Loudness wars over...apparently! Celebrating the great and not so great...

[ff1d1l]

Sound on Sound magazine leads on its front cover with a story - THE LOUDNESS WAR WON - that with the widespread adoption by broadcasters of equipment which imposes an apparent loudness average throughout programs, there is now no incentive to produce "hot" discs which are heavily compressed and normalized so they will sound louder than competing tracks when given radio play. The new equipment is wise to this, apparently, and is not fooled.

The excellent Bob Katz, who has long been a stalwart opponent of music mastered for loudness (and the resultant poor fidelity and sapped dynamics), is quoted. His "Honour Roll", of CD's he considers to be well mastered and not dynamically compressed is instructive and well worth a look.
http://www.digido.com/media/honor-roll.html

Also worth bookmarking is the DR Database, an extensive database of recordings with ratings for a maximum dynamic range achieved (track) minimum (track) and average (entire disc).
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/
I'm quite a fan of ROIOs, and would just point out that some of these, straight out of a good quality mixing desk can be shockingly clean and dynamic.

So...Vinyl...Thumbs up I'd like to nominate King Crimson's "Islands" as having excellent dynamics.
Thumbs down for a great album sadly marred by little in the way of dynamic range - Blur's "Parklife"

CD....Musica Nuda's eponymous first album sounds extremely good for all the right reasons. At the moment I can't think of a real stinker of a cd. But then my tastes don't include radioplay/chart fodder.
Perhaps someone can help?

[nat8808]

Good to hear (no pun intended..).

Radio One still sounds absolutely terrible though. Compare it to Radio 3 and it's like having a hang-over in a dirty London squat compared to being at peak fitness and alert in fresh mountain air.

[Audioman]

Radio stations had equipment that added extra compression and loudness before the CD loudness wars started and they have always had to compensate to even levels out. Since radio play is actually mostly file based (for some years now) leveling of volume is done at this level I would imagine.

The loudness wars as far as physical media is concerned was always a wast of time and has probably put many of buying CD. If they are mastering for MP3 player users why not restrict the loud master to MP3 download? The plus side is that this type of loudness cannot be readily applicable to vinyl and has thus boosted sales to even younger listeners who don't own proper hi-fi. The lack of digital compression on vinyl cuts of popular music likely accounts for it's growing popularity with young listeners.

Having said that if you are buying chart music on Cd (albums as Cd single is almost dead) the loudness war is still in full flow. The situation does appear to be improving with remasters of old rock titles. Where before most were being ruined by loud remastering a lot more care is now being taken. CDs in general are still being cut at rather too high a level though, so one still can't make full use of the volume control. Amp input sensitivity and the way most volume controls are set for near max gain half way round does not help the problem either.

Paul.

[petrat]

I'm quite a fan of ROIOs, and would just point out that some of these, straight out of a good quality mixing desk can be shockingly clean and dynamic.


ROIOs. :scratch:

[keiths]

ROIOs. :scratch:

Recordings Of Indeterminate Origin

A polite term for live 'bootlegs'

[petrat]

Recordings Of Indeterminate Origin

A polite term for live 'bootlegs'

Ah, that makes sense .. thanks.
I can see, that in terms of dynamic range, that probably would be better than a dead bootleg :thumbsup: