'The Loudness War' Dynamics of music

The Loudness War Dynamics of music.
Over the last twenty years the loudness of popular recorded music has dramatically increased, with increasing demand from record labels in the current music industry, for popular music to be mastered at such a high volume, has resulted in the vast majority of music being over compressed and lacking dynamic range and sonic detail.
This video demonstrates the damaging effect this has on music.
Written and produced by Alan Lawther
Music and mastering examples written and produced by KnightFreak
/ knightfreak
/ knightfreakuk

[@aggserp4340]

I cannot hear the music?

[@theeverythingchannel5457]

It's because of copyright

[@greyhooves3959]

I clicked this video out of curiosity, but it looks like this was muted by youtube somewhat recently because it was flagged for copyrighted music, so you can't actually hear anything.This is a shame because this video probably served a nice educational purpose before :/

[@victorcoss2600]

Why is their no audio?!

[@theeverythingchannel5457]

Copyright probably

[@Badministrator]

People complain all the time that my songs aren't as loud as everything else in their playlist. They think I am doing something wrong when all I'm trying to do is preserve the dynamic range. Basically the loudness war is self perpetuating because of this. No one cares that the music is loud, but they do care if your track is quieter than everyone else's track.

[@CabooseNor]

Thank you for making this video! I wholeheartedly agree.

[@TranceBeforeWeDie]

Singers and music producers don't even need to have any talent these days to become famous, they just need to make their music louder than the current competition and the mainstream will lap it up as the next best thing. It's all about noise now and nothing to do with the music. As long as it sounds loud on their £3 or $5 ear buds, coming out of their shitty soundcard on their IPOD, they're happy to accept this.

[@The90sGamingGuy]

I totally agree with everything you say here. We the listeners should be in control of the volume. Not the record label or mixer guy.This loudness war needs to end!

[@Dillinify]

"Many independent artists and producers fear that their music will not sell as much if they do not master it loudly." [Citation needed]

[@anakinash]

Thanks for this. This is the only YT video i could find that i can clearly hear the difference in DR. The second one is just so clean and crisp.

[@nickelindimer]

All I've seen here... in both video & text, by both OP & commentators... had made me realize the need to be more critical in my choices of 'Tube downloads for tracks I've been searching for. Thank-you!

[@Time_travel_Channel]

The difference is huge! But the thing is lots of people don't know this so they will never hear it... sad

[@Redhotsmasher]

They say point of compressing music into sauce is to make it louder than the competition, to make it pop. Ironically, the shitmaximized track sounds kinda bland and dull to me while the sensibly mixed track just pops out with it's massive amounts of detail and spatiality.

[@thiemocyril1267]

Every now and then, I try and remind some musicians/producers of this fact. They need to be reminded because… they might start losing perception. Good video!

[@fogzax]

great vid

[@acoustics101]

Recording and reproducing sound as accurately as possible was the original purpose of the high fidelity movement ever since it began during the 1950s. It resulted in recording and reproduction systems of an extremely wide dynamic range. Now that we have such systems, a number of record companies and radio stations defeat the entire purpose by compressing the dynamics of the music to be "competitive".

[@Redhotsmasher]

First example: Sounds loud, compressed and flat. Second example: HOLY **** DETAIL + EPIC REVERB.

[@retanoab]

The worst part is that newbies in the art of mixing (such as myself) are led to think that this is what it's supposed to sound. I saw many articles about mixing stating that a mix has to sound as loud as it can, and showed images of brickwalls as examples to be followed.

[@rafaelkumoto]

Excellent job!

[@SPANISHFLYENTERTAINMENT]

THE BEST EXPLANATION YET. I have wondered why I felt the need to increase the volume of my songs tracks tracks. All it did was rob the song of it's original emotion and got muddy and killed it. TY for putting me back ON TRACK. I don't care if my music gets played on the radio if it doesn't sound loud enough. As long as it is heard that I am a MASTER.

[@RedPillRecording]

Totally with you, my friend!

[@mvyper]

Good video and beautiful song! That was a good example, and the first one shows also how compressed music uses to REALLY pump, btw...

[@andrewgreen9238]

I am playing this video on KZbin on my MacBook Pro with Yamaha headphones through Yamaha Audiogram 3. Maybe I just have the wrong setup, but I can't hear most of the recording the way others do, just bursts of sound.

[@OurgasmComrade]

@tri400 Especially with the decline in physical media, it won't even cost that much to have two versions because the files could be sold online cutting down on production costs.

[@theoneandonly09]

Thank you for this. And I actually like the song being played too.

[@monsterjazzlicks]

Good video and track. Shame its was not longer and in more detail !!

[@Vanalos]

It really bugs me that I can't put the thumb on what's wrong with the compressed one. The less compressed one sounds more smooth, round, but I it's not like a big "aha!"-moment. This makes me feel like I'm just imagining the better quality to match my beliefs. Ok, I listened to it several times with my eyes closed. The compressed one sounds, compared to the other one, much flatter. The second one has a bigger stage and more substance, it's like the individual sounds themselves have way more space. Fascinating. Using AKG 612. Otherwise, chances are good I wouldn't be able to hear it. I guess it's more of a subconscious feeling.

[@MrKickyourbutt]

A really easy way to notice the compression in the first clip: listen to how the bass gets quieter (almost mute) during cymbal hits.

[@Zarabozo]

Yes, that's correct. That's why I said Vinyl has a tremendously smaller dynamic range than a CD. :-)

[@jjovereats]

I can help fix this using a compand circuit. If I had the expand side of a compand circuit and put it in a CD player subtle compression would become uncompressed and heavy compression would be medium compression. Even less reason to compress, so that people with regular CD can hear that tune the same way as people with Supex.

[@StarFury2]

@sacredgeometry Yes. And if you only read the very first word I wrote (word "also"), then you would understand that I was trying to point out another problem that encourages the record companies to push music engineers to destroy their mixes by overly compressing audio and maximizing RMS volumes. Audio and data compression are different things, but they support each other. Cause lack of details, and production mistakes often cannot be noticed on mp3 anyway.

[@TranceBeforeWeDie]

Correct. The first example given is what you can expect now in 2012, the second example is something you could have expected in 2000, which was still far too loud!

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

Nice track you got there.

[@sacredgeometry]

@StarFury2 I think he was talking about audio compression not data compression. They different things.

[@CrystalJupiter]

So this is why I get headaches listening to music all the time now...

[@StarFury2]

@sacredgeometry Increase in loudness leaves much bigger initial impression than increase in quality. There were actually some very good studies about why our ears and brain make it so. And today it's all about initial impression. It's all about sudden bomb that makes your jaw drop. It doesn't just happen in music, but in other forms of commercial artworks.

[@megahurtz30]

I think if you use a multiband compressor at very low levels of compression, it will actually enhance the detail and give some life to the music. It depends on what music we are talking about, of course. Forget that with orchestra music, for instance. I think a better example in this video would be a rock song with real drums with loud cymbals, rahter than techno.

[@sacredgeometry]

Where has your music gone? I love the track in this video and your sound cloud appears to be down...i tried without the hyphen and its up but with no tracks :( sad panda!

[@StarFury2]

@sacredgeometry Video games example I've mentioned - I meant that today, all are being made as quick adrenaline shot, masking it's shallowness with constant action and explosions, but once you scratch the surface looking for details you'll see that there are none. No game developer would dare investing years in developing detailed simulations, or deep point&click adventures, as these are consumed by limited number of people and thus do not bring the desired payback. Same with music! Peace mate

[@sacredgeometry]

@StarFury2 My mistake, i dont think producers over compress the music to compensate for mp3 compression as it was happening way before mpegs were standard. A lot of it has to do with radio and mp3 players...being able to listen to music side by side these days means that there its very easy to hear volume differences and generally speaking with most people "loud" sounds better "fatter/fuller" I hear people mistaking volume for sound quality all the time regarding synthesis its depressing.

[@doxent]

I noticed the tendency some time ago and now I'm trying to avoid loudness as much as possible in my music. Even experimenting with sound expansion. Expanded and not compressed audio souds a way better. Compression should be used only on few instruments but not a whole track.

[@tuffnucks]

Actually the reduced dynamic range of vinyl means it cannot be mastered as quietly as a CD can. There are plenty of vinyls being cut from the CD pre-master today, and because of the additional distortion and peak control lost be lack of frequency response to DC and phase rotation, the perception that these CD pre-master-sourced vinyls are more dynamic is false. They require additional peak control after pre-emphasis in fact, so often have a bit less dynamics.

[@corporacionmonstruo]

@acoustics101 what i don´t get is why they do that if the sound isn´t better,where is the benefit ?

[@sacredgeometry]

@StarFury2 ... anyway this trend means that if your track isn't as loud as the one that played before it it sounds cheaper to a lot of people, i personally only ever lightly compress at mastering, I personally hate the loss of dynamics which sometimes i have spent days working on. How do you mean the same thing happens in the video game industry or movies? The quality is dropped to cater for a mass market?

[@RocknCorruptrepublic]

there's also normalizing, which many of the major media players have now, and normalizing as opposed to leveling, doesn't screw up the dynamics (in fact most of the time if I'm normalizing a library it's because a track will abruptly follow one at an ok volume, with abruptly loud volume.. so it's probably the compressed ones I'm normalizing *against.* :P

[@GlennMichaelThompson]

Both of these examples suffer from being over compressed, however the 2nd isn't as bad. Who do you suggest we speak out to? I doubt large corporations would look twice at any complaints. Although, maybe if enough of us complain about this problem, to the same corporations around the same time(or continuously) they just might take notice. Any suggestions? Anybody? I think a campaign would be in need to actualize any change in these obvious problems.

[@ullasan32]

I have large collection of venyl&cds.The venyl cannot give the extreme dianimic tempo. But the new digtal audio give iarge explosive tempo.I think that is the reason for the young love compressed digital audio.

[@ejxiviii]

Wickid video, nicely one! good track n all ;)

[@pioneertech-w5o]

not all remasters are like this. There are many audiophile remasters like MFSL and Audio Fidelity CDs that sound better than the original vinyl record masterings

[@danyy1831]

i love compression tight loud maxed

[@jhhwild]

Record companies don't care about sound quality, they want to grab people's attention and get them to buy what they are selling. Also those people responsible for sound quality are afraid if they don't make the song loud the single won't make money amongst their loud competitors, and they would be out of a job because of it. And besides, most people don't notice, people aren't educated in dynamic range and music in general, all they want is something that makes them seem cool to their friends.

[@LiquidChem]

@canitasteyou321 youre so right, I think people will sit there and become accustomed to a certain loudness at a certain volume level on thier home system, and when they play something else, actually mastered properly, theyre like, oh this isnt as good as this other guys track, here listen, this guys awesome, here listen to this! (and obviously its like 3 or 4 dB louder so it gives the impression of being more powerful and "better".

[@DaviasArzgul]

You should match the volumes. I think the masses likes compressed music, not only because it's louder. But because it's more easy to understand. Despite the fatigue for the ears... Anyway in a lot club or whatever they push hard the soundsystems with bad quality speakers. So at the end, the consumers brain is used to compressed music, they like the pumping, and thinks that dynamic music is as boring as classical music. They love the wall of sound, they want their heads be smashed.

[@StarFury2]

Also there's a problem in a way people listen music nowadays. MP3's and stupid iPods with bug earphones can hardly deliver the dynamic range and soul of the music. Most common people that buy CD's would actually listen music in that way and they don't care about details nor do they have ears and sense to feel it. Music today is being produced for that kind of folks not for audiophiles. Same thing happens with video games or movie industry for example.

[@murfdog19]

My band was a victim of over compression for two straight CDs. Back then I thought it sounded cool. I thought it was the only way to get our production close to what we heard on the radio. Now I can barely listen to them. The Chili Peppers have been victims of the loudness war, especially on Californication and Stadium Arcadium. Two fantastic albums, ruined by massive compression.

[@Zarabozo]

Well, yes... but Vinyl has a tremendously smaller dynamic range than a CD. Also, it certainly cannot be mastered as loud as digital because it would simply throw the needle out of the track, so that forces labels to have a limit on the loudness aspect. The only solution would be to have a -20 dB-peak headroom (as it has been proposed already by top mastering engineers) and have all popular media leaders (iTunes, radio, TV, KZbin) keep any track on a fixed -20 dB-average. Dynamics war instead.

[@tuffnucks]

"Vinyl [..] cannot be mastered as loud as digital" due to not having as much dynamic range is wrong. Anything that doesn't have as much dynamic range (vinyl) *must* be mastered louder than is possible to do on something that has more dynamic range (cd). What you're saying is completely opposite. Understand what I'm getting at yet?

[@Redhotsmasher]

Yep.

[@museumoftechno]

Using electronic music in this video is a bit of a mistake: any kind of music where the studio as a whole is used, in effect, as a musical instrument, should be allowed to compress heavily as an aesthetic option. Maybe not in rock, trying to capture a performance by people playing electric/acoustic instruments - but for music that never claimed to be anything but numbers produced by the functions of computer software, as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I much prefer the compressed version.

[@DaStig]

Ive never understood why people do this, why go through the effort of making a track and then lose most of the waves by clipping it to death! if they want it to sound like a wall of sound then why dont they just have each sound boringly set to the same volume and velocity!

[@metastrophic1]

i feel sorry for people who listen to MB3 songs/music...GO GO Flac

[@HylerMusic]

Not a single audible sample present here, don't waste your time.

[@JPGMUSIC793]

What song is this?

[@michaelbhs05yb]

The second example is sooo... airy! And when level-matched by ear, the bass is more taut and powerful.

[@therealKINDLE]

I Agree with EVERYTHING you said. We Have to Stop this Bullshit. Go join the company "Turn me Up" & have your Say. The moment they Started destroying Music simply to SELL more, they bypassed the reason we invented Music in the first place: For the Listening Experience. Is it no wonder Vinyl is selling more? Thats because the Highest Volume in the Grooves is conciderably Lower than the that of Digital Media. Thank You so much fo doing this Video. Lets SAVE our Music NOW.

[@Hirotoro4692]

CHECK THE DESCRIPTION

[@darek4488]

There is a problem how do you notice this album. Let's think from a typical customer view. You probably would not read about it. You will hear a song in a radio or somewhere else. And all these randomly met media usually lacks the audio power and quality. Many people can't notice a difference or simply don't care. The masses are not musically educated and they can be satisfied by only a rhythm played loud enough. The loud banging is enough for them. The flood of cheap audio systems also matters.

[@jjovereats]

stupid me productions: i think music played on concorde should be of original, not remastered quality.

[@svtcontour]

My taste in music has changed drastically due to this crap but in a way im thankfull because ive discovered lots of new and less known artists which have great music!

[@nickelindimer]

I hear you about video games these days... "Impossible Mission" was a favorite of mine from the great Commodore-64 era, and showing a "walk-thru" to my 15-y/o nephew brought from him comments of "...This would very-popular today if it had loads of weapons involved.". (Sigh) And with that, I'd seen that the appreciation for the "We've gotta get something done...!" tension is lost in favor of the "Let's blow something up!!!" lustfulness. Shame.

[@ajuk1]

YOU SHOULD HAVE MATCHED THE LEVELS.

[@metalupyourass9]

@therealKINDLE Its meant to have the effect its called ducking lol\

[@DJA1TCH]

i love compressing the shit out of my wav 32-bit float master's....it makes them sound LARGE!!!!!

[@therealKINDLE]

Oh don't worry! I've been working [like a dog!] for 3 years on a project deliberately designed to show up the loudness war, evade genre specifics, & put the fun of creativity BACK in to composing. I must admit however that when I started this project, I underestimated how difficult it would be. =-< It's hard to try & keep positive & push harder every day when Pop Puppets like Will I Am & Britney are at the top by literally spitting on music. It's no wonder the LW is needed to sell utter shit!!

[@therealKINDLE]

@metalupyourass9 I stand corrected! I just would never have thought such an ugly effect, could be a Desirable one. And because I have never heard the effect applied in the Analog world, I assumed it was an unwanted side effect of digital mix-down! Holly Crap! People actually LIKE this technique?! Shocking. I would have loved this track for example, to be without it. I feel somewhat dissapointed you know. :_( Ok, well. I'll remove the comment. Thanks for your wisdom man.

[@ophios]

I saw a website selling a product for making your audio heavily limited, and shit like this. made me want to vomit. and it even said something like "make your music louder", I'm sorry, I have VOLUME controls. if I want louder, I TURN IT UP.

[@DJA1TCH]

eh? explain urself!!

[@stevepringle3107]

Is it just me that can't really hear any difference?

[@natetheguitarkid]

Steve Pringle put on some good quality headphones.

[@mandokir]

Steve Pringle Because you're a filthy fucking casual.

[@tuffnucks]

In my opinion *both* of the examples in this video suffer from the loudness war. Obviously one less than the other. Just sayin'.

[@Molekulasti]

I can't listen to this overcompressed bullshit anymore. I work as a radio DJ and we are swamped with it. I found a refuge in pre 2000 releases. I'd rather ride a fader on every song than listen to those screeching highs. Ugh.

[@Ernthir]

you're abviously not a musician

[@Hirotoro4692]

yea, gg on having a garbage taste in audio :D

[@Kinsky2309]

Yes because if your mix is louder when you are in a club.. it will stand out more than all the other tracks.. and then this song will be "remembered" over the others.. and of course everyone wants that, but as we are talking about this is shooting yoursef in the foot.. i dont understand why leading people inside the industry dont simply make rules on how many db´s your mix is mastered in? say to feks the different genres... you know something like that!