The END of the Loudness War

Is the loudness war over? What does that even mean?
Loudness, dynamics, over-compression, and other buzzwords have dominated the industry for many years. But what does any of it really mean and how does it affect us as Mastering Engineers? Has music gotten louder and less dynamic? Or have our techniques just adapted as music production styles have changed?
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Video hashtags: #Mastering #loudness #loudnesswar #dyamics
• The END of the Loudnes...

[@clouds-rb9xt]

The competition is over, but the overcompression of albums and songs remains.

[@mikecassell8953]

Exactly. At this point, many people have gotten so accustomed to the overcompressed sound that it’s what they like and expect now, especially the younger generation. It’s sad that the damage has been done and we’ll likely never go back to having dynamic and dimensional sounding music as the norm again.

[@danielweirdone]

​@@mikecassell8953 I really don't like the notion "we'll likely never go back...", if there will be enough people to challenge status quo, it will change it just won't be quick... The problem is that even many of the people who like their mixes/masters dynamic will still overcompress them just because of some beliefs that you need to do it to be successful or something...

[@soynachosonido]

Dane: "Loudness war is basically over" Video: LOUDEST INTRO LOGO EVER

[@lambertstarr1218]

that had to be intentional, there's no way lmao

[@dfallchild]

🤣

[@rockyd57]

Like they say"you learn something new every day"...and this is one of them...

[@Titanisback-again]

When I find that a release in 2020 is less dynamic and is indeed still louder than the same exact tracks released in 1988... no, the loudness war isn't over.

[@ml.2770]

The loudness wars may be over, but the scorched earth remains. Overcompression has become the norm and normalized overcompression sounds dull.

[@mikecassell8953]

Exactly. It’s sad how the damage has been done and is likely permanent.

[@evanmatthiesen7478]

as someone who is about to release an album this has done a LOT to help me alleviate my stresses about it not being loud enough. Luckily it has become less a factor than when I started releasing music and I can worry more about it just sounding good than how it competes with other songs. People can turn it up if they want it louder. And Streaming services are doing that for them anyways!

[@aklankrisz]

"People can turn it up if they want it louder. " How many years did it take you to figure out this self-evident simple thing? Streaming services also screw up the excellent dynamics anyway. Where are your ears these days?

[@memeswillneverdie]

@@aklankrisz "streaming services also screw up the excellent dynamics anyway" what do you mean by this? if your referring to loudness normalisation then your just wrong (i'll explain if you choose to reply) if your talking about the encoding process to lossy formats then your also wrong (it's more of a frequency and bit depth issue than a dynamics issue, unless your song has like 90+ db of dynamic range which I highly doubt) other than that i've no idea what your on about so please explain?

[@EmilioPortal]

Thanks Dane. This is a very important topic, and I agree, it all comes back to EQ.

[@josephmorales652]

This is an interesting topic. I was thinking about some of drakes music on “Scorpion” and it seems the mix is really subtle and can some time be actually pleasant. Not this super over compressed wall. It was kind of a sigh of relief. I also noticed the same thing with fleet foxes latest music. It kinda hurts when listeners associate loudness with professional…

[@klaytonvonkluge4905]

Very interesting, good stuff 👍🏼

[@GingerDrums]

The loudness war is over, and louder won.

[@j7ndominica051]

"AM" Pop and rock music in the 60s was often almost as distorted as it is today. The bass was really growling. The music also often lacked nuance with vocalists coming on at full blast immediately. Guitars and vocals were often bandpassed for different reasons, but with a similar outcome. People give old music a free pass because the processing was analog. American pop music seems to have suffered more than European or Soviet. Only later in the late 70s up to the early 90s, we had high fidelity long form music for "FM" stations. LUFS is a simple as it gets, an RMS meter with a highpass and a high shelf. Modern pop producers only know the loud sound and can't make it any other way. The loudness won in the war.

[@jtmichaelson]

Hello, I'm here to post this a year after this video was releaed and I just opened up my all-new Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds album, and I have to say, it sounds like garbage and is worthless because of how loud it is. Many are saying how this is the best album the Stones have put out in YEARS! But it sounds like pure garbage and I can't enjoy it enough to tell you how great the music is. It's distorted at the utmost level and as the songs get louder, the more distorted it gets -- in 2023. It's WORSE than a Bigger Bang in 2005.

[@curtisscott9251]

I'm a post mastering engineer & entrepreneur. Glad to see more engineers addressing the loudness war. I'm watching your video as I type so you may cover common ground w. my comments. But, the #1 reason WHY the loudness war happened was an attempt to make music sound louder on the radio than competing stations on the tuning dial. The #2 reason was when decision makers were choosing which mix to release commercially - the loudest mix got unfair leverage due to human psychology. When presenting a decision maker with the choice of several mixes for commercial release - the loudness should be leveled between them so that sound quality wins out & not the artificial effect of a louder mix. In other words: Half-Assery contributed to the loudness war.

[@joesmith4443]

What is often left out of the loudness wars is that most mixes today also suffer from distortion and clipping from too many plug-in runnings and processed through the signal that are baked into the Final Cut. It’s impossible to remove it

[@robetclo2516]

Recently, I watched a review of the new remixed releases of The Red and Blue album of the Beatles. Unfortunately on CD some tracks have been brickwalled and those tracks sound better on vinyl.

[@Zobeid]

As a listener and collector, from my perspective. . . No, the loudness war isn't over. I haven't seen any relief from it whatsoever. You can try to say it's all about different styles or genres of music, but everywhere I look that either doesn't seem to apply to my problem, or in some cases just doesn't fit the facts. I'm still listening to the same style of music that I grew up with, in many cases from the very same acts. Over the last 20 years I've bought brand new releases from: ZZ Top, Yes, Asia, Styx, Jethro Tull, ELO, Boston, Deep Purple. . . They're still doing the same style and genre of music that they've always done. It's just that now the music has all the life crushed out of it through compression and limiting. From time to time new releases come out from acts like these, and I look up the analysis on those recordings, and I don't see them getting any better. Moreover, there's no explanation for why the same recording, released at a given time, has completely different processing based on the media or distribution venue. Today I was just looking at the analysis for "Subtract" by Ed Sheeran. And what I'm seeing is crushed dynamics on Qobuz Hi-Rez, "okay" dynamics on the LP, and quite good dynamics on the Tidal Dolby Atmos version. Where's the logic in that? Who made those decisions, and what were they thinking?

[@cbcdesign001]

Depressing isnt it?

[@JohnSmith-oe5kx]

Because the venue has a lot to do with what the consumer is looking for. If listening in a car, road noise obliterates subtleties but turning up the sound would make the peaks too loud-so music with valleys suffers in comparison with “louder” music. Same with headphones when out in public. Similarly for music played in malls, where merchants do not want big cracks of sound. Music with constant loudness dominates there, also. That is a huge segment of the market. So it makes commercial sense to release an audiophile mix on audiophile platforms and a Muzak mix for general consumption.

[@mikecassell8953]

The newest Rolling Stones album is a great example. Very compressed and processed. It lacks the rough and unrefined edge that gave their music its character in my opinion.

[@leifvieri4372]

Loudness war over? Its quiet easy to see... -if a singer is compressed or altered in any way -there is no singer, but a sound-effect. Maybe accepting sound-effects rather than singers is a solution to tell the loundess war is over? When listening to masterings studios "marketing" with before/after examples... -I too often prefer the before-version as it still got all expressions, all feelings. You hear the harder punch on the drums, the small differences in the singers voice when she sounds sad or happy -which are totally destroyed and gone by the master process... In a way, the mastering process creates muzak -a greyish, boring color...

[@watcharaphongtrithawat3553]

Can you help me ? My music

[@MrVidification]

Judging by the first loudness war database that pops up, almost all albums from around the very late 90s to present for both CD and digital formats don't seem to fare well at all regarding dynamic range. LPs (vinyl) may fare better with a wider range according to this database, even with music released today. If dynamic range was truly a major issue then I can imagine how audiophiles might feel after wasting thousands on those cushy new focal clear headphones.. and only then to buy a lossless format that they feel is 'too loud' throughout, lol