Everything Louder Than Everything Else...

[archosman]

As a music critic and journalist, I can get pretty jaded about listening to the new CDs that cross my desk (or, increasingly, the digital downloads or streams that are grudgingly entrusted to me by record labels through top-secret back alleys of the Interwebs). But I can

[Smeggy]

Yeah, what he said.

[helleke]

"Great music should be timeless, something to be returned to again and again , something to be discovered anew.":cool:

yeah,uh, much for thought.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Dusty Chalk

[Cosmopragma]

This is a lost case.

The main target group of the music industry (at least as far as music for the masses is concerned) already grew up with overly compressed music.They are now used to it and even demand it.

There's probably no way back.

It's like mexican meals.Mexicans are used to it and call it "spicy", middle europeans swear loud and complain about the ruined taste quality.After having breathed fire for several minutes, naturally.

Most mexicans wouldn't appreciate nouvelle cuisine because of the perceived lack of spice, and the average kid perceives prewar music as lame.

[LFF]

It is tough but little by little, more people are becoming aware of the problem. However, despite that it seems to be creeping into jazz and classical music now. Very sad indeed.

I have even seen this mentality on OTHER SITES as well. Seems anything pre-1970 is garbage because recording technology back then was primitive. *sigh*

Even when I do this professionally, I always get the client worrying if the mix will be loud enough. Takes a lot of explanation for them to understand the whole volume vs loudness vs dynamics thing. At least The Beatles remasters weren't compressed to hell. Let's hope it starts a trend.

[Dusty Chalk]

This is a lost case.

The main target group of the music industry (at least as far as music for the masses is concerned) already grew up with overly compressed music.They are now used to it and even demand it.

There's probably no way back.

It's like mexican meals.Mexicans are used to it and call it "spicy", middle europeans swear loud and complain about the ruined taste quality.After having breathed fire for several minutes, naturally.

Most mexicans wouldn't appreciate nouvelle cuisine because of the perceived lack of spice, and the average kid perceives prewar music as lame.

Disagree -- you never get used to artifacts that are exclusive to the recorded domain, because you always have the real world to compare it to. Fatiguing is fatiguing, and it'll still be fatiguing to anyone whose love of music isn't strong enough to overcome such distortions (which is most everyone).

[catscratch]

I don't think it's a lost cause, but it is a trend that's firmly entrenched, and if it is to be reversed, then it will have to happen one little step at a time until there is a trend in the opposite direction.

Radio uses its own compression to normalize volume levels, so I well and truly have no idea why this keeps going on at least from a rational, sober perspective. Maybe if you have a shuffled playlist the loudest song will jump out, and yeah there's that whole idea that psychoacoustically the louder material will sound better. But when you restrict dynamics so much and induce so much clipping, the brain gets fatigued listening to it all since it's really like a constant wall of white noise - there's little to no variety and nothing for the pattern-recognition machinery in your brain to work with.

IT'S LIKE A GIANT BOLD ALL-CAPS SENTENCE THAT GOES ON AND ON AND ON WITH NO END IN SIGHT AND IT'S STILL GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND YEAH LOUD MUSIC IS EXACTLY LIKE THIS JUST HAMMERING YOU IN THE SKULL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND THERE'S NO VARIETY AND NO CONTRAST AND NO RELIEF AND DON'T YOU JUST WISH THIS SENTENCE WOULD JUST END ALREADY BUT IT'S GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND THERE'S NO END IN SIGHT AND NO VARIETY AND CAT JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY! *stop button*

You don't have to be a mastering engineer to notice it. Everybody does, even if they're not aware of what it is that's making them turn off their music. I can't for a moment think that this hasn't contributed in some way to the major labels' financial problems.

I also have had a lot of music that I like rendered unlistenable by hot mastering, but I'm still fortunate in that the genres I listen to are largely immune from this - mainly because they're run my small labels that put a premium on sound quality. But some of my favorite metal, like Alchemist - "Trypsis" has been killed by hot mastering and I can't listen to it, even if it is great music.

Whole decades and genres of music lost. This sucks. But it won't go on forever.

[archosman]

I have even seen this mentality on OTHER SITES as well. Seems anything pre-1970 is garbage because recording technology back then was primitive. *sigh*

Holy shit that guy is a fucking idiot.

My biggest complaint nowadays is no one seems to know how to mic a room. All they do is iso everything.

[LFF]

Holy shit that guy is a fucking idiot.

My biggest complaint nowadays is no one seems to know how to mic a room. All they do is iso everything.

Tell me about it. Idiot all the way.

Knowing how properly mic, to me at least, is a total art form (especially when doing minimalist mic'ing) and the very best way to EQ something. Sounds bad, move a little and try again. Nobody does that anymore.

[mypasswordis]

IT'S LIKE A GIANT BOLD ALL-CAPS SENTENCE THAT GOES ON AND ON AND ON WITH NO END IN SIGHT AND IT'S STILL GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND YEAH LOUD MUSIC IS EXACTLY LIKE THIS JUST HAMMERING YOU IN THE SKULL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND THERE'S NO VARIETY AND NO CONTRAST AND NO RELIEF AND DON'T YOU JUST WISH THIS SENTENCE WOULD JUST END ALREADY BUT IT'S GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND THERE'S NO END IN SIGHT AND NO VARIETY AND CAT JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!

There is no stop button with Billy Mays. Except the die of cocaine button.