Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
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 > >