Professional mixing and mastering engineer here! What a great video! The loudness wars are still happening, but with LUFS being the standard now and the wide acceptance of normalization from the streaming services, it's much less of a problem. It makes it almost not worth all the time and energy needed to get a master super loud. The streaming services are just going to turn it down anyway now. I personally try to find the middle ground. I work hard on my clients mixes! I don't want to destroy that work with a limiter when mastering. So I master a track now as loud as I can without taking away from the dynamics as much as possible. Also, the increase in the quality of our tools has certainly helped! There is much less aliasing now in plugins, especially mastering plugins. I won't get into the technicalities of aliasing and such but it was greatly adding to the issues with loud masters. Aliasing will make things sound harsh and brittle. So, there are lots more of us now who prioritize dynamics over loudness but unfortunately, there are still many who don't and whose ONLY goal is to make the master as loud as humanly possible. I personally don't play that game tho. I love the natural flow and feel of a song. I don't want it to be one volume from start to end. Neither do the final consumers in most cases! Again, great video! Thanks for making it! You earned a sub!
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer I was just pointing out that while it's great to hear that people like you are releasing high quality masters for upcoming new albums, we still have low-quality masters from the past that are likely not going to get an upgrade, so streaming services adopting volume normalisation is probably not going to make a difference. Does that make sense?
@@luca6635 Ahhh ok. Well, actually a pretty big job opportunity in the industry if you can find it is to remaster and sometimes even remix older music! Especially with Atmos now. In order to have The Beetles or Jimmy Hendrix albums work on Atmos they had to be remixed/mastered. So it's actually quite common now that much of that music, especially on Apple Music, is actually a more recent remaster. This is even more true if you have Atmos turned on in Apple Music. Even if you aren't listening in Atmos you will get the stereo folddown of the Atmos mix. Now, that doesn't usually make them "better" lol, quite the opposite most times but at least they get a refresh. So many of the older songs you hear now have actually been "remastered" to be more in line with today's standards. 🙂 In general tho yes, I agree.
I'll always remember annoying my stepdad while trying to find the right volume for Rhapsody in Blue on the car (CD). I couldn't hear the quiet parts over the engine, then the family would get blasted in the loud parts. Now I know it wasn't my fault: CD dynamic range, Harold!
That's a very good summary of this phenomenon. And the album examples you picked are spot on. They are exactly those I have on my reference CD shelf when I want to hear how I don't want to sound when mixing/mastering, except for Chinese Democracy of course. I am glad that war is over, even if it's initialized thru institutions that don't pay musicians decently any more. But something always hurts... Thank you for this video! 🙂
Hi, the record industry has gone crazy. My favorite recordings are from the 80's in 16bit 44.1kHz with a fantastic dynamic range, the music breathes, the percussion instruments hit hard at the weakest thresholds, that's music!!! Today compressed distorted music makes my head EXPLODE, I listen to two tracks and turn off the music, it's like being inside the turbine of a Boeing 727. I haven't bought music since the 2000's. For me this Loudness War technique has killed music. For example, I really like Cold Play, their recordings are HORRIBLE without dynamics, with clipping, crushed sound, destroyed percussion, IT'S ABOMINABLE and it's a shame not to be able to buy this music with a master that offers at least a Dynamic Range of DR14 or DR15. I have listened to your comments with great attention and enthusiasm. I really liked your explanation. Thank you.
This is a great in-depth history, thank you. It does seem like you’re reading from a script though and trying to get through it without any interruption. Would be nice to have some breaks here and there on poignant points, perhaps with some more of your own musings on the turns of events. I found myself constantly pausing and replaying because there’s not enough time to consider the implications of what’s just been said
Thanks for watching! Appreciate the feedback, too. It was a lot to write & cover concisely, was afraid if i went off script, it would get a little boring, but I def see your point!
Interesting and well explained. I lived through this and your explanations are spot on. In particular, I graduated college in 1985 and at the peak of my music listening. I had transitioned from vinyl to cassette and CD In those days they all sounded good, but later, CDs seemed to sound worse after being over compressed. Although it is also true that some early CDs didn’t really sound very good. They got better, but in reality, it was how bad early MP3s sounded that gave CD a relative boost and n being considered more desirable!
I remember a friend of mine thinking he was "wearing out" his old CDs since newer releases were louder in the mid-90s... prob should've included that! Your comment made me think of it. In the recording industry circa 2000, we were all pushing for a higher-fidelity format, like SACD... sad to see the world go in the opposite direction.
3 месяца назад+1
Great content. You deserve more subscriptions my friend.
Great overview. We are better off now, with streaming services auto-adjusting levels of tracks... but there are still plenty of pros who compress the living hell out of music, with dynamic range being tossed aside, and then the semi-pros and hobbyists emulate them, and you end up with the latest Kings of Leon record - great songs, but crank it in your car and after half a song you're reaching for the volume knob because of ear fatigue. After a few decades of loud/little dynamic range, people now defend this as just "the style of the genre". I do have a theory that most people listen to music on phone speakers or iphone headphones that sound like ass at high volume, so most people don't turn the music up. Almost no one is sitting in their living room between two speakers and listening at semi-loud volumes. Many people even listen in mono, with a bluetooth speaker. Sorry! I do tend to go on and on. In general I LOVE where music recording is now - with a laptop and an Apollo interface, you've got a super pro signal chain. You can get a great set of powered studio monitors for $500. It's a great time for hobbyists.
It’s quite interesting that you mentioned Led Zep II - one of my favourite albums of all time, Revolver, my favourite Beatles album, and the Oasis albums (one of my least favourite bands, for its dirginess). It’s almost as if I have an innate sense that high-compression tools in tracking, combined with high dynamic range in mixing and mastering, makes for a good overall result 😂
What's fascinates me is there are still mixers in active rock etc. gunning for for 4.5. It's better with current tools, experienced engs, and thick (synth & aug samples) arrangement, but there are so many sweet spots anywhere from 11 to 7. There are ways of getting compactness + satisfying transients--I think some of the mixers mostly want to impress managers and leaders, and prove themselves. I hope more mixers develop an enjoyment of just that 2dB of extra range, it makes a massive difference. One key is maybe consulting outside people, and getting good at reading what they enjoy, throughout DR's.
It has not ended, check out any modern rock mix from Alge or Cervini and many others and you'll hear massive clipping and distortion and incredibly loud mixes and all those bands are top of the charts. The myth of LUFs is probably ruining your chances of competing against the big boys so don't worry about it because now that loud is here it is not going back to the way it was, ever, so make your masters loud. Some of my songs have been played a million streams on Spotify and they are loud and no digital distributor ever rejected the masters nor did the streaming services.
It has always seemed to me that current overly compressed productions sound smaller than older productions. It like the snares of modern metal productions sound like a hammer hitting a table, but a powerful snare from the 80s metal sound like a big book hiting the table, it has more mass, more weight and dynamics. Why make the stuff so loud if you're still gonna listen to it to a medium / low enjoyable level most of the time. It makes no sense.
I can't say I enjoyed your video because I didn't understand most of it. However I took out my 1987 "rubber soul" by The Beatles CD & compared it with the 2009 box set version . The 2009 is louder, but not bad.
the loudness war never ended, it just changed forms (I think people worrying about their tracks sounding "quieter" than everyone else's is never going to go away) people aim for -11LUFS in the same way they uses to mindlessly aim for whatever RMS was the style at the time, and the problem is the same, you have so many amateurs putting out, say, aggressive rock mixes that sound undercooked and unexciting because they've made them stylistically "quiet" to hit the LUFS they think they need to aim for. Less bad than butchered, crunched-up 90s casualty records, sure, but it's still a bad way to work. Meanwhile the pros are just going for whatever loudness sounds cool and exciting, more or less, because that's the real thing.
It's already been said by others, but I'm disappointed by how many new releases are still being compressed way too much. Nothing about it makes any sense to me. That being said I do occasionally find a new release here and there with reasonable dynamic range, although half the time they don't have a CD release which is my preferred format for purchased music.
Interestingly, I recall dynamic range compressors started appearing in car stereos in the mid '90s, as well as automatic volume control based on car noise. Loudness normalisation like ReplayGain or SoundCheck has made the level jumps completely irrelevant and in my car, over Bluetooth, makes more dynamic recordings really stand out from squashed releases. It's amazing how bad CDs still sound in 2024. I still buy them and I keep a database of my music including DR values, and major releases are still getting DR5 or DR6. Are they still being mastered for cars? The new Cure album has DR5 on CD! The only label I know that's issued a mea culpa to the Loudness War excesses has been Earache records who actually promote "Full Dynamic Range" on a lot of their reissues. It's funny because they're a metal label and metal is (in theory) the loudest genre. I hope more labels follow suit but I doubt it. CDs are a "dead" format according to a yearly article on most sites, but people do still buy them in the age of streaming. I don't know what the stats on types of buyers of CDs are - I'm a (mild) audiophile who seeks out the best mastering job when buying classic albums, buys CDs to rip to FLAC, and I avoid vinyl because I don't need that extra expense or storage issue in my life.
I should've mentioned Earache in the video, I have several of their FDR re-releases on vinyl, and they sound really great, especially stuff that was originally recorded pre-2000
It's not "loud", it's clipped. It's not "loud", it's digitally distorted. It's not "loud", it's limited. Who wants a limited presentation of their artwork? If you don't view music as art, well then who wants an inferior product? F Rick Rubin and F the dynamic range wars!!!
I have yet to find a streaming service that has turned the volume of my mastered songs down when they get distributed and they are LOUD!! It's a myth, perhaps even a conspiracy to sabotage indie artists chances to compete.
hard to imagine that any engineer would think that a wave file turned into a solid block of green or whatever color is a great idea. I happened to purchase an amplifier with a volume control. I can handle my own volume. I do not need any engineer f**king up my CDs with this loudness wars garbage. I no longer purchase remastered CDs because too often remastered just means it's louder. Again, my amp has a volume control. Shame that the compression cannot be undone by end users. Thanks for nothing, engineers !!!
Professional mixing and mastering engineer here! What a great video! The loudness wars are still happening, but with LUFS being the standard now and the wide acceptance of normalization from the streaming services, it's much less of a problem. It makes it almost not worth all the time and energy needed to get a master super loud. The streaming services are just going to turn it down anyway now. I personally try to find the middle ground. I work hard on my clients mixes! I don't want to destroy that work with a limiter when mastering. So I master a track now as loud as I can without taking away from the dynamics as much as possible. Also, the increase in the quality of our tools has certainly helped! There is much less aliasing now in plugins, especially mastering plugins. I won't get into the technicalities of aliasing and such but it was greatly adding to the issues with loud masters. Aliasing will make things sound harsh and brittle. So, there are lots more of us now who prioritize dynamics over loudness but unfortunately, there are still many who don't and whose ONLY goal is to make the master as loud as humanly possible. I personally don't play that game tho. I love the natural flow and feel of a song. I don't want it to be one volume from start to end. Neither do the final consumers in most cases!
Again, great video! Thanks for making it! You earned a sub!
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer thanks so much for watching & commenting!! Appreciate your perspective, and agree completely.
So what about the existing masters? I don't think recording companies have any incentives to release a remastered version of each album, do they?
@@luca6635Not sure I’m following your question. Even those get turned down by the streaming services, is that what you mean?
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer I was just pointing out that while it's great to hear that people like you are releasing high quality masters for upcoming new albums, we still have low-quality masters from the past that are likely not going to get an upgrade, so streaming services adopting volume normalisation is probably not going to make a difference. Does that make sense?
@@luca6635 Ahhh ok. Well, actually a pretty big job opportunity in the industry if you can find it is to remaster and sometimes even remix older music! Especially with Atmos now. In order to have The Beetles or Jimmy Hendrix albums work on Atmos they had to be remixed/mastered. So it's actually quite common now that much of that music, especially on Apple Music, is actually a more recent remaster. This is even more true if you have Atmos turned on in Apple Music. Even if you aren't listening in Atmos you will get the stereo folddown of the Atmos mix. Now, that doesn't usually make them "better" lol, quite the opposite most times but at least they get a refresh. So many of the older songs you hear now have actually been "remastered" to be more in line with today's standards. 🙂
In general tho yes, I agree.
Great work here!
thanks!
I'll always remember annoying my stepdad while trying to find the right volume for Rhapsody in Blue on the car (CD). I couldn't hear the quiet parts over the engine, then the family would get blasted in the loud parts. Now I know it wasn't my fault: CD dynamic range, Harold!
HA!! That's a fantastic example of exactly what Bob Katz was talking about! Thanks for watching!
That's a very good summary of this phenomenon. And the album examples you picked are spot on. They are exactly those I have on my reference CD shelf when I want to hear how I don't want to sound when mixing/mastering, except for Chinese Democracy of course. I am glad that war is over, even if it's initialized thru institutions that don't pay musicians decently any more. But something always hurts... Thank you for this video! 🙂
@@regnifelrub thanks for watching!!
Thanks for sharing! This. Great history
Thanks for watching!
Hi, the record industry has gone crazy. My favorite recordings are from the 80's in 16bit 44.1kHz with a fantastic dynamic range, the music breathes, the percussion instruments hit hard at the weakest thresholds, that's music!!! Today compressed distorted music makes my head EXPLODE, I listen to two tracks and turn off the music, it's like being inside the turbine of a Boeing 727. I haven't bought music since the 2000's. For me this Loudness War technique has killed music. For example, I really like Cold Play, their recordings are HORRIBLE without dynamics, with clipping, crushed sound, destroyed percussion, IT'S ABOMINABLE and it's a shame not to be able to buy this music with a master that offers at least a Dynamic Range of DR14 or DR15.
I have listened to your comments with great attention and enthusiasm. I really liked your explanation. Thank you.
@@Vanflowne thanks so much for the kind words!
Wait what? 80’s music has dynamics? You like Cold Play?
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh Okay
@@ihatezgoogle6264 I love Coldplay but their records have a DISGUSTING quality
Very insightful! Thank you
Thanks for watching!
This is a great in-depth history, thank you. It does seem like you’re reading from a script though and trying to get through it without any interruption. Would be nice to have some breaks here and there on poignant points, perhaps with some more of your own musings on the turns of events. I found myself constantly pausing and replaying because there’s not enough time to consider the implications of what’s just been said
Thanks for watching! Appreciate the feedback, too. It was a lot to write & cover concisely, was afraid if i went off script, it would get a little boring, but I def see your point!
Great review enjoyed it well
Thanks for watching!
One of the “botched” jobs that was getting a lot of attention when I was at audio school was vertigo by U2
@@millerlightmoose I forgot all about that one! Or subconsciously blocked it out of memory, either way.
L1 was a godsend when mastering 8-bit sounds that we had for multimedia in the early 90's
@@peppepop it was a great tool when it wasn’t abused!
I’m loving these videos!
thanks for watching!!
The louder things got the more dissatisfied the consumer and you can see record sales plummet. I personally feel loudness helped to kill rock😮
I think you’re absolutely right!
Very well done video, almost a documentary on the subject! Interesting subject, even if you are not into music production.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!
Superb video.
@@nicmcv6925 thanks for watching!
Interesting and well explained. I lived through this and your explanations are spot on.
In particular, I graduated college in 1985 and at the peak of my music listening. I had transitioned from vinyl to cassette and CD
In those days they all sounded good, but later, CDs seemed to sound worse after being over compressed.
Although it is also true that some early CDs didn’t really sound very good. They got better, but in reality, it was how bad early MP3s sounded that gave CD a relative boost and n being considered more desirable!
I remember a friend of mine thinking he was "wearing out" his old CDs since newer releases were louder in the mid-90s... prob should've included that! Your comment made me think of it.
In the recording industry circa 2000, we were all pushing for a higher-fidelity format, like SACD... sad to see the world go in the opposite direction.
Great content. You deserve more subscriptions my friend.
Thanks so much!
Great overview. We are better off now, with streaming services auto-adjusting levels of tracks... but there are still plenty of pros who compress the living hell out of music, with dynamic range being tossed aside, and then the semi-pros and hobbyists emulate them, and you end up with the latest Kings of Leon record - great songs, but crank it in your car and after half a song you're reaching for the volume knob because of ear fatigue. After a few decades of loud/little dynamic range, people now defend this as just "the style of the genre". I do have a theory that most people listen to music on phone speakers or iphone headphones that sound like ass at high volume, so most people don't turn the music up. Almost no one is sitting in their living room between two speakers and listening at semi-loud volumes. Many people even listen in mono, with a bluetooth speaker. Sorry! I do tend to go on and on. In general I LOVE where music recording is now - with a laptop and an Apollo interface, you've got a super pro signal chain. You can get a great set of powered studio monitors for $500. It's a great time for hobbyists.
i agree completely! Thanks for watching & commenting!!
It’s quite interesting that you mentioned Led Zep II - one of my favourite albums of all time, Revolver, my favourite Beatles album, and the Oasis albums (one of my least favourite bands, for its dirginess). It’s almost as if I have an innate sense that high-compression tools in tracking, combined with high dynamic range in mixing and mastering, makes for a good overall result 😂
Great ears!! haha
What's fascinates me is there are still mixers in active rock etc. gunning for for 4.5. It's better with current tools, experienced engs, and thick (synth & aug samples) arrangement, but there are so many sweet spots anywhere from 11 to 7. There are ways of getting compactness + satisfying transients--I think some of the mixers mostly want to impress managers and leaders, and prove themselves. I hope more mixers develop an enjoyment of just that 2dB of extra range, it makes a massive difference. One key is maybe consulting outside people, and getting good at reading what they enjoy, throughout DR's.
You are 100% spot on. At this point, I don't think there are many engineers left who remember the days before extreme loudness! It's really a shame.
It has not ended, check out any modern rock mix from Alge or Cervini and many others and you'll hear massive clipping and distortion and incredibly loud mixes and all those bands are top of the charts. The myth of LUFs is probably ruining your chances of competing against the big boys so don't worry about it because now that loud is here it is not going back to the way it was, ever, so make your masters loud. Some of my songs have been played a million streams on Spotify and they are loud and no digital distributor ever rejected the masters nor did the streaming services.
I still suffer from the loudness war. It hurt recorded music so much and the expericence of listening to it. Now LUFS producers continue the madness.
it's tough breaking bad habit for sure!
Apogee AD500 is what Owen used I believe.
It has always seemed to me that current overly compressed productions sound smaller than older productions. It like the snares of modern metal productions sound like a hammer hitting a table, but a powerful snare from the 80s metal sound like a big book hiting the table, it has more mass, more weight and dynamics. Why make the stuff so loud if you're still gonna listen to it to a medium / low enjoyable level most of the time. It makes no sense.
agreed completely!! thanks for watching!
I can't say I enjoyed your video because I didn't understand most of it. However I took out my 1987 "rubber soul" by The Beatles CD & compared it with the 2009 box set version . The 2009 is louder, but not bad.
the loudness war never ended, it just changed forms (I think people worrying about their tracks sounding "quieter" than everyone else's is never going to go away)
people aim for -11LUFS in the same way they uses to mindlessly aim for whatever RMS was the style at the time, and the problem is the same, you have so many amateurs putting out, say, aggressive rock mixes that sound undercooked and unexciting because they've made them stylistically "quiet" to hit the LUFS they think they need to aim for. Less bad than butchered, crunched-up 90s casualty records, sure, but it's still a bad way to work.
Meanwhile the pros are just going for whatever loudness sounds cool and exciting, more or less, because that's the real thing.
@@DavySolaris very well said!
It's already been said by others, but I'm disappointed by how many new releases are still being compressed way too much. Nothing about it makes any sense to me. That being said I do occasionally find a new release here and there with reasonable dynamic range, although half the time they don't have a CD release which is my preferred format for purchased music.
Agreed completely!
James Jamerson won the bass grooves wars.
Bootsy Collins has entered the chat...
Interestingly, I recall dynamic range compressors started appearing in car stereos in the mid '90s, as well as automatic volume control based on car noise. Loudness normalisation like ReplayGain or SoundCheck has made the level jumps completely irrelevant and in my car, over Bluetooth, makes more dynamic recordings really stand out from squashed releases.
It's amazing how bad CDs still sound in 2024. I still buy them and I keep a database of my music including DR values, and major releases are still getting DR5 or DR6. Are they still being mastered for cars? The new Cure album has DR5 on CD!
The only label I know that's issued a mea culpa to the Loudness War excesses has been Earache records who actually promote "Full Dynamic Range" on a lot of their reissues. It's funny because they're a metal label and metal is (in theory) the loudest genre. I hope more labels follow suit but I doubt it.
CDs are a "dead" format according to a yearly article on most sites, but people do still buy them in the age of streaming. I don't know what the stats on types of buyers of CDs are - I'm a (mild) audiophile who seeks out the best mastering job when buying classic albums, buys CDs to rip to FLAC, and I avoid vinyl because I don't need that extra expense or storage issue in my life.
I should've mentioned Earache in the video, I have several of their FDR re-releases on vinyl, and they sound really great, especially stuff that was originally recorded pre-2000
I wondered if they were just reissuing older masters in some cases but they're actually re-mixing/mastering from what I can see. Amazing stuff.
It's not "loud", it's clipped.
It's not "loud", it's digitally distorted.
It's not "loud", it's limited.
Who wants a limited presentation of their artwork?
If you don't view music as art, well then who wants an inferior product?
F Rick Rubin and F the dynamic range wars!!!
@@RealHomeRecording amen!!
I have yet to find a streaming service that has turned the volume of my mastered songs down when they get distributed and they are LOUD!! It's a myth, perhaps even a conspiracy to sabotage indie artists chances to compete.
hard to imagine that any engineer would think that a wave file turned into a solid block of green or whatever color is a great idea. I happened to purchase an amplifier with a volume control. I can handle my own volume. I do not need any engineer f**king up my CDs with this loudness wars garbage. I no longer purchase remastered CDs because too often remastered just means it's louder. Again, my amp has a volume control. Shame that the compression cannot be undone by end users. Thanks for nothing, engineers !!!
agreed 100%!!
Dubstep won. 😂
haha seriously!!