Bob Katz about the "loudness war" part 2

This is part 2 of Bob Katz talking about the "loudness war" at AES '09

[@ajawam]

The best comment I've ever heard is the one Bob sent to me that I used on my marketturd site - "Turn it up Mudderfudder..." "But when all the lights are lit on the peak, you win, right?"

[@SPLSoundPerformanceLab]

Thank you for this video. We feel very strongly about the points made in this video. After all, we are right in the chain with our mastering consoles. Please stop the loudness war and start to make music sound awesome again.

[@LawrenceCarroll1234]

Now there is a "loudness" war & this talk is very interesting! Those who want to explore the digital vs. analog history: it is interesting how at one time (mid-80's), there was a negative view of CDs & digital by some even then. 1 theory was that there weren't enough "dots" to accurately record a waveform accurately in digital,hence the introduction of 2x oversampling (in players), then 4x, 8x, 16x. Another was that this was result of the engineers then only being familiar with analog methods.

[@AeonFlexMusic]

i add compression to the individual bands IF necessary to glue the mix better, especially low end, but I stopped compressing my final mixes.

[@cheesepieisgood]

i'm in this part of youtube...... IT'S AWSOME

[@nemesis4go10]

@freezazoid He is refering to hot signals pre PA, not post PA. Depending on the electronics, saturation adds harmonics. Also, heavily compressed guitars, with very high RMS, are part of the character of that sound. On both cases (which there are more) the process has changed the tone color and dynamics, which translates to a specific distinctive sound. That's what the crappy camcorder or a professional microphone would be recording.

[@subtractivemagic]

@Nightmoore Yeah, all the early grunge in the mid to late 80's albums were recorded on old analog equipment, usually by Jack Endino. Really, only a few albums at the tail end of the original grunge scene were recorded with the digital stuff. He's probably talking about about a lot of the generic post Nevermind wannabes that mainstream critics and fans usually group in with the "grunge" scene, like Bush, Silverchair, Candlebox, etc.

[@wado1942]

@freezazoid That's one of his points. The people forcing the mastered levels can't control the user's volume knob. It's not about noise though, the noise on pretty much all the equipment used by pros is so low, nobody would hear it even with -30dBfs signals. Consumer replay systems are a little different, but the noise is still too low to really be a factor unless you listen through a Sony F1. Even if that were the case, is a little noise really worth adding all that distortion?

[@TimpBizkit]

I like to think of Loudness as money. In the world, there are rich people and there are poor people. Now what makes someone rich? Is it that they have a lot of money? Or a lot of money compared to everyone else? What happens if you print out £1000,000 for everyone in the country? Does the money become less valuable in any way? Isn't this sort of happening with inflation? What happens if the entire track is almost as loud as the peaks? Does it just get turned down because it's loud all the time?

[@ParadoxCircuit]

image line DAW wars page brought me here.

[@archieh70]

@freezazoid You need to read Bob's book on Mastering. It's clear from your comments that you do not understand what he is talking about. I would also suggest that you read Roey Izhaki's book on Mixing Audio. Especially the chapters on Compression and Limiting.

[@LandownerRecords]

I have a hard time believing that Black Eyed Peas is one of his favorite bands.

[@mikeanaro]

Come on, dude was trying to be polite

[@LandownerRecords]

True, but it's surreal to even hear him say it.

[@nickpelkey]

i get a kick out of the trend being.. lets make good equipment sound bad because our DAWs are too clean and our samples too perfect.

[@ElMoShApPiNeSs]

Well if we didn't try to do that, then they're kind of a waste. If I wanted something as clean as possible I'd do it all in the box.

[@petegiant]

He's probably misinformed about some records or hasn't listened to them enough. Nirvana - Nevermind (1991) Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger (1991) Melvins - Bullhead (1991) All have a dynamic range comparable with Pink Floyd - Dark side of the moon

[@ToneSpectra]

Why do expert sound engineers always talk a good game but like really crap music?

[@woobilicious.]

Yeah, because when you're in the business of Audio mastering and are doing a speech about poor quality mastering, you don't do any research, and just make shit up right, and the layman who probably never listened to any of these albums on a decent HiFi system clearly knows better right? maybe you're listening to a "remaster" of Dark Side of the Moon which has the dynamics removed.

[@Nightmoore]

When he actually suggested that digital distortion created "grunge", I stopped. I'm sorry, but that's just a lie. A whole sub-culture of Rock and a very distinct sound created by Pearl Jam/Nirvana/Soundgarden was NOT created from digital clipping. That is ridiculous.

[@fleshtonegolem]

dynamics have been destroyed because people are more concerned with their tracks sounding as loud as the one that was previously on there ipod during shuffle. Your first concern should be transmitting emotional music, not being as loud as the competition. There is no finesse in loud. #freezazoid you clearly don't understand what loudness is or what you are talking about. You always raise the noise floor when you compress something. Dynamics in music is what dictates the noise floor! if you take away dynamics you bring the noise floor up *smacks forehead* You are saying the exact opposite of what is true.