EPTThe Loudness War - Page 7
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Soleron
United Kingdom1324 Posts
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couches
618 Posts
On September 09 2011 01:02 Gnosis wrote: To be fair, how many people - outside of 'audiophiles' - know enough about music to say anything other than "it sounds the same to me"? It doesn't take an audiophile or some pretentious music quality nerd to notice a difference between say... Dark Side of the Moon and Death Magnetic or Californication (RHCP) I'm not talking music styles, instrument tones and effects or genres or whatever. I mean the dynamics range between loud and soft. You can blast Dark Side (within limits of your stereo) and it sounds great no matter what. Blast any modern brickwalled album and it is physically tiring and painful to listen to. Especially when it starts clipping all over the place, it sounds incredibly bad for guitar oriented music with lots of soloing. The system is built to sell records, not to sound the best it can. Dark side has no problems making sales even to this day. | ||
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Daimai
Sweden762 Posts
I have always been assuming it was the download quality but now I know. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18100 Posts
On September 09 2011 01:23 Lucidity wrote: This should be added to the OP. It instantly displays the problem without requiring people to read a technical wiki page. EDIT: nvm, it's included in the OP's video, just somewhere halfway  | ||
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Chemist391
United States366 Posts
I'm somewhat of an audiophile, not the most insane, but I do rip cds in lossless codec and dropped $250 on my headphones. I'm always amazed at how much more dynamic my old jazz cds--and even classic rock cds--sound, compared to recently released music. The tendency to compress and amplify music to the limit of our current physical medium (the cd) is hurting music, in my opinion. A smaller dynamic range means less expressive music: King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" features a larger change in sound amplitude than anything off of Justice's "Cross." It's also frustrating as a musician to work so hard on dynamic control and nuance, all to have it washed away in the 'mastering' process, where the sound engineer is just going to smash it all into a ~5-7dB range anyway. As a drummer, dynamic subtleties are part of what separate good from great. I want my ghost notes to add feel and depth (even if the average listener will never hear/notice them), and I want my rimshots to ring loudly. Modern sound-engineering habits make this more difficult. | ||
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couches
618 Posts
On September 09 2011 02:28 Daimai wrote: It's funny, I have been thinking about this since I noticed that the more modern the songs are in my music collection, the louder they sound compared to the older ones when I have my computer at a set volume. I have always been assuming it was the download quality but now I know. It can even be both of those factors contributing. Could even be your computer soundcard and the speakers you are using as well. But those are much more subtle. The best way to describe it is older albums sound smooth because they aren't brickwalled. | ||
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deo1
United States199 Posts
- there is a maximum dynamic range for digital audio. The loudness at each sample in time of cd audio is encoded using 16 bits (2^16 possible "loudnesses"). - compression refers to the reduction of dynamic range of the audio, such that the loudness swing of a particular song can be shifted upwards (made louder as a whole) within this 16 bit range. Compression doesn't refer to an information encoding scheme to reduce the size of an audio file. | ||
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ChibiSage
36 Posts
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Zedex
United Kingdom310 Posts
On September 09 2011 03:22 ChibiSage wrote: I remember when i first payed attention to actual sound quality on Califinication after reading that artticle a few years ago and it was surprising lol Upon reading about this I finally discovered why that's one of my least favorite rhcp albums. If you listen to albums released before it they are incredibly more dynamic, which is a good thing. | ||
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Madkipz
Norway1643 Posts
No wonder Death magnetic sucked ;/ Then again i turned from regular music and metal to dubstep so maybe i shouldnt complain. xD | ||
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taran
Finland49 Posts
On September 09 2011 02:17 Soleron wrote: I feel sorry for people that can hear this kind of volume compression, or can hear the difference between mp3 and lossless. It just means they are forced to buy expensive equipment and search for versions of tracks that sometimes don't exist just to get the same experience that 'normal' people have. HAHAHAHHAHAA :DDDD! I'm sorry, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Since when is good hearing/a trained ear a bad thing? It's kind of like watching starcraft and being able to tell the difference between a bad player and a good player - you won't have a clue which is which unless you've played starcraft. When I listen to music I can argue why the stuff I listen to is so much better than what 90% of the world listens to. Ever since I started making music the thrill and vibes I get from listening to it has amplified exponentially. I'm sorry for people that can't listen to the nuances that exist in all forms of music. | ||
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UltimateHurl
Ireland591 Posts
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Miss_Cleo
United States406 Posts
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MrTortoise
1388 Posts
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Myles
United States5162 Posts
On September 09 2011 03:58 taran wrote: HAHAHAHHAHAA :DDDD! I'm sorry, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Since when is good hearing/a trained ear a bad thing? It's kind of like watching starcraft and being able to tell the difference between a bad player and a good player - you won't have a clue which is which unless you've played starcraft. When I listen to music I can argue why the stuff I listen to is so much better than what 90% of the world listens to. Ever since I started making music the thrill and vibes I get from listening to it has amplified exponentially. I'm sorry for people that can't listen to the nuances that exist in all forms of music. Apparently never heard the phrase 'Ignorance is bliss'? | ||
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coolphantom
Canada17 Posts
Weather it sounds better or not is all very subjective.Todays Loudness standards are much higher then they were 20 years ago and thats not going away because most people, artist and bands don't care. | ||
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Mordoc
United States162 Posts
Though this definitely explains why I seem to have a natural propensity to hating modern music, notably rap and pop (mentioned in the OP). | ||
exnomendei
Netherlands122 Posts
Reducing the difference between loud and soft, like the video above explains, simply means that you are removing loud entirely. It means you have no room to surprise, which basically means your music sounds flat and boring. When you raise levels so close to the peak, this is what you're doing. You're reducing the difference between loud and soft, you are removing loud from your musical vocabulary. I have songs that depend entirely on this in some parts. Like the "Be quiet, big boys don't cry" from 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" as a good, rather well-known example. Or you know that part where Coldplay's "Fix You" goes into the really repetitive (but epic) guitar riff? That's where you can hear that it's too loud - that has too little impact. If that song had been mastered at -10dB it would have blown my mother-f-ing socks off. It sounds so monotonous compared to if it had more room to breathe than it does now...It could have been, well, good! The ones to blame? Radio basically. They're the bane to a lot of things about sound but this might be the worst - the radio stations could have simply normalised everything, but they seem to either not do that or not do it well enough. I think "Parachutes" by Coldplay is a good example of how the volume level shifts back and forth a lot. Anyway, I agree completely. Modern music is being made less epic feeling, being made like less of an adventure, because of a pressure to make things louder. It needs to end. Now. | ||
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