Are the loudness wars over?*

How did that stray DR10 get through?

 

LOUDNESS?WHATLOUDNESS?THISISHOWMUSICISSUPPOSEDTOSOUND!!

 

It's over with me.

 

It's the inherit limitations of a vinyl record that basically saved the dynamic range of the music, especially during the cutting part with a professional lathe cutter, which cutting from a brickwalled release would otherwise be impossible to create or cause a record to be practically unplayable due to skipping since the crazy grooves would be almost impossible to play.

 

Search Results for Query: Loudness+war | Steve Hoffman Music Forums

 

I would also like the title of this thread to be changed to either "Are the loudness wars over" or "Is the loudness war over"

 

Loud won.

 

I don't think it's just loudness. Those Cars remasters just sounded BAD. Wonky. Out of balance. Hard to quantify but they just missed the 'Pop' of the originals. I went back and listened to my original Elektra CD's and was quite blown away by how much better they sounded. I'm no audiophile either, so if it's apparent to me, I'm surprised they even let those things out the door.

 

As long as people continue to buy the albums mastered this way the record companies will continue to have recordings mastered in this manner. As long as it sells it must be good right ???? (Answer = WRONG ............ unless you are someone who has NO idea what fidelity is about). #thesadtruth

 

I think the record companies are missing a huge opportunity here. If they made an "audiophile" version of most releases, either as a standalone blu ray, or a cd with a blu ray, and put a non-limited version of the mix on that blu ray, I'd pay extra every time for that. We're already sort of doing that, albeit inconsistently, with vinyl. It would be a win/win for everyone involved.

 

That doesn't make it okay, you know.

 

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??

 

What?

 

Should have called him the dork!

 

Great point and I 100% agree with you. That said, bean counters (which I am one of so I can call us that LOL) at recording labels do not model releases that way. Appeal to the masses for the lowest cost and you will maximize the return on investment. Yeah .... that's the ticket

 

LOUDNESS
WAR IS OVER
IF YOU WANT IT
Happy Christmas from
John and Yoko™

 

Yep, but... price it where it makes sense for them as well. There's a number that works for both of us. Heck, I would have paid $50 for a non-limited blu ray of Pepper.

 

True but .... the magic question is hw many people would have paid that price for it? Total revenue is the product of price x volume and if the volume isn't high enough the value equation won't work. The harsh reality here is that this comes down to economics and if there aren't enough people out there willing to shell out the coin ($ per unit) for such product it will never see the light of day. Sux I know

 

But still... I would settle for a HD download in a pinch!

 

I first became aware of it (though I didn't know what to call it at the time!) when, out of curiosity, I inserted Lemon Collie & The Infinite Sadness into a friend's CD player at (what I took to be) a reasonable volume, and had to switch it off after about three seconds.

 

Everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost. . .

 

Even lower-key releases aren't so lucky. Earlier this year, Martha and the Muffins/M+M released The World is a Ball on CD for the first time. I assumed that special care would've been given to the mastering, seeing that this would be the album's very first CD release and because a smaller label was responsible. Sadly, that just wasn't the case, and the result ended up being one of the worst CDs I have ever heard. No joke. It had almost no dynamic range whatsoever, and once you combine that with a horrible lack of midrange, you've got an instant ear-bleeder. The CD was so bad that I had to get the vinyl just to be able to listen to the damn thing, and that's a shame since it's such a great album.

To make a long story short, nay. I can't see the war ending any time soon, if at all.

 

Wrong. Lots of people care. Don't relegate this forum to such importance.

 

It's a matter of do you blame the ME or the record label or both? or even the artists whom's release it is.

I had my album mastered by a well known mastering engineer whom had 2 songs much higher RMS level , when I said it to him he said to change it I would have to pay him again for a full mastering session. Alas I fixed it myself but I was not happy with the mastering level and too broke at the time to pay the guy again to master it.

Lessons learned tho.

 

Is it really overall volume that people are objecting to? Because to me there's nothing more annoying than cd's that aren't competitive sounding. You've got to have a decent amount of volume...otherwise it feels like you have to turn the volume knob up to obscene levels just to get anything out of it, which sometimes makes the peaks sound super harsh and uneven in the process. Decent volume creates a certain sensation of there being "power" on the album. Maybe people object to the distortion created by sloppy digital mastering? Or not hearing enough dynamics? I can totally understand that argument. But it's definitely possible to create a competitive sounding album that's quite loud and still maintains the integrity of the mix and dynamics -- you just have to buy the vinyl to get it.

But hardly any band is going to want to put out an album that isn't competitive. So, good luck returning to the sound of CD's from 20 years ago. Not going to happen, and it shouldn't either.