walden
Head-Fier
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Below is a nearly finished article I'm writing for my high school's newspaper on the loudness war. It's targeted obviously towards people with little or no knowledge or sound science. I tried to simplify it as best as possible for this purpose, while still maintaining a technically accurate description, and thorough explanation of dynamic compression. If you have the time, let me know what you think of it.
The Loudness War
Have you ever wondered why some songs are louder than others while listening to music from iPod or computer? Starting after the widespread use of the compact disk in 1982, digital audio recordings started to become progressively louder. This trend is exemplified by Metallica's 2008 album “Death Magnetic” which has been criticized for being the loudest recorded album to date. Although many listeners enjoy pushing the volume to the limit, the negative effects in quality for loud recordings heavily outweigh any positive effects.
Although this loudness trend started with the widespread use of the CD as a music distribution medium, digital music isn't inherently worse than analog, it is merely subject to poor circumstance. The biggest problem with audio production today is compression, however to understand compression, one must first understand the basics of an audio signal. Digital waveforms, like the ones shown below, are simply audio data. The graphs below are simply lines which represent volume over time. The peaks signifying the loudest portions, while the thinner parts represent quieter ones. To make a recording louder it could simply be stretched vertically, but digital audio has a volume cap, making this impossible without cropping essential data . Instead, professionals will use a different method to push the volume of music after it's recorded.
(I had two beautiful graphs here, the first one is of a louder and more heavily compressed version of the second graph)
A mastering engineer, who's job it is to make recordings sound a music as possible after they are recorded, will use a method called dynamic compression to increase the volume of recordings. The first graph above an exaggerated visual of the second graph compressed. Audibly, dynamic compression does exactly what one would think it does: it squishes the peaks down, allowing the net volume to be increased more without clipping but simultaneously destroys the dramatic changes in volume that often make music exciting.
Although Metallica's “Death Magnetic,” a metal album, is the loudest recording ever released, the use of dynamic compression isn't limited to any specific genre, but can be found in the mastering of all kinds of music, and in most recordings. A good question is; why are albums are so highly compressed if they sounds worse? The answer is that most people initially perceive a recording with higher volume as a recording with better quality when examining it at a quick listen. This is because it makes quiet portions louder, revealing details that wouldn't usually be as audible. What an inexperienced listener may fail to notice is that the louder, more heavily compressed recordings usually sound worse due to the compressed volume dynamic. If listeners were to examine just one highly compressed track against one with very little compression, they would likely find the heavily compressed track to be boring in comparison. Because the average consumer doesn't often notice the effects of compression, producers, artists, and music labels push mastering engineers to compress music more heavily in order to please consumers and inevitably sell better.
The beginning of the loudness war was started by a constant one-upmanship between those who influence mastering engineers. This so-called “war” began with artists and music labels who wanted their music to be the loudest in comparison to other tracks. In the attempts to make their recordings the loudest you hear on shuffle, artists and music labels were only furthering the degradation of their own recordings. In the long run, this meant the degradation of future recordings by raising the loudness bar even higher for others to jump over.
There are a few artists who try to maintain the integrity of their recordings by requesting they be mastered with little or no dynamic compression, however many artists may not have the autonomy, seeing that their music labels often veto their requests for sales purposes. On the other hand, as albums approach unprecedented volume levels, loss of sales from criticism and reduction of sound quality will begin to outweigh the sales advantages of compression. Unfortunately there is not a lot that can be done to combat the loudness war for people who have no influence on the music industry. Aside from waiting for the issue to resolve itself, one can negate the effects of volume inconsistency by using replay gain or what Apple calls “sound check”. What this does is simply mediates the volume of all recordings to maintain a consistent volume level while also fighting the loudness war on a personal level. However, replay gain can only mediate volume, it can not reverse the damage that has already been done to a poorly mastered recording. The only way to fix poorly mastered music is to replace it with another mastering by more integral engineers, if such mastering even exists.
The Loudness War
Have you ever wondered why some songs are louder than others while listening to music from iPod or computer? Starting after the widespread use of the compact disk in 1982, digital audio recordings started to become progressively louder. This trend is exemplified by Metallica's 2008 album “Death Magnetic” which has been criticized for being the loudest recorded album to date. Although many listeners enjoy pushing the volume to the limit, the negative effects in quality for loud recordings heavily outweigh any positive effects.
Although this loudness trend started with the widespread use of the CD as a music distribution medium, digital music isn't inherently worse than analog, it is merely subject to poor circumstance. The biggest problem with audio production today is compression, however to understand compression, one must first understand the basics of an audio signal. Digital waveforms, like the ones shown below, are simply audio data. The graphs below are simply lines which represent volume over time. The peaks signifying the loudest portions, while the thinner parts represent quieter ones. To make a recording louder it could simply be stretched vertically, but digital audio has a volume cap, making this impossible without cropping essential data . Instead, professionals will use a different method to push the volume of music after it's recorded.
(I had two beautiful graphs here, the first one is of a louder and more heavily compressed version of the second graph)
A mastering engineer, who's job it is to make recordings sound a music as possible after they are recorded, will use a method called dynamic compression to increase the volume of recordings. The first graph above an exaggerated visual of the second graph compressed. Audibly, dynamic compression does exactly what one would think it does: it squishes the peaks down, allowing the net volume to be increased more without clipping but simultaneously destroys the dramatic changes in volume that often make music exciting.
Although Metallica's “Death Magnetic,” a metal album, is the loudest recording ever released, the use of dynamic compression isn't limited to any specific genre, but can be found in the mastering of all kinds of music, and in most recordings. A good question is; why are albums are so highly compressed if they sounds worse? The answer is that most people initially perceive a recording with higher volume as a recording with better quality when examining it at a quick listen. This is because it makes quiet portions louder, revealing details that wouldn't usually be as audible. What an inexperienced listener may fail to notice is that the louder, more heavily compressed recordings usually sound worse due to the compressed volume dynamic. If listeners were to examine just one highly compressed track against one with very little compression, they would likely find the heavily compressed track to be boring in comparison. Because the average consumer doesn't often notice the effects of compression, producers, artists, and music labels push mastering engineers to compress music more heavily in order to please consumers and inevitably sell better.
The beginning of the loudness war was started by a constant one-upmanship between those who influence mastering engineers. This so-called “war” began with artists and music labels who wanted their music to be the loudest in comparison to other tracks. In the attempts to make their recordings the loudest you hear on shuffle, artists and music labels were only furthering the degradation of their own recordings. In the long run, this meant the degradation of future recordings by raising the loudness bar even higher for others to jump over.
There are a few artists who try to maintain the integrity of their recordings by requesting they be mastered with little or no dynamic compression, however many artists may not have the autonomy, seeing that their music labels often veto their requests for sales purposes. On the other hand, as albums approach unprecedented volume levels, loss of sales from criticism and reduction of sound quality will begin to outweigh the sales advantages of compression. Unfortunately there is not a lot that can be done to combat the loudness war for people who have no influence on the music industry. Aside from waiting for the issue to resolve itself, one can negate the effects of volume inconsistency by using replay gain or what Apple calls “sound check”. What this does is simply mediates the volume of all recordings to maintain a consistent volume level while also fighting the loudness war on a personal level. However, replay gain can only mediate volume, it can not reverse the damage that has already been done to a poorly mastered recording. The only way to fix poorly mastered music is to replace it with another mastering by more integral engineers, if such mastering even exists.
