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Re: Why contemporary music sounds terrible



Well, I have to admit, I do like to listen to music at high volumes with 
headphones...maybe because of the hearing loss from playing in metal bands 
in the 80's and practicing with a full scale PA inside a small garage. :) 
Seriously, though, I like it loud because I like to be really "inside" the 
music and not distracted by other ambient sounds outside. However, I still 
like natural dynamics inside that volume scale.  I like to hear the 
original 
peaks and valleys of the original performance, the climax, build-up, etc. 
So, part of the point of the article below is that folks are compressing 
the 
natural dynamics out of mixes and then raising the level to the max. You 
can 
still have loud and natural, just not loud 100% of the time...let's say 
you 
only compress so much so that only 25% of your material peaks at 0db, the 
rest hits below that because the original source material was actually 
quieter.  There are a lot of trade-offs....it's a very interesting and 
complex topic. When I mastered the songs for the BEMF 2 CDs, I applied a 
different compression algorithm to every song. Some songs were reasonably 
quite most of the tune, and then BAM! a the remaining 10% would sky rocket 
10db. The compression settings I used to master that song was different 
than 
what I used for a song that had very stable dynamics. In general, the more 
variance in dynamics a song had, the more careful I had to be with 
compression.  I had to make some judgment calls, continue looking at the 
original wave form, and what it looked like after I compressed, and then 
re-doing until I obtained a natural balance between level and natural 
dynamics. The easy stuff to master was the material where there wasn't a 
lot 
of fluctuation in dynamics...that called for minor compression and just 
bringing the overall floor of the mix up to -0.5db (I think I used -0.8). 
Also easy was the material that was quiet most of the time....same 
unextreme 
fluctuation in dynamics, just lower level.

The interesting point about the article to me, is not the actual volume of 
the mixes in question, because you can always turn down your stereo or 
headphones. We are talking about a different phenomena here....it is the 
naturalness of dynamic range and capacity of the human brain to process 
audio data.  It's that folks are compressing it away, so that even when 
you 
turn your stereo volume down to virtually nothing, what you hear, albeit 
quiet, sounds like a lawn mower. There are no relative changes in levels 
to 
give the mind a break.  Now, of course, even this is relative. Some people 
like that sort of steadiness. Others like more space...so there is some 
subjectivity at stake here.  But one fundamental question is that despite 
personal preferences, is the lack of dynamics in music psychologically 
deleterious? Some people get a thrill out of sleep deprivation, but is it 
healthy over time? Not for most. Your system will eventually shut down.

Kris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles Zwicky" <cazwicky@earthlink.net>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: Why contemporary music sounds terrible


>I 've got to chime in here before this becomes a sycophantic feeding 
>frenzy.
>
> The reality is that humans like 'loud'.
>
> Back in the day Jensen sold more car speakers than anyone because they 
> were 'louder' on the display wall than the other options.
>
>  Anything done badly can be tiresome.
>
> Loudness is only the scapegoat du jour... past 'culprits' have included 
> EQ, effects, distortion, transistors, digital recording, EMGs, MP3s, 
>"the 
> internets", saddam, osama, etc...
>
> -- 
> ...
> http://www.zmix.net
>
>