The Loudness War: Give It Up!

Supervise is one thing, oking the final product is different.

 

Horribly written article. Comes off as an excuse for all things brickwalled and just tries to shoehorn audiophiles as some fanatical group that should "give it up". Nice try but I don't think so.

I like how they throw in all the usual stereotypes. Bah. Sounds like this guy just wants to make excuses to me.

 

Look, that comment was 5% of my post yet you seem to treat it as the only thing I've said. Maybe I should have after it? How about commenting on the rest of it? I was glad you brought it up. I thought.

 

If compression is a choice made by the artist and producer on the original release, it might be disappointing to some, but it is part of the original work. If it is added to a remaster or reissue of a beloved classic to "improve" the sound of a record, I think audiophile collectors and discerning listeners of that music have a legitimate beef.

 

Audiophiles are a fanatical group and I think his point is we aren't going to change the studios or labels opinion of dynamic range compression. We are a very small minority with the vast majority not caring.

 

I don't know if all the artists are given the opportunity of "oking" their releases (regarding sound issues, I mean).

 

Except many of these remasters are approved by the artist. Example Bruce Springsteen Born To Run 30th Anniversary release.

 

Have you heard any complain about how the final product sounds?

 

Loudness Wars, meh. I really don't indentify with "Audiophile", middle aged or elderly men, as the article purports "his people" are.

Good muisc is good music.

 

Ok, good point. That too. But fans can still say I wish he didn't mess with it. Like George Lucas messing with Star Wars. He has a right to do it but the changes still suck.

 

OK, I admit that I know very little about mixing and mastering, but Butterworth talks about needing compression to get an acoustic guitar and a vocalist to be heard along with fully cranked electric guitars and etc. Doesn't mixing also accomplish this?

Also, if audiophiles are such a pitifully small and insignificant bunch of fanatics, why do people need to write these articles telling them their concerns suck?

 

To your first point it is a combination of mixing and compression.

To your second point I don't think anyone said audiophiles are an insignificant bunch of fanatics just a very small minority of the population.

 

Yes, Zappa aprroved some disastrous remasters back in the nineties (You Are What You Is, Sheik Yerbouti, among others) and they still sounded like a series of asteriks (the word I want to use will never get through). Of course, poor Frank was very sick at the time

 

Greg Calbi tells it like it is :

 

Audiophiles are fanatics and they aren't going to change anyone's opinion. Sounds pretty insignificant to me.

Shut up and eat what you're served, "audiophiles!" We want your money, not your backtalk!

 

I don't think I said insignificant anywhere just a vast majority there is a difference. I see where the confusion could be though.

 

Which is why I care!

 

I don't think there is anything wrong with compression used in the right way . What I can't stand is recordings brick walled to the point instruments are ill defined & things sound strained & distorted .

 

I find that to be a rare circumstance. Usually when that happens it is because of a poor mix. It does happen though.

 

Well, I accept that some contemporary artists have made a conscious choice in this regard, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the way that it sounds. I don't consider myself to be any kind of a purist either--I imagine my tolerance threshold is higher than many around here--but in some cases, when bands have gone way too far with the compression (Flaming Lips, and the majority of the Dave Fridmann productions of the last decade), it has significantly hindered my enjoyment of the music. For the life of me, I can't see why the Lips think that this kind of an aural migraine is a good sound, unless they're practically deaf at this point. And what if an older band has personally approved this kind of an approach for their remasters, even demanded it? Wouldn't that be their artistic choice too?

I recognize that we're in the vast minority here and as a rule, I don't beat my head against the wall on this question too much, but at a time when music sales have been slumping, this is just one more factor that turns hardcore paying customers away from buying new music.

 

This is perfect. The people who write articles about this subject should approach it more like Calbi does, and with less of the, "shut up you weirdos you're not going to change anything."

 

There is no going back. I've been listening to Van Halen's first 3 albums, early Sabbath, etc. - very open mixes (Rhino vinyl reissues). The days of that kind of mix are long, long gone. In a lot of music these days (metal, especially, this is what I'm familiar with), the mix and master are done at the same time, and everything is very compressed - drums are limited so that they have little resonance, EQed to a very tight frequency range; guitars are multi-tracked, EQed and compressed into a ceaseless wall of sound, even outside of the metal world. The whole sound of the thing is very dry, perfectly contained to fit into a particular frequency and DR container. Thank you, DAW.
My point is, this is what "recorded" (this is a stretch of the meaning of that word; more like digitally-manipulated and -created) music sounds like these days. The artists love it. "modern production" whoo hooo!!

There is no War anymore.

 

They MAY have been.

I've been trying out all kinds of VST mastering plug ins and its amazing, the difference between them all. Some are dynamic, and have a sort of emphasis on either a warm-ish sound, and some a more upper mids sound, and some are more trebly but seem to have a nice sort of "airy" quality to them.

and some of them are apparently designed for LOUD. The resulting wav looks like a Johnny Unitas crewcut. Its almost startingly loud but after 30 seconds, you run screaming back to one of the other versions.

Crazy.

 

Flaming Lips is a perfect example. I agree, the compression has also hindered my overall enjoyment. But that is how the original releases sound. And it's so extensive it must be an artistic or production choice I just happen to dislike. I can't help imagining my dad, or any number of 40s and 50's music fans, the first time hearing a distorted guitar. I'm sure many felt the same way.

 

This is without a doubt the biggest pile of ******** that I have read in an article in many weeks and I'm reading political newspapers and magazines every day.
The author made so many ludicrous assumptions and wrong conclusions that I won't even attempt to address them one by one.
Also...why give up on the loudness war when the tide is beginning to turn? Some of the "Mastered for Itunes" albums are mastered with decent dynamic range and the latest Yes album "Heaven & Earth" might be artistically questionable but it was mastered with lots of dynamics.

Okay...one thing more: I would LOVE to listen to more new music instead of "Aja" and "Dark Side Of The Moon" but the sad fact is that most new CD releases are damn near unlistenable due to their squished dynamics. Oh...and I DO listen to Metallica, maybe I'm not an audiophile after all. But if the author of the article is representative for audiophiles in the 21st century I don't WANT to be an audiophile.

Nuff said.