Loudness Wars.

Started by KrazyKatz, November 18, 2007, 19:43:21

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Saga Musix

Quoteimho the main reason is consistence. Listening to a well engineered/mastered song and right after listening to a poorly made one feels like a significant drop on the volume level
Now you're implying there that "louder" does indeed mean "better". That is how many people perceive loudness, but of course only making it loud doesn't make the music or the mix itself good. The situation you describe can be solved best by applying the same gain to all tracks (e.g. by normalizing all your audio with ReplayGain), and certainly not by maximizing the shit out of every song and compressing it to aural death. Your argument is invalid and just a blind reiteration of what the industry wants to make you believe is the best solution.

But the "louder means better" thing is a good point. Some reasons for loudness are probably:
  • Loud music on the radio or a CD or whatever may be perceived as better. Maybe because it is more noticeable. Ever wondered why advertisements in TV or radio are so much louder than movies or music? This is the reason. Ads are so much louder so that you can't miss them, even if you go to your kitchen next door to get some new popcorn for that movie.
  • From an engineering aspect, music should sound equally good on every kitchen radio and hifi equipment. You should still be able to hear the awesome bass of your tune on the kitchen radio, just like you hear it on your hifi. Applying hard compression is one way to achieve that.
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sso

its going bit far,im  finding tracks on Soundcloud f.e , where the audio is just one continuous block of sound and the resulting mix is just "flat."

i prefer bit more dynamics in my music.

though, the biggest difference i see between now and f.e the 80´s where songs had much more dynamics, is the bass, music today usually has lots more bass.
bass needs more volume to be heard properly than the higher frequencies,but if you up the bass, it drowns out the higher freq unless you amp those too, lol

might be a result of the current fascination with the bass (started in the early nineties if i remember correctly)