[Stompede]

Just a while ago i saw this you tube clip ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex...eature=related

And looking around I saw that this was a pretty well established term (if you really are into that sort of thing) As a avid music fan who listens a lot to all kinds of music, but don't really know anything about the technical bit of either production quality or stereo techs I still got kinda upset over the whole thing.

This is just a sad statement to the power that the "industry" as the beast it is, has over the choice of the music we listen too, and the reason for it being as such, a fucking joke.
There is also a good Wiki article about it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war.

The Wiki article cites a The Stooges - Raw Power remix from 1997, and as a stooges fan i listened to it, and realized that the one copy of Raw power i had, was indeed from 1997, and when i listened to the old recording. The sound was so much better!

And seeing it as that we have worse quality on our sound in some cases than we had a long time ago just makes me think one should try to do something about it. The question is what.

Now as i said i don't really have any exact knowledge of the technical bits of music in any way, but just comparing a few classic tracks and you really see the difference.

[Phaedrus]

I wonder what year they started doing that?

It definitely sucks though. If you listen for it on your CDs you can tell when the sound quality has been compromised.

[rhode warrior]

Are you talking about digital remastering?

It's the biggest scam in music, all they do is turn all the levels up so you get no dynamics.

works fine with music that's loud anyway, like a ****llica album, but anything with dynamics, like a jazz record.....you will wonder why quiet parts and uses of dynamic changes of volume seem flat.

It makes no sense and reduces the quality of music, simply put.

It's a repackaging scam, they make it as if you are being done a favor and charge more.

good thing the entire industry is dying........they deserve it.

[Death Roll]

Interesting why they would do such a thing.

[kartaron]

Originally Posted by rhode warrior

Are you talking about digital remastering?

It's the biggest scam in music, all they do is turn all the levels up so you get no dynamics.

works fine with music that's loud anyway, like a ****llica album, but anything with dynamics, like a jazz record.....you will wonder why quiet parts and uses of dynamic changes of volume seem flat.

It makes no sense and reduces the quality of music, simply put.

It's a repackaging scam, they make it as if you are being done a favor and charge more.

good thing the entire industry is dying........they deserve it.

You are probably right as to the changes of the levels but some of the albums Ive had both version there were big improvements in background noise in the remastered versions. There is a give and take in quality.

[alphamale]

As a professional music producer/engineer i can tell you that its a major issue having the life squeezed out of your music just to have it louder, but its market pressures from labels and consumers that have forced it. Its pretty much got to the point now where albums cant get any (more noticeably) louder than the leaders, but the sound quality has already suffered an dits too late to turn back because noone wants to have one song/album quieter than others- people just skip it.


The way it works (in terms of getting songs louder) is mastering engineers use compression and limiting to increase the AVERAGE loudness of the track. There is actually a digital ceiling that audio cant go past (0db) withour clipping, so the way to make a track seem louder is to make its average loudness greater. Our ears then perceive this as being overall louder than before.

The problem with this is the way to get the average loudness up is is to compress/limit transient/dynamic parts of the music, which results in less feel and space in the mix. It soudns inferior to how the mix would have sounded if you'd just turne dup the volume knob and not smashed the dynamics.


Having said that, a lot of people really can't consciously tell the difference- especially in a generation of people walking around listening to poor quality mp3's through bad headphones on ipods.

for those of us who can hear the difference (i really dont like to listen to mp3s due to the quality) its pretty annoying, especially if its something you've spent hours fine tuning and then the mastering engineer is forced into smashing it by the label. Over time we as mix engineers have had to increasingly mix to compensate for whats going to happen in the mastering process, such as pushing drums much harder than before (things like kick and snare are badly affected by the compression), but ultimately we're kind of chasing our tails.

In defense of mastering engineers, they're not "just turning up the volume" when they remaster- it give them a chance to do a lot of corrective EQ and work on things such as spacial imaging as well.

Anyone interested should read some of Bob Katz's articles, he's an authority on mastering.

[rhode warrior]

Originally Posted by alphamale

In defense of mastering engineers, they're not "just turning up the volume" when they remaster- it give them a chance to do a lot of corrective EQ and work on things such as spacial imaging as well.

Anyone interested should read some of Bob Katz's articles, he's an authority on mastering.

Some are justifiable, it seems.

You seem more in the know, I'm a musician too but not an expert on recording by any means.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by rhode warrior

Some are justifiable, it seems.

You seem more in the know, I'm a musician too but not an expert on recording by any means.

Yeah mastering is a positive things, and correctly done REmastering can breather new life into old recordings. The problem is that much of the good work they do in other areas of mastering is then comprimised by the loudness requirements.

that was the great thing about vinyl, you couldn't have your masters too loud or the needle would jump out of the groove, so a lot of the dynamics are preserved and hence why they sound so good. you just turn up whatever album you listen to to whatever volume you want. But put that album on an ipod with hundreds of others and it need to be as loud. Unfortunately the human ear perceives louder as better, but if you played the original mix at the same volume as the smashed master, its easy to hear the difference.

Sorry for the long read, but it seems we have a lot of musos here on sherdog so i thought someone may find it useful. im sure there are a few other pro producers/engineers out there too.

[JSN]

it's romosexual that they crack it up so loud. i only have the volume on my mp3 player at like 20% and it's blaring. i do have really sensitive ears though.

[rhode warrior]

Originally Posted by JSN

it's romosexual that they crack it up so loud. i only have the volume on my mp3 player at like 20% and it's blaring. i do have really sensitive ears though.

Tarkovsky fan huh?

Yeah mastering is a positive things, and correctly done REmastering can breather new life into old recordings. The problem is that much of the good work they do in other areas of mastering is then comprimised by the loudness requirements.

that was the great thing about vinyl, you couldn't have your masters too loud or the needle would jump out of the groove, so a lot of the dynamics are preserved and hence why they sound so good. you just turn up whatever album you listen to to whatever volume you want. But put that album on an ipod with hundreds of others and it need to be as loud. Unfortunately the human ear perceives louder as better, but if you played the original mix at the same volume as the smashed master, its easy to hear the difference.

Sorry for the long read, but it seems we have a lot of musos here on sherdog so i thought someone may find it useful. im sure there are a few other pro producers/engineers out there too.

What's kind of sad is most popular music lacks real dynamics, is highly compressed and superfluously layered(multi guitar tracks, vocal tracks) anyway. The whole loudness thing doesn't really matter much..........it's all one continuous volume level with very little in the way of whisper-to-roar uses of volume and dynamic volume interplay between instruments(especially the drummer, things like ghost notes, accents, etc.).

****l being the worst with triggered drums and all the way distortion........SEEMINGLY no one as of yet, in 30 years of ****l's existance, can actually capture what the bassplayer is doing as something individual/apart from the guitars.