What is "brick walling" a mix?

I've heard the term "brickwalled" or "brick walling" a mix here before and I'm not sure what it means. Is it when everything is mixed so loudly that everything becomes distorted and difficult to listen to?

 

There's many ways to explain it. A limiter is used to remove "transient" peaks in the music so that the overall volume can increase, at the sacrifice of dynamics. Quiet gets loud, but loud stays at the same volume because it has no room to increase in volume, thus ruining the subtle dynamics that used to exist (that music needs to sound natural or at least bearable). And from the constant "loudness", it leads to listening fatigue.

 

Ah, so the music isn't given any room to "breathe"? Okay, I get it now.

 

As a follow up question, why do the so called 'mastering engineers' use this hideous technique? Do they do it because they know that most music these days is listened to on a crappy MP3 player through crappy headphones? I just don't get it....

 

Because their clients want the product to be LOUD. Sadly, most people think that LOUDER is better.

 

I'm glad they havn't found our forum... yet.

 

They do it because the A&R person, label or artist asks them to do it. Louder has been equated to better because it jumps out at you but at the sacrafice of loss of the dyanmic range and emotional impact of the music. I always equate brick walling with yelling--if someone yells at you at the top of their lungs all the time its fatiguing, annoying and deadens you to subtler sounds.

The mastering engineers do it because their clients ask them to and they are running a business. A good mastering engineer will at least explain and demo what it will sound like and how it hurts the music (and in a sense the fans). There are some here (like Barry, Steve, etc.) that just won't do it and direct them to others for business if that's the sound they want.

 

Brick walling music is like having someone yelling at you from behind a closed door. Just the type of scenario where you would leave the door closed. Sensible use of mastering results in something more like someone sitting in front of you narrating a story with all the tone and volume ups and downs to make it interesting and compelling.

 

I'm glad someone asked this because I was wondering too