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Topic ClosedIt's too freaking loud !!!

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rogerthat View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 31 2010 at 07:18
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:



An obvious case can emerge when you listen to different albums of the same band; for me such a case is that of Led Zeppelin. When yoy listen to I, II and III in a row, you notice that II is produced at a much lower volume than the others, and the difference is unpleasant to my ears. It's ok when I listen to it by itself and I crank up the volume, but the comparison does not favour it.


Oh, I thought you meant dynamics within a song, that is why I was confused. Confused
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 31 2010 at 07:20
Clarity is not my forte Embarrassed
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2010 at 05:25
Have you heard the Mind's Eye cd by Stiltskin? It's recorded far too loud and the distortion is massive. If ever there was an argument for remastering an album, this is it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2010 at 05:54
Originally posted by Hawkwise Hawkwise wrote:

As someone who doesnt really buy CD's very often (being a vinyl freak ) i have come to notice the last few CD's i have bought have  been mastered so freaking loud ,  Yesterday the new KT Tunstall album droped through the letter box , so i took out the lovley re master of Coltrane's Giant Steps , Popped in the Tunstall didnt touch the Volume control  pressed play booooooooooooom holy sh*t man that;s freaking loud !!!

The album has next to know real dynamics to the sound  which is such a shame as  Miss Tunstall does write good songs and i am big fan of her previous albums (specially acoustic extravaganza ) but this to me because the way been mastered is almost UNLISTENABLE   .

I also found the same with a CD of  Zepplins Houses of the Holy , which now has been relegated to the car stereo
as i find cant listen to it on my hifi it does my ears in.

does this happen to many of the Prog re issues on CD ? also do they do the same to the new prog albums out there ? 

Why is this being done ? anyone else find this damn annoying ?Angry





I would recommend you not play CDs with your turntable. Tongue

But as someone who grew up with LPs and totally embraced CDs even though many were really crappy at first.  Have you tried the volume control? 

It's really a bit of an odd complaint, but you are on record as hating CDs in the first place, so I applaud you for your consistency.  And of course no disrespect intended. Big smile
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2010 at 07:47
It varies from album to album. CDs can be mastered louder than vinyls while the quality remains the same, they can be mastered too loud - adding more compression, reducing dynamics - or they can be re-mastered less loud - less loud, increasing the dynamic range. It's up to those who decide how the CD should sound. I don't know much about KT Tungstall, but guessing that it's a mainstreamy alternative band, it wouldn't surprise me if they opted for the overly compressed sound that is common in that genre. Except for a elitary niche of audiophile artists that exists in most genres to varying degrees.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 03 2010 at 08:36
I don't mind the loudness of some bands which started their work in digital era - The Mars Volta and Muse made an art form of it. However, remastered old recording sometimes can be awful: instead of a big homogenic lump of sound I have a feeling I'm listening to a pile of very thin layers  - for example early Bowie albums, or Tull's Aqualung. There's an extra 'oomph', but acoustic guitars are horrible.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2010 at 11:53
i did an experiment once importing files of songs recorded in different decades from the 70's up to the 00's into a DAW and found when i got to about 1994 a lot of digital clipping started emerging and as you move forward from that point dynamic range disappears more and more. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2010 at 12:12
Originally posted by topographicbroadways topographicbroadways wrote:

i did an experiment once importing files of songs recorded in different decades from the 70's up to the 00's into a DAW and found when i got to about 1994 a lot of digital clipping started emerging and as you move forward from that point dynamic range disappears more and more. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Already posted, and the loudness war is really overrated. It wrecks a few CDs by overzealous bands, yes, but those aren't CDs that I have any interest in listening to, and you probably don't either, so why does it matter?
if you own a sodastream i hate you
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2010 at 12:31
Originally posted by Henry Plainview Henry Plainview wrote:

Originally posted by topographicbroadways topographicbroadways wrote:

i did an experiment once importing files of songs recorded in different decades from the 70's up to the 00's into a DAW and found when i got to about 1994 a lot of digital clipping started emerging and as you move forward from that point dynamic range disappears more and more. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Already posted, and the loudness war is really overrated. It wrecks a few CDs by overzealous bands, yes, but those aren't CDs that I have any interest in listening to, and you probably don't either, so why does it matter?

yes sorry i didn't read the whole post


and as a sound engineer it definitely bothers me but to most people it probably wouldn't either way i do think it's interesting and it is ruining music i listen to some modern bands and notice it a lot when i listen on good headphones especially in heavier music 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2010 at 12:43
All I know is the loudness war turns me off new music. If I like new music it's in spite of the bad mastering. I want to hear something with more dynamics than my MIDI keyboard.

I'm not an audiophile. I'm fine with 128kbps mp3s on my iPod. I put my iPod on shuffle sometimes and I'll hear an older hard rock song with the volume where I want it, then some newer mellow song comes on 10dB louder.

This is the first time I've seen anyone defend the loudness war.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2010 at 13:00
Originally posted by notesworth notesworth wrote:

All I know is the loudness war turns me off new music. If I like new music it's in spite of the bad mastering. I want to hear something with more dynamics than my MIDI keyboard.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 01:47
I could heavily agree  that the loudness war turns me off to new music.  Even later King Crimson...I put in on and its just so f'ing compressed that is retains absolutely no dynamics.  It certainly helps to go live with bands from this era.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 01:55
Loudness: Another symptom of post-89 degeneracy.

Whereas tape benefited from natural compression and early digital recording exhibited judiciousness when dealing with the increased dynamic range, modern attention whores can't help but turn everything into a loud pile of digitized tosh. Take a gander at a waveform for some current atrocity then compare it to a pre-89 treasure. Not only is the music itself a piss-poor imitation, but the sonic properties reflect the muddied frenzy of this aberrant age.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 02:07
I believe it's the "Loudness War"
I assume if I read this thread before I posted this many people have probably brought it up already LOL

Yeah, labels keep cranking up the volume (because what's more awesome than being louder!?) and many albums sound like crap thanks to it. Especially remasters of older ones.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 02:23
Ha.  Very recently a friend of mine was for some reason checking out the sonic properties of a Wolfmother album.  The song "Woman" was literally a square block of compression.  So bad!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 07:27
Originally posted by WalterDigsTunes WalterDigsTunes wrote:

Loudness: Another symptom of post-89 degeneracy.

Whereas tape benefited from natural compression and early digital recording exhibited judiciousness when dealing with the increased dynamic range, modern attention whores can't help but turn everything into a loud pile of digitized tosh. Take a gander at a waveform for some current atrocity then compare it to a pre-89 treasure. Not only is the music itself a piss-poor imitation, but the sonic properties reflect the muddied frenzy of this aberrant age.


So are you suggesting that the post-89 albums of pre-89 bands are crap?  Old bands have adopted new technology.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 11:29
Some bads still have the common sense to master their albums properly :)

Also, apparently vinyl is immune to the loudness war because if you cut the grooves too deep then you have a hole in your vinyl. At least that's what my roommate tells me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 12:08
1) A lot of times vinyl records these days are pressed from CD masters because vinyl is a good way to get unwitting people to spend a lot of money to feel superior. Sometimes if the band really cares and they have the money, it will be a separate master.

2) The loudness war is mostly a result of radio airplay. Human perceive something that is louder as being better, at least if it's slightly louder and the things being compared are similar. So slowly the song waveform became a block. But things don't have to have cavernous gaps in the waveform to be good (http://soundcloud.com/warp-records/brian-eno-2-forms-of-anger-small-craft-on-a-milk-sea) Example of good modern mastering. But you have to figure there's a lot of variety in the instrumentation here. Too much really loud distorted guitatrs will just be a wall of piss, to me. (re: Modern Heavy Rock/Post-grunge)

3) Remasters are often louder than the originals, but it is equally about getting a good stereo mix down, too. These days in 5.1 or maybe 7.1. Case in point: Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine remaster. Granted, if you like the really 80s sounds-so-distant-it's-from-another-room goth production, you might not care for the remaster. But the mixing is so much more interesting. The songs actually have presence now. Seems to me like some people long for the days of mono and weak recordings. Why?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 13:38
What people call "loudness" here is how much of the sonic space is filled up. Some modern artists have all the space filled up all the time and can do it well by varying what occupies that space. The other thing that compression does is make you feel like you're physically closer to the band or the instrument being compressed. And some music sounds like crap when it feels like you're in a closet with all the instruments. It's also a nice contrast if a track seems very close and personal while another is more open and at a healthier distance.
 
OTOH, many of us listen on small stereos at work or in the car for alot of our listening time. Wide dynamic range sucks in those situations. A little headroom is good, but parts that are almost inaudible are just annoying. If you're in a concert hall or in front of a good stereo system with nothing else interfering with the sound space, dynamics are great.
 
Anyway, carry on.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2010 at 14:19
Originally posted by stonebeard stonebeard wrote:

1) A lot of times vinyl records these days are pressed from CD masters because vinyl is a good way to get unwitting people to spend a lot of money to feel superior. Sometimes if the band really cares and they have the money, it will be a separate master.

2) The loudness war is mostly a result of radio airplay. Human perceive something that is louder as being better, at least if it's slightly louder and the things being compared are similar. So slowly the song waveform became a block. But things don't have to have cavernous gaps in the waveform to be good (http://soundcloud.com/warp-records/brian-eno-2-forms-of-anger-small-craft-on-a-milk-sea) Example of good modern mastering. But you have to figure there's a lot of variety in the instrumentation here. Too much really loud distorted guitatrs will just be a wall of piss, to me. (re: Modern Heavy Rock/Post-grunge)

3) Remasters are often louder than the originals, but it is equally about getting a good stereo mix down, too. These days in 5.1 or maybe 7.1. Case in point: Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine remaster. Granted, if you like the really 80s sounds-so-distant-it's-from-another-room goth production, you might not care for the remaster. But the mixing is so much more interesting. The songs actually have presence now. Seems to me like some people long for the days of mono and weak recordings. Why?


Great post Stoney, and the first phrase is pricesless LOL
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