Loudness war still going on

[Chris-S]

Hi guys,

have there been some production tricks to make the title song of Fifty-Shades-Of-Grey-3 such loud?

When I load the Wav into Reaper the meters hit +4 dB and when it's played on the radio it is pumping and distorting like hell.....

https://youtu.be/7If7yvX_vXU

Chris

[MogwaiBoy]

I think it (the Loudness War) will stick around for atleast another decade or so - until all devices and platforms have pretty deep AI on playback levels between tracks.

Until such time, your quiet, dynamic "-1db -16LUFS Integrated" track next to Chainsmokers or Katy Perry, even on "everything is the same volume" platforms like youtube - will get totally blown away by the loudness factor.

[Chris-S]

When I load the Wav into Reaper the meters hit +4 dB

First I was wondering how this is possible because the physical limit for wav is 0 db.

But my AAC (YT) to wav conversion seems to generate float/32 bit wav and this can exceed 0 db due to inter sample peaks I guess...

[Chris-S]

Hi,
Ian Shepherd's webcast

Dynamic Range Day 2018

https://youtu.be/DEtK12KF34k?t=2m0s

[Tj Shredder]

when it's played on the radio it is pumping and distorting like hell.....

They lost the war. Bad production tricks make a bad production. You can't win that way...

But maybe you listened to a pirated version...

[The Chase]

Intersample peaks can peak above 0db.

The answer is to clean up your mix as much as you can. Highpass every track as much as you can, scoop out as many unneeded frequencies as much as you can.

Compress each track to the point of detriment and then move upwards doing the same to the buses.

Side-chaining helps a lot with loudness as well. You'll notice when listening to pop music, you really only hear one or two things at any given instance, because everything is moving out of the way of each other.

Keep in mind almost none of this is good mixing advice, just good loudness advice. But that's pop music for you.

[herodotus]

I think that the loudness war is actually over.

Heavily limited music with extreme threshold settings has simply become another aesthetic choice. For reasons that I will never understand, some people like that sound, and it will probably be around for the foreseeable future. But I am not worried that this aesthetic will become the norm, because I hear well-recorded new music all of the time.

[No_Use]

When rightclicking on a video on YT there's a 'Stats for nerds' choice, which (among other things) shows how loud a video is (originally) and how much volume normalisation YT applies.
This video is turned down 4.9 dB, so yeah, at least on streaming services where loudness normalisation is applied (which most majors ones do meanwhile afaik) the Loudness war is pretty much over I'd say.

http://productionadvice.co.uk/stats-for-nerds/

[DJ Warmonger]

^Very interesting tip. Just checked stats of my releases, indeed the lower loudness reduction, the better.

This could be win as I can can create very dynamic tracks now.
However, Youtube policy doesn't seem to apply to Soundcloud - some terribly overcompressed track from a friend recently got positive response and he claimed it was "the best master".

Keep in mind I'm always talking EDM here, which was supposed to be loud in first place.

[brainzistor]

What people don't understand is that music or song is NOT just music or song, but it's a music lesson too.
Kids are listening music and get inspired to take instruments, to learn how to play them.
How can someone get inspired to start learning drums when he hears latest Foo Fighters song and can't even distinguish crash cymbals, hihat, you can't even hear the snare properly...
OF COURSE that you'll go and listen "Achilles last stand" by Led Zeppelin and get mind blown by Bonham's drumming because you can CLEARLY hear every single hit and dynamics.
OF COURSE that you'll go and listen to bass guitar in that song and play it too.
OF COURSE that you'll go and listen to guitar and learn to play it too.

When you record your music as a horse shit, who will you inspire with that shit sound? Nobody.
But, be free to be loud, be a part of loudness wars and play on stadiums around the world and to cripple your sound just to make it familiar to people who are accustomed to crippled sound and production.
Some kid somewhere will go and learn to play his instrument by listening to music when music was being recorded and produced properly because he CAN'T hear shit in your recordings.

When I heard the drums, ESPECIALLY the snare on Soundgarden's "Superunknown" album while being a kid, that was the moment when I said:"That's it, I'm learning drums" even though I was already learning to play guitar and learning drums a bit. So, I was learning them both at the same time.
But, the thing which pushed me completely into learning drums as well, was the snare on "Superunknown" album and the sound of the drums on that album.

So, Dave Grohl brought a guy who was producing albums for pop stars to produce a rock album and he basically deleted drums from the music, just remove transients to overcompress everything easier.
When Metallica and Alice in Chains joined the loudness wars with their albums, fans went nuts and said:
"Nope, I'm not buying this crap, produce it properly, end of story". There were people who wanted their money back....

People are not looking deeper at things. Every single song out there is someone's music lesson, a reference, someone's inspiration to pick up the instrument and to play it. If you produce it like shit,
you won't inspire anyone because he can't even properly hear the instrument he's into and you can't hear the dynamics how to play the instrument, everything is flat and straight because overcompression killed all the dynamics and on top of that nowadays many rock and especially metal bands are recording drums by using metronome and you have everything lined up like it's EDM...

I'm 100% sure that even in 2070 some kid will be inspired by John Bonham to start playing drums
and he surely won't take "Concrete and gold" by Foo Fighters as his inspiration because there's nothing to inspire him to go and play drums and it's a rock album and it's a rock album of a band which once was the most popular rock band on planet and played on full stadiums...

So, yeah, all that loudness wars crap will be lost and forgotten in time, sooner or later...

[fluffy_little_something]

It's so irritating and one reason I don't like modern pop music. I like things to be subtle so that the sound doesn't destroy the music.

[MogwaiBoy]

People enjoy dynamic music more when volume matched - that's almost a scientific given. You just have to control the way they listen so they give it a chance before pushing "SKIP". Vinyl is one of those ways as it's a physical medium and people expect to have to set the volume manually to their liking.

The other way is just completely rejecting overcompressed pop music and making music purely for your fans who seek quality experiences. Carve your niche and don't worry about what the big sellers are doing. Unfortunately there is that feeling that you need to 'compete' no matter what and that involves being as loud as current hits or fear being seen (heard) as inferior.

One day technology will make it completely redundant to maximise your music's loudness. People say we're already there but I don't think so yet.

[ATS]

I never master or have my songs mastered super loud.

[heavymetalmixer]

What's good about listening to a song that sounds like a flat-n-static sausage? I need to feel drums trying to smash my face, I need to hear the screams of the singer, I need to feel the warm and softness of the not-loud parts.

In a few words: I need to feel the emotions of the instruments and the song, not just one or the other.

[ianshepherd]

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Hi All,

The war is certainly still raging but there are plenty of hopeful signs:

http://www.dynamicrangeday.com/award (http://www.dynamicrangeday.com/award)

Meanwhile I made something new with MeterPlugs to try and help the situation - see what you think!

www.loudnesspenalty.com (http://www.loudnesspenalty.com)

Explanation:

https://youtu.be/rxqjEuD0Ncw