[Glmoneydawg]

Modern formats have nothing to do with dynamic range in recordings. Aesthetic choices and comfort in listening under normal conditions do. A recording that uses a dynamic range of 70dB is going to require getting up and adjusting the volume control all through the recording. It's great to have such overkill on our formats nowadays. Much better than when I started out listening to vinyl. But music is music, and music has requirements for sounding good. That has nothing to do with how loud a close range double fortissimo blast of every instrument in an orchestra all at once is. That doesn't reflect any sort of real world situation. Recordings don't need or use the dynamic range they already have. Overkill is overkill. More isn't better. Too loud and too quiet is uncomfortable to listen to in your living room. Get a dynamic expander and try expanding the peaks and see how you like it. Classical music sounds perfect with a dynamic range of around 50dB.

Agreed it seems the larger the scale of the music,the less you enjoy expanded dynamic range.Counterintuitively(to me at least)i find small scale acoustic instruments benefit more from greater dynamic range in a listening room environment.I guess an acoustic guitar in your living room is reasonable...orchestra on full charge not so much.

 

[gregorio]

[1] It took some time for the consumer to be aware of the loudness war, took some time to react, some time in the industry to release LPs again.
[2] You think it's a nonsense view if me and lots of people (otherwise there wasn't a longtime broad debate) don't like hypercompression and especially audible distortion where it distracts from the music and results in fatiguing, blurred sound, and see it as a fault?
[3] Well, that's what I've said actually ...
[4] Wrong. I like this music.
[5] Take Nirvana as an example. I very much like Nevermind. Especially the MFSL mastering. There is no clipping on that CD, DR 11-13 (original CD 10-13), compression indicator is 0-7%.
[6] Besides, all genres are affected by the loudness war.
[7] Again you confuse musical content with compression/limiting/clipping.
[8] It seems most things have been said and we simply have different opinions and are not easy to convince.

1. The biggest single leap in the loudness war occurred with "Morning Glory" in 1995. You're saying that consumers didn't start to notice until 10-12 years later? It's only in the last 5 years or so that vinyl has started to grow significantly and that's 15-20 years later! Where's the correlation?

2. Absolutely I do, and for more than one reason: 1. "Hypercompression" is a term you or some other audiophile has invented, it's meaningless unless you can define it. 2. The "my mum" argument again, The whole point of applying compression as a musical tool is to "audibly distort" the signal, if it's not audible, what's the point of applying it? Like my mum, you feel that distortion "detracts", so you call it "blurring" and "fatiguing" because you don't like it, just as my mum called the type of distortion Hendrix used "just noise". Sometimes there is too much compression and it is too "fatiguing", sometimes there isn't too much and sometimes it's supposed to sound "fatiguing"! Again, the exact same argument can be (and was) levelled against heavy metal and it's various sub-genres.

3. No, it's the opposite of what you said, because artists do IN EFFECT state they want audible distortions because they feel it sounds better musically!

4. In which case you're contradicting yourself because Techno, various other EDM genres, Drum & Bass, hip-hop, etc, uses way more compression than any other genres. I don't know exactly what you mean by "hypercompression" but if these genres are not hypercompressed then nothing is!

5. No, some tracks have heavy compression. Heavy compression does not necessarily mean no dynamic range, I thought you said you read the article I linked to? Teen Spirit is a good example of heavy compression and dynamic range. It absolutely does NOT have 0% compression, where on earth did you get that from?

6. Again, that just nonsense. Classical music isn't for example.

7. This statement is completely backwards! Why do you think artists/engineers apply compression and limiting? The reason is because: 1. It smooths and blends the sounds, 2. It adds colour and 3. It can make it (or parts of it) louder. All of which are musical decisions!! Again, you are doing exactly as my mum did, separating distortion from "musical content".

8. It seems you have a different opinion to yourself. Hypercompression is a terrible fault but you like types of music which are more hypercompressed than any other.

It would be great if the industry let the consumer decide. As a starting point, the consumer could be offered even a rough mix before hypercompression was applied.

You haven't defined what hypercompression is but if we assume it's very heavy compression (a low threshold, high ratio and a great deal of make-up gain), then how could a rough or any other sort of mix be offered to consumers? How about just the un-mixed raw recordings and then the consumer can mix and master it themselves? Heck, most of the raw recordings (performances) are much poorer quality than consumers could believe, so why not do away with them too? Err, what's left? Why not just get yourself a free DAW and then you can create recordings with exactly the specifications you desire?

G

 

[Husky]

1. More or less, yes, for the named reasons. Vinyl sales started to grow 2007, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival
2. Google for hypercompression (https://www.google.com/search?q=hypercompression). It's a honor to me if you think I could have invented the term
   There is clipressed as an alternative. If you have a better term, feel free to tell the world. If you know about the loudness war, you know what is meant, or see my previous posts.
   
3. Previously you stated "artists do not "tell the engineer to brick wall with audible distortions because they feel it was musically better". (...) artists typically tell the mastering engineer that they want their master to be at least as loud as band/artist X, Y and Z (...)".
   Now you state the opposite again. You or your artists are lunatic then...
   I wonder how you want to fight the loudness war, looks quite schizo to me.
   
4. There is no contradiction at all. I see that you are unable or unwilling to make a difference between genre and sound quality.
   I guess if an artist of the named genres comes to you with a dynamic, unclipped and only moderately compressed record, you tell him he doesn't belong to that genre as long as he doesn't make it as loud and distorted (and mashed at loud parts) as others do, or even a bit more to make a statement and just to belong.
5. Read my previous posts about the compression indicator again, it does not mean zero compression. But on this album it is modest - as can be seen from the RMS as well - and there are no clippings. So following your logic it wouldn't be grunge. I can't post the complete analysis at the moment because I'm not at home and don't have access to it. But I attached the table with the overall results and a distribution analysis of Territorial Pissings which has louder RMS (-15.2 vs. 15.7) and clipping indicator (6% vs. 4%) than Smells Like Teen Spirit:
   
   
   If you think this is heavy compression, then I don't know how you call the sort of compression (and limiting) that is commonly applied today or on later remasters of this album.
   The article described - among other things - two different ways to get dynamics (meaning the difference between periods of low and high loudness), the more traditional way of changing the volume (linearly, rising peak level) vs. by compression and limiting (decreasing crest factor, stable peak level). Of course the result is not the same because of the distortions by the latter. I guess you mean this was applied on this album? Well, we don't know exactly, but if it was, it was subtle enough.
   
6. Classical is affected, fortunately only slightly. (See e.g. the post in this thread above https://www.head-fi.org/threads/too...lity-of-mastering.735405/page-3#post-10940459 or https://www.kirkville.com/the-loudness-wars-and-classical-music/)
7. I wouldn't consider making all louder a musical decision really (the listener has a volume knob!). If you classify sacrificing sound quality for loudness as a musical decision, well, then we have different definitions about music. For me the music (as described earlier) stays the same music irrespective of the applied measures aimed at increasing loudness. Else louder remasters would be different music...
   
8. My opinion is absolutely consistent. Read again what I've already written. If you haven't understood before you probably won't now or later.
9. Hypercompression includes clipping (from limiting). I don't know what you want to express with your statement. As you know that mixing needs much more effort than mastering, you totally miss the argument. If all the people in the music industry thought like you then now wonder that the industry was declining.

I think this will be my final post discussing the loudness war with you, because it takes too much time, seems to be useless and is mostly off-topic.

 

[bigshot]

Husky, you do know you're talking with a professional sound engineer, don't you? If you want to know about how compression is used in commercial recording, you should listen to Gregorio, not argue with him.

 

[RRod]

Classical is affected, fortunately only slightly. (See e.g. the post in this thread above https://www.head-fi.org/threads/too...lity-of-mastering.735405/page-3#post-10940459 or https://www.kirkville.com/the-loudness-wars-and-classical-music/)

That link seems a bit disingenuous. He basically says "I didn't hear anything that bothered me, then I looked at the waveform and now the clipping I couldn't hear bothers me."

 

[bigshot]

Everyone wants to look at charts. They don't know how to use their ears.

 

[pinnahertz]

"Hypercompression", while a term used for quite a while in several different disciplines (if audiophilia is a discipline), has not been clearly defined, nor is it in common usage in the recording industry. Sure there are a bunch-o-Google hits, that just means people use the term, that doesn't mean it's universally used in the industry, nor defined at all. There are a lot of audiophile terms like that (do we need to go down the blurring path?).

Indeed, "compression" cannot be defined simply to the extent that "more" or "less" has any meaning without understanding many more parameters such as independent attack and release times, threshold, detector characteristic (average, peak, RMS), ratio, as well as the obvious degree of gain change. It is possible, for example, for a compressor to operate 20dB above threshold, and by simple parameter change be heard as "more" or "less". It's also common to apply compression at the track level, which completely changes the concepts of "more" and "less". Compression (and limiting) are also sometimes applied by splitting the spectrum into semi-independent frequency bands, further changing what "more" vs "less" means in the result. It would be incorrect to assume that, for example, 4 bands of compression followed by 4 bands of limiting would be default be "hypercompression". With the right parameters, it could sound almost unprocessed.

Hypercompression implies "more" of something that has not been defined other than general "compression", and "clipping". If you include "limiting" (a somewhat more defined case of compression, but only somewhat), the definition blurs even more. All we can assume is that "hypercompression" is, at least to some, an objectionable amount of program-based automatic gain change. But then, "objectionable" is a subjective term, meaning it is determined by opinion and not measurement. So we don't really have a handle on what hypercompression is, even though the term is used here and there.

The 2014 AES paper "Hyper-compression in Music Production: Listener Preferences on Dynamic Range Reduction." - (Robert W. Taylor and William L. Martens) bats the term around freely without defining it other than to document the particular compressor and settings chosen for their paper. The paper attempts to determine listeners awareness of hypercompression in various genres, then determine preference. What's interesting is their results, which show a remarkably uncorrelated preference in most genres tested, with classical being the stand-out that did have general agreement that little or no "hypercompression" was desired. The other interesting possible correlation was not fully explored, that of influence of the cultural and creative models of the individual genres of music used for testing. However, the paper suffers from a limited definition of hypercompression, a limited number of samples, and, relative the the recording industry in general, a severely limited selection of the types of compression.

It seems silly to have to point this out at this late stage in the...um...conversation, but compression, limiting, and clipping are all fairly different things. Each can be used inaudibly, to audible benefit, or to excess with subjective benefit or detriment depending on who's listening. Further, when peeping at a music waveform in an editor, the flat-topping is not necessarily clipping, limiting looks quite similar until you zoom into the single wave level. Clipping, if it actually does occur, is not always audible. The audibility of hard clipping depends on a complex combination of time, frequency, degree, and total active spectrum which is quite capable of masking clipping induced distortion products. Clipping audibility covers the full range from completely inaudible to gross distortion, but to assume that just because something looks clipped that it is, and that clipping is audible at all would be naive.

If excessive distortion is heard in a recording, we could put part of the blame on intersample overs, which have the ability to push some DACs into hard clipping even though no samples go above 0dBFS. Benchmark provides this info. Who is to blame, the DAC, the mastering job, loudness war? All of the above? Sure. And that specific issue can be solved by any of the three. One of those resides in the realm of the audiophile!

 

[gregorio]

1. More or less, yes, for the named reasons.
   
2. Google for hypercompression (https://www.google.com/search?q=hypercompression). [2a] If you have a better term, feel free to tell the world.
   
3. Previously you stated "artists do not "tell the engineer to brick wall with audible distortions because they feel it was musically better". (...) artists typically tell the mastering engineer that they want their master to be at least as loud as band/artist X, Y and Z (...)". Now you state the opposite again. You or your artists are lunatic then... I wonder how you want to fight the loudness war, looks quite schizo to me.
   
4. There is no contradiction at all. I see that you are unable or unwilling to make a difference between genre and sound quality. [4a] I guess if an artist of the named genres comes to you with a dynamic, unclipped and only moderately compressed record, you tell him he doesn't belong to that genre as long as he doesn't make it as loud and distorted (and mashed at loud parts) as others do, or even a bit more to make a statement and just to belong.
5. Read my previous posts about the compression indicator again, it does not mean zero compression. But on this album it is modest - as can be seen from the RMS as well - and there are no clippings. So following your logic it wouldn't be grunge. I can't post the complete analysis at the moment because I'm not at home and don't have access to it. But I attached the table with the overall results and a distribution analysis of Territorial Pissings which has louder RMS (-15.2 vs. 15.7) and clipping indicator (6% vs. 4%) than Smells Like Teen Spirit:
   
6. Classical is affected, fortunately only slightly. (See e.g. the post in this thread above https://www.head-fi.org/threads/too...lity-of-mastering.735405/page-3#post-10940459 or https://www.kirkville.com/the-loudness-wars-and-classical-music/)
7. If you classify sacrificing sound quality for loudness as a musical decision, well, then we have different definitions about music. [7a] For me the music (as described earlier) stays the same music irrespective of the applied measures aimed at increasing loudness.
   
8. My opinion is absolutely consistent.
   
9. Hypercompression includes clipping (from limiting). [9a] I don't know what you want to express with your statement. [9b] If all the people in the music industry thought like you then now wonder that the industry was declining.

1. Exactly, 12 years later! Where's the correlation?
2. Not a single definition there!
2a. Yes, I have! "Inappropriate Over-compression" or "Inappropriate Heavy Compression". The reason this term is better is because heavy or over-compression can be appropriate, whereas the term hypercompression does not consider appropriateness, hypercompression is apparently always inappropriate, which is nonsense!
3. Yes, it looks quite schizo to you because you do not fully understand what the loudness war is or have any significant experience of what artists want. If, as is typically the case, band X, Y and Z are compressed/limited to the max, then the only way to get our artist's recording to be as loud is to also compress/limit it to the max or even over the max, depending on exactly how it's been composed, orchestrated and mixed. In this latter case, we're now applying "inappropriate" amounts of compression/limiting but the artist will typically prefer this inappropriate amount of compression to having their recording quieter than band X, Y and Z. So, IN EFFECT, they are
asking for "brickwall limiting with audible distortion" although they typically do not phrase it like that. In other words: Often, if you ask the artist, they will specifically state they do not want (what you appear to mean by) audible distortion. However, the only way of achieving equal loudness with bands X, Y and Z is to compress/limit to the point that undesirable distortion is unavoidable, in which case most artists will choose some undesirable distortion over having their recording quieter. This is not the only scenario though; some artists, depending on the track and what they want musically from it, specifically want that type of distortion, regardless of loudness relative to band X, Y or Z. Again, there is no black and white here, no absolute "this is always wrong/faulty"!
4. I see you have little/no idea what "genre" actually means or how music is created. What, for example, is the difference between rock and heavy metal? Yes, there are some structural/compositional differences but there are also some ESSENTIAL production/mixing/mastering differences, including loudness/compression. Remove the extreme loudness and severe distortion/compression from heavy metal and what you're left with is no longer heavy metal!
4a. Absolutely!! If a thrash metal band comes to me with a dynamic, slow, sweet sounding track, that's absolutely fine but by definition, it is NOT trash metal! The modern genres, like EDM (and pretty much all of it's sub-genres), depend on massively compressed and distorted kick sounds, snare sounds, etc. Note that I say "kick sounds" and not "kick drum", which is because the sound employed as the kick drum is so distorted it has almost nothing in common with an actual/real kick drum and these different (hugely distorted) kick sounds are one of the defining features of different genres and sub-genres. Massive amounts of compression is one of the tools applied to create these kick sounds and by massive I mean huge transient reduction and make-up gain of up to 20dB or so. So common is this that many/most compressor plugins come with a preset called something like "Drum Crush", "Drum Slam" or something similar. Of course it's not just limited to the kick or drums, large amounts of compression are also applied to the bass, vocals and guitars. That amount of compression is way more than is ever applied during mastering, so again, what do you mean by hypercompression? And, if you want to "do away" with such large amounts of compression, then you are going to destroy much of what makes different genres different in the first place!

5. Have you even listened to "Teen Spirit"? Apparently not! Listen to the verse, it's got a relatively quiet lead vocal that balances well with the heavy kick, snare and guitar ... how? Then there's the pre-chorus, where the drum kit is louder still, with a lot more mid and high freq content (due to added cymbals) and the lead guitar is a higher and more constant level, the vocal though is still at a moderate level, so again, how on earth does it balance? And then we have the chorus, the guitars are massively distorted and Cobain's singing is nearly screaming, yet listen closely and actually there's relatively little difference between his voice level in the pre-chorus and chorus, even though there should be a huge difference, again, how? There's heavy compression being applied, that's how! BUT we still have dynamic range and RMS variation because of the construction and orchestration of the song. If you did read the article to which I linked, you should have a far better understanding of this!

6. Not it's not. This statement is a good demonstration of why I stated that you apparently don't understand what the loudness war actually is! Yes, this album has been made very loud BUT have all (or the vast majority) of subsequent classical albums been made equally as loud or louder? If not, then where's the war? There is no war, just the odd example of a very loud/compressed classical album!

7. As heavy metal (for example) is largely defined by more distortion (sacrificing sound quality) and loudness than rock, you're therefore saying that the decision to create heavy metal instead of rock is NOT a musical decision?
7a. Unless you have significantly different hearing to most other human beings, this statement cannot be true. And, why do you think multi-band compressors exist?

8. Yes it is. You've consistently said you effectively hate hypercompression, you've also said that you like the most hypercompressed music genres. If you still assert both of these views then you are being consistent BUT, those two statements are contradictory. While consistent on their own, they are inconsistent with each other. If this isn't the case, please explain how.

9. No it does not! Why do you think it's called a "brickwall limiter"? It's called a "brickwall limiter" because it compresses to an absolute (brickwall) limit, defined by the user. If the engineer defines a limit of say -0.1dBFS then there will be zero samples above -0.1dBFS and there is no possibility of clipping (except in the case of inter-sample peaks as mentioned by pinnahertz).
9a. And that's because you do not understand what mixing and mastering actually are! Very heavy compression is an intrinsic part of the mixing of virtually all popular/rock genre recordings, it's therefore impossible to have a rough mix without compression. You appear to believe that mixes are created/completed and then compression is added afterwards but that is NOT how music is mixed! Compression is added and then it's mixed, so there is no such thing as a mix without compression. In other words; if you want something without heavy compression (so the consumer can decide for themselves), then the only point at which that exists is after recording and BEFORE mixing!
9b. All popular (non-acoustic) music genres are made this way and have been since the mid/late 1960's and of course, all engineers know this (and therefore do "think like me")!

G

 

[Zapp_Fan]

I came to this too late, didn't realize there was much debate over the loudness war? It's basically defined as overuse of compression. "Overuse" is subjective, the objective measure of the loudness war is comparing average RMS values of normalized audio tracks over the years. Other than that what is the argument?

 

[gregorio]

I came to this too late, didn't realize there was much debate over the loudness war? It's basically defined as overuse of compression. "Overuse" is subjective, the objective measure of the loudness war is comparing average RMS values of normalized audio tracks over the years. Other than that what is the argument?

Other than that, there is no argument. The problem is that your statement (It's basically defined as overuse of compression. "Overuse" is subjective, the objective measure of the loudness war is comparing average RMS values of normalized audio tracks over the years) is only true in it's entirety. If we take just parts of your statement, in isolation, then either it's not true or what it would then imply would not be true, for example: "the objective measure of the loudness war is comparing average RMS levels of normalised audio tracks" or, if we omit the "Overuse is subjective" part.

G

 

[bigshot]

Mixing and mastering is a creative process. It's also the most important factor in sound quality. It's impossible to be Spock about it. That isn't what science has to offer to sound. Science should serve the creativity and facilitate it, not replace it.

 

[Strangelove424]

The tools are in the hands of the user, what he does with it (or fails to do) is in his hands. A very typical perfectionist debate has ensued and both sides are demanding perfection (either from a subjective creative process or an analytical tool) and such perfection will never be found. These analysis tools were meant to supplement listening impressions, so that when one person said "I hear more x or y" in a certain master the analysis tools could prove it. Such info can be helpful to those who actually spend their money on music, and don't like wasting it on duds. To rely only on the analysis tools, or subjective forum talk from armchair reviewers, are both dead ends if they are to be pursued in isolation of each other.

The fact that so few have mentioned actual musical examples in their posts speaks volumes about the adherence to ideology rather than application. To claim the loudness war does not exist is ignoring the elephant in the room. So what then are the pragmatic solutions for people looking to avoid it? I haven't heard a constructive point, or a piece of advice in this debate so far.

 

[bigshot]

So what then are the pragmatic solutions for people looking to avoid it? I haven't heard a constructive point, or a piece of advice in this debate so far.

I'll tell you what I'm doing about it... I avoid lousy music with lousy sound quality. I'm trying to listen to better music. That way if it's well engineered, it can really shine, and if it isn't well engineered, at least the performance of the music is enough to make listening to it worthwhile.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

I'll tell you what I'm doing about it... I avoid lousy music with lousy sound quality. I'm trying to listen to better music. That way if it's well engineered, it can really shine, and if it isn't well engineered, at least the performance of the music is enough to make listening to it worthwhile.

Yep...gotta be music first....have some truly spectacular audiophile recordings of music that sucks azz...wasted money,never listen to them....also have Robert Johnson recordings fromthe the 20's that sound like you would expect...love them!

 

[Glmoneydawg]

The tools are in the hands of the user, what he does with it (or fails to do) is in his hands. A very typical perfectionist debate has ensued and both sides are demanding perfection (either from a subjective creative process or an analytical tool) and such perfection will never be found. These analysis tools were meant to supplement listening impressions, so that when one person said "I hear more x or y" in a certain master the analysis tools could prove it. Such info can be helpful to those who actually spend their money on music, and don't like wasting it on duds. To rely only on the analysis tools, or subjective forum talk from armchair reviewers, are both dead ends if they are to be pursued in isolation of each other.

The fact that so few have mentioned actual musical examples in their posts speaks volumes about the adherence to ideology rather than application. To claim the loudness war does not exist is ignoring the elephant in the room. So what then are the pragmatic solutions for people looking to avoid it? I haven't heard a constructive point, or a piece of advice in this debate so far.

Btw...enjoy the company here...thought perhaps it was digital above artists in here..i was wrong...interesting fun conversation.Could be the Johny Walker talkin lol