The Loudness War
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Spring 2016 - check out my updated course, Foundations of Digital Audio, at www.lynda.com/A...
HD version of this video and petition to end the Loudness War here: www.change.org...
Big-name CD manufacturers are distorting sounds to make them seem louder. Sound quality suffers.
NOTE: Use headphones if listening on a mobile device. Phones and tablets usually apply their own dynamic range compression on their built-in speakers, which hides the effect of this example.
This video was made with image editing software and a screen capture program for the visuals, and a DAW (Digital Performer 4.5) to process the audio.
Thanks to everyone for watching! - Matt Mayfield, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Saddest thing is that youtube is full of tutorials instructing people to "improve" their sound in exactly this damaging way.
You just blew my mind on mastering. This whole time I've been trying to make my stuff as loud as modern music by sacrificing quality. Thank you, for helping me realize the folly of the industry.
***** That's not true at all.
Bob He has a point, but it only helps the individual, and only in the short-term.
Bob If you want to get played on the radio, you'll have to. If you just sell CDs or Vinyls or make a living from Downloads, it's not that important I guess.
DJ ConRad
What would be the reason for that? Because I don't see one. Everything is leveled in volume on the radio anyway.
Radios don't play very dynamic mixes because of a row of factors. Many people listen to the radio in their car, which makes quite a lot of noise. A dynamic mix has way more level differences than a very compressed mix which means the quiet parts could not be or hardly be audible. Plus, imagine yourself zapping through the radio. You automatically give the station which is louder more attention in the first place. I believe radio stations even demand certain RMS levels, so the average volume can be kept. It's way too much to discuss though. There is a lot literature or stuff in the internet about this theme too I think... Its pretty sad though what it does to the music, I prefer dynamic mixes myself - even though there are exceptions.
'Wimpy loud sound' has to be the perfect way to explain the loudness wars in three words.
Very clean and flat sounding.
To me. If you're using more than a compressor, a 3-4 band parametric EQ and a very sparse use of a limiter - you're mixing down wrong.
Terrific, and still very relevant 10 years later (unfortunately).
It’s getting even worse with the amount of music being produced at home.
Bullshit
About a month ago someone named Dan Worrall made a song that pretty much maxed out how loud things can get by setting each sample to be either +1 or -1, effectively making 1 bit audio and turning the volume to max
@@TwoQs What's wrong with music being produced at home?
Still relevent 17 years later. This video is literally older than my sister is
0:10 original
0:35 compressed
1:10 compressed with original volume
This video is literally less than 2 minutes long. Anyone that needed timestamps here should get their life together lol
@@stormingthecastle69 Its for quicker A/Bing comparisons
0:15
1:15
0:15
1:15
Ever since I got a decent stereo setup in my home I've noticed just how fatiguing it is to listen to most new music because of this phenomenon. Many audiophiles complain that modern day stereo components aren't as good as older ones, when in reality it's the compression and loudness of the recordings they're playing that are the reason for the poor sound. Shit in = shit out :(
If you have good speakers, it wont sound so shitty..
GuyVelella *if you have good speakers it sounds even shittier*
bardust Completely agree. I put together a good stereo setup at home and noticed the same thing. But two good things emerged from this problem: 1. I started to discover and appreciate older records I never paid attention to before, like Steve Miller Band or early Rod Stewart. These early albums sound amazing. And 2, I started downloading HD music files, like 24bit FLAC files with higher frequencies around 48kHz and above. The difference from a regular CD or an MP3 file is huge, you should check it out.
Slayer4965 I'm in the same boat as you, I've got into a lot of music I'd never have listened to before since getting my high end speakers + amp and guess what? All of that music has great dynamic range compared to what I listened to before.
I even listen to the higher dynamic range stuff with my earphones while out and about and can't hear any background noise like cars and such.
There's literally no reason for them to squash music like they do, but I doubt it will ever end unfortunately for us audio loving people :(
Slayer4965 Yes one positive bi-product is that one gets a newfound appreciation for older music :) The difficult part then is to find vintage CD's that hasn't been remastered recently. There's been alot of visits to second-hand markets or thrift shops for me, and that's an exciting experience in it's own right. And I took it a step further and bought a vintage record player and started listening to vinyl. I love it, it takes me back to my childhood so it's a dual benefit of nostalgia and better sound :) I have a modern pickup and RIAA amp and the player has a 2,7kg suspended platter so the quality really impressed me.My DAC handles 24bit so I'll check it out, definitely! Thanks for the tip!
I really dig this video. Clear, concise, and every EDM producer needs to watch it.
they need to learn the basics before, we all knows they lack on that.
I happened to have a chance to speak with Steven Wilson just over a week ago when he flew to Sydney on the Hand. Cannot. Erase tour. Having discovered his work through it being known exceptions to the loudness war. I felt an urge to ask him about why he decided to avoid it. He was apparently sick of sending albums out to external mastering studios. More explicitly he was pissed at having to pay $10,000 to have an album mastered, only for it to sound worse. After taking a well deserved shot at Metallica- He went into more detail: A few years ago, he took one of his albums to Abby Road for mastering and sat in on the mastering session. During the session, the mastering engineer started leaning over to the monitor on the far left. Steven got worried that something might be up with the mix and asked the engineer if there was anything wrong. The engineer replied "Sorry I'm losing my hearing."
Paul Graves that’s as absurd as letting a pilot that’s going blind continue to fly
@@danieldaniels7571
True story though! And it got a big laugh from the audience!
Actually, another memorable moment from that night was when he started talking how artists used to release albums on a yearly basis, and how the time between album releases is getting progressively longer. To illustrate this, he made a point that things are so bad that Tool hadn't released an album in 10 years :D
When you know what exactly you have to be listening for and have a lot of experience with all the standard techniques you can continue to work with a surprisingly bad hearing.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I sense that nothing I say will change your mind, so I wish you well as you go your way, and the rest of the professional audio community and I go ours.
Peace,
Matt
So this is why I feel like me ears are gonna bleed after a few songs new albums.
I stumbled across this video as I was reading an article about dynamic compression on the new Dylan CDs. This video in turn prompted me to really explore this whole compression thing as just today I discussed with a friend of mine taking a shot at doing some amateur mastering for work we're doing.
I really just wanted to express my thanks because I know that what I'll be doing in the future with regards to mastering will be better because of this video and how it was a catalyst for learning.
Loud is not enough, but tell this to AC-broadcasters who even squeeze tender jazz tracks or classical music into literally zero dB dynamics and MPX power of continous +3dBr...
I cant believe ive never heard of this before! I dont have alot of cds but from the ones i do i have it becomes clear how this loudness war has taken a toll on the quality.
How disappointing to know that I will experience less range for the rest of my lifetime. I believe this explains a lot. Music these days tends to all sound exactly the same from start to finish. It's strong and loud... but being in your face isn't everything.
I heard about this a while ago & must confess that I haven't always understood, nor have I been annoyed to any large degree. But as time goes on, I've begun to feel it's impact more clearly, I think. As it's often been described, the loudness can sound good at first.. everything right there, clear & detailed. But at the very same time, there might be a subtle or not so subtle wearing effect.
What I don't understand is how does this loudness war help sell music? I don't get it.
Yea I don't get that. You already have to adjust the volume to the level you want to begin with. Either way you're going to listen to it at whatever volume you want. Something is severely lost on me here lol.
Warndog Its for people that turn up there speakers all the way regardless.
people perceive loud as better. and it started back in the day with louder tracks getting more requests on jukeboxes something like that. but in all honesty its not as simple as just turning the track up, you can can still make it loud and have dynamics if it is mastered/compressed at a good level.
***** imo it's not poor if that's the results you wanted.
yeah i understand, its art for a reason. it's all subjective.
the right way to make a song louder is to normalize it up to about 98%, that way you wont loose the dynamics. it makes everything louder as much as possible, thus reducing noise coming from your equipment. Normalizing wont do anything if certain parts are already at 98%. A song like in the example which is already normalized obviously can't and shouldnt be tampered with.
It's like night and day there's a lot more feel and power going into the music when it isn't compressed its strong and powerful feels better to listen to
The new Foo Fighters EP is a shocker for this, very noticeable on Neverending Sigh.
even the vinyl doesn't really improve it, must be a quiter (but not more dynamic) transfer of the loud digital master
I have CDs of the Japanese singer Mariko Ide that are loud, though I can’t complain of owning her music and jamming out to it.
Most people would have no idea what to choose if given two loudness choices; it would also cost more to the producer which would defeat the purpose of making the song louder.
In a direct comparision, louder is perceived as "sounding better".
On the radio songs compete against each other. Many people will perceive song A sounds better, because it's 3 dB louder than song B - even if it's a different track.
On an album this doesn't apply, because usually ONE sound engineer takes care the different are in harmony. But one of these tracks on a sampler ... loses the "sampler loudness war" :-/
Who masters the same song 10 times for 10 different releases? It costs money.
A perfect example of demonstrating the loudness war, and explained in less than 2 minutes. Very good video!
No, that's something different. Look up "Fletcher-Munson" on Google. The device that does what I'm talking about is a dynamic range compressor/limiter.
Still relevant in 2019.
Yes - turn up the volume on your playback device. (Not meant to be sarcastic or disrespectful - simply serious.)
I don't mind if its loud as long as it's clear
If you have dynamic compression on your audio driver set on both tracks will sound exactly the same.
Damn, you can fuck up audio really easy.
Thanks for the video.
One should be put in jail for doing this! They ought to be sued!
Lars-Olof Ström irk
Still a good Video. BUT: Brickwall-Limiting does not always mean that it's bad sounding. I had tracks that i used brickwall-limiting on and they sounded great and more compact.
As always: It all depends on the style, the sound and the mixing-engineer.
well actually.
they used more disk size than the high dynamic range ver. unfortunately not more "compact".
When 2 or more instruments play at the same time, they each magically become quieter so the total volume stays the same
Re-do the video in "HD" so that there is more difference between the two.
Could this explain (among other things) why there are so many people out there who prefer older music to the new songs released today?
Pretty much true, except that there is a limit to how loud low tones can be on an LP before the needle starts jumping out of the groove.
I'd agree compression can't be undone but there are some techniques that can be applied to improve some overly compressed material to give it more life and dynamic range. Of course that's not going to be a good as proper original mastering but it can be a bit easier to listen to.
Yup. It's kind of an "ignorance is bliss" thing, but once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore.
this is why vinyl is making a come back
What complicates a clear understanding of it all is that I DO still enjoy the music, but.. possibly w/ a diminished sense of satisfaction without fully realizing it. I think this whole topic gets lost on the average person, especially. They hear music, and if they like it, well.. it must SOUND good enough if they're still enjoying it, right? But maybe they listen for only 20 minutes when it could have been for an hour.
Production is the key.. If you listen to Van Halen's FIRST album (KILLER ALBUM!), it sounds so much richer, fuller and deeper than let's say '5150' with Hagar. The later albums sound 'tinny'.. First album EVERY SONG is mixed to perfection. Even in the nosiest song "Atomic Punk" you can hear every instrument AND the vocals quite clearly.
PVTGovernment, Thank you for sharing your interpretation. I hope that whatever is happening in your life to make you that angry over something like this gets resolved. Best wishes, Matt
Well if you're using either mp3 or aac (m4a) files, it is possible to bring them all to a near identical level without any additional re-encoding quality loss! The way these files are built, you can change the volume of a track in 1.5dB steps, free software mp3gain will do it for you!
I've often found myself using Audacity to *manually* put volume dynamics back into some of my favorite songs for this very reason. I've also developed a tendency of hitting my keyboard volume buttons to the beat of music because the dynamics just aren't there on their own... :(
Kitty Lue I’ve figured a way to do it in Audacity, but it requires sacrificing some of the deeper bass. It also doesn’t give the dynamics of a recording that wasn’t compressed all to hell.
I wish they didn't compress the old songs as well. It makes it difficult to find good quality anywhere these days.
Torrents my friend
Old records and tapes
Somebody have to show this video to Hardstyle producers. 10 years old tracks (and older) are better than what's currently being produced.
Figure of Eight by Paul McCartney. Amazing song.
thank you...so true and so sad
So sad. I hope we get to hear less-compressed versions of music some day. I've been listening to 70s vinyl and CD reissues, and though I far prefer 80s music, earlier sounds so much better.
Is there a tool that can give a numeric value to the amount of loudness cheating? It would be interesting to correlate it with my own "Damn, love the music, why is the sound so uninvolving?" reactions to so many recent CDs.
Wow. Who knew. Pisses me off.
Fantastic video. I can't stand large corporations making decisions the consumers should make. If I want the volume up, I will turn it up.
The shear number of uneducated people liking low dynamic music in this world saddens me. Anyone with half a brain cell should understand when you listen to live music, it's nothing like the crap compressed files that our new society listens to. With the current technology you can record music to sound real, but the fat cats wants you to be brain numbed and give them your scoodies!!!! .Matt Mayfield Music,I give you the thumbs up for making people aware the crime that so called record engineers get up to, might as well employ a traffic warden to mix the final album.Might sound better!!!
Live music can sound poorly too unfortunately. Most live concerts I have been to had mediocre dynamics and equalisation. :(
Maybe I'm too attentive to the music, who knows...
@@nuggetlord3861 You are not too attentive. Many of the live recording today are mastered the same way. The dynamics are gone, and it's practically impossible to equalize the music due to all of the frequencies being muddled together.
Bob Ludwig himself said in an interview that he will link this video to clients and particular albums, such as Avenged Sevenfold (2014 album? He didn’t say which one but it was after hail to the king) have ended up quieter because of this exact video.
Probably The Stage, which has a pretty decent dynamic range compared to almost everything else released these days.
The y-axis in your video can be misleading. When discussing loudness (instead of something like frequency and wave forms), you should use decibels instead of the simply pressure amplitude. This way you can actually visualize how loud the extreme peak is compared to everything else.
The drum hit looks like its 4 times as loud as the rest of the music but listening to it it only sounds about twice as loud.
(doubling the pressure is +6dB, 4=2*2 so +12dB; +10dB is perceived as about twice as loud.)
The most accurate representation for loudness is to take the root of the pressure instead of the log for dB but for small to medium level changes it doesnt make that much difference.
Excellent demonstration! 5 stars.
compression is to today's music what reverb was to eighties music... a lazy way to sound hip
80's reverb sounded great tho
@@wezzuh2482 and 20 or 30 years after the loudness wars people will say the same thing about music without dynamic range
생각이 바뀌었다.. 레코드판 쓴지 몇십년이나 됐다고 현재는 지구역사상 단한번도 등장한적 없는 디지털 음원으로 음악을 듣는다.. 표준이란 상대적이며 항상 바뀐드.. 저 피크 좀 눌러주고 싶다..
A mastered track can be done better than this.
but i liked the greasy thump it made with the transients
Thanks for the comments everyone. Pretty much everything relevant has been said. Feel free to browse the comments archives, and please take a look at Bob Katz' (Grammy award-winning mastering engineer) web site for more info. -Matt
"When there's no quiet, there can be no loud." Sums this video up fantastically. Let the listener turn the volume up, don't destroy the quality of music doing it for them. Death Magnetic by Metallica and Vapor Trails by Rush are exhausting to listen to.
This is why I am hating the modern music.
You can easily try it yourself. Download Exact audio copy and audacity (both apps are free) Rip CD with EAC and then open wav in Audacity.
Good example
What he didn't show was making all parts louder with the same range, which is the equivalent of turning up the volume knob on the playback device you're listening through. In this case, the louder parts would absolutely kill your ears. When this kind of music was prevalent, headphones likely hadn't even existed yet and car speakers were in their infancy. From a modern perspective, this sounds like a slightly clearer recording of a live played session. The reality is that if the entire track were played at an ideal volume, the loud parts would pierce the ears and make for a very unpleasant listening experience. The solution isn't to significantly raise the quieter parts to be equally as loud as the peaks in the song, but to find a much closer medium that would still allow the key parts to be louder without them being harmful to the ears, without leaving such distance between the quieter parts. In this video, the second sound example(with quiet parts raised), has been pushed beyond the max threshold, which causes distortion + clipping & makes it very unpleasant to listen to. Had he stayed within the given parameters, the sound quality wouldn't have been nearly as tarnished in the second + third examples. This is a horrible mixing job, raising the quieter parts of the full track after the song has been mastered is a very 1st-grade attempt at solving this issue. There are much more efficient ways to alter the sound volume and energy of each individual sound(individual track compression/limiting, EQing, altering frequencies, adding effects) before mastering to create a much better mix that would prevent parts from being too quiet and would allow select parts to maintain the same punch to them as desired.
That is so misinformed on so many levels at the same time. In short every single argument you make is false!
+MovieViking u are wrong
Nope, but since you persist..
"What he didn't show was making all parts louder with the same range, which is the equivalent of turning up the volume knob on the playback device you're listening through. In this case, the louder parts would absolutely kill your ears."
Are you really that foolish? I own several commercial recordings with a greater dynamic range than the example and I have also produced recordings with a much greater range. Of course they will not "kill your ears" - that is absolute rubbish. My home equipment is capable of an ambient SPL around 115 dB and 124 dB peak and even when played loud we never exceed 110 dB in the listening position with the most dynamic tracks. Onlu exception is effects used in a movie. In the headphones the dynamic tracks sound superb - and no, they do not harm your ears as long as you use your head.
"When this kind of music was prevalent, headphones likely hadn't even existed yet and car speakers were in their infancy."
That is quite simply a retarded... sorry, false statement.
Are you 9 years old or just ignorant?
Yeah.. I hate "wall of sounds" as much as anyone, but I also hate old tracks where you have to turn them up to hear the voice and the instruments properly, but the drums are PIERCINGLY loud. That is beyond dynamic, that's just punching my ears with one part of the song. It really comes down to the fact that songs, old or new, can be or could have been botched by the mixing job done by the last person to touch it before it hit the CD or the record. It's sad that someone not even involved in the music can so easily make or break the quality of a song, but it's the reality. And it's been true for a long time. I collect CD's, some quite old, and some are brand new releases in the shrink wrap. Whether it's something I got at the thrift store (1990 or earlier), or something from 2016, it comes down to the particular album. Some old albums are dynamic and sound great to this day, some of them were horribly quiet, and turning them up showed that they were just a quiet wall of sound. Some new CD's sound like they are low quality, a grainy wall of sound even at a high KBPS. Some of them sound fresher and clearer than anything that precedes them. It's just reality that when so many hands touch an album, even the hands that don't really belong there can do a whole lot of meddling.
Or maybe instead of answering my previous question, how does one detect whether or not the "loudness war" exists on a given track and/or CD?
After using Adobe Audition (I downloaded the trial just for this purpose), I noticed that my 1986 Pet Shop Boys CD has a significant dynamic range of sounds compared to a modern rock CD, or the 2CELLOS or Taylor Swift CD. With the recent CD's the waveforms look like a wall of stuff, literally. With the Pet Shop Boys CD, waves/notes were at least visible
Cont: That said, because of Peer 2 Peer, I have spent a considerable amount of money on CD media alone, well beyond what I used to spend prior. Why? Because after hearing a near perfect album, I can't stand not owning it. Therefore, Just my Japan imports alone account for well over 2500 CD's alone. All stored in metal file cabinets in my garage (after ripping them to my HDD's). So no guilt here! None what so ever!
Used to be, when an album was "REMASTERED", it took weeks if not months to bring the life of the original master tapes to a whole new "CLARITY". Now days, it's "WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAME", no manual mixing boards, just Computerized SOFTWARE, BOOST THE EQ LEVELS"
The Cheap, EASY way for the record industry to cut costs and resell it as a "FALSE" remaster.
that is a terrible and unfair comparison because that has nothing to do with how it's mastered at all
@weses1 That's great. Show them the size of the files and I guarantee most people prefer the smaller one...
PERFECTLY explained. Thank you!
Figure of Eight! Great song.
Not sure how to prevent this from happening with my own recording though
It's not something that "happens," but something you do.
Hey, can you maybe tell, what song that is? I would find it interesting to listen to the full song! :)
I totally agree with your thoughts, however listening to your video on my laptop with its tiny cheap speakers doesn't sell the outcome. You should explain the difference between listening to music on a portable device like an iPod with earbuds and listening to music on an amplified pair of good speakers. That is where it really makes a difference in quality of mixing aka loudness war.
Thank you for your answer i thought that is a software that it can increase or decrease
the sound the way you do it.
Why is this video disabled for mobile devices?
...that option is not set as the default, you have to purposely choose to exclude mobile devices.
In Half-Life 1 with the HighDefinition Pack, they solve this, in fact, they made me jump from my chair a couple of times.
@Kueller917J Is it compressing? Using a limiter would just discard the data, not compress it, right?
People have to understand that this has nothing to do with the CD format itself. That is a common misconception.
Too often people compare CDs where the dynamics has ben removed, with LPs where the dynamic is kept, and blaim the CD format for the loss of "quality". That is wrong.
What's at fault are not the CD format, but the record companies themselves.
DragonForce - Inhuman Rampage Album , CD release -> Somebody please visit that sound engineer with a flamethrower
this is great !
@capo420420 Thanks! Actually there is no software that works the way you see here. I simulated it in the video with image editing and screen capture software - there is nothing in Digital Performer or any other DAW that I know of that looks like that.
What you have on the video sounds good to me, at least on the laptop where I am now. If I were you I'd probably use volume automation by hand for that kind of track for the most natural sound.
At first I thought I sucked because I couldn't tell the difference but then 1:10 hit me and I am proper shocked.
the first victim of compression is....the poor snare :'(
12 years after this was published, but this is easily the clearest and most understandable explanation of the loudness wars I've seen - thanks!
16 years after it was published, TH-cam and the Record Companies can now steal all the money because Matt used a 5 second audio clip from a song made in 1989, lol. Love the irony of our little f'd up world. (I can't even use the f word anymore without the Autobots rolling out and deleting my comment).
@@casedistorted Fuck.
Incidentally, normalizing does NOT increase ALL the peaks to their limit. It finds the single LOUDEST peak and adjusts the level of the sound so that single peak is at 100% volume.
This should be played as an AD each time you open TH-cam.
About 10 years too late with this request.
There is no streaming platform that allows us old guys to listen to good old music. All is remastered and if you are young you cannot understand how cheap and bad the remastered music is ... Too bad those streaming platform do not propose both original and remastered. The real problem is that remastering is a destructive process. Dynamic range of the music is definitively lost.
By chance I have a copy of the albums I want to listen to.
In fact I've arrived here just because searching what was this stupid 'remastered' word seen on every 80's music I was listening to. And I thought my ears had lost quality because of the age which is probably true. But the reality is that this is the remastering that altered my music. What a strange world !
Death magnetic....
Look for the Guitar hero III Rip or moderus remaster, they're much better than the original.
I prefer dishing the album than risking to lose my hearing permanently, Hardwired is also a bit over-compressed.
Such a terrible loss...
2015 remaster (Itunes version)
loudness started because stupid top 40's radio stations would "audition" a bunch of records at a time - finding out which ones to air, you see - and they seemed to be picking the songs which sounded the loudest. This is because they would sit behind a desk all day, listening to song after song after song and when one is suddenly WAY louder, you notice it WAY more and it picks you up. This has nothing to do with the music, it is sheer volume and how we as human beings perceive sounds. A car alarm. A fire alarm. We are startled and surprised by loud noises.
In other words, loudness started because of ignorant, stupid people.
+duviday I wonder if it wasn't the opposite - that quiet songs were rejected instead of louder songs being favored. Or both...
I think that the loudness war was started by record pluggers wanting their song to have more impact than the previous one.
Pressing X to doubt
Yeah, the issue is that radio stations have incredibly distorted music over the radio waves and also, they have a limited acceptable volume because they don't want people driving their cars to crash them.
Basically, I don't believe you, because any song that sounds "louder" wouldn't sound any louder over the radio and FM radio fucks up the range of anything played over it.
best sound quality of any 2006 TH-cam video
The song is "Figure of Eight" by Paul McCartney, according to the end credits of the video... I'll have to give it a listen, the original version sounds extraordinary
Maybe this is why I struggle listening to more modern music.....
This is what, in part, killed rock music.
Yup. I got my first album by Garbage, the one from 2016 called "Strange Little Birds" I played half of the album once and I never touched it again. It was a huge wall of ugly sound. Shame because some of those tracks were good.
Rock never died -_-
@@randomboys1000 Name a rock band less than 20 years old that's popular. Chances are, you can't (or it's a hybrid rock/synth/pop/rap type band). Rock is still just as popular today is it was way back when. Only problem is, now with such a plethora of content out there, many people just settle on the classics and don't give new bands a chance.
Go to any college, and they're listening to Queen, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles. Crazy.
@@TheDylandProductions Every single Nu Metal band was putting stuff out after 2001 that was good. Fuck you, that's rock, rock was always a little funky and political, and in your face. You can pull stuff up from the 1940s that was funky, angry, and political.
Most of the Alternate Rock golden hits were after 2001.
Most of Green Day, was after 2001.
After 2010, you're kinda right.
@@Seth9809 Firstly, calm down. I was just making an observation based on my own experience.
I agree that there's been a lot of great stuff in the 2000s, but that's when Rock was on the decline. Sure, Green Day is popular, but they're no Foo Fighters, or Coldplay, or Taylor Swift, or Pink Floyd, or The Beatles, or Beethoven etc. Rock bands and musicians used to be the pinnacle of pop culture and popularity e.g. Elvis Presley. Even in the 1980s and 1990s you had international sensations like Guns n Roses, Metallica, and Nirvana.
Not so much any more. Again, not saying there hasn't been good rock music post 2001, because there has. I'm saying that 99% of popular post-2001 rock music has been from a band formed earlier. There aren't many, if any, bands FORMED in the 2000s or 2010s that have achieved that level of mainstream success that aren't hybrid rap, country, or pop musicians.
Good day.
16 years after this was published, but this is easily the clearest and most understandable explanation of the loudness wars I've seen - thanks!
Latest Disturbed single is so disgustingly guilty of this it's not even funny...
To all the people saying: "I like the loud one better", no you don't. You objectively don't. There are two reasons why you literally cannot prefer the loud version from a musical perspective:
1. Our ears prefer dynamic range because the breathing space between louder parts gives our ears a break from constant loud sounds. Hearing something at the same volume consistently is fatiguing to the ears. Unless you're some freak of evolution, then it's likely your ears are built the same way.
2. Emotional quality of music is directly linked to dynamic range. Seeing as the original purpose of music is for enjoyment through the emotional shifts we experience when listening to it, it isn't too hard to imagine why we enjoy the music less when one of the emotional aspects is diminished.
If you think you prefer the loud one, it's an illusion. What you're really hearing is an increase in overall volume, and this tricks almost everyone into thinking it sounds better. But you have complete control over the volume of what you're listening to, so it isn't necessary for the quality of music to be diminished just to gain some volume.
100 times this. Of course I'd like to add that people will also go with what is familiar to them. It's the same reason why people prefer the shit food they ate as a kid to high end versions (canned cranberry sauce versus fresh, etc...)
MrRuination these may be the two most intelligent comments I've ever seen on TH-cam.
Unfortunately all volume knobs have a limit. Your not going to get the music as loud as possible without the loudness war.
I disagree.
The sudden spikes in volume in the original might make it objectively "better", but the one with the range reduced at 1:11 is easier to listen to. Sure, you might not get the same emotional impact, but that might not be what people are looking for.
The flipside of dynamic range having more emotional quality is that it also commands more attention. And if you're sitting at a desk working, then you might not _want_ to have your concentration be constantly broken by music with a very diverse volume range.
If you're putting on music for the sake of putting on music and you're, at that moment, committed to _just_ listening to music, then yes, dynamic range is what you want.
But for a lot of people, music is merely something pleasant to fill in the silence. And in that case, dynamic range is _way_ too demanding of attention.
Lol no offense but that's just not the way it works. Transients from recorded instruments will only be distracting if you have the music at a loud enough level to begin with, and that's no different than squashed music. You, as the listener, adjust the volume for your preferred listening experience, and a lack of transients won't change that. If you want music that's so consistent and soft in its volume level, then the answer is to listen to different music. Grab yourself a meditation/ambient music CD and take that to work. There's no reason for music of a naturally dynamic style to be diminished in quality so that some workers aren't "distracted".
I think they take "smash hit" too literally
Douglas Holmquist moment
Thank you for this! I could never quite put my finger on exactly why I prefer old recording and older music... Now I understand! It's that contrast between loud and soft that's missing in so much of today's music.
Unfortunately, most listeners have become accustomed to the loudness, and anything that isn't almost clipping will sound flat to them.
THe magic is gone. The whole aura the ambience and the reflex and tightness of the speaker as it makes way for the quietness so the sound before it can prepare for the whispers to be heard in between is all gone. Buying good speakers makes no difference when all your music is being blared in one monotone which is like a siren. There must be a way to but quality. Because this is a good demonstation so how can you purchase quality. There should be an alternative to be able to purchase quality misc and keep it.
If you want to, i will sell 2 versions of my upcoming album: Mastered for Loudness and Mastered for Dynamics. Good idea?
@@KOSMIKFEADRECORDS I say ditch the first version.