Are you NOT bothered by the "Loudness Wars" CD's? Do you listen to music loudly in general?

I admit I'm not quite so picky as some of the purists here. Certainly I don't care for brickwalled releases, but I don't mind some judiciously applied compression in the least. And I never use DR numbers (or bother looking at waveforms) to form an opinion - If I like what I hear, that's all that matters to me.

 

I admit it took me a while to really understand what loud mastering did to the product, but once I understood, it became very simple and easy to identify. No, I don't like aggressive mastering at all, mostly because there's no need for it. And apart from the fact it's very fatiguing, I always feel like a portion of the music is just plain missing...squashed off the sides of the soundstage. No fun.

 

I love music so i do listen to hyper-compressed albums from time to time. If no better source exists what choice do i have?
I just prefer not to have my music severly compressed and often finding myself wondering how good that album could have been without it.

Just sent to the void by the limiters

 

I don't give a damn about sound quality in general. I can't tell the difference between remastered and original versions of albums, don't care whether it's in mono or stereo, and have encoutered perhaps two or three CDs among my thousands with which I've had qualms about their sonics. Being a member of this forum makes me think ignorance is indeed often bliss.

 

Removing your equipment's capabilities and limitations out of the equation, listening to a nicely remastered and good sounding CD at loud volume level is not the same as listening to a CD that was remastered to compete in the "Loudness War".
The nicely remastered CD still sound good at high volume with much less fatigue factor.
On the other hand, listening to a "loudness war" CD even at moderate volume level would make you want to shorten your listening session, skip the track, or stop playing the CD altogther. There is no life in the music and we lose our emotional connection to the music.

Bob Ludwig, a record mastering engineer, believes this is one of the chief reasons people don't engage with albums as deeply anymore. "When you're through listening to a whole album of this highly compressed music, your ear is fatigued." "You may have enjoyed the music but you don't really feel like going back and listening to it again."

 

Not sure I would agree with this statement. The LP format has physical limits to how loud music can sound. CDs do not.

Agreed.

 

I realize this forum is hugely biased toward audiophile recordings, and their sonic perfection, but most of the music being released doesn't have these same standards. They come out in one version, with one mastering, and honestly, until someone points it out to a typical fan, they wouldn't realize what brickwalled is.

It is the condemnation of these recordings that make me laugh. Since knowledge of these "loudness wars" has increased, I've read multiple opinions on, and self-appointed experts of, mastering.

The ever-swaying opinion is using these waveforms as evidence, rather than one's ears. Almost like one declaring their disdain for all foods containing gluten, it seems like lambasting an album for it's visual waveform is the newest bandwagon to jump on.

Should sound quality matter? Of course, but I use my taste in music, and my ears as the sole judge of whether I like any particular recording.

 

It's quite amazing how much more you can actually hear on those 'quiet' CDs as opposed to the loud ones, which tend to hide all of the subtleties in the music.

 

I think you are wrong. You would be surprised how good these brickwalled albums would sound just by removing the compression.

The artists spend a lot of time in the studio recording. That bit havent changed at all over the years. Every new album is a potenitonal audiophile recording. But instead they put it to the meatgrinder.

Edit: sometimes i wonder why they pick good studios, fancy producers and spend all that money just to brickwall it to death in the mastering-stage. Don't see the point

 

Yeah, there certainly is a bandwagon element here. Now I do care about sound quality, quite a bit in fact, but I find the obsession with waveforms and DR numbers to be a bit over the top in many cases. For example, back when the first round of the most recent Led Zeppelin remasters hit the streets there were a few who were denouncing the remasters (without ever hearing them) because the reported DR numbers were a bit lower than some previous digital release.

Since I had access to more than one mastering of one of the albums (LZII) it was easy for me to listen and decide for myself. Frankly I thought the sound quality of the remaster exceeded all previous digital versions*, and certainly it wasn't lacking in dynamic range relative to those releases as far as I could tell. I thought it was ridiculous that anyone could make a decision on sound quality without at least listening to the music!

*Not everyone agreed of course, and that's fine. I don't think we ever get consensus on the best sounding version of anything around here.

 

In the case of the different LZ-masters i think eq would be the deciding-factor. We all have different taste. Diements for me but i can understand if some people prefer the new version. It's not bad after all.

 

I think your mixing things up. I was talking about compression using analog gear in a studio as opposed to modern digital compression, how loud can music be on vinyl is a different topic*.

* By the way, the whole physical limit is misleading data. Most people use that as an argument that vinyl albums can't brickwalled, which is totally wrong. You can make a master as loud, limited, clipped and distorted as you like, all done in digital format, and then transfer that to vinyl, which is what happens to almost every LP released nowadays. There's plenty of vinyl albums squashed to death, no format is safe from the Loudness Wars.

 

I don't have the luxury of buying the best recording of everything I enjoy as I'm sure most here understand. So if it's affordable and I finally get to own it then I'm happy.

 

People crying Loudness War because of a DR9 was just silly. Just by looking at the waveforms and LISTENING to it, you could tell it was never intended to be loud. There was plenty of space to increase a dB or two, so "loud as possible" was not what they were aiming for.
DR meters is a really great tool. But in order to be actually useful you need to know how to properly interpret the numbers. Reminds of the folks comparing DR info between CDs and LPs. Apples and oranges.

It's not necessarily a luxury (perhaps more about one's patience ). Many times, the standard domestic release turns out to be the best one.

 

Yes it's silly but at the same time why apply compression at all? LZ allready applied all the compression they wanted when they recorded the albums. Just use tastefull eq and be done with it.

 

Try and get the levels of compression at its worst into a piece of vinyl!! Computer says NO. That's why people find vinyl valid in this respect for new releases, it's secondary that it's mostly digital mixes.

an

 

They managed to cut Metallica's Death Magnetic to vinyl.. no probs. And it should be the same master
Vinyl is just as bad but they cannot go beyond 0db offcourse.

 

I didn't know there was such a thing until I heard the term. I only know that I wondered why the first Oasis album sounded so loud even at low volume. I still enjoyed it though - though I thought that it was due to a very midrange-heavy mix. I know that if someone wants their music played on radio, it has to be mastered to a certain level, or it won't be played. I do get ear fatigue, though, so I turn it down when listening to the Foo Fighters. For me, the best antidote is to go back to either 60's pop or piano trio jazz.

 

making things bright, unrelenting and ear bleeding isn't fun

I am sensitive to it even at low volumes

 

Edit: Radio applies it's own compression. Softer music gets compressed harder to the same level as loud recordings. So it doesn't matter.

Yeah and the record-companies wonder why records don't sell anymore

 

Bothered. I guess I am an audiophile purist as I want the best possible dynamics for my records and CD's.

 

I don't listen to albums that have abused and unprofessional compression on them.
I expecially can't listen to the cranked up, becuase they sound even worse when you play them loud. There is a lot of music out there that I like the music itself, but the compression poisoning makes them unpleasant to listen to.

 

I'm not really bothered by it at all.