i had my ipod on shuffle last neet, was listening to the pixies on the bus, this seemed normal volume, then on came smashing pumpkins , something off siamese dream and it went so much louder, so i turn it down, then after a couple off that album it went onto mars voltas latest and it was almost twice as loud as smashing pumpkins! why have cds got progressivley louder?
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Here is a very good article on it
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm
The author sometimes writes/posts on here as well.
Basically loud songs sound better on the radio and sell more.
seems a little silly
as to make them louder to sell more cds, because the listener has control of the volume also, so in effect they have just made everyone turn down their radios
It isn't actually how loud it is over all
It's to do with the range, so the average is now louder and you don't get as extreme peaks and troughs. So a Frank Black scream wouldn't stand out as much if the cd was being produced as many cds are these days.
Yes - that's right
Here's a good youtube video that makes it very clear, in simple, visual terms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
It's quite easy to see how this practice of mixing is fucking up records.
The reasoning is a number of things - to 'optimise' records for mp3 players, to stand out on the radio/jukebox etc. The Arctic Monkeys 1st album is a good (bad) example - it's LOUD all the way through.
TV adverts use the same tactic now too, which is why they're always louder than the show they're interrupting, which reveals its roots as a cheap attention-grabbing technique.
JOe - www.anewbandaday.com
That article has some of the most boring pictures I've ever seen
They really defeated the
ingenuity of the article. It's hard to sustain interest.
I miss Stylus :(
Very good article.
Compression
It's something that happens in the 'mastering' process, some records released these days are really harsh on the ears.
WHAT?
Speak up man! But seriously... I noticed this when I used to DJ (about 8 years ago now) so it's obviously a long-standing trend. Why? I've no idea.
yeah it sucks when ya mixin
and one tune would go perfectly but its to damn quite to bother mixing with even after tweakin the EQs
BECAUSE LOUD MUSIC ROXXXORZ
Change of Formats
As the formats have changed from vinyl to CD now to MP3 bands have to change the way their music is mixed. Unfortunately, this leads to less sound quality and more producers/mixers saying just turn it up. Butch Vig gives a good explanation on 04.04.08 episode of Sound Opinions
http://www.soundopinions.org/
Saw
an interview with Owen Morris who said that when he worked with Oasis it was a deliberate tactic so when their tunes came on pub jukeboxes and everyone was pissed up, it really grabbed one's attention. He was, at the time, attempting to claim that he invented this technique.
Kevin Rowland writes about this in the liner notes for the "Don't Stand Me Down" Director's Cut
http://oldlady1.tripod.com/dexys/dsmd.html
It's fucking annoying
But yeah, the first post's link is a good article.
Basically louder = sounds better. Producers decided that they'd compress the mix more to make a louder-sounding and therefore better-sounding record than their contemporaries. So the average volume level of records would increase slightly year on year, which over 15 years means the norm is now fucking loud. And sounds worse, as everything's compressed to fuck. Like the Justice album, which makes me tired listening to it all the way through.
Listen to My Bloody Valentine's first album, then Justice. Justice is about ten times as loud.
God, I type slowly.
^^ what they all said.
I always find the pixies records
to be too quite.
But...
couldn't you just turn it up? It's quiet because there's more range, so the bits that they wanted to really stand out would do.
All records over about 10 years old sound pretty quiet in comparison to recent SUPER LOUD albums.
Joe - www.anewbandaday.com
because people listen to music in much noisier environments
than they used to (e.g. on the Tube on their MP3 player, rather than in their living room on their posh hi-fi).
And people didn't
listen to walkmen on the tube?
See above for the real reason.
They did
but music for CD (which is what all the Loudness War data is from) was mastered primarily to appeal to people who bought a lot of CDs - in the late-80s this would have been well-off people who listened on their hi-fis.
I'm well aware of the other arguments that have been advanced, but I don't find them terribly persuasive by comparison.
65dos tried to go against it with the last album
and got loads of flak for it, mainly because MP3 players and computers are people's main way of listening to music.
I reviewed that album.
I agreed with the sentiments behind their approach (I hate over-compression as much as the next man) but the primary reason they got flak was because it was actually executed really badly. The dynamic range was certainly there, but the individual instrument tracks themselves sounded fucking horrible.
http://www.turnmeup.org/
^see this
that'll be compression
innit
that was an immensely satisfying read (the article)
thanks for sharing.
Everyone was complaining about Los Campesinos!
album being mixed really loud but i'm yet to see people making the same complaint about Johnny Foreigner (Can't comment on the album yet to be fair). If the LC! album is loud then the Johnny Foreigner ep was REALLY FUCKING LOUD!
I thought...
the los campesinos album was far too quiet. Am I just going deaf?
because there are very few mastering engineers
around today that actually know what they're doing. A lot of the time it's mastered by the recording engineers who, whilst vaguely know what they're doing, aren't very good at it.
Also the whole 'loud = grabs your attention' school of thought which is stupid as anything on radio goes through the broadcaster's compressors and so gets squeezed to fuck anyway.
Who cares?
You should
I suspect the mastering engineers know exactly what they're doing
but fear they'll be sacked by their boss if they make their releases "quieter" than everyone elses.
radio shows
use limiter compressors that 'pump' the sound to make it constant.
the compression used on cds brings th volume to near digital distortions.
Imagine that a normal waveform of a recording was like this:
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\mmm/\/\/mm/\/\
or something.
Producers make it like this:
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Basically
It makes records sound dogshit because it removes all the dynamics from the playing.
There is a maximum volume that you can get out of a cd so if you can imagine once the loud parts have hit the ceiling of that maximum volume, if you continue to push, the quiter parts get louder but the loud parts stay the same... thus eliminating loads of the dynamics of the performance.
It started to happen in the late 80's with hard rock records. Everyone would want their record to be the loudest and it just became the norm.
MP3s and Ipods have just made it worse because people don't want their song to be the quiet one on someone's ipod.
Its not just mastering
the dreaded producers are guilty of compressing everything to oblivion, even distorted guitars which in themselves are a true form of compression. so by the time the mastering engineer gets hold of it and uses a multiband compressor, the dynamic range is pretty much lost. then when the tracks are sent to the radio station who then uses further compression for transfer (digital or analogue).
the process sucks the life out of records but makes them more accessible to casual listeners (ie no harsh transient bursting out halfway through a song). and you end up with razorlight.
but anyway too my actual point! it is just a fad, the same as the phil collins drum sound that was on nearly everything damn record in the 80's (you know crappy reverbed drums). i suspect it will end fairly soon, what with all these "noise" bands and the like (compressing them would defeat the whole point).
every so many years a new fad comes along, using a specific microphone, or a certain analogue mixing desk.
its also worth noting that nearly all the BIG production break throughs are made by small time engineers/producers... bring on the home recordings!
ok my rant it over.
A fad?
It's really not a fad, get used to it. It's been happening for years. Probably almost as long as CDs have been around and mp3s are even worse because they're compressed to shit by nature of what they are. People in general are happy to stream music from shit like myspace which says it all. Most people really aren't bothered and would be annoyed by a quiet song on their ipod unfortunately.
i've really noticed this
on 6 music. Sonically speaking, most recent releases just sounding the same. Very dull.
I've recently
got into recording a few bits and bobs for TV / internet TV, and sadly compressing the feck out of everything is totally the done thing (as production companies can't bear anything quiet, especially if they want their advert to stand its own ground etc). Like that article points out, it clearly serves a purpose when you're trying to stand out amongst the noise of everyday life, but all the nuances and detail is gone.
So yeah - blame TV and radio.
Its interesting
to think how classic music fits into all this, as much of it has (or is suppose to have) a broader dynamic range than pop music. If you stick a recording of a classic piece on CD on, its generally much quieter than a Rawk CD for that very reason... just wondering if anyone knows if recent recordings have been affected by such a push for LOUDNESS? I'm assuming not, as its geared toward a different 'market' (ugh), but then again, with the recent burgeoning of Classic FM, perhaps some of the 'classics' have been remastered in a more radio-friendly way.
difficult to say
because even within "Classical" music there are variations in terms of dynamic range. A big orchestra has much more dynamic range than a chamber quartet in principle, but in fact a lot of Romantic symphonic music doesn't really use the whole range, while chamber music aficiondos care more about hearing precise detail (I think).
There have definitely been changes in Classical music recordings though - not least the fact that everything these days seems to get a slightly OTT amount of reverb which used not to be the case in the 1960s.
* aficionados
I wonder
whether you can tie this into the whole shift in money from recorded music to live music. After all, when it used to be that recorded music was "the product", then people were more likely to expect rubbish sound at gigs, which were just acting as a sampler for high-fidelity sound on record. Now that records - well, MP3s, really - are just samplers to get you to go to check out the bands live, then they're going to be more aimed at just grabbing attention and less at depth and detail.
i think you're in the right ballpark there
one thing i want to say on this topic is that electronic music and hip hop/r&b in particular is probably partially to blame for overcompression. A lot of mainstream records of this type are cranked up to hell, and so if a rock band or more "organic" artist wants to compete they feel the need to do the same. But hip hop/r&b has the natural advantage of having a more clear cut dynamic structure - where a lot of rock bands have more subtle shifts in texture due to every second being filled with sound, modern r&b and hip hop tends to have a more minimal body of bass and drums with a lot of space between the various parts, so the listener isn't necessarily blown into submission by constant noise. That's one of the main problems with overcompressed rock - you get fatigue from listening to it because there's no respite, except for between songs. With more minimal electronic music it just sounds more punchy, which is what you want from pop innit
So yeah, as long as there's no digital clipping compression can be (over)used well
Bit late in the day
but the Pixies are super-quiet on my iPod - all albums. Especially annoying for the quiet bits.
Maybe
It's the band that annoys you then because the quiet bits are supposed to be quiet. Perhaps you just hate the pixies?
=
Ive been getting progressivly deafer so havent noticed.
No.
I do listen to the Pixies in other formats and being able to hear the quiet bits is quite important otherwise they would be loud-silent-loud which would be pointless.