital format.
>
> As technological shifts have changed the way sounds are recorded, they
> have encouraged an artificial perfection in music itself. Analog tape
> has been replaced in most studios by Pro Tools, making edits that once
> required splicing tape together easily done with the click of a mouse.
> Programs like Auto-Tune can make weak singers sound pitch-perfect, and
> Beat Detective does the same thing for wobbly drummers.
>
> "You can make anyone sound professional," says Mitchell Froom, a
> producer who's worked with Elvis Costello and Los Lobos, among others.
> "But the problem is that you have something that's professional, but
> it's not distinctive. I was talking to a session drummer, and I said,
> 'When's the last time you could tell who the drummer is?' You can tell
> Keith Moon or John Bonham, but now they all sound the same."
>
> So is music doomed to keep sounding worse? Awareness of the problem is
> growing. The South by Southwest music festival recently featured a
> panel titled "Why Does Today's Music Sound Like Shit?" In August, a
> group of producers and engineers founded an organization called Turn
> Me Up!, which proposes to put stickers on CDs that meet high sonic
> standards.
>
> But even most CD listeners have lost interest in high-end stereos as
> surround-sound home theater systems have become more popular, and
> superior-quality disc formats like DVD-Audio and SACD flopped. Bendeth
> and other producers worry that young listeners have grown so used to
> dynamically compressed music and the thin sound of MP3s that the
> battle has already been lost. "CDs sound better, but no one's buying
> them," he says. "The age of the audiophile is over."
>
> (On the next page: Top artists and producers sound off on the sound
> wars. Plus: Check out waveforms to see what dynamic compression looks
> like, and more.)
>
> Want to continue the sound quality conversation? Click here to discuss
> this story in the comments section of our Rock & Roll Daily Blog.
>
> Advertisement
>
> Sounding Off on the Sound Wars: Top Producers and Artists Speak Out
>
> This is what I think is happening: Everybody has iPods, so you can't
> get them that loud. So they have a algorithm called a "finalizer" —
> it's not that new, but the way people are using it is new — and it
> makes your music sound louder. People will ruin their records and CDs.
> I was really stunned by the CD the guy gave me when I listened to it
> at home — it sounded crazy! It was like, abort mission! Supposedly it
> sounds fine on your iPod, but if you take the CD and put it on your
> hi-fi CD player you can hear the digital clipping. It's a big news
> story over in England."
> — Kim Deal, on mastering the new Breeders album, Mountain Battles
>
> "Compression is a necessary evil. The artists I know want to sound
> competitive. You don't want your track to sound quieter or wimpier by
> comparison. We've raised the bar and you can't really step back."
> — Butch Vig, producer and Garbage mastermind
>
> "We're conforming to the way machines pay music. It's robots' choice.
> It used to be ladies' choice — now it's robots' choice."
> — Donald Fagen, producer and Steely Dan frontman
>
> "I believe that if a vocalist is hyper-tuned, it's less personal. I
> have no aversion to using Auto-Tune when I have to. But I think
> listeners can hear it."
> — Brendan O'Brien, producer of Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and
> Bruce Springtseen's The Rising and Magic
>
> "I think there's been a huge shift in how people listen to music. They
> used to get as good a stereo as they could. Now they want an iPod. And
> the audiophiles have moved on to multimedia. But to get the content to
> people, you have to play by their rules."
> — Matt Serletic, Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul producer and
> former chief executive, Virgin Records
>
> "A&R people like the compressed aesthetic because they can take it to
> the radio. They think if they want to have a hit record they have to
> spend a lot of money so they want to cover themselves. But if you
> think about the classic records, none of them are squashed."
> — Mitchell Froom, producer of albums by Los Lobos, Elvis Costello and
> others
>
> "I find it quite interesting, and I think its instructive, that if you
> focus on one area of the music business — you could generally call it
> music for people over twenty-four — and you look at the last ten years
> and look at records that have come out of nowhere, that no one's
> putting any money behind and have takes off, the two things that come
> to mind are the Buena Vista Social Club and Norah Jones. And those
> records were made in the most old-fashioned ways you can imagine." —
> Joe Boyd, producer of several Richard Thompson albums and R.E.M.'s
> Fables of the Reconstruction
>
> "I cant tell you how many times someone comes in and plays me
> something he wants mastered and I'll say, 'Do you want to make it
> slamming loud or retain some of this great sound?' They'll say, 'We
> want to keep it really pristine.' Then the next day they'll call me
> and say, 'How come mine isn't as loud as so and so's?' "
> — Bernie Grundman, mastering engineer
>
> "With the Beatles or Rolling Stones, they'd be a little sharp or flat,
> but no one would care — that was rock. Now if someone's out of tune or
> out of time, they treat it as a mistake and correct it."
> — Ted Jensen, mastering engineer
>
> (On the next page: A look at what compressed waveforms look like.
> Plus: Links to loudness resources on the Web and a list of tracks
> where you can hear the difference for yourself.)
>
> Want to continue the sound quality conversation? Click here to discuss
> this story in the comments section of our Rock & Roll Daily Blog.
>
> Advertisement
>
> Loudness War
> Since the mid-1990s, engineers have used dynamic compression to make
> CDs louder and louder. These waveforms show how loud contemporary
> recordings have become:
>
> Nirvana
> "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
> Back in 1991, even the loudest rock wasn't always loud: "Smells Like
> Teen Spirit" has plenty of fluctuations in its volume — so when Kurt
> Cobain screams, you feel it.
>
> Arctic Monkeys
> "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"
> This 2006 track is a prime offender: The sound wave is cranked to the
> limit, and it stays there for nearly every second of the song. Have a
> headache yet?
>
> U2
> "With or Without You" (Original)
>
> U2
> "With or Without You" (Remastered)
>
> How does MP3 work?
> MP3 reduces a CD audio file's size by as much as ninety percent, with
> an algorithm that eliminates sounds listeners are least likely to
> perceive — including extremes of high and low frequencies.
>
> What is dynamic range compression?
> This studio effect reduces the difference between the loud and soft
> parts of a piece of music — recently, mastering engineers have used it
> to make sure every moment on a CD is as loud as possible.
>
> Want to see more? Make your own waveform comparisons and send the
> images to us here. We'll make a gallery and post in on
> RollingStone.com.
>
> (On the next page: Links to loudness resources on the Net. Plus: A
> list of tracks that'll let you hear how dynamic range has changed.)
>
> Want to continue the sound quality conversation? Click here to discuss
> this story in the comments section of our Rock & Roll Daily Blog.
>
>

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