loudness war

[detfella]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

[p_brane]

too true

[dirty_bass]

Abd techno suffers from this the most.
I really really wish people would learn about dynamics.

You can keep shouting at someone, and they will just switch off to the noise.
But if you sneak up to them in the night and whisper in their ear, you`ll have a far stronger effect.

[BRADLEE]

I love lamp

[stjohn]

You can keep shouting at someone, and they will just switch off to the noise.
But if you sneak up to them in the night and whisper in their ear, you`ll have a far stronger effect.

wau!! thats pretty cool

[RDR]

Thats very true steve.

I was discussing that very thing with another music tech lecturer the other day.

There's nothing wrong with limiting to increase loudness per-se but when you import tracks and see that they have had the nuts limited out of them to the point that the waveform is a square block it doesnt seem right to me.

Mind you its not only techno thats guilty of this, ive seen some system of a down waveforms that displayed the same dynamic behaviour.

There's no education of the ear with that sort of thing.

Perhaps thats where minimal comes in...?

[loopdon]

[RDR]

Is that a minimal reply?

;) i think it might be!

[Jay Pace]

Had this problem when I got stuff mastered

Had two tracks full of dyanamic, lovely warm bit of bass in there and nice rounded full sound. This really came out in the mastering as well - good full bodied rounded sound that held its form even when you cranked it right up.

Problem was that it was noticeably quiter than most other commercial tracks. So I had get it remastered and push it a bit harder, which gave it more volume and bite but lost some of the polished fullness.

Shit state of affairs, but I though it was more important to have a track that would work on the floor and fit comfortably with other tracks than standalone and protect the audio quality but risk sounding quiet in the middle of a set.

[dirty_bass]

Had this problem when I got stuff mastered

Had two tracks full of dyanamic, lovely warm bit of bass in there and nice rounded full sound. This really came out in the mastering as well - good full bodied rounded sound that held its form even when you cranked it right up.

Problem was that it was noticeably quiter than most other commercial tracks. So I had get it remastered and push it a bit harder, which gave it more volume and bite but lost some of the polished fullness.

Shit state of affairs, but I though it was more important to have a track that would work on the floor and fit comfortably with other tracks than standalone and protect the audio quality but risk sounding quiet in the middle of a set.

Ah you fell into a bad trap there man.
You see, the volume of your final master has no relation to the cut on vinyl.
In fact, a crushed loud master, when cut, may end up quiter (and indeed far weaker) than a quiter more dynamic master.

If your talking about just stuff you are playing off CD or whatever when live, just turn up the gains. The clarity and presence will end up shining through.
Unless you are on a rig where everything is run in the red anyway, in which case you are doomed either way.

People always comment about my live PA`s that the sound is always really clean and clear, after gigs, that kind of comment shouldn`t even be happening. To me, my tracks are just produced normally, but I guess I just play after DJ`s playing a lot of new wave of techno stuff that has been crushed with maximisers by new producers and so ends up loud, uncomfortable and noisy.

All this does is increase the stereotype that techno is just noise for drug heads.

[Jay Pace]

To be honest I think I'll play the first masters out and see how it goes, I preferred the smoothness of the sound but I was worried about the overall bite of the track

My concern was that the transients in the first master are loud and punchy but take up the headroom and perceived volume of the track. And you can't keep pushing the gains up because whilst it would bring the overall volume up to the equivalent of the track before, the transients would run well into the red with every kick.

Got both versions anyway. Will check them both out on Saturday before we open - be interested to get your opinion...

[maily]

but it don't even go up to 11, that's whack...

[Radic]

down here in Melbourne our city's commercial FM radio stations are having a loudness war between themselves. One station tryin to be louder than the next to try n seem more professional. The shit thing is when a radio host talks into his mike, u can hear absolutely every bit of saliva and lip smacking that goin on if u know what i mean. Annoys the hell out o me + the music they play is so compressed it's starting to sound annoying. Now i listen to AM more and it's a lot less fatiguing (god i sound like an old man......) :)