collision detection: Why the “loudness wars” are killing today’s music
Pull out a vinyl record from the 70s or early 80s, and listen to it. Odds are it’ll have a big dynamic range — it’ll be whisper-quiet in some parts and booming loud in others. You’ll pick up new nuances every time you listen to it. Now listen to any music track recorded in the last ten years, and it’ll be radically different. That dynamic range is gone: The entire track is loud, all the way through. The sound sounds a lot more intense, and it “grabs” you more quickly the first time you hear it. But does it still reward re-listening?
Nope, says a writer at Stylus magazine. In this amazing and lengthy piece, he argues that the “loudness wars” are destroying music. Record labels for decades have tried to make records louder, on the mostly-correct theory that louder music is more likely to pull you in on first listen. But the way you make music louder is via “compression”. In a normal recording of music, the loudest parts — the peaks — are much higher than the quietest ones, the valleys. Compression shrinks the difference between the peaks and valleys, so there’s less dynamic range; this frees up more room up top so you can boost the whole volume of the entire song.
I agree 100%. That and the fact that there is very little “good” music being made.
There are some to be sure, no doubt about that. But very few innovators today that people will one day say “I was influenced by_____” like you got with the Beatles or Stones or Zeppelin or The Clash etc etc.
The way that they’re made, the over producing, is killing everything. Also, where’s the longevity with bands today? TYou have bands like Rush that have changed their style, have evolved, have kept at it for over 30 years and they’re hardly noticed by the rock press. Yet they give tons of lip service to guys with rhyme dictionaries and drum machines who are here today, totally forgotten tomorrow.
Bah…it’s a mess. You kids today and you’re damn music….
There may be other reasons at work here. 10 years ago, most people listened to the radio a lot more, and EVERYTHING on radio (except maybe NPR) is heavily compressed. There’s a reason for that: a lot of people (most?) listen to the radio in their vehicle. Vehicles are noisy. Audio compression compensates for that. I actually wish NPR (the only radio I listen to) would use a little compression; it’s really hard to hear normal conversations in a noisy environment (like traffic) otherwise.
That said, I don’t listen to very much music recorded in the last ten years anyway, with a few exceptions. (Wolfmother for one.)
I disagree. xrayspex pretty much got it. The reason a lot of music today is at one dynamic level (high) is two-fold. One reason is that most people listening to music could care less about dynamic range; you won’t often hear many parts of rock or hip-hop songs with a dynamic level of pianissimo (nor would the artists know what it is in the first place…).
But more important than that is that most music listening happens in vehicles, in clubs/dances/etc., and on headphones while walking around. In all cases, a large dynamic range is not desirable.
So it’s not the production, it just plain sucks.
Gotcha.
Accurate statements re Radio since compression and limiting have been de rigueur since the advent of AM. The FM stations were a little less obnoxious in the very beginning, but not by much… and I doubt too many listeners could tell the difference anyway.
If you look at new recordings in decent audio record/playback software, the evidence is overwhelming the “music” has been absurdly compressed. Take a peek at the Sheryl Crow/Sting “Always By Your Side” outing to see an example of overdoing it. And that is actually a song.
The other trend that is even more odious (IMHO) is the insane bass boost. Couple that with razoring of high end (still occurring from the 60s) and the listener is not experiencing music anymore than eating at McDonalds is food.
The British artists back in the day were always aghast at what Americans pressing plants did to their records with EQ. The argument was the ‘tweaking’ benefited car radios and cheap HiFi/Stereo systems. The more accurate statement on the high end was anyone who listened to audio at exaggerated levels was blowing out their hearing (to some degree) anyway and thus they would need to have the upper frequencies boosted.
Compression is amusing as a tool to alter signals for effect in a recording studio, but it actually has no validity in playback with CDs and modern audio equipment unless, of course, someone really does confuse the excrement from Ronald’s with edible nutrients as easily as they are enamored by the sound of a chain saw on steel.
You Guys….
The reason compression “came to be” is because of radio but not for the wierd reasons that you are talking about. Someone had the bright idea one day of applying compression so that their tracks would be louder on the radio than everyone elses, and they would get more attention. Before too long everyone had to apply compression or their tracks would barely be audible over the radio between all the compressed songs.
Most of today’s music involves computer adjustments to make the voices sound better. It’s why so many stars have to lip-synch.
I dont know nothing about the compression. I am sure i would understand it if it read about it. I can say this though. I help a friend of mine that i help transfer his LP’s to MP3. he has always been real funny about how they are transfered. He wants them to sound like the record is playing. we have been sucssful with it and after listening i see what he means. So many more things seemed to be going on on the Ella Fritzgerald album then just her singing. I really liked it. I am not stopping listening to Slipknot and Rob Zombie but there is a differance. I kinda would like to see a few groups release LP’s. see how they sound.
Whew! I just thought it was because I stopped using drugs that the music sounds different.
First, everyone is talking about two different subjects. The first is the quality of the music itself. The second is the quality of the playback. My understanding is that the article is referencing the later.
It should be clear that MP3 was never considered a high fidelity compression format. MP3 is desirable because of its high level of compression with *relatively* little fidelity loss with *ordinary* music (read: Pop music, Rap etc). No one ever claimed that an MP3 of Mozart would be superior or even comparable to an LP in terms of sound quality. However, there are other digital formats that produce substantially better fidelity such that I question whether a person can differentiate between an LP and the digital version. A simple double-blind test where you let people listen to recordings of a high quality LP and various digital recordings of that same LP (MP3, Ogg etc) would reveal the truth.
Music today, especially today, rocks. If you think it doesn’t, you are probably just showing your age.
I don’t disagree about the technical issues being discussed here, but there is no such thing as “the good ole’ days” and there are great bands out there.
What I will agree with is that none of the great music is on the radio. Radio is long dead. I’ll also agree with the issue of longevity. I don’t think the bands are short lived. I think the attention spans are short lived. Couple that with marketing weasles who couldn’t tell a quality band from a mousekateer (Britney, Christina, Justin Timberlake, etc.,) and you have great bands with all too short lived careers.
To Chris, message #9:
The “different” sound of the Ella Fitzgerald recording has nothing to do with it being on LP. In fact I think the personnel involved with making recordings like that would have embraced digital technology. That recording sounds like it does because the recording engineer was just as much an artist as the band director. Choice and placement of microphones. Judicious use of limiting, compression, eq etc. These are the things that made that music sound so lively, not the medium that wound up in the hands of the end user. LP’s aren’t so great anyway. I have a collection of commercial open reel tapes from the 60’s that sound far better than the LP’s from that era.
What ever happened to just going into the studio, miking the amps, throwing two mikes on the drums and give the lead singer a mike with a bit of re-verb on it. BAM…you got yourself an album.
Led Zeppelin’s first album was recorded AND mixed in only a few days doing this very thing. Yes, it sounds raw, but that’s the appeal. The only people that I’ve heard that do something like this now are possibly the Foo Fighters. I’m sure there’s others, but I’ve lost touch….
I also like that 10 different people have 10 different experiences/opinions. Some are saying the LP had the best sound….no no no, I have tapes from that period that sound better than any LP….no no no, CD’s and digital are far more blah blah blah.
Good thing that things never change. I remember having this argument like 30 years ago. The “what’s wrong with today’s music” and the “this format sounds better than that format”.
neverending circle.
Sorry, slightly off topic but if you’re ripping a CD to something compressionless, you want FLAC format. I hope you have a big hard disc though 🙂
What I find interesting about this whole subject is that in the UK, and I’m sure in the States, bands are gaining popularity despite telling the large record companies to “shove it”. Some of these groups are bucking the trend of highly compressing their material, as are some of those artists that the record companies dare not push around, such as Ms Kate Bush (I love you Kate!). I challenge anyone to listen to her new album “Aerial” and tell me that it doesn’t have *a lot* of dynamic range – sometimes you have to strain your ears to hear the music lol
To Thomas…
Compression is a word used in two ways.
What you are correctly referring to as ‘compression’ is a method of reducing the size of a file. That would be analogous to Zip or RAR. In audio, the common ‘lossy compression’ formats are MP3, M4A and Ogg Vorbis. Each has avid supporters who swear one is better than the other — usually without realizing moving away from the default settings makes a noticeable change either way.
The topic here is in reference to the ‘compression’ which reduces the difference between soft and loud passages in “music” to achieve a more even audio playback level.
What has been skipped over is ‘limiting’ whereby the entire signal is ‘turned up’ but the overly loud passages are ‘limited’ so as to not overwhelm. Audibly it is different from compression since a form of untouched pianissimo remains.
And – believer it or not, there are ‘expanders’ which exaggerate dynamic range. They would be the mirror image of compressors.
Which brings us right round to Dolby (Ray to be precise) who –along with the people of dbx) figured out a method to compress the dynamic range while boosting the highs simultaneously so the signal saturated the TAPE medium. On playback, Dolby exactly expanded the signal back to normal while reducing the highs — the benefit: significantly reduced tape hiss. The digital medium has no tape hiss so I don’t know what Dolby does these days.
By the way, compression – while associated with radio – actually has its true place (and origin) in the recording studio where, as I mentioned earlier, it is a fine tool to alter instruments.
Noise gates anyone? Slapback echo? Plate reverb?
And before leaving your topic, I’d be remiss not to share that ZIP is a compression algorithm stolen from ARC. If you want to support a quality product that outperforms ZIP, try RAR instead.
There was a period starting in the late ’60s with the Beatles where the artists did most of their own arranging and producing. Or had significantly more input into it. Independent producers were usually more in tune with the artists and could work to bring out the best sound. There is a big difference in sound from the established bands compared to the Phil Spector (for example) commercial produced music.
Most new bands had record label producers and engineers that shaped the music into something commercial. Today, very few artists do their own producing and rely upon the labels. Few record companies would / will spend a lot of time and money in the studio for unestablished artists. One of the more notable examples from this period was The Artist Formerly Known As Prince who rebelled at the record company production control over his music. It took 10 years of retirement from recording before he could produce his own music.
With the big band artists, they were all professionals who knew their craft. The producer was often also the arranger. They didn’t need the engineer to help them play pianissimo, forte or staccato. I fully agree with circuitsmith on that point. Usually they could get the track down in one take. The exception would be a prima donna like Sinatra who was very picky about his own performance. He kept doing takes until HE felt good with it.
Compression only means something to audiophiles. The 95% of us who aren’t will accept a lot of degradation in the sound. At least 80% are only interested in music they can sing along with or has such deafening guitar riffs your ears bleed. Lesser bands usually play at such a high volume so the audience can’t hear the mistakes.
I was there only long enough to realize I wasn’t good enough and to see what a cut throat business it is. Almost all the cash is skimmed off before the artist sees anything.
“The digital medium has no tape hiss so I don’t know what Dolby does these days.”
Lots of signal processing for film, live concerts and so on, plus exotic things like virtual audio for games. Lot of audio processing beyond compression. Here’s their website: http://www.dolby.com/
BobH,
Thanks for the clarification! Well written and informative.
I assume the compression issue is a transient problem. As hard disk/players capacity gets bigger, we won’t need lossy codecs anymore. I, personally, have been working more and more with flac.
But the general issue of loudness is cultural and may be with us for a while.
So much music today is … well… crappy music. It’s more like a chant to a rhythm.
Rap and hip-hop, for example, is generally not very musical and when it is, they’ve usually sampled something from when music was good.
Right, here we are not talking about compressing data. Compressed file formats such as MP3 just sound like garbage no matter what (except for the great TWIT podcast, of course). We’re speaking of audio engineering. This kind of compression (peak limiting, loudness maximizing, whatever) has nothing to do with computers or file formats.
The loudness race is definitely on. The availability of cheap ($2000 or less, i.e., the TC Electronic Finalizer) hardware and tons of software that can smash the crap out of a track of music, combined with the fact that people do not in general sit around in a controlled listening environment and listen to music. Music is increasingly listened to in non-ideal environments.
Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in delivering correctly for the medium. Radio broadcasts MUST be compressed. In order for little Jimmy to hear the latest song (sorry, not sure what the “latest songs” are right now) on his little crappy iPuke ear buds, compressing the song will help.
And not all music is equal. Electronically synthesized music (example, the group Crystal Method) does not sound bad after being heavily compressed. Which they are. However, the more acoustic instruments (real instruments recorded with real microphones) that exist, the more that the loudness race will detriment the sound quality of the overall product.
Once you get to classical music, which is fully “acoustic”, compression of any kind ruins the intent of the song.
However, if you are a studio and are going to release a CD, and you leave 4dBFS of headroom on the disc AND you do not over-squash your mix, your disc won’t sell. Or maybe it will sell, then people will not listen to as much. Because people’s ears are funny. It is a well-known fact in audio engineering circles that “louder is better”. Even a tiny increase in volume can bias a person’s judgment of how something sounds.
So it just makes sense, monetarily, to make your CD as loud or louder than the next guys’ (or gals’).
But I’m an audio engineer by trade. I actually do sit down at home and listen to music, though not nearly as much as I listen in the car. And I’ll tell you that judging sound quality is really really really difficult. There so many variables.
But one thing is for sure, I do believe the push to completely eliminate dynamic range has resulted in sub-par quality recordings over the years. However, today’s software solutions are finally getting good. Today’s stuff compresses but retains dynamic range.
And of course, as a musician, I must say this: a great song will stand the test of time, whether it is compressed too heavily or not. Check out Robert Johnson, if you haven’t… his music sounds like dog dookie and yet most blues and rock guitarists through the years have cited him as a major influence. Who cares that he was recorded before the US had tape machines? (he was recorded on ceramic and wire).
Below is a link for those technically inclined, to Bob Katz’s site. Bob has a great write-up on the loudness race. Can highly recommend his book to any audio engineers reading this.