Bob Katz about the "loudness war" part 3

This is part 3 of Bob Katz talking about the "loudness war" at AES '09

[@RachEspinosa]

This guy is a genius

[@EzeeLinux]

This is why I collect records... You know, vinyl records? Everything being put out on CD today, whether it's old or new is just crushed until it's nothing more than a huge square wave. You can keep 'em. :) JC

[@ZombieLincoln666]

This is a fantastic lecture

[@isthis1available]

Over compressed music on the radio contributes to listener fatigue and therefore less time listening to the radio station. Obviously, not what stations want their listeners to do. Radio stations already have processors to make them sound loud. I usually listen to classic rock/pop music or sports/political talk or news radio because I cannot tolerate the over compressed newer music. I have started using the "Dynamic Range Database" (do a search for the URL) to decide what CDs to purchase.

[@boabyp]

I'm a sound engineer. I hold the analogy that producing music is like driving a car on the motorway. You never drive as fast as your car can travel because sometimes you need acceleration as much as braking. Peaks and troughs. Dynamics make music good. What you leave out is as important as what you put in.

[@PrankZabba]

wow. informative!!!

[@3leggedcat]

Its a null test, you take the two tracks, play them through the same output, and flip the phase of one, if there is no difference then you will hear nothing (null) because they cancel each other perfectly. Anything you hear is what is not in the original.

[@3leggedcat]

Really its a technique for engineers to be able to see what something adds or takes away from the audio signal; to see if something is adding distortion or what is lost in encoding etc like Bob is here. You can also used this to turn tracks into instrumentals, using the accapella track, flipping the phase and playing this over the original track, removing the vocal part.

[@markshanny]

Well, most people who notice don't know exactly why music isn't as much fun for them any more, they just know that they don't enjoy listening to tunes the way they used to. Maybe they think they are getting too old. This is why talk radio is becoming the preferred format. Your post reminds me of someone saying that if you don't get a cancer diagnosis, you won't feel the effects of the disease.

[@smash461986]

Yay to Bob Katz. I shall be using the K14-System to master my band's album. A Punk band at that. I think the 20dB jump happened after 1999 at least. I remember when every waveform started to look like a Toblerone. I'm talking about the digital clipping and squashed dynamics here. Anyway if you listen to the breakdown on Rank 1's 'Airwave' (1999), the pads are barely audible. It sets an atmosphere that I doubt would be allowed to flourish in today's music. But it's ok coz there's no more headroom

[@DTM-Books]

@JagdT34 That's very interesting. I thought about it, and I remembered that back in the 90s, I listened to everything on cassette - Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden, REM, STP, Hole, yadda yadda. Those albums sounded great on tape. Later, when I finally got the CDs...I stopped listening. I just assumed that I was moving on to other music, but it's very true that the CDs sounded colder, more brittle than the tapes. I only realize this now that I'm into analog LPs.

[@smash461986]

1997 sorry. A very good year.

[@bumr055]

If i get what he was showing right.. I think it might possibly have something to do with inverting one of the waveforms so that they cancel out each-other only leaving the difference. If that's what your looking for, look up vocal removal when vocals are only on left or right channels. Also stereo to surround sound converters use something like this for the middle channel.(I think)

[@atta1798]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! 3:30 BEAUTIFUL!!!!

[@joelkcph]

His shirt was so loud I couldn't hear any of the music.

[@terrabun]

@pgulbis add to that modern daws which easily allow you to throw multiple compressors at things. First studio I ever started making music in had 1 comp, 1 reverb, 1 delay.. had to think about what you wanted to do with stuff.

[@LittleWhoreRecords]

Bob Katz's book mastering audio opened my eyes at a time when I was really lost and looking for answers on the whole Mastered Loudness issue.

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid (part 3) It merely chops off peaks so the track is louder (RMS or average signal level) at the same volume setting on your knob as another track with less compression would sound. Because in a dance-hall somewhere, you don't want your song to sound quieter, because it's a well proven fact that to the trained or untrained ear, louder simply sounds better. I said "...better is knowing when to revise our mistaken assumptions." Give that another try.

[@ParadoxCircuit]

Top suggestion for a vid. "HOW TO MASTER A SONG - 7 Steps to Loud!, FAT, & In Your Face"

[@MikeRoePhonicsMusic]

Needs more Disco Volante.

[@JagdT34]

@cometogether420 Well, the difference seems enormous in terms of cassette tape vs. cd. I had the original on cassette and ity just sounds warm and full, but the cd has more or less sounded brittle and noisy to my ears, same with Bleach, on cassette it sounded great like a album made in the 70's by black sabbath, but maximized and digital it just sounds fatiguing to my ears. I remember also that glam metal was mostly pretty warm sounding as well in the 80's, then the 90's and it was brittle.

[@archieh70]

@Geeljasjes Well said.

[@jamesjin8839]

until someone I listen start to keep make their records quiter and more dynamic, I don't think any of these videos are doing anything. In fact, both of my favourite bands have their new album way more loud than anything in my collection.....One released 1 year ago, another in this june.

[@bloodaid]

so, what is the benefit of knowing what's not in the original? I produce music myself and I'm constantly looking for new ways to improve my music's sound quality. could this null-test-thingy be a benefit somehow?

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid (part 2) So of course you don't do that. You record a performance with proper micing at 90 or 100dB. This has *nothing to do* with the signal level on the final mixdown. The loudness war is applying dynamic range compression, so that the difference between average volume and peak volume is smaller (around 8 dB currently) This doesn't make noise quieter. It would actually make it more *audible* if it were audible in the original recording.

[@bumr055]

Actually maybe not vocal removal but the opposite. vocal (isolating?).

[@bloodaid]

does anybody know how he extracted the noise from the song at 3:27? I need to know this pretty bad!

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid (part 1) Respectfully... don't call me "bro." What you just described is a perfect example of how we're talking past each other. You're talking about recording level and I'm talking about dynamic range compression. They are not related concepts. Recording low volume performance results in "shit" because background noise doesn't ever drop below ~30dB even in the best studio. So performance at 60 dB and noise at 30dB gives you 30dB of SNR. (continued in part 2)

[@nickpelkey]

So is that noise in the percussion instead of using a sample to trigger reverb to give the track a sense of space?

[@nickpelkey]

Cool. Thanks.

[@terrabun]

Great vids other than the comments about grunge which were just misguided, how a genre ends up (typically) being mastered/engineered has nothing to do with how it originates.. the sound of grunge was formed by bands long before they ever got near a studio.

[@clutch1141]

maybe it is time to rethink what we think is "good" music...if a performer has to be compressed EQed and sidechained full of effects to sound good then where is the pleasure of listening to a skilled musician? I'm not saying that its bad to enhance and add interesting dynamics to the mix but when it reaches the point that it is being used as place for bad performers to hide their lack of having nothing to say musically it is generally compensated for by adding imagery ie sex and shock value

[@raptorekpl]

He kind of reminds me of George Carlin somehow... ;-)

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid Also, once again (and I won't bother to repeat it after this, since there's no point in being pedantic)... the loudness war has *nothing* whatsoever to do with making music loud enough to to mask noise. This is an absurd suggestion that has nothing to do with reality. It is ignorant of all relevant facts and the actual history of music production. We all make assumptions and hypotheses about unknowns. This is good. Better is knowing when to revise our mistaken assumptions.

[@monthlysurvey]

Does he mean 96kbps?

[@SolomonKull]

This only applies if you want your music on the radio. If you are releasing lossless files digitally, you basically never have to worry about these audiophilic problems.

[@Username93611]

I agreed with nearly everything he said, except for that the loudness war created grunge and alternative rock and hip-hop. These are genres of music which, frankly, had nothing whatsoever to do with mastering or audio engineering. Some grunge and some alternative rock and some hip-hop does feature a "wall of sound" at times... but that isn't alternative rock. That isn't grunge. The genres have nothing to do with the dynamic range in a master.

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid You're wrong, and uninformed. You're not hearing your equipment... you're hearing the noise on those tracks. The mics and recording equipment used to record that music are what's not noiseless. Harmonic distortion and noise from digital electronics is below -90dB in almost every instance, even with cheap hardware. Frequency response accuracy is quite different, but that doesn't cause noise. If you believe you can hear -90dB noise under loud music; feel free. You're incorrect.

[@SolomonKull]

Dude, a lot of punk *needs* to be compressed very heavily, otherwise it sounds terrible. Compression on drums can add the power the album needs. I've recorded dozens of punk, hardcore, and metal records, and I can tell you that some of them absolutely needed to be "loud".

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid What you don't "get"... is that we're talking about two different things. I'm telling you facts about audio equipment, audio recording and mastering. You're saying "I don't care what you say, somehow you're wrong, because I'm never wrong... plus, --flicks snot-- just because I can." I'm done with the conversation now bro.

[@PajakTheBlind]

Your point is not valid my friend. Older generation felt like all this about the Beatles because of the musical content - not techniques used by audio engineers (under direct orders from record producers) that directly and drastically change the quality of the record.

[@Username93611]

@freezazoid Sorry, but what you said is in general plainly wrong and misunderstood. You hear hiss and sparkle and wow and flutter on a record because it's a needle vibrating on a rotating disc. I won't assume anything about your shitty preamp, but digital amplifiers, ADC and DAC circuits are all accurate to well, well below human hearing ability. The loudness war has absolutely nothing to do with that, and everything to do with genuinely just trying to beat out competition by being louder.