Is Mastering destroying music ?

[CosmicDolphin]

I heard an piece on the radio news about mastering and the loudness wars going on in CD mastering nowadays.   It is shocking how much the average level of an audio CD has increased, and there are albums I find myself reaching for the tone controls to make them listenable.

I found the newspaper article that they were talking about, it was printed in the Times newspaper here in England yesterday.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1878724.ece

Strange how our little world has made headline news - I'm not sure if the average listener can even notice the difference.  What do you think

CosmicDolphin

[Caine]

good point, good article.
when i bought the chilli pepper's "californication", i was wondering why some parts were distorted.

i think digital compression is a nice tool and you can make records sound better than in the early analog days. for me it's okay that music can be made "louder" than before and that you can decrease peak levels...but it has to be made with flair. a lot of popular music is squeezed to death. there's no room to breathe.

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=54823

iron maiden decided to not master their last album. i can't judge if this was a good idea, cause i didn't hear it. but listen to some old stuff from led zep or deep purple that has been digitally remastered...in my ears it sounds so much better. in my point of view , it's not the question of making it loud or not, but to which degree.

[Gerk]

The problem is not mastering, it's the fact that anything bound for the radio being in this big volume war now, and the lack of dynamic range.  Not apparent dynamic range, but _real_ dynamic range.  Mastering is a good thing, squashing things down to 0.5db of dynamic range is a bad thing.

The problem is that everyone wants to be louder than everyone else on the radio.  The other problem is that the radio station also squishes the hell out of the audio when they broadcast it  as every radio station wants to be louder than the others, so even if you do have some real dynamic range in your material and its getting radio play, chances are bery good that it will not sound as it was intended -- and as a result likely sound worse than the other stuff that's already so squished it has nowhere to go.  It's the chicken and the egg all over again.

Listen to some of the classic 70's stuff that sounds amazing, something like ... Dark Side of the Moon.  It has dynamic range (quite a bit of it in fact) and sounds killer all around.  When they digitally re-mastered it they made obvious attempts to keep that dynamic range intact and for the most part succeeded.  Other things that have been digitally remastered didn't come out as well.  I have some remastered Zappa and Jethro Tull stuff on CD that sounds horrible when compared to the original vinyl due to bad mastering/squishing to get it "louder" . . .

Can you imagine if soundtrack music and movies went this way?  The super quiet love scene and the massive explosions .. same audio level .. same emotion .. no range to it at all.  What a boring movie that would be.  Music needs this room to move as well, even if it is more subtle.

So long story short ... mastering is not the problem, brickwall limiters and compressing the hell out of everything are

Save the dynamic range!!  If the song is not loud enough there is a simple solution ... TURN UP THE VOLUME

[Gerk]

Worth the read:

http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicrange.htm

And the video they link is a good example too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

[Appleluza]

eh..?  What's that?  Speak up, speak up boys:)

[luisma1972]

Great topic. Every once in a while this subject comes back, and to be honest, I'm glad it does. I love compression, but what I can't stand is the use of compression only to get things louder. Compression as a tool for getting a desired timbre is great, but compression just to make things louder is another history. I still remember the day I first walked into a pro studio, they had a monitoring system valuedat $15000, that was more than 15 years ago  . I was amazed about the details of the music program I was listening to, I miss that kind of resolution.......


Maybe I'm just getting old 

P.S. as usual, I have to agree with Mark, It's not mastering fault, is it about the weird perception that louder is better.

[dogbizkits]

This is a good read

As Mark says: The problem is not mastering, it's the fact that anything bound for the radio being in this big volume war now, and the lack of dynamic range.

I think the obsession with with "loudness" is on the slide as more savvy listeners know that louder doesn't mean better - and the industry realises it. More artists are demanding better fidelity. Making something "louder" for the radio can actually cause major problems for the stations compressors. If a station plays something with an incredibly reduced dynamic range (where the meters are almost pegged continually at 0db), the result is that some station compressors will force this to be played at a lower volume than "normal" program material with a wider dynamic range. Without any doubt, mastering is something that can make huge improvements in the sonics of a piece of music through the application of skill in the hands of a talented engineer. As for making something "louder" for the sake of it.... well... anyone with the right "box" can do that. Dynamic range will always be King.