If there is no such standard, what organization or entity would be the one to establish it?

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Mastering engineers prefer a great sounding CD to a very loud one, but when clients demand that their CD is as loud or louder than the competitors, they have to do what is asked. With any digital media, there IS a ceiling. The signal cannot go beyond 0db or digital distortion occurs.

Oh, I could go on about this issue for hours... Fortunately there is a growing resistance to this War Of Loudness among serious recording and mastering engineers who are trying to push through a 'standard' at about -13 to -15db.

The problem is the record company executives, who's afraid 'their' products will sound weak compared to the competition,- exactly the situation Roy describes. Don't expect any changes anytime soon, but hopefully thing will 'normalize'. For the time being the situation is like this; Those who care deeply about the quality of music is trying to keep the loudness down to a reasonable level, and the rest squash their products so they look (and sound) like a brickwall.....

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

[This message was edited by Steinar Gregertsen on 24 March 2005 at 10:24 AM.]

Too bad the "suits" make that kind of decision rather than the artists and/or engineers.

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Fortunately there is a growing resistance to this War Of Loudness among serious recording and mastering engineers who are trying to push through a 'standard' at about -13 to -15db.

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That's the kind of info I was looking for. Bet I won't live to see it happen, as I'm 75, but perhaps our 9 grandchildren will benefit from a standardized db level.

BTW, Jim, I've been hearing some great stuff out of you on Steel Radio.

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Visit my Web Site at RoysFootprints.com
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Steinar

PS- Jason, reissues have often been remastered to match the current level of loudness.

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www.gregertsen.com

[This message was edited by Steinar Gregertsen on 25 March 2005 at 04:29 AM.]

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

The advent of the look-ahead digital peak limiter is the tool that has allowed this extreme loudness. Never have I seen an audio tool so misused and abused. The reall killer for me is that many of my clients insist on the super-loud. They don't understand that loud means less dynamic, less impactful, and less listenable. Music sounds much better when mastered quieter with more dynamic range. If you want it loud, turn it up. Then you've got more impact and more dynamics. It's a tragedy that I live with every day. Mastering engineers have been pleading with the producers to bring it back down to a reasonable, more musical level. The rock producers seem to be getting it. Some Rap produers are also getting it now. Pop Country producers don't get it. Country has become some of the most awful sounding production lately with extremely loud mastering and painfully bright tones geared for cutting thru the radio mix and road noise. The irony is that mastering engineers have found that the loud masters play worse and sound wimpier on the radio than the quieter records. Since radio has very heavy compression of its own, the loud CD doesn't really end up sounding loud, just squashed and lifeless and often distorted on some stations. This topic gets me into serious rant mode. I better stop now.

This all fits in with my view that a lot of modern country is just rehashed rock, delayed several years. Hopefully, they will begin to see the folly of their ways.

BTW, why can't country LEAD instead of FOLLOW for a while here? What's the sociology behind this? The truly great music of any type stands on its own.

"...Indeed, my Coldplay, Kylie Mynogue, Napalm Death, Maddona, Tom Waits, the Foo Fighters, etc CDs..."

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Since radio has very heavy compression of its own, the loud CD doesn't really end up sounding loud, just squashed and lifeless and often distorted on some stations.

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Great graphic Steinar!

[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 25 March 2005 at 06:28 PM.]

Can someone explain db levels a little bit?
Does the lower the db number mean there is less room for dynamics? Or is the opposite true? And what about the + and -'s?

One of the responses above seemed to contradict db capacity.

Can someone just give a quickie synopsis?

I play around with the EG in SB Audigy when making tapes or CDs and I'm aware of individual EQ's for treble, mid, and bass - flat, increase, decrease - but I'm a bit confused how db works within the final song, what with multi instruments and voices etc.?

Thanks all, in advance...

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/voltageloudness.html

But, hey, I tried.

Again Bill, thanks!

I listen to a fair amount of weird ambient, noisecore, drone and oscillating material, however there's a lot of country and rockabilly I love as well.

I think that a lot of reissues depend on which label has issued it, and how old the masters, or what the masters were. (Aluminum, tape, digital, glass, etc)

Labels like Ace and Sundazed keep it pretty crisp without getting 'the big sound' as I think of it.
Compression in noticable, it's the same reason adverts seem so loud on TV, and I agree that it's a lack of taste and professional judgement, but it's an industry demand.

Just the continual blandifaciation of everything.

My original post was to note that I rarely notice a level drop on an album, even with reisues there's generally a level volume standard even when it's drawn from a lot of different sources.
Obviously the older the source, there's some degredation.

I like a lot of lo-fi, indie rock, garage punk, etc and believe me, no-one's gonna get that stuff at the same level as Brittney or whatever Simpson gal is on the charts now.
Maybe that's why I don't see it as much, I don't listen to as much chart material.
Still, a good buddy of mine is the king of pop and listens to a lot of chart material, often buying and flogging off CDs as he works his way throught he chaff.
I notice on some of the comps he makes to play at work, that there's a real difference in levels between artists mastering levels.

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Can someone explain db levels a little bit?
Does the lower the db number mean there is less room for dynamics? Or is the opposite true? And what about the + and -'s?

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First, it's important to recognize the difference between peak and average db. 'Peak' is the highets tops of the source, and is never over 0db (personally I prefer to leave a little, so I usually have the peaks at -0,3db).

Peaks above 0db will distort,- in the days of analog recording equipment this was sometimes used as an effect (think Beatles vocals like "Don't Let Me Down" or the middle section of "Oh Darling"), but I assure you, there is no uglier sound than that of digital distortion.

The average db, often referred to as RMS level, or 'loudness', is the real issue here.
The lower the number, like -6db compared to -13db, the less headroom there is for the music to breath. So, you have your average dynamics limited to a 6db range instead of a 13db range.

So, you can have two songs that both have their peaks at -0,3db, but if one has an RMS of -6db and the other is -13db, the -6db RMS song will sound a lot louder than the one at -13db RMS.

The most ironic thing about this, to me, is that with the introduction of digital music production, we got the possibility to produce music with a dynamic range that was unheard of in the analog days. But instead of taking advantage of this, the industry has taken it to the other extreme,- smashing music in a way that was also unheard of before.

I'm with Jason here,- the best productions (and also the best music) are coming from small indie labels, and often distributed over the Internet. The big corporate labels are dying it seems, and the sooner they're gone the better, IMHO.......

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

[This message was edited by Steinar Gregertsen on 26 March 2005 at 06:11 PM.]

In your above last response you are talking about -6db's vs -13db's in the beginning of the post, and then towards the end of the post you mention 6dbs and 13dbs again without a + or -. This is confusing to me.
Did you just forget to put those symbols in?

I have not read Bill L's links yet, so maybe I should, before I pose this question.
But I'm still in the quick fix mode.
Please don't take offense, but I'm confused.
Again.

cf

[This message was edited by CHIP FOSSA on 26 March 2005 at 06:50 PM.]

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

I guess I've got my home work to do. I'll read more up on this.

Thanks again...

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

[This message was edited by b0b on 29 March 2005 at 08:57 AM.]

This link, http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/dB.html, has a straightforward mathematical definition of all this. If you're not exactly current on your logarithms, the article has a brief explanation. Basically, a logarithm (base 10) is a function of a variable which goes up by one every time that variable increases by a factor of 10, the base.

When you see something like "3dB difference" in signal levels, it means the ratio between the minimum and maximum signal level is a factor of two. A "6 dB difference" is a factor of 4, a "9 dB difference" is a factor of 8, a "10 dB difference" is a factor of 10, and a "20 dB difference" is a factor of 100, and so on.

On the other hand, when someone says a particular signal level is "6 dB down", "6 dB below, or "-6dB" relative to another signal, it means that it is 1/4 the level of the other.

By convention, in an electronic amplifier, "0 dB" is generally defined as the maximum level that can be generated without distortion, and all levels below that are defined in terms of how many dB below that level the signal is. "Headroom" is the difference (in dB) between the actual level and this upper limit. On the other hand, in comparing loudness levels, one typically calls "0 dB" the ambient sound level, and levels above that are defined in terms of how many dB above that level the sound is.

Another confusing aspect of dBs is when relating different types of signals. For example, generally electrical power is the square of voltage, so if you relate power dBs to voltage-level ratios, if you do the math, you'll see that the dBs are computed as 20 (not 10) times the log of the voltage-level ratio. "Apparent loudness" is more complex yet. But if you just compare apples to apples, the above definition works fine.

So when Brad says "Much of the loud stuff today has only about 6dB of dynamic range from soft sections to Full Scale (max -0dB)", he's saying that the ratio of the loudest possible section to the softest section is a ratio of about 4 times. That's not much 'dynamic range', the softest section is not much softer than the loudest at all. It makes it sound like it's always quite loud. 20 dB (a loudest/softest level ratio of about 100) or more is not unheard of, say in a symphony, where everyone will stop, and then suddenly crescendo. Similarly, older styles of music such as traditional jazz, country music, and pop typically had both quiet and loud passages. Modern rock and rap started the trend to keep these levels loud all the time, which makes the music tiring to listen to after a while.

Brad, don't you think that typical playing mode of car radios, cheesy boomboxes, and portable tape/CD/mp3 players bears a large responsibility for crushing the dynamic range of most popular music? How many people spend most of their listening time with a good stereo these days?

Current radio friendly production is the same as taking the greatest foods in the world and making them all taste like Mcdonald's french fries.

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Bob
intonation help

[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 28 March 2005 at 12:02 AM.]

Natural Extreme Compression

A few lines down from the top of the page, click on EXTREME COMPRESSION, then on the next screen, click on the first article listed, "Natural Extreme Compression."

Am I wrong in this assessment?

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[This message was edited by Roy Ayres on 28 March 2005 at 07:37 AM.]

That was quite an explanation and I managed to grab most of it. I also started to read some of the links here in the topic.

Man, such a small symbol (dB), but such a big concept.

A lot of it is still beyond me, technically, but I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of the CD volume gangbusters dilemma.

Thanks again, all...

Compression has always been used as a means to control the levels of a signal, and the only music I can think of where compression has always been a no-no is in classical music.

But, unfortunately, when we humans are faced with the options of using or abusing a tool, we all too often end up doing the latter (remember, dynamite was intended to help us build roads and stuff, not to blow each others up)....

So today, in the age of digital recording, we see compression abused almost as a rule, compressors are slammed over almost all tracks in a mix at first, and then over the whole mix as a part of the mastering process. Why? As in so many other cases,- simply because we can.
Hopefully, this is something that will pass, and be standing as a trademark of this era of music production, just like the insanely huge snare drums and long reverb tails of '80s pop music.
As I wrote earlier, there is a growing resistance against this, among very 'prominent' recording/mastering engineers, and I think this will change, but slowly.
If not before, then at least when the record company executives realize that they are probably losing more sales because of this than because of mp3 sharing.

My own rule of thumb for using compression is; As soon as I can hear the compressor working, I back off. (Unless it is meant to be used as an audible effect,- listen to the heavily compressed lead guitar picking in country music, for example. It wouldn't be the same without the compression.)

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

I was thinking of this thread whilst driving across Ohio and Indiana, listening to the R&R stations. I wonder what Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs" tracks would look like in an editor.

[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 28 March 2005 at 01:55 PM.]

http://www.digido.com/.../pageadder_page_id=59/

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[This message was edited by b0b on 29 March 2005 at 08:57 AM.]

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Remember that the loudness "race" has always been an artificial one, since the consumer adjusts their volume control according to each record anyway.

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As Don McLean said in Vincent -- "When Will They Ever Learn?"

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Steinar made a great point. One of the great aspects of the digital revolution is that we lost our tape hiss and things got very quiet allowing for extremely large dynamic range potentials. Music can get very, very quiet in digital and not dissapear into the hiss and noise. But instead of taking advantage of that, they've done the opposite.

Compression is not good or bad, just over abused. Compression has always been there. It's this new look-ahead digital peak limiting that is the culprit. It's THE loudness tool. The people who have pushed this loudness race are those who do not posess the understanding of what a listener really experiences when listening to music, especially listening to an entire album (CD). They're oblivious and they're doing themselves a disservice. There's this commercial, dollar based psycology that has them greedily battling for the relative loudness of a single, and they're really painting themselves into a corner. These loud and bright, in-your-face masters just don't hold up to repeated listening and in 10 years will be total forgotten trash unless they properly remaster it again. It's a real tragedy when great artists make great recordings of great songs and then they get DESTROYED in the mastering for stupid reasons. Artists should be furious.

The real solution for those who respect music and the listener is to restore the dynamic range back to where it was 10-20 years ago, and let the listener turn up that knob called "volume" if they want it loud.

I believe it's also the reason the volume control was invented in the first place. Somebody uttered the phrase, "It's too loud!" Which led to the invention of head phones, then to ear plugs and on to hearing aids. Music that's too loud is an industry...

This is a true story from 1980: This is about a bass player I worked with. We were playing and the club owner comes up to him while he was singing. The owner says, "Can you do something about the volume?" The bass player looks over his shoulder to his amp head and in between singing lines of the song, says, "I can't it's already on ten."

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My best,
Ernie

www.buddyemmons.com

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Radio stations really can add an awful lot of processing to the music they broadcast. Compression (almost certainly multi-band), "exciter", brightening EQ, and maybe even a bit of stereo enhancement (surround sound effect). I'd like to know what gear is typically used to do all this. Or maybe it's all done in software these days

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Most Radio stations use.. sorry.. OVER-USE one of these devices http://www.orban.com/orban/products/radio/

And it's a GOOD record producer/engineer's job to come up with a mix that can fool the "Optimod"
Some of us can do that without "Apparently" sacrificing dynamic range..It just takes experience..
Baz

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Steel players do it without fretting

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