Fighting the loudness war

[AdrianMills]

I did a search and didn't find any mention of this;

http://turnmeup.org/

It's about time someone was doing something a little more organized to bring dynamics back to music production. Go there, sign up and show your support!

Turn Me Up!™ is a non-profit music industry organization campaigning to give artists back the choice to release more dynamic records. To be clear, it's not our goal to discourage loud records; they are, of course, a valid choice for many artists. We simply want to make the choice for a more dynamic record an option for artists.

 

[Djizasse]

It's about time. I wonder if it'll do any good though :\

 

[fmw]

Since I don't buy rock or pop music, I don't encounter the problem. But I can tell you that if the public didn't prefer highly compressed recordings, then there wouldn't be any highly compressed recordings. The record companies are businesses and they will provide what people want to buy.

Remember, most music isn't heard on a good quality audio system. Most of it is heard in car stereos and ipods. Loudness is probably a better choice than accurate in those situations. I doubt the campaign will help at all. You would do better to try to change people's preferences or get them interested in listening to better quality playback equipment. It's always tough to be in the minority.

 

[avaserfi]

Since I don't buy rock or pop music, I don't encounter the problem. But I can tell you that if the public didn't prefer highly compressed recordings, then there wouldn't be any highly compressed recordings. The record companies are businesses and they will provide what people want to buy.

Remember, most music isn't heard on a good quality audio system. Most of it is heard in car stereos and ipods. Loudness is probably a better choice than accurate in those situations. I doubt the campaign will help at all. You would do better to try to change people's preferences or get them interested in listening to better quality playback equipment. It's always tough to be in the minority.

This is an interesting point. My senior year in undergrad for a psychology/statistics independent study I conducted an experiment to see where preference lay with dynamic or compressed tracks. The song IGY by Donald Fagen was used as the dynamic track due to its high quality recording. In effort to minimize erroneous effects the IGY was also compressed in a way to avoid introducing noise and used as the compressed version (thanks to WmAx).

Two files were created Dynamic-Compressed and Compressed-Dynamic with a 3 second gap between [these two files were rotated between participants]. Using the MDR-7506 headphones and a laptop for playback about 145 [pilot study and final study combined] individuals of varying ages [16-63] were asked their preference between the two. In the end 97% chose the uncompressed clip over the compressed on which equates to a 95% confidence interval ranging from 86.4% to 98.6%.

Now this methodology removes the low-fi issue from the picture, of course. From completion of this study I believe that it isn't just low quality playback devices causing this. A small subsection of participants have relatively nice audio systems/headphones, but rather a lack of knowledge [or perhaps care] as few participants even know what the loudness wars are.

 

[3db]

Or try going back to vinyl where loudness isn't an issue.

 

[Adam]

If it's not there already, perhaps the industry could set up music encoding software and playback devices to have the same dynamic range controls that we have with digital surround sound formats. That way, people could choose to listen to the music with full dynamic range or with compression.

 

[Joe Schmoe]

Or try going back to vinyl where loudness isn't an issue.

Just distortion, surface noise, narrow frequency range, and deterioration with repeated plays.

 

[Joe Schmoe]

Since I don't buy rock or pop music, I don't encounter the problem.

For the most part, I don't either for the same reason. Unfortunately, I have gotten a couple of jazz recordings with audible compression lately. (Sadly, it has affected Mindi Abair, who I love.)

 

[JerryLove]

Just distortion, surface noise, narrow frequency range, and deterioration with repeated plays.

And they can suffer from compression in recording as well (it's called "hot mastering"), but the physical limitations of the media limit compression more than CDs do.

 

[fmw]

This is an interesting point. My senior year in undergrad for a psychology/statistics independent study I conducted an experiment to see where preference lay with dynamic or compressed tracks. The song IGY by Donald Fagen was used as the dynamic track due to its high quality recording. In effort to minimize erroneous effects the IGY was also compressed in a way to avoid introducing noise and used as the compressed version (thanks to WmAx).

Two files were created Dynamic-Compressed and Compressed-Dynamic with a 3 second gap between [these two files were rotated between participants]. Using the MDR-7506 headphones and a laptop for playback about 145 [pilot study and final study combined] individuals of varying ages [16-63] were asked their preference between the two. In the end 97% chose the uncompressed clip over the compressed on which equates to a 95% confidence interval ranging from 86.4% to 98.6%.

Now this methodology removes the low-fi issue from the picture, of course. From completion of this study I believe that it isn't just low quality playback devices causing this. A small subsection of participants have relatively nice audio systems/headphones, but rather a lack of knowledge [or perhaps care] as few participants even know what the loudness wars are.

Very interesting. Then there really is no reason for the record companies to do what they are doing. In fact there is a good reason to reduce the compression. Very interesting indeed.