Loudness War, good to know!!! Options

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

The phrase loudness war (or loudness race) refers to the music industry's tendency to record, produce and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness to create a sound that stands out from others. This phenomenon can be observed in many areas of the music industry, particularly broadcasting and albums released on CD and DVD. In the case of CDs, the war stems from artists' and producers' desires to create CDs that sound as loud as possible or louder than CDs from competing artists or recording labels.[1]

However, as the maximum amplitude of a CD is at a fixed level, the overall loudness can only be increased by reducing the dynamic range. This is done by pushing the lower level program material higher while the loudest peak sounds are either destroyed or severely diminished. Certain extreme uses of compression can cause distorting or clipping the waveform of the recording.


please look at the whole text....very interesting subject : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war


as the text above say....phenomenon...that seams to apere by it self and is at the moment unstoppable...
I was not trying to tell in my own words becouse here(wikipedia) has done a great job....and grafix are great and realy helpfull...
......hope it give you some insites on the subject....

[DeepRoots]

wow- opened my eyes, thanks Nemanja i had no idea this was happening

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

wow- opened my eyes, thanks Nemanja i had no idea this was happening

yeh my friend my too..when I foud out I gived my full etention to the subject...very interesting stuff...

[Ivan Milenkovic]

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

[Bogdan Radovic]

Very interesting subject...people here think - the louder the better !

[OrganisedConfusi...]

We play ear blasting loud lol. Loud is better. Nobody ever told Manowar to turn down

[Dejan Farkas]

the easiest way to achieve this is to make a series of 'normalize', 'wave hammer' in sound forge , normalize would increase the overall level, while wave hammer will cut the outstanding peaks, and if repeat it you would get pretty loud mix, but it doesn't mean it will sound better

[Ivan Milenkovic]

It doesn't sound better, that is the problem, the more the sound is louder, the more is dynamic-free.

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

@Dejan....yeah you are wright...I use Soundforge as well for mastering interventions...but not troug normalize option...I take EQ paragrafic option and cut or bus what I need...and then go troug Dinamics- Multiband...and bus up the whole singnall...to 1.8....and + I have Wawes L2 multimaximizer on master chanal in Nuendo.....only then when I compare the loudness with World productions songs(but it is allways Vlado Georgiev:)he is my parameter for loudness)...I am setisfied.....

[OrganisedConfusi...]

It doesn't sound better, that is the problem, the more the sound is louder, the more is dynamic-free.

I didn't mean Loudness sounds better I just meant it is better for a gig. I don't like being loud in recordings but when we are on stage we like it loud because people get more involved I find the louder you are. If you are of a decent level everybody is laid back and not doing anything. Up the loud factor and they are loving it and going crazy.

[Toni Suominen]

Yeah, this is a very interesting subject. It's so annoying when you try to raise the volume on your stereo on a recording that is compressod so much that there's only a little bit of headroom and the whole thing just starts to distort. These kinds of recordings that are very much compressed may sound ok on your ipod and little headphones, but when you try to listen to it on a really good stereo system, the powerfulness and the "umph" and just isn't there. There's so little headroom that there's no place for the audio to go, and it just starts to distort when you raise the volume on your stereo system.

In a noisy enviroment, such as a mall or a workplace, a compressed and loud track can be heard better because there's really no volume differences in the track.

I read somewhere that around 70's-80's the standard amount of headroom was something like 12-10db and today it's just around 6-4db.

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

as they say...before the people needed to rise up their volume to here...now thay need tu cut down their volume to hear..

[Toni Suominen]

as they say...before the people needed to rise up their volume to here...now thay need tu cut down their volume to hear..

+1

[Ivan Milenkovic]

I didn't mean Loudness sounds better I just meant it is better for a gig. I don't like being loud in recordings but when we are on stage we like it loud because people get more involved I find the louder you are. If you are of a decent level everybody is laid back and not doing anything. Up the loud factor and they are loving it and going crazy.

Hey man, I didn't reply in that post before to you, I was just stating out the general fact. I agree with you. But now that you mentioned gigs, I must note something. Often gigs are too loud. Well it is all relative, but vast majority of gigs that I've listened too and played on to was too loud, practically overloaded and clipped. This is not the way it should go wouldn't you agree? The sound can be loud to a point, but then, even on gigs when too compressed it looses the dynamics. Often it is better too play with rolled off volume, and go to max only sometimes when leads and all. It is not good when a drummer beats the hell of drums and the sound comes out compressed. There always must be some headroom left for the dynamic dimension.

[Bogdan Radovic]

Sometimes when the gig is too loud you can get opposite effect - people tend to back off the stage instead being close to the band...That too should be avoided..So somewhere in between should do the trick..

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

The term "Loudness War".....is explicitly implied in music recording industry.....
Playing on satge(loudness) I think is diferent from case to case(diferend kind of music)...so if go tho the Pantera concert(if I coud only have time machine )...I woud like to be loud as possible....but Pantera's (stiking with examplle)volume on their CD is so much under today's metall songs....and steel they hav the best metall production in the world:)..just my opinion...

This post has been edited by Nemanja: Feb 11 2008, 10:15 PM

[Saoirse O'Shea]

I may well be wrong - usually am - but I think the term came from the rise in the recorded levels of demos and dj mixes for clubs. Basically clubbers pay more attention to 'loud' mixes - hence engineers were pushed in to increasing levels to get and keep a club's attention.

Sadly the area I do most of my work - radio production - has been sucked in to this to the extent where we now use ways of peaking and broadcasting material that is recorded loud, distorted and is over compressed and then we compress it even more.

Cheers,
Tony

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

Sadly the area I do most of my work - radio production - has been sucked in to this to

I think that every thing is suked by it
and thanks for complete answer for the term...good knowe...

[Muris Varajic]

Very good topic Nemanja!!

When I had my first record done I gave it too a friend(good one) to do mastering.
When he was done I took it from him,played it and my ears exploded!
I was like ..."man,it's tooo loud,why did you do it like that??"
and he said .."ohh,I thought you want it like rest of them"

So he had to make new master with bit lower power.

This post has been edited by Muris: Feb 12 2008, 01:55 AM

[Nemanja Filipovi...]

.."ohh,I thought you want it like rest of them"

but he did not know that Muris was not like the others....