Help End the Stupid Loudness War

Imagine going to a fancy restau­rant with a famous chef. You look for­ward to the atmos­phere, the ambi­ente, the excel­lent ser­vice. Your taste­buds are sali­vat­ing in advance imag­in­ing the lucul­lian delights.

But instead of a tasty, deli­cious, freshly cooked meal made of qual­ity ingre­di­ents, you get an over­cooked, nutri­ent deprived mush.

You are dis­ap­pointed — maybe even furi­ous. You make the solemn oath to never visit that restau­rant again.

What if the next time you vis­ited another fancy restau­rant the same sce­nario happened?

• Would you be des­tined to a life of over­priced junk food?
• Or set­tle for MickeyD’s instead?
• Time to enroll in cook­ing classes and only pre­pare your own meals?

Of course not.

But what’s all that food stuff doing on this music blog?

The Loudness War — Why Should You Care?

1) As a music lis­tener you are being deprived of the soul, the essence of music. Instead of get­ting all the nuances, the rich­ness, the dynamic vari­ety, you get an over­com­pressed song that’s loud, but noth­ing else.

Flat.
Dead.

R.I.P.

2) As a musician/producer it’s frus­trat­ing to work on deliv­er­ing a great mix for a client with all the nuances to make the music shine — and then hav­ing to destroy the del­i­cate work of art you put your exper­tise in just to make the “lev­els competitive.”

Competitive to what?
Other crappy mixes.

It hap­pens too many times.

Instead of focus­ing on the music, it’s all about lev­els — and that’s just plain wrong.

The History

I’m not going to bore you with the his­tory of when the Loudness War started. If you are inter­ested, read this .

Back in the days, when there was mag­netic tapes, vinyl, etc... it was impor­tant to cap­ture as much sig­nal as pos­si­ble to avoid hiss and back­ground noise. There was a musi­cal rea­son to get the sig­nals hot.

Artificially inflat­ing the lev­els to make them loud only works to a point. When dig­i­tal dis­tor­tion starts to kick in, the sound ain’t pretty anymore.

Best exam­ple: Metallica’s Death Magnetic, prob­a­bly the loud­est record of all time with RMS lev­els of –4,5 dB Full Scale.

What to Do Next

Ian Shepherd from the awe­some productionadvice.co.uk had the great idea to start a move­ment.

1) Join the Facebook event!

2) On Dynamic Range Day, March 20^th, shout (on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc...) by writ­ing in all caps to help raise aware­ness. Explain your rea­sons and direct peo­ple to this post or the Facebook event page.

In the Long Term

Support bands and musi­cians that don’t sac­ri­fice their music for loud, so-called “com­pet­i­tive” levels.

If you are a musician/producer let your music breathe — opt out of the Loudness War. Tip: use the free dynamic range plug-in to help you keep your lev­els in check.

LET’S END THIS STUPID LOUDNESS WAR!

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Tagged with: Death Magnetic • digital distortion • Dynamic Range Day • Loudness War • Metallica • mixing • Producing

Filed under: Music • Producing

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