The End Of The Loudness War?
Sometimes reading Stereophile forum is like watching a movie based on an un-visited Lostland. So much time has been spent on component of the month marketing, and foolish notions like the topic of discrete one sound systems, it boggles the mind how or why the folks who claim to be at the top have missed or over stepped the basics. The basics are simple. You record a space and you play it back. Where it becomes interesting is how & where you play the space back. Those of us who grew up having recording music plus the playback as our profession see the lines between the divid of the audio chain as a whole into these small camps of study. Add EGO to this and you've got something that was meant to be a shared knowledge turned into a free for all of narrowed points of view without much of the big picture.
Where do the egos get called out? With one simple question. How big is the soundstage?
This is the question that reveals everything in this business and hobby. I have posed this question on Stereophile several times without any takers. The best I got back was "soundstage isn't everything" or "it's all a mystery". Worst, when you go to explain the basics, audio internet flames come out of the woodwork. My answer to this is "ignorance is only bliss till you prove yourself stupid". Maybe this sounds a little hash as other times I have talked to this forum about topics that you would think an audiophile should have already known before throwing money to the wind so carefree only to make their hobby into some type of sound torture.
For those who have turned their hobby into unsuccessful listening ventures I can only say "it's your own fault". Playing back music isn't all that difficult, it's as easy as your ability to learn the entire audio chain and your desire to apply the 3 parts to the audio trilogy Acoustical, Mechanical, Electrical. The more side tracks you throw into the mix, the further from the truth you will be. The longer you listen to non-truths, the longer it will take you to find the consistant joys of playback.
Studying volume (gain loudness) will allow you to take your listening experience to the next level. You'll have to learn what the "recorded code" is and how to get that code through the audio system to your ears, using your room as the audiophile version of headphones. I'm not wanting to subtract headphones and ear buds from being part of the audiophile hobby, however I'm here to mainly talk about the entire body experience of listening.
I've upon request, reserve the first few posting spots on this thread to be able to come back and build on the OP. And now
The End Of The Loudness War?
"As the nails are being hammered firmly into the coffin of competitive loudness processing, we consider the implications for those who make, mix and master music.
Hugh Robjohns
In a surprising announcement made at last Autumn's AES convention in New York, the well-known American mastering engineer Bob Katz declared in a press release that "The loudness wars are over.” That's quite a provocative statement — but while the reality is probably not quite as straightforward as Katz would have us believe (especially outside the USA), there are good grounds to think he may be proved right over the next few years. In essence, the idea is that if all music is played back at the same perceived volume, there's no longer an incentive for mix or mastering engineers to compete in these 'loudness wars'. Katz's declaration of victory is rooted in the recent adoption by the audio and broadcast industries of a new standard measure of loudness and, more recently still, the inclusion of automatic loudness-normalisation facilities in both broadcast and consumer playback systems.
In this article, I'll explain what the new standards entail, and explore what the practical implications of all this will be for the way artists, mixing and mastering engineers — from bedroom producers publishing their tracks online to full-time music-industry and broadcast professionals — create and shape music in the years to come. Some new
Mastering engineer Bob Katz, who has long campaigned for the end of hyper-compression in mastering, and who recently declared the loudness wars to have been won — by the right side!technologies are involved and some new terminology too, so I'll also explore those elements, as well as suggesting ways of moving forward in the brave new world of loudness normalisation.
The Loudness Wars
Anyone who has contemplated putting their own music onto a CD or online, even if only for family and friends, will be all too aware of the 'Loudness Wars'. This long-standing practice of competing to make one record sound loud in relation to others is usually claimed to be the consequence of an observation made in the 1950s that people tended to play the louder-cut records in jukeboxes more often. Thankfully, there's a physical limit to how loud a vinyl record can be cut without making it unplayable, so even the loudest-cut records managed to retain quite reasonable dynamics. Unfortunately, digital recording removed such constraints — a CD, for example, is playable regardless of the amplitude of the encoded audio data — and that simple technical freedom facilitated the 'war' that has been raging with (arguably) ever more musically destructive power over the last 30 years.
The audible consequence has been that the 'volume' of pop, rock and other music recorded and released on commercial CDs has risen steadily since the late 1980s, with a corresponding reduction in dynamics and, in many cases, a trend towards a more aggressive and fatiguing sound character — all in an attempt to make each track as loud as or louder than the perceived competition. It's bewildering to think that the audio format that offered the greatest dynamic range potential ever made available to the consumer is now routinely used to store music deliberately processed with the least possible dynamic range in the history of recorded music!
If Bob Katz is proved right, this current fashion to 'hyper-compress' music may well be relaxed or even reversed in the months and years to come, and the application of compression and limiting will revert to being a purely artistic and musical decision, rather than being an essential process in making a competitive product.
The key to Katz's claim is an ongoing industry shift into a 'loudness normalisation realm', in which the replay level of individual tracks is adjusted automatically to ensure they all have the same overall perceived loudness. This already happens to some extent on commercial broadcast radio, for example, but the new technology makes it practical to employ it in Internet music-streaming services and, crucially, personal music players too. Within a loudness-normalisation environment, it becomes impossible to make any one track appear to sound louder, overall, than any other, so mastering to maximise loudness inherently becomes completely futile.
A second aspect to this paradigm shift is that the kind of hyper-compressed material which the loudness wars encourage ends up sounding very flat, lifeless and even boring when compared with tracks which retain some musical dynamics — and the loudness-normalisation world really encourages and accommodates the use of musical dynamics.
So, in loudness-normalised environments — which is likely to include the vast majority of music replay systems within the next year or two — the use of heavy compression and limiting to make tracks sound loud will no longer work. Each track is balanced automatically to have the same overall loudness as every other track, and hyper-compressed material actually ends up sounding flat, weak and uninteresting compared with more naturally dynamic material.
Katz argues that the universal adoption of the loudness-normalisation paradigm in the consumer market will inevitably create a strong disincentive for the use of hyper-compression, and instead encourage music creators to once again mix and master their music to retain musical dynamics and transients. If this proves to be the case then the loudness wars may indeed be over, at last... but it will be a while before the last skirmishes are fought!"
rest of the article http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/loudness-war.htm
and another interesting read
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep11/articles/loudness.htm
more to look @
Here's some more to look at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
Compression and volume are closely related when we are talking about dynamic ranges. In recording dynamic range has many different affects on the production, the videos (below) will show you this, but as far as volume goes, try not to think of it as only softer and louder when thinking about gain in the context of recording and playback from the electronic side. In DR there is volume, compession, limiting and frequency response at play. If you start thinking of DR as, saturation of space, it might help to picture what is happening.
lets start from the beginning
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=compression+in+mastering&FORM=HDRSC3
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+use+a+compression+in+recordin...
and a little on some uses of C/L's
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+use+a+compressor+limiter&FORM...
If you take the time to look through some of these videos and articles you will start to see Dynamic Range in different light.
michael green
MGA/Roomtune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
The End Of The Loudness War?
Sometimes reading Stereophile forum is like watching a movie based on an un-visited Lostland. So much time has been spent on component of the month marketing, and foolish notions like the topic of discrete one sound systems, it boggles the mind how or why the folks who claim to be at the top have missed or over stepped the basics. The basics are simple. You record a space and you play it back. Where it becomes interesting is how & where you play the space back. Those of us who grew up having recording music plus the playback as our profession see the lines between the divid of the audio chain as a whole into these small camps of study. Add EGO to this and you've got something that was meant to be a shared knowledge turned into a free for all of narrowed points of view without much of the big picture.
Where do the egos get called out? With one simple question. How big is the soundstage?
This is the question that reveals everything in this business and hobby. I have posed this question on Stereophile several times without any takers. The best I got back was "soundstage isn't everything" or "it's all a mystery". Worst, when you go to explain the basics, audio internet flames come out of the woodwork. My answer to this is "ignorance is only bliss till you prove yourself stupid". Maybe this sounds a little hash as other times I have talked to this forum about topics that you would think an audiophile should have already known before throwing money to the wind so carefree only to make their hobby into some type of sound torture.
For those who have turned their hobby into unsuccessful listening ventures I can only say "it's your own fault". Playing back music isn't all that difficult, it's as easy as your ability to learn the entire audio chain and your desire to apply the 3 parts to the audio trilogy Acoustical, Mechanical, Electrical. The more side tracks you throw into the mix, the further from the truth you will be. The longer you listen to non-truths, the longer it will take you to find the consistant joys of playback.
Studying volume (gain loudness) will allow you to take your listening experience to the next level. You'll have to learn what the "recorded code" is and how to get that code through the audio system to your ears, using your room as the audiophile version of headphones. I'm not wanting to subtract headphones and ear buds from being part of the audiophile hobby, however I'm here to mainly talk about the entire body experience of listening.
I've upon request, reserve the first few posting spots on this thread to be able to come back and build on the OP. And now
The End Of The Loudness War?
"As the nails are being hammered firmly into the coffin of competitive loudness processing, we consider the implications for those who make, mix and master music.
Hugh Robjohns
In a surprising announcement made at last Autumn's AES convention in New York, the well-known American mastering engineer Bob Katz declared in a press release that "The loudness wars are over.” That's quite a provocative statement — but while the reality is probably not quite as straightforward as Katz would have us believe (especially outside the USA), there are good grounds to think he may be proved right over the next few years. In essence, the idea is that if all music is played back at the same perceived volume, there's no longer an incentive for mix or mastering engineers to compete in these 'loudness wars'. Katz's declaration of victory is rooted in the recent adoption by the audio and broadcast industries of a new standard measure of loudness and, more recently still, the inclusion of automatic loudness-normalisation facilities in both broadcast and consumer playback systems.
In this article, I'll explain what the new standards entail, and explore what the practical implications of all this will be for the way artists, mixing and mastering engineers — from bedroom producers publishing their tracks online to full-time music-industry and broadcast professionals — create and shape music in the years to come. Some new
Mastering engineer Bob Katz, who has long campaigned for the end of hyper-compression in mastering, and who recently declared the loudness wars to have been won — by the right side!technologies are involved and some new terminology too, so I'll also explore those elements, as well as suggesting ways of moving forward in the brave new world of loudness normalisation.
The Loudness Wars
Anyone who has contemplated putting their own music onto a CD or online, even if only for family and friends, will be all too aware of the 'Loudness Wars'. This long-standing practice of competing to make one record sound loud in relation to others is usually claimed to be the consequence of an observation made in the 1950s that people tended to play the louder-cut records in jukeboxes more often. Thankfully, there's a physical limit to how loud a vinyl record can be cut without making it unplayable, so even the loudest-cut records managed to retain quite reasonable dynamics. Unfortunately, digital recording removed such constraints — a CD, for example, is playable regardless of the amplitude of the encoded audio data — and that simple technical freedom facilitated the 'war' that has been raging with (arguably) ever more musically destructive power over the last 30 years.
The audible consequence has been that the 'volume' of pop, rock and other music recorded and released on commercial CDs has risen steadily since the late 1980s, with a corresponding reduction in dynamics and, in many cases, a trend towards a more aggressive and fatiguing sound character — all in an attempt to make each track as loud as or louder than the perceived competition. It's bewildering to think that the audio format that offered the greatest dynamic range potential ever made available to the consumer is now routinely used to store music deliberately processed with the least possible dynamic range in the history of recorded music!
If Bob Katz is proved right, this current fashion to 'hyper-compress' music may well be relaxed or even reversed in the months and years to come, and the application of compression and limiting will revert to being a purely artistic and musical decision, rather than being an essential process in making a competitive product.
The key to Katz's claim is an ongoing industry shift into a 'loudness normalisation realm', in which the replay level of individual tracks is adjusted automatically to ensure they all have the same overall perceived loudness. This already happens to some extent on commercial broadcast radio, for example, but the new technology makes it practical to employ it in Internet music-streaming services and, crucially, personal music players too. Within a loudness-normalisation environment, it becomes impossible to make any one track appear to sound louder, overall, than any other, so mastering to maximise loudness inherently becomes completely futile.
A second aspect to this paradigm shift is that the kind of hyper-compressed material which the loudness wars encourage ends up sounding very flat, lifeless and even boring when compared with tracks which retain some musical dynamics — and the loudness-normalisation world really encourages and accommodates the use of musical dynamics.
So, in loudness-normalised environments — which is likely to include the vast majority of music replay systems within the next year or two — the use of heavy compression and limiting to make tracks sound loud will no longer work. Each track is balanced automatically to have the same overall loudness as every other track, and hyper-compressed material actually ends up sounding flat, weak and uninteresting compared with more naturally dynamic material.
Katz argues that the universal adoption of the loudness-normalisation paradigm in the consumer market will inevitably create a strong disincentive for the use of hyper-compression, and instead encourage music creators to once again mix and master their music to retain musical dynamics and transients. If this proves to be the case then the loudness wars may indeed be over, at last... but it will be a while before the last skirmishes are fought!"
rest of the article http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/loudness-war.htm
and another interesting read
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep11/articles/loudness.htm
more to look @
Here's some more to look at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
Compression and volume are closely related when we are talking about dynamic ranges. In recording dynamic range has many different affects on the production, the videos (below) will show you this, but as far as volume goes, try not to think of it as only softer and louder when thinking about gain in the context of recording and playback from the electronic side. In DR there is volume, compession, limiting and frequency response at play. If you start thinking of DR as, saturation of space, it might help to picture what is happening.
lets start from the beginning
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=compression+in+mastering&FORM=HDRSC3
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+use+a+compression+in+recordin...
and a little on some uses of C/L's
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+use+a+compressor+limiter&FORM...
If you take the time to look through some of these videos and articles you will start to see Dynamic Range in different light.
michael green
MGA/Roomtune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/