I found this interesting viewing. I am always struggling with "loudness" but had never considered the sound quality tradeoff. Or is this a myth?
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mick
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 21:16No it's not a myth. Now with digital we can certainly make things much louder then we could analog because with analog recording, even with the best of equipment, we recorded noise and introduced even more every step of the way in the analog process. Bouncing two tracks to one, added noise. If you had a 4-track recorded and needed to record 16 parts, that was 8 bounces and lots of noise. Digital eliminates that a lot of that noise.
But the louder you make it the more the inherent noise in the recording process gets. Then when you make it louder you are reducing the dynamics (amplitude variation) of the music making everything louder and louder. You compress the peaks downwards and move everything else up to make it louder (compression).
Another reasons quality definitely goes down is the ear doesn't hear all freqs equally. Normalization and compression reduce the volumes of certain freqs more then others and digital compressors that aren't well written does this poorly. So ....
No myth. You can push it so far before you start losing all the little subtle "noises". A good example is Saikafu on Spirits. It's got birds and thunder, quiet flutes, and a didj part so subtle you feel it more then hear it. I can pump up the volume (I mastered at -0.5) to even as high as +1 if I wanted but it wouldn't sound the same. Things would be lost. Dynamics would change
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ColinGarvey
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 21:17I fear a can of worms has been re-opened...
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sister_savage
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 21:19ColinGarvey wrote: I fear a can of worms has been re-opened...
Ha! Sorry - I must've missed it the first time around!
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mick
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 21:24Well let's open them all and free those worms so they can get back to eating garbage.
I think in any listening test it's pretty obvious.
Besides I have a very expensive, high-end amp I use to play music with. With a modern CD if I turn it up to 5 the cops will be there within the hour 'cause the neighbors will be pretty pissed off. I'd rather use that expensive amp to make quieter music loud at the 8 or 9 setting then loud music quiet at the 5 setting.
Post edited by: mick, at: 2008/04/29 22:31
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fenceflatley
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 22:00mick wrote: Well let's open them all and free those worms so they can get back to eating garbage.
I think in any listening test it's pretty obvious.
Besides I have a very expensive, high-end amp I use to play music with. With a modern CD if I turn it up to 5 the cops will be there when the hour 'cause the neighbors will be pretty pissed off. I'd rather use that expensive amp to make quieter music loud at the 8 or 9 setting then loud music quiet at the 5 setting. But can you go all the way to 11? Now THAT's something...
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sister_savage
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 22:21*Settles in with huge bottle of cider to watch favourite movie of all time*
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strummindude
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 22:25In a 24 bit digital world, 11 is kind of measly. What you want is 111111111111111111111111.
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mick
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 22:29Yeah, the old 11 knob. No my amp doesn't have that, but it would probably just break the windows anyway.
No, I'm a minimalist when it comes to mastering. As an artist, I know that artists often put a lot of time and work (and money) into getting a sound like they like it. And the guy sitting at the mastering console and completely ruin that (without much effort). Of course, the better the sound is originally recorded the less work there is to do at master time. My favorite mastering job (like Kavin's Acoustic Church "Westward") is no compression only limiting. A bit of EQ always, and usually a little work on the spatial, but I try to master as little as possible.
Keep in mind, the bad guy usually isn't the mastering engineer. He totally understands what's going on. It's the suits -- as usual -- saying it has to be that way -- and consumers demanding it because volume has always been "cool".
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Kaichi
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/29 22:33Heh... I have an old Line 6 Spider amp that has 11 dots on the master volume control! So I can turn it up to 11! mwahahahaha!
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kavin
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/30 02:15This extends into the live music world as well. I notice a lot of young bands think louder is better, and crank up the bass to 11. This just muddies the overall mix (as well as hammers the eardrums), so I don't go out and see them anymore. And no it's not just because I'm getting older (I am).
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ACL
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/30 02:54kavin wrote: This extends into the live music world as well. I notice a lot of young bands think louder is better, and crank up the bass to 11. This just muddies the overall mix (as well as hammers the eardrums), so I don't go out and see them anymore. And no it's not just because I'm getting older (I am).
Uhhh... this doesn't just apply to newer, younger bands... for years, bands I've known have cranked it all the way up just so they couldn't hear how badly they sucked.
kirk (& wendy) aka ehhh? i can't hear you...
p.s. +1 to what Mick has said above - and normalization still sucks. Discuss.
Post edited by: ACL, at: 2008/04/30 03:00
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thel1195
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/30 04:33The last band I worked with that did original, the band the drove me underground was one of those bands. Most of guys were in thier forties. The drummer felt that louder was better and the band felt they had to play to match the drummer. This in small venue. When I can't order a beer at the bar...nuff said.
Normalize? Which kind? Purely volume or the one that equalizes.
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Lunarsight
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/30 13:14I typically do all my mixing at +30DB. The way I see it, clipping is your friend. The more red in the mix, the better.
I'll definitely be more louder-er than the rest of ya'll.
MWAHAHAHA.
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Gary Fox
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/04/30 22:53mick wrote: No, I'm a minimalist when it comes to mastering. As an artist, I know that artists often put a lot of time and work (and money) into getting a sound like they like it. I try to get a good sound going in (garbage in, garbage out) I also try to keep the effects down to next to nothing, unless it's for something that just 'makes' the recording. While some of you have been very kind in your comments about my production standards, I mainly just layer stuff a lot. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.
In reality, I am somewhat incompetent as an engineer. I don't know the frequency ranges of different things, so by extension I don't know how to keep things from competing with one another in the mix. I have used Sonar for this last go-round, and it does come with some Mastering plug-ins. Instead of playing around with them or EQ in general, I just chose a very basic preset that brought the volume up to 'standard' levels and it also seemed to enhance the low end (to my ears at least). It doesn't sound overwhelming to me, but I could be wrong.
Cheers,
Gary
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Raleigh
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Re:The Loudness War - 2008/05/01 06:06After last year, I spent a lot more time studying the mix... I can't say I got anything right, but I tried to keep clipping nil and the effects on the backburner.
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