Loudness War - New Foundation

Fredo · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:13 pm Post subject: Loudness War - New Foundation

Friedemann Tischmeyer, mastering engineer and author of books about audio mixing and mastering, has started a foundation, trying to improve the quality of music albums.

The issue is that music gets louder and louder, with less dynamic range, which means less emotion and expression. There's no issue with some albums being mastered really loud, yet many albums could have been a lot better if they weren’t over compressed.

If you’re remotely interested, please take a look at the website and sign up. It’s free and it takes only a minute or 2. It is valid both for music industry people as well as regular listeners who enjoy listening to well mixed and mastered music. The website is both in the German and English language.

http://dynamicrange.de/

All the best, and thank you for reading,

brandy · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 1:05 pm Post subject:

Jean-Michel Bocéno · Member Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 653 Location: France

Neil Wilkes · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 2:26 pm Post subject:

Good thing too.
One question about the DR meter - will this be a multichannel one or just stereo?
The overcompression/excessive Peak Limiting thing is creeping into surround as well, and it's awful.
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Tank · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 5:37 pm Post subject:

Musicbynumbers · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 6:05 pm Post subject:

i tried too :(

got an error, waiting for someone to get back to me :)

but it is a very good cause!
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Leon EA · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:41 pm Post subject:

Derek · Senior Member Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1542

the loudness war is going to end. but its not going to happen because people stop the insanity or because of some
well meant campaign such as this one (or the 34964322 ones before it), its gonna happen because of technology
advancement.

already now, most music is listened to via media players, at least in genres where the loudness
race is an issue at all. these media players, one after another, will start to adopt the technology to analyse tracks
in their playlist in advance. piece of cake for todays computers, hey, my mobile phone can do it too already.
the at times *extreme* volume jumps are something very annoying for the consumer, and its an issue even
joe average notices and cares about when its disturbing his enjoyment of random playlists through his downloaded
music collection. i would guess that at the latest with the new OS generation, the OSses default players will have
the needed tech to be able to playback tracks at properly "equalized" RMS levels, and theres a good chance that it will be activated by default.
meaning, this technology will cover the majority of the market pretty soon, without the end users having to do anything at all about it.

and THAT will lead to the loud masterers nightmare where all tracks are played back at the same RMS level
and the only difference will be that, the louder you master, the more whimpy your track appears in the RMS levelled
playlist.

and when that has happened, THEN the loudness war will finally be over. a couple more years maybe. im pretty optimistic
that the technological advancement will come a lot sooner (in fact its already in place in many media players), it
will just take a few years until the majority of audio engineers realize these new circumstances and react accordingly.

anyway, this will be the reason why the loudness war will end eventually. it will not end because of people acting like grown ups. there are not enough
grown ups in this industry for that to happen ;-)

zolo · Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:29 pm Post subject:

Derek · Senior Member Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1542

zolo · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 12:46 am Post subject:

Derek · Senior Member Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1542

LordNibbler · Senior Member Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1268

I am not at all optimistic the loudness war will ever end. Let me try and explain.

There have been three technologies that have run in parallel with each other over the last ~15 years or so - loudness maximising, abundant digital copies and home cinema. The first two together have become essential fuel for the "ipod" boom and the ipod boom has shaped the way people listen to music. Music is no longer a feature in our lives, it is now an accompianement, part of the background noise which the ipod serves very well. Due to the environments most ipods are used in, loud masters work better than more dynamic masters and critical listening isn't possible, nor desired. As long as these conditions exist and continue to grow, fewer and fewer people are going to be listening in more traditional ways (putting a CD on the deck and sitting down to listen to it) so the demand for dynamic masters gets smaller and smaller.

Where home cinema fits into this is that it has replaced the "physical experience" that people used to get when listening to hi-fi. People are now critical of their home cinema setups and tune them carefully to maximise the sonic impact. Where as previously, the pure fun of listening to good sound came from the hi-fi, now it comes from DVD - loud explosions, surround sound, etc.. The audio-visual experience of film has pushed music aside. The ipod has further reduced music to a background noise and loud masters are better for this.

The industry and domestic momentum behind these changes is too large to stop or even slow down. Just look at the way hi-fi manufacturers have had to diversify into home cinema just to survive. Look at the way CD "remasters" come out every few years, each one louder than the previous, each one a cheap excuse to get people to buy the CD yet again (when they invariably sound far worse than the first generation). Look at the sales figures for ipod players vs simple but quality home replay systems. It's probably 100:1.

In this environment, how on earth is the loudness war going to be stopped? It would have to be a cataclysmic event to stop it and undo all the damage. I hate to be living in the era when high quality recordings with proper dynamics became consigned to the history books but painful as that is, I have to accept it has happened. There is no way this is all going to be unravelled. It's gone. Take care of all those old CDs and LPs because that era of sound has passed.

LN
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Derek · Senior Member Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1542

i fully agree with your "diagnosis". yet, my source of hope lies directly in your post as well - the primary playback device these days is the ipod (or, more general, some sort
of audio file playing device, i.e. the ipod is already on its way out, soon to be replaced by "whatever mobile phone you happen to have" with all of them having 8 GB upwards).

that means, the mechanism that is playing back the music is at its core a media playing software. and yes, the primary use is playing back more or less random playlists
out of huge mp3 collections.

again, heres where my optimism comes in: if there is ONE thing joe average notices about "audio fidelity", its the constant and extreme changes in playback volume
when your media player plays frank sinatras "my way" right after some linkin park production. people hate this problem, even joe avrage is annoyed by this.
and its a problem that is easily solved via technology, already now many media players have this. that ALL of them have this and have it activated by default (important because joe average would never consciously change the settings in his media player) is really just a question of time IMO.

and then, doing a loud master will be "punished" sonically. that mp3 players are designed to have you listen to your music loud in loud environments doesnt have
anything to do with it - listening to stuff at high volume makes the media players ability to know a tracks RMS level all the more important. the development leads
to future mp3 players that 1. can playback music at high volumes but 2. dont control these volumes in dumb absolute parameters but based on a RMS readout.
and be it only for health reasons. i.e. my country has strict health regulations regarding the maximum potential playback volume, so a mp3 maker really only
has the choice of either making a "dumb" mp3player that doesnt know the RMS level of the audio files it plays back and thus has to ship it with a "safety buffer"
regarding the absolute volume, leading to a mp3player that would be considered a "quiet mp3player" by teenagers. nobody wants those.
so already by this dynamic, manufacturers of mp3 players are automatically lead to build more intelligence into their mp3players.
for all the wrong reasons, but who cares :-)

so, there wont be a cataclysmic event. just the mechanisms of the market and technological advance that will make loud masterings first obsolete and then counterproductive.
and then - and only then - will the loudness war end.

and if we want to do anything about this, i personally wouldnt go to audiophile initiatives (that everybody can agree on, only to then get back to ignoring them),
but i would go to manufacturers like microsoft and apple. make a petition that they ship their media players 1. with RMS detection and 2. with the according volume
adjustment mechanism *activated by default*. you can make a very convincing case about why they should do this (convenience for joe average, and its a super easy
fix to a problem *everybody* can relate to)

have sucess there and BANG, you have already made loud masters completely obsolete on, i dunno, probably 80% of the market (when you include the 40% of
radio listening where loud masterings have been obsolete already for a long time). that seems a lot more effective to me. and then its only a question of time
until people realize how much theyre doing themselves a disservice, when their loud masters sound worse not only on the radio but also when played back through
itunes or the windows media player etc. this is just a question of "reaching critical mass" until the majority of mastering engineers will see themselves forced to
react accordingly.

if there is a way out of this at all, this is the only way IMO.

Derek · Senior Member Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1542

btw, one of the reasons why im so convinced about this is my own car stereo, which came with exactly such a RMS based "auto volume", and it was set to on.
its awesome, because really all tracks playback by about the same perceived volume. very very nice. and indeed, flat limited masters dont stick out at all anymore there, on the
contrary, they sound kind of pale in comparison.

Vocalpoint · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 5:59 pm Post subject:

HHaynes · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:25 pm Post subject:

This is a very dynamic discussion. I give it 60dB from nominal to peak
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zolo · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:18 pm Post subject:

Houston has opened the door for S/N and Crosstalk analogies...
the main disadvantages of Vocalpoints vinyl ressurection.

It's all a compromise... as long as apathy eclipses action.
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SafeandSound · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:10 pm Post subject:

I actually think vinyl sound sucks.

It's good for 20 plays and then you have loads of distortion.

Well recorded, mastered 24 bit audio dithered to CD is pretty good sounding.

Vinyl has a physical experience associated with it but it sounds pretty dire quite
quickly.

After reading this I don't think there is much hope for less loudness maximization.
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Musicbynumbers · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:40 pm Post subject:

The public "want" what the public "get" ; ) not the other way around a lot of the time..
.
This is a worthy cause as it's not really about the general public it's about all us guys who loved music the way it was.. Dynamic! ; )
.
And i agree, vinyl is not really the way forward.. More of a psycho-acoustic "baby blanket" to help us remember our youth ; )
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commandcom · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:58 pm Post subject:

I'm with Derek!

Very good points, really.

You've sumarized with ease the same (but vague) ideas that I've had for quite some time.

I really think that he's right, just because he's refeering to a very basic and human habit: Take the easiest way.

And yes, auto-volume is the easiest way!

My only concern, being agree with that, is that it WILL extend to home cinema and kill (simple paradox here) all dynamics in movie sound! (home released, obviously)
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Vocalpoint · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:08 am Post subject:

BIG8 · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:11 am Post subject:

Safe&Sound, being in the UK, did you get the chance to audition top notch British engineered turntables of the likes of Linn Sondek or Roksan Xerxes, mounted with an SME pick-up and a decent MC cartridge (Audio Technica or Sure) through good amps and speakers in a well treated room?

Well kept records do not distort that easily. You've got to abuse them and lend them to others for that :)

I never stop being amazed by the sound of vinyl. There is something about orchestral stuff which give me goose pimples... never could get that effect from digital, but I don't know if that has more to do with the carelessness of recent recording than anything else.

Cheers,
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zolo · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:05 am Post subject:

BIG8 · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:54 am Post subject: