Louder is not better!

[Mark Kaufman]

I wonder how this problem will play out... It's sort of a United Nations-style problem: get a lot of different organizations to agree on something for the sake of consistency...meanwhile, the upstarts still want their own recording to outshine the others...with VOLUME.It's already annoying when some recordings are pitched louder than others. Then you have the issue of natural dynamics being limited, compressed, and "normalized" into a non-stop volumefest.Perhaps technology itself will eventually come to the rescue...just as radio stations are able to maintain a consistent "mastered" level for broadcasting, we may eventually depend on similar technology to standardize such random level fluctuations in our media players of the future.At this time, it seems to be everyone for themselves.

[mazz]

As one who grew up with vinyl, I struggled with the transition to digital right when it was becoming "affordable" (I transferred a DAT tape to recordable CD when the CD recorder was $10,000 and the blank CD was 20.00. It was a realtime operation and we were renting the CD recorder for 80 bucks an hour! You young bucks don't know how good you have it).As I see it, analog and vinyl react the same way our ears and brains do, with a limited frequency response that is also dependent on amplitude. Digital does away with that with a basically flat response at all amplitudes all the way up to the sampling frequency. Digital sound does not mimic the real world the way analog does and it allows manipulation of the signal in ways that analog cannot, such as having much more bass in the recording than would ever be possible in a vinyl record, just due to the laws of physics!!Maybe we've pushed digital to the limits and people are just exhausted by being constantly bombarded by recordings which "feature" all frequencies at the same amplitude (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the definition of white noise!) all of the time!"Traditional" music depended on, among other things, dynamics (for those not familiar with the term: music with loud AND soft parts ) for it's emotional impact, not necessarily crushing the listener into submission with "loudness". I understand that modern music relies on visceral impact and that can be very emotional, but believing that listeners will respond favorably to a song if it's "louder" than the next one is a paradigm that just might be starting to fall apart. Don't get me started!! Oh, I guess you already did! Mazz

[andreh]

Quote:My issue is that we're falling into an attitude of "it's ok to skimp on quality".Who's we? AFA all this demand for loudness goes, does anybody know anybody who doesn't adjust the volume of their playback system after a song starts so it's not too loud or quiet? In which case, a track's mastered level is completely irrelevant.André

[andreh]

Quote:Perhaps technology itself will eventually come to the rescue...just as radio stations are able to maintain a consistent "mastered" level for broadcasting, we may eventually depend on similar technology to standardize such random level fluctuations in our media players of the future.http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/level-pr ... .htmlAndré

[Mark Kaufman]

Fascinating read, Andreh. And it appears I was correct with the UN analogy...it will take a wide-reaching accord to make such a standardization happen. But this article does appear to also tackle the issue of dynamics as well.I guess I'm with Mazz on this, philosophically. You know, that guy is really pretty amazing, given that he appears to be a small white dog.

[edteja]

You do pretty good for a talking (typing) guitar, Mark.

[tedsingingfox]

I'm just glad it wasn't ME who started this thread (even though that article enfuriated me on first read)...' cause I was already planning on posting something about the article; but I wouldn't have been half as eloquent as guscave was. Ted(Now I'll have to go back and read it for laughs...)

[Mark Kaufman]

Quote:You do pretty good for a talking (typing) guitar, Mark. You mean, you all aren't guitars...? Am I the only one?

[edteja]

If we were all talking guitars, then Andre wouldn't need those glasses, now would he?

[andreh]

Quote:If we were all talking guitars, then Andre wouldn't need those glasses, now would he? You should see the size of my hearing aids! I owe the need for those to talking [yelling actually] guitars AND loud mastering. André