loudness wars

[doors666]

Hi All,

Loudness war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have been reading a bit about this phenomenon in recording industry called loudness wars. All the manufacturers are trying to make their CDs as loud as possible, killing the music. No wonder lots of cds sound like crap these days and give u listening fatigue. Another factor is most of the remasters of the old albums are crap as the people doing remastering are butchering the music, of course barring a few. No wonder people keep praising the old vinyls so much. I did comparisons on a few albums using the latest CDs that I have with some downloaded vinyl rips at cd quality and saw a lot of difference in sound quality. I also found a lot of useful information on the steve hoffman forums regarding good and bad remasters for some of my fav bands.

 

[alpha1]

Correct.
Most of the CDs released in 80s or later exhibit this.

I guess such music is good for noisy environments, or some place where you cannot really turn up your system volume.
But in a quiet ambience, with a high end system, you feel somethign lacking while listening to stuff like this,

 

[doors666]

Correct.
Most of the CDs released in 80s or later exhibit this.

I guess such music is good for noisy environments, or some place where you cannot really turn up your system volume.
But in a quiet ambience, with a high end system, you feel somethign lacking while listening to stuff like this,

I believe all CDs were released in 80s or later, correct me if I am wrong. this trend really started early to mid nineties. so all ur cds in 80s and very ealry nineties should sound fine. Another reason for that is that during that time frame, the concept of remasters werent there, and tons of cds are from the original master, so these sound great.
my 663 has a night mode called adaptive drc or something. these cds sound like that. I believe the functionality is the same, squashing the dynamic range. The effects of night mode are specially brutal on classical music due to its inherent dynamic range.

 

[doors666]

The loudness war and CDs vs. LPs are different discussions.

thats true, but what links them is that this phenomenon does not exit on the LPs, but only on CDs. I guess since LPs usually cater to the audiophile segment, they are the first ones to reject the artificially loud ones, hence no market for these.

The best recordings are usually from smaller bands and labels. The mass market guys have got it totally wrong.

I guess its a question of priorities. Small guys want good sound quality, while the big guys just want money

If you hear the latest album from Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, it's shocking how they've totally murdered the music by compressing it. Allison is blessed with a lovely voice, but here she sounds like she's singing from behind two doors. Someone should be shot for this kind of stuff.

Havent tried that one. didnt know plant is still active, will check it out. I believe the worst and most popular example is death magnetic from metallica. Its supposedly so badly compressed that people wrote a petition and sent it to metallica:clapping:

It is possible to compress without losing the music, and the guys who do this very well (believe it or not) are the guys who mix metal and hardcore. Since all that kind of music is compressed anyway, they have figured out a way to let the music through. There's not much dynamics obviously, but the information is all there and clear. If you listen to some Linkin Park on a *very* good system, the separation of instruments, imaging and soundstage is top-notch, and you still get the 'wall of sound' as per the musical intent.

True, they do a relatively better job. But its still getting impacted. Try some of the original lps of iron maiden and compare to the latest remaster and you can see the bad effects of loudness and remastering.. Same with led zep, metallica, RHCP, AC/DC, megadeth..... Another thing worth mentioning is that most of the times when a musician himself is involved with the remastering, it will be a shitty job, while people will get suckered in thinking now they will get music as the musician wants you to listen to it. a good example will be dave mustaine and jimmy page masters for megadeth and led zep respectively. They stink as compared to the from the original masters cds.

 

[alpha1]

I think you are correct on that 90s thing.

But many of the 80s music today available on CDs is remastered - hence, my observations of 80s and later music.
But then I guess that would hold true for 70s and earlier music also.

Anyway I am just contradicting myself.

 

[greenhorn]

quite true. I love a lot of old music, and the amateur vinyl rips people upload sound much nicer than the so called "digital remastered" CD's