loudness war and mp3's how they are ruining our music.

[moomooemu]

So for the college application essays, one of the topics is to choose any issue of importance to you and write an essay explaining the significance to yourself, community or generation. I think this would be a good topic to write about because it technical and would contrast my other essay quite well( as they are more personal) and also I really have no idea what else I would write on. I mean rather than write about something like global warming, fossil fuels or social injustices in which many people will write about, why not try and be unique. (i dont think alot of people will write about this? lol)

Anyhow, I have read a little bit about both of the subjects but I was wondering if you guys know of good articles I could read or forum threads that are good as I may have missed them. I saw a video on youtube about the loudness war and thought it was very interesting. I also read this thread of "will mp3's destroy my high-end audio experience? " Help... will mp3's destroy my high-end audio experience?
Are there any other good sources of info I could read. Or even if you want to voice your opinion on this matter, that would be great as well!

So in terms of organization, I am thinking
1. intro - talk about this generation of music, how the production of music is corrupted, introduce the loudness war and how mp3s worsen the listening experience.
2. talk about the loudness war- talk about how it ruins any dynamics the music has, ruins the beauty of music. How it is a cheap production technique to drawn listeners in by making it louder but destroys it. Also allude how if this technique were used on paintings, so if it had overexaggerated contrast, it would look terrible.
3. talk about the mp3- how it additionally ruins the music experience by cuttin g out the low end and high end thinking. and even though it makes music more acessible, it won't sound as good as a cd. Maybe make another analogy, like eating a burger without the extras such as lettuce and tomatoes, yes it will still taste good but it is missing the extras that make a burger complete. haha, can anyone think of a better analogy?
4. Conclusion- wrap things up, how both of these things ruin the whole music experience. Perhaps list some a cd that was produced but then later "remastered" and ended up sounding like crap.

Does this look good for you? Any input would be greatly appreciated haha. Anything I am missing. I am not sure how long its supposed to be but probably under 1000 words, prolly less. Oh yeah, quick question, what does compression mean? I hear people say it all the time, they are like " its overcompressed or too compressed or add a little compression and it will sound better" what is it?

Thank you all very much!

[hempcamp]

Originally Posted by moomooemu

2. talk about the loudness war- talk about how it ruins any dynamics the music has, ruins the beauty of music. How it is a cheap production technique to drawn listeners in by making it louder but destroys it. Also allude how if this technique were used on paintings, so if it had overexaggerated contrast, it would look terrible.

There's a Rolling Stone article about this. And a pretty interesting video on YouTube. I don't have the links in front of me, but both are mentioned in recent Head-fi threads if you search for them.

Originally Posted by moomooemu

3. talk about the mp3- how it additionally ruins the music experience by cuttin g out the low end and high end thinking. and even though it makes music more acessible, it won't sound as good as a cd.

I personally think that most people can't distinguish well-made, high-bitrate MP3s from CDs, even on the very best equipment (I generally can't tell the difference between CD and 192kbps AAC or 192kbps VBR MP3, although I rip to Apple Lossless to make transcoding easier down the road if alternate formats come along.) You will find this hotly debated on Head-fi, but if you want some cold, hard, data (and to get a balanced perspective) you may want to check out hydrogenaudio.org. They also have detailed wikis/FAQs/threads on all the common formats, and the benefits and pitfalls of each.

Originally Posted by moomooemu

Oh yeah, quick question, what does compression mean? I hear people say it all the time, they are like " its overcompressed or too compressed or add a little compression and it will sound better" what is it?

There are two types of compression. "Compressed" as in lossy or lossless techniques for reducing file size, and "compressed" as in limiting the dynamic range of a recording (the consequence of the loudness war and the reason the sound quality of such recordings is degraded). Wiki it -- the info there is generally accurate with lots of good links.

Sounds like you have the outline for a very good and interesting essay. Good luck!

--Chris

[Maniac]

Once I was listening to a disc loaned to me by a coworker, and it sounded as if the singer got a cold or something. I seem to remember that clipping can easily cause sound to crap out like that. So I grabbed the track and use a wave editor to view it... Woha, when I first saw the waveform, it looks exactly like the sign "Welcome to clipping country". The mixed and tuned to the point that the song started to clip before they even got through the first second of the first track yet.

ouch...

[Joshatdot]

Here are some YT vids about it

YouTube - The Loudness War
YouTube - The Loudness War - New Example!
YouTube - I Want to Break Free from Loudness War

[jilgiljongiljing]

You should talk about both forms of compression as mentioned before, the compression involved in creating an mp3, specifically lower bitrate mp3's.

And the compression involved in the studio to keep the track at a consistently higher volume level to "appeal" to the consumer.

Since your topic mentions both mp3 and loudness war, I think you should mention both issues.

But one thing, while compression in the studio is an issue which usually gets nods from everyone, the topic of mp3's ruining music is not something everyone might agree with. There are a lot of people who will argue that higher bit rate mp3's do indeed maintain the same characteristics of the Wav file and there is no discernible difference between the two. Thats one of the "to each his own" arguments. So you might want to limit the argument to lower bitrate mp3's. They are the most widely used type of files by the ipod generation anyway, so its still a valid point.

[servoled]

IEEE Spectrum: The Future of Music

[listenCarefully]

Originally Posted by servoled

IEEE Spectrum: The Future of Music

Dude!!!! That was a great contribution and I found the article very informative. There is one point I'm unclear on though. In the article it states:

"But there might still be hope for getting out of the loudness war. RMS (average) normalization algorithms, such as Replay Gain, have been implemented in many digital audio players and work to bring all songs in a digital library to the same average level. With Replay Gain enabled, songs originating from many CDs are processed and played back at a consistent average level of loudness. This helps listeners because they no longer have to adjust their volume each time they go from one album to another. And while such normalization cannot undo the compression of music (it amplifies or reduces the song in its entirety), it counteracts any efforts that were put in to make one song louder than another, essentially nullifying the loudness war altogether."

The author claims that this kind of level "normalization" cannot undo the original compression. Assuming that he is referring to compression of the waveform and not file compression, I really don't see how using "Replay Gain" or "Soundcheck" will help
"nullify the loudness war". A compressed song with the same RMS level as an uncompressed one will still sound louder and thus, compression will still be used by the music industry to make a recording "stand out".

Ps No wonder the music industry is in decline and this certainly explains why, even though I like all kinds of music, I spend so much time listening to good quality (read uncompressed) Jazz recordings on my high end system. The commoditization of music has crushed the art out of it and the industry big shots deserve everything they get as their companies wither and die.

[moomooemu]

Thank you guys so much! Very good information and sources here. Good points as well. So yeah thanks everyone for the info and comments, I gotta get working

[Rempert]

Originally Posted by listenCarefully

The author claims that this kind of level "normalization" cannot undo the original compression. Assuming that he is referring to compression of the waveform and not file compression, I really don't see how using "Replay Gain" or "Soundcheck" will help
"nullify the loudness war". A compressed song with the same RMS level as an uncompressed one will still sound louder and thus, compression will still be used by the music industry to make a recording "stand out".

The difference here is between peak normalization and average/RMS normalization. If you record a track and then normalize it to 100%, that means the loudest peak is as loud as possibly in the format (let's assume I'm talking 16 bit fixed integer like a CD). If you then use a limiter or clipper, you alter the sound by lowering the level of the highest peaks in some way. Then when you normalize it again, the loudest peak is as loud as it was previously, but the average level of the track is obviously louder. This is in simple terms what is happening during CD mastering.

Now when some computer user takes your track that you compressed like this and applies ReplayGain, they are almost reversing the last "normalizing" step you performed in mastering. They are lowering the average level back to match the level of the rest of their music. Now your song will be more dynamically consistent than the others, rather than louder. For an extreme example, let's say someone has in succession two tracks on their portable player. One is a piano recording of a Rachmaninoff prelude, very soft in the first half and very loud at the end, lots of transients and little compression. The next track is a super hot pop song. First of all, the prelude will sound terrible because it is too dynamic. The soft part will be covered by the traffic on the street and then the guy turns up the volume to hear it and the noise floor is terrible and then the loud part distorts because of the insufficient power and blows his ears out to boot. But make no mistake, when the pop song starts it will sound very soft and lacking of dynamic power in comparison.

The hope would be for the industry to someday take a step back, stop trying to make the loudest track possible, and find the middle ground level of dynamic consistency that will allow pop songs to sound good under typical (not audiophile) listening conditions without being overly squashed or distorted.

[listenCarefully]

Good explanation Rempert. Based on the nature of the "industry" I see little hope of things improving for someone like me who treats listening to music as an experience to optimized and savored. If I want this optimal experience I guess it will be relegated to Jazz. Not the worst thing I guess since I would be much less happy if things were reversed and Jazz was butchered while Pop retained some integrity.