By Shawn Daley

Unfamiliar with the term “Loudness War”?  Here is a quick rundown:

For the last several years, modern music has been subjected to quality-destroying production methods mostly during the mixing and mastering stages of the recording process.  Through the abuse of digital audio compression and limiting, music is given a false sense of loudness, and a resulting reduction in natural dynamic range (ratio of the quietest section of a song to the loudest section of a song) occurs.  In extreme cases clipping of the audio waveform results in audible digital distortion.  Go to our Loudness Wars category for more information.




Not everyone  will understand why this is such a large problem, or even care about it. This is understandable. This also begs the question…. Why not? Why WOULDN’T the average music listener care about the quality of the music they enjoy so much? I’ve come across plenty of average music consumers, educated on the Loudness Wars, who still feign ignorance and choose to ignore it.

Why?

One key reason is that many listeners have not compared the quality of artificially loud music to a recording with greater dynamic range.  A reasonably compressed recording doesn’t need artificial loudness. These recordings beg you to  listen loud! When the dynamic range is taken full advantage of,  you notice a crisp and clearer sound, even at a large level of volume.  Turn it up and feel the power and punch of dynamics!

Over-compression and limiting results in recordings that sound worse when listened to loudly.  Don’t we want to turn our music up?

Another reason is one that many involved in the music industry are coming to realize: change is on its way. Thanks to many extreme examples, particularly Metallica’s Death Magnetic, the Loudness War has gone from a slight loss of dynamics to gross quantities of distortion. Even average music listeners are noticing the snaps, crackles, and pops that can be heard throughout Death Magnetic. This is nothing new for today’s modern recordings, but the fact that consumers are noticing this is a sign that the engineers and producers responsible are pushing the limits of what is acceptable.

It’s one thing to notice this loss of quality, but it’s another thing to understand the cause of it.

At Euphonic Sound Recording Studio, James and I are working with two bands, who are taking advantage of our Studio 2.0 offer, and have specifically acknowledged the Loudness War. They have volunteered their music in the hopes of educating others regarding over compression and limiting. 48caliber (Ajax, Ontario) and Foresight For The Blind (Toronto, Ontario) understand that the general public perceives louder as better. Since most of today’s hard rock bands release their material ridiculously loud, how does one compete with that?

For the 48caliber and Foresight For The Blind recordings, we are aiming to put back the punch in Metal and Punk, by allowing more dynamic range in our mix and mastering process.

The decision to listen loud will be up to the listener

To anyone who has never set foot in a recording studio, or has never heard the words compression and limiting described in an audio environment,  This video is straightforward and simple, showing the way audio is physically affected by the result of over-compression. However, the best way to understand is to simply use your ears.

Compare older recordings from the 50’s through to the early 90’s with the recordings of today. You probably won’t be able to transition between songs comfortably without either turning your stereo up during the 50’s – early 90’s recordings, and needing to turn it down during a modern recording.

Finally, I’d like to go over a couple of common misconceptions that many people have about the Loudness War.

Misconception 1 – Loud Is Bad!

With a title like The Loudness War, this could easily lead people to believe that loud equals bad. This is only true when loudness is artificially introduced to a recording. I like to listen to music loud. Hundreds of thousands of people love to crank their stereos. Because of this artificial loudness, we lose quality when we listen loud. When each individual instrument in a song is being heard at the same level of volume, we don’t need to crank our stereos. If we do, we’ll hear distortion, our ears will tire quicker than usual,  we lose dynamic resolution. If music is produced without artificial loudness, we CAN turn our speakers up, and it WILL sound better. This issue should be referred to as the Artificial-Loudness War to avoid the confusion that loud equals bad.




Misconception 2 – Compression Is Evil!

With all this talk of compression and limiting, many of you might think that both are responsible for destroying the quality of music. Compression and limiting are fantastic tools that can be used for creative purposes in the same manner that equalization and microphone placement techniques are. As with anything they can be abused. It’s when producers and engineers overuse these tools that the real problem occurs, hence the term over-compression.




So, what is your take on the Loudness Wars?

Leave your words in the comment section and let us know.

The Loudness War – Why Should You Care? by Shawn Daley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at studiomanifesto.ca.

Technorati Tags: 48caliber, audio compression, Broken Window Records, Death Magnetic, dynamic range, euphonic sound, Foresight For The Blind, James Pew, Loudness War, Metallica, music, Shawn Daley, toronto recording studio, You Tube

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Loudness Wars, studio 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.