The Loudness War: Give It Up!

I have been a professional mastering engineer for almost 5 years now, working mostly for indies or small labels, with a couple exceptions.
In my experience, it is mainly the label and/or the producer that check and approve the final mastered product.
Artists rather usually trust the opinion of more technically-minded people or leave it entirely to the label/producer/engineer for sound-quality. They rarely trust their own ears or even have a view on the matter. They may offer very general observations.
There are exceptions of course but they are rare. IME.

Some artists supervise the whole production. These I enjoy working with the most.

 

People give always the blame to the Mastering Engineers, but often the blame is with the producers during recording/mixing.
A mastering engineer can try to make a horrible recording sound better, but they can't do miracles ... just slight modifications in EQ etc.

I don't like the person Rick Rubin, but he was responsible for some great classic albums. His latest production with Angus & Julia Stone has very poor Dynamic Range ... but it's not as horrible as some other loudness wars releases like Foo Fighters and many other rockbands. The Angus & Julia Stone album is pretty good and no ear fatiguing imo ... while other loudness wars victims I can't listen through the whole album.

 

BINGO!

 

Your point is well taken and I guess the overall point is the artists that care about the sound go through the whole process where the ones that don't care will trust the producer to finalize the sound they discuss while recording. Either way most don't feel dynamic range compression is that bad or that big of a deal.

 

Agree it's the choice of the artist and producer. Good or bad.

 

Although when you educate them about the matter, they usually don't want to subject their tracks to brickwalling.

And those who supervise the whole process have a precise sound in their heads and usually don't want brickwalling either.

 

Everyone here raves about the Led Zep RL records from the 70s. Now many seem to not like Robert Ludwig's work. Am I wrong about that? Now he is raving about the sound of the upcoming Springsteen LP and CD reissues which I assume are from digital files? He things they are better than the originals. Of course part is always sales hype but it will be interesting to hear those...

 

I helps my ears! Get it.

 

No because turning down the treble has no affect on dynamic compression in any way, shape or form. It only helps tame mixes that have way too much treble EQd into them.

 

When you cut the treble, you also change the dynamics of the frequencies affected. Although I agree the effect is mainly on tonality.

 

True but it has a minimal affect at best on dynamics especially if you are just using a typical treble knob. It's usually only enough to measure but is almost undetectable when just listening.

 

Mainly the producers and the labels, apparently. It's a shame that more bands don't take an active roll in determining how their music sounds.

 

As soon as the author referred to "Loudness Wars" as a "purported trend", in the first sentence of the article, my BS radar jumped to code red.

 

Most of them don't care or feel that it sounds good this way.

 

It is a "purported trend" because all throughout the history of Rock music people have been trying to make their recordings as loud as possible. This isn't new only the technology has changed and opened up the possibility to make it louder now.

 

I think it's a little sad if bands don't care how their music sounds. I don't expect them all to be technical masters on these kinds of questions, but I would think that many would want to have some kind of input on these questions.

 

most of the time they think their playing makes the most impact on "the sound". Then the recording, then the mixing. Naïvely, the mastering comes last in their priorities although it can have a huge effect on the sound.

 

The article is totally disingenuous. He just sets up a straw-man crazy "audiophile" who demands that Dr. Dre and Katy Perry record their their albums in the style of Chesky or Mapleshade, using zero compression and no post-recording processing. But virtually no one is asking for this. Most audiophiles understand that compression is a useful, even necessary, tool in recording and producing pop and rock music. The objection is generally to the extreme use of compression at the mastering stage that dramatically reduces dynamic range. No one is asking "the mainstream recording industry...to give up dynamic range compression," only to back off on the excessive use of it in mastering.

I haven't heard everything he's produced, but I tend to think Rick Rubin's recordings sound pretty good, if they have been mastered well (unfortunately that's a big if). Neil Diamond's The Long Way Home sounds really nice to me, and it has fairly decent dynamic range, ditto most of the albums he produced for Johnny Cash. And part of the whole controversy surrounding Death Magnetic was due to the fact that a number of Metallica fans noticed the (not completely dynamically squashed) Guitar Hero version of the songs sounded much better than what made it to the CD.

 

Almost all of Rick Rubin's most recent productions are way too loud and I for one noticed the problem with Death Magnetic before I even knew about the Guitar Hero version. I thought there was something wrong with my car stereo until I put a different CD in and it sounded better again. The ZZ Top he is referring to sounds awful on a good system IMO which is too bad because it is a great album.

 

I agree. This article is a straw-man argument. I don't think many pop/rock fans have any problem with what Guttenberg calls "tastefully applied compression", and as many note, dynamic compression has been around long before everyone went digital, and has been used tastefully on many/most of our favorite albums. I'll go as far as to say many, including musicians, like the sound of tastefully applied compression. So, we are actually on the same page here as the author(s) purport to be - we just want our recordings to sound good.

What most object to is harsh, congested, and distorted mixes that are trying to be as loud as possible when compared with other music. The author(s) here have latched onto a misuse of the word "compression" to set up the straw-man argument that Loudness Wars = Compression, and since compression is obviously a valuable tool in the studio, there's no Loudness War to fight. It's neatly side-stepping the actual problem faced.

 

This! It's one thing to produce newer songs/albums with very limited DR, but it can really change the character of older recordings. Good or bad, it's a kind of revisionist history.

 

True- there are plenty of albums being mastered with an enormous amount of digital clipping/limiting. Usually some compression is involved too, but not always...

 

I guess I'm in the minority here. After 50 years of buying all forms of recorded music with over 10,000 plus LPs and CDs, the Loudness thing has never bothered me. Records have never hurt my ears, unless I simply hated the music. Yes there have been bad recordings but if I enjoy the music, I turn it up anyway.

But I appreciate and respect those who feel differently.

 

This is where I am. I'd love to buy more new music and listen to stuff by modern pop/rock bands. I really like Airborne Toxic Event and Neon Trees. But I bought their first few CD's and I've just gotten sick of buying awful sounding music (good songs, awful sound). So with their most recent releases, I've heard the songs (the way record companies hate), but I'm not buying them until they put out a decent sounding option. I'd love to spend more time on new music, but the way its presented, I'm just not going to.

Count me as another "audiophile" who listens to Metallica (and Slayer, and Motorhead, and Megadeth, etc) - but it doesn't serve the writers purpose to acknowledge we exist.

 

The point is, Rick Rubin didn't master those titles. He's not a mastering engineer. The article discusses his work as if he were. I agree with you that those titles are too loud, but it's not necessarily Rubin's fault.