Ever since the beginning of recorded music, we've wanted to make songs as loud as possible. But it wasn't until the development of CDs that it became possible to push songs louder than ever. Over the decades, that's just what happened. Music got louder and louder--at the expense of musical quality. This was the Loudness War. And streaming music put an end to it (more or less). Here's how. Enjoy!
@@FindecanorNotGmail yes, was about to mention how heavily compressed in dynamics the audio in this video is( squashing loud/ boosting quiet noises) which is what they were explaining was the primary tool in the loudness wars😂. Maybe it’s an intentional Easter egg?
Streaming Music presents another problem entirely. With streaming, Songs or Albums can be pulled from the service due to licensing, Artist refusing to use the same mainstream media talking points, etc.
The loudness war is not over, nor will it ever be. That is, so many people have become accustomed to that flat, over compressed sound that dynamic music seems too quiet and distant to them. The unfortunate fact is that the loudness war has caused permanent damage.
@@JackMarston-hn4qn BSSM is produced beautifully. And if I’m not mistaken, it was actually produced by Rick Rubin. One Hot Minute sounded ok but it’s when they started to engage in more compression. Californication is an audio disaster. It’s just sad that even though there’s no need for the loudness war anymore, it’s still alive and well because younger people have grown so accustomed to the over compressed sound that they can’t appreciate dynamic range.
@@mikecassell8953 The Californication is clipping even on reissue vinyl, can't believe it. Once i know this fact that most song I've listened is clipping I can't even listen it with smile on my face no more, damn you who think it's great to sacrifice quality for loudness.
The loudness war isn’t over. Have you listened to pop music recently? Heck, on her newest album Miley Cyrus pretty much never stops wailing into the microphone at full volume.
@@JnL_SSBM Normalization makes it so there’s no reason to sacrifice dynamic range anymore. Whether or not master engineers will use it to their advantage is up to them.
@@iurigrang If songs weren't *analog* limited (like Oasis), very different to digital clipping like 95% of artists like Metallica or RHCP. Even with declippers it won't restore clipping, because it's soft limited three times, different to clipping, clipping cuts the wave, and limited waves, lowers down the highest peak underneath, like it was by nature, but it's not. In this particular case is irreversible. Red Hot Chili Peppers has hope... is just clipping and period. Just like Metallica. Oasis loudness war was already from master tapes... specifically on Definitely Maybe, RIP. This is what I call it: Going too far... enough.
@@iurigrang The whole thing is what I said is truth. Did you know loudness war invaded vinyl? Look at oasis remastered. Even on vinyl, cassette, streaming normalisation, it won't restore clipping and even worse, limiting; from very first source (like half master tapes) I am aware I may be a non sequitur, but loudness war isn't gone, producers know secrets tweaks to shortcut/skip normalization.
New releases are still loud, and most uploads on streaming systems are the latest remaster. They also cut out silence between tracks in "gaps left out" ripping mode. Normalization in collections was introduced with ReplayGain years ago; radio normalizes everything. That didn't end the war, and I don't see it happening now. Producers and mastering engineers think that most contemporary genres benefit from compression.
Yep people are not buying good audio equipment anymore, just think about how much people buy little speakers with a stereo so little that doesn’t matter, or Bluetooth headphones/speakers, it’s good but it still haves a long way ahead of it, the big companies know that and instead of making good quality music they just use loudness because less money
Was listening to led zep 4 on AM and then the new green day album. The loudness war is back, it deafened me. No need to be ten times louder than black dog or rocknroll! Whoever mixed it must be deaf or wanting to compress it to fook
Normalizing made it so there’s no reason to do it anymore. Your song wont sound louder if you limit it to hell and back, so there’s no reason to do it anymore.
@@iurigrang There is plenty of reason. Normalizing destroys the intended dynamic range of the song to bring it into range with everything else. It's not an ideal solution, but it does work for casual listening.
@@iurigrang It does exactly that. You only have a certain range between 0-100. Normalizing brings down the peaks and evens out the RMS to fill out more of that range. If you want soft talking and loud explosions like in a movie, it will not read the same.
@@kevincomerford2242 Normalizing the volume of a track brings the OVERALL volume to the same AVERAGE level. It does not alter the track itself. It's basically just a volume knob. It does not alter the level of individual moments in a track, so if there's a louder and quieter part in the track, it's still there just as normal, but if there's a track that is SUPER LOUD all the time, that track will be reduced to the same average loudness of the quieter track. Again, this doesn't raise and lower the volume of different moments in the track, it only turns the overall volume of the track down the same way lowering the volume on your sound system would. You can demonstrate this by downloading a track from RUclips and examining its waveform in Audacity. All the peaks and valleys will still be there, despite the fact that the track has been normalized.
Oh I wish, Wish, WISH RUclips would normalize their audio. But no, you go from one inaudible video to the next blown out one. Even worse. You get two people in the same video were one is quite and one is loud. I grant that that last one may be hard to program for but the rest should be no problem.
@@ManDoorHandHookDoor Well, it's very interesting that they are at least tracking that information. Maybe some day they will actually try and do something with that data. :p But seriously, My comment was about what they where actually accomplishing, not what they where trying to do. Man they need to do better.
All videos are normalized on YT. It's just not very effective sometimes, and I think ads are excluded or something because they can be very loud (for example Wish)
@@xWood4000 I use the premium service so I can speak to adds but it doesn't matter whether they don't do normalization or they are not affective at it. The end result is the same. Different volumes for different videos.
@@ManDoorHandHookDoor "doesn't *always* work" haha. I get so many videos with WAY different volumes, it seems to be a coin flip whether it works or not~
I remember running some software for hours to normalize my whole mp3 collection in mid 2000s, otherwise some songs where too quiet and others made my ears bleed. I also had a special tool to fix the file tags in bulk, to make them consistent because mp3 players though that "KoRn" and "Korn" were two different bands. Keeping my mp3 library nice and organised was a substantial effort back then. Discovering new music was also very time consuming. Streaming is way more convenient, but I'm getting tired of missing or disappearing albums, bonus songs and artist. I might need to dust off my old archive some day.
this is my biggest gripe, i used to use itunes before jumping ship to android rendering my music useless almost, so i had to upload my massive library to google play music and i lost hundreds of songs, songs were mismatched and had completely different tracks, some songs changed version, for example acoustic songs were replaced with the studio versions etc. streaming killed the nuance of peoples playslists, now its just whatever apple music, spotify or youtube decide you should listen to.
@@Slippergypsy If you still have those archives of music, you can put them into a Spotify playlist using the Local Files feature on a PC, and then download that playlist on the mobile app. This will download the local copies of that music to your phone, so you can listen to all of your favorite music through one singular app, and don't have to rely on Spotify's Recommended lists. It might take a while to set up the playlist, but... it always has, and you will only ever have to do it once
@@atta1798 He's referring to changing the volume of the entire file. The dynamics will be kept, it will just lower the overall volume, the same as just turning down the volume knob.
Loudness is not just volume/amplitude; it's also the volume/amplitude of each frequency band. Check out the Fletcher-Munson curve. We hear different frequencies at the same amplitude as being louder or quieter. Our sensitivity to sound is not flat across the spectrum. For this reason and for other psychoacoustic reasons (i.e. if a sound is droning/not changing over a long period of time, then your brain tunes it out or reduces it's loudness in your mind), a lot of really smart people developed an algorithm for measuring loudness called "LUFS". It's not perfect and there is no such thing as a perfect measurement of loudness (everyone hears things slightly differently), but it's what most services use, including youtube, to calculate loudness. But there's actually still plenty of services which leave the audio untouched or not normalized. While RUclips, Spotify, iTunes, etc.. all normalize LUFS... Soundcloud, TikTok, Instagram, etc leave the levels where they are.
I would argue the loudness was a response to how we were listening to the music. Radio became more and more a car experience which is where most music gets discovered. The car is very noisey which doesn’t allow for enjoyable dynamic music as you wouldn’t hear the quiet bits.
Yeah, but you're wrong. Every single example of a "louder" track has forced me, on my computer, to turn down the volume or risk hurting my ears. If I was driving, I would've crashed the car and died. This is why every single radio station has a limit for how loud, or perceptually loud, a track can be over the radio waves. Meaning all the tracks were made closer to the same volume over the radio.
I didn't stick with the crowd when everyone migrated to Spotify. I still buy albums, directly from the artist or on Bandcamp, and I keep all my artists and albums organized in folders on my computer and phone. I only use RUclips and Pandora sparingly to discover new artists, whom I then go and support directly.
@@bigboy9661 - If every did what I do, artists wouldn't be forced to sign shitty deals with labels that abuse them, getting paid pennies per week for your Spotify hits, and we wouldn't be inundated by vapid musical artists that only get famous because they're sponsored by clothing and beverages. I'm not patting myself on the back. I'm angry that more people don't understand what I'm saying.
Can someone explain how streaming fixes this? That makes no sense to me. Just because they normalize it doesn't change the fact that it would be compressed to shit... Or am I wrong? That sound quality is still going to be shit.
Let me use an analogy this video in no way employs: when a war ends, all of the people who died or were injured aren’t suddenly “fixed.” But it does prevent further casualties.
I do not really think they normalize the music for instance Spotify has a -14dBFs if not subscription if if so -10dBFs so you can make it as loud as you want...they will control the loudness to those two numbers
@The Good Stuff Yes the Loudness Wars are over and loudness over dynamics won the battle a very long time ago. The only thing that streaming service providers have done is adopt a loudness standard (in this case LUFS) and while this is a good step in the right direction, it is only one of many steps that need to be taken to truly resolve the Loudness Wars. I can do the exact same thing these providers are doing by taking a modern, hyper compressed recording and put the track through Audacity and enable the 'Normalize' feature. Sure it lowers the volume of the track, but it still sounds bad because the damage was already done during the mixing and mastering phase of the recordings (extreme compression/limiting, clipping and bad EQ). The main issue lies with modern recording practices going all the way up to the mastering chain. We need to re-educate the recording industry going from the record labels/Producers/Mixing Engineers/Mastering Engineers to adapt and adhere to these new LUFS standards in order for the issue to be corrected. Of course the excuse for loudness is always going to win out where they say its "a purely artistic and musical decision" when they do not need to follow this process anymore. Mastering Engineer Bob Katz addressed all of this in the following article published over 7 years ago: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
You've shown four different visualisations for "loudness": two absolutely pointless (non-functioning) visualisers, the increasing and colour-changing note and the tire analogy. What you haven't shown IS AN ACTUAL WAVEFORM OR SPECTROGRAM. Why would you make a four minute video with lots of talking without actually showing what this is all about? Sorry for the all-caps, but videos that contain lots of animations but leave out the most relevant information on purpose just infuriate me. You've got the animation budget, you've got the script writers - why keep the most relevant piece of information to yourselves?
I think it works fine, it gives a good understanding without having to go into a lot of detail, and it looks like he was aiming for a 4 minute video. I actually thought the tire visualisation was one of the best I've seen for limiting.
I hate the loudness war, I am a non audio engineer weighing in but back in the day I used to listen to FM radio in my car and FM stations would lift the softer sections with compression, driving 70 miles an hour I thought that was a good idea, that was bringing up the softer parts of the music above the road noise. I agree with over limiting and compression has ruined dynamics, it’s gone to far.
0:08 - we shall not ignore the fact that artist had to cope with record labels, tv and radio stations and their request. before the internet a song would not be played on mainstream media even if it was a masterpiece. only a couple songs broke free of the three minutes rule - one of them was "bohemian rhapsody" has a musician's life got better over the last years... i dont know, but the mcd cheeseburger is the most purchased hamburger where i live and no one ever in the history of humanity has called it a masterpiece of cuisine.
I am so glad this has a name. I HATE how music is so loud. I don't listen to streaming music really, mostly just songs I like from RUclips (I agree with @Lucid Moses, they need to normalize badly). However, this makes me think of how almost all audio on any website/game/software/whatever is DEFAULT to the MAX volume. WHY?? Why not just start at 50%? Even very common console games (Minecraft I'm looking at you) have their default volumeS (yes, there are multiple individual volumes for ambiance, monsters, etc.) as well as their primary volume always set to maximum. It needs to stop.
I'm not even convinced by your main thesis. One can still make a track sound louder for a given peak waveform level. Unless streaming services use an algorithm that figures out perceptual loudness, there will still be producers compressing & maximizing their work to sound louder.
Yes, but it eliminates the reason for increasing the loudness of your song using all kinds of goofy compression techniques, because in the end the streaming service is going to lower the volume to the same as everyone else's.
you didnt mention the effect, that players like the ipod shuffle had on the loudness war. People listening to random playlists tend to skip the songs that appear to be less loud. And playing tracks on "shuffle"" stopped people listening to albums, which have musically composed loudnesses between the tracks.
@@DWJ2 I don't know. I just know that mastering engineers told me so. I guess apple already knew which songs people listened on their iPods and which they didn't.
It didn’t end the war, me, my bus compressors, limiter, and enhancers entirely disagree. I’m working every day to be just a little louder then the next guy. If you need proof go look at Nipsey Hussle Vs. YGs music
Try the volume knob. Your "louder" music sounds flatter than stuff they were doing in the eighties because your drums have no punch and your sound-stage sounds about as broad as a girl's shoulders. Cut the fakey "loudness" and introduce actual volume dynamism. You can't have loud without quiet.
@@Selrisitai ok what would you say the loudness was in average? -10dBFs ...what was the dynamic range/ceiling left? Alan Parsons.....one of those songs was squashed to death ... just look a the resulting audio file print
You are doing it all deceptively ....you destroy the dynamics and intended Art in the Mix by doing that....the loudness war lost...and will be further controlled....examples...Spotify,,,,etc etc etc
I find Loudness mixed rock music sounds like shit on modern car stereos. Have to EQ the hell out of it and you still can't decipher the dynamics. Generally true for albums recorded in 1992 and onwards. I initially thought it was CDs just done after 2002, but no its 1992. I used to stream from FLAC2 which is done directly from CDs and the catalog after 1992. But now they charge, so thats shit
@@TheGoodStuff An LP can't handle as much dynamic range as a CD, but "loud" music has virtually no dynamic range. Perfect. What don't you understand exactly?
@@TheGoodStuff Wider than normal space between groove turns, 45 RPM vs 33, and the ability to over modulate. Digital tops out at 0, thus can't be cranked to to saturation/distortion. Yes, digital does have more headroom/dynamic range than an LP or 45 but it's not because it get get "louder", bur rather a lot "quieter" than records can reproduce do to surface noise, thus there is potential for more of a difference between the lowest and highest sound levels. BTW radio is all about outright LOUDNESS. Every station has an audio compressor/processor that cranks up the sound as loud as possible without going into distortion. Why? It helps get the strongest signal out as possible. Without audio processing you would hear noise (yes, even on FM), and the signal wouldn't travel as far. If you want to hear a "loud" record put on the 45 of Land Of 1000 Dances by Cannibal & the Headhunters or Tonight by Raspberries.
I think we're probably not talking about the same thing (or using these terms differently), but you can definitely distort a digital recording. And a vinyl record cannot be pressed louder than a CD. It's physically impossible--unless there's some new kind of material that's come out that I'm not aware of.
I think you're talking about compression--which is integral to the loudness war--but yes, you're right, you can quietly compress something so it has no dynamic range. But it's still going to be quieter than a CD.
I’m so happy you keep making these. I know it can’t be easy without the resources and time y’all used to have. I know that behind the scenes, each of you has grown into your own lives, with children and cool opportunities, like moving across the country or getting involved in other projects. It means a lot that you still take the time and effort to make these. It brings a smile to my face every time a new one pops up in my feed. Awesome video! Keep up the great work.
Wow, quite a few false claims here. CD's have volume limits the same as vinyl regardless of analog vs digital and normalisation doesn't have much to do with the loudness wars, its all about audio compression!! You guys should probably do some research or at least run it past your audio guy... bad form.
That's absolutely wrong. You can't master for a vinyl record the same as you do for a CD. There are level limits to a vinyl that a CD is not subject too. Hence, you could compress the shit out of a CD master, brickwall limit it all to hell so the all the levels are smashing their brains into the ceiling, but you'd have to reduce the level for a vinyl master. The lathe just wouldn't be able to handle it. Normalization (as I explain in the video) lowers levels so all the songs in a playlist are pretty much the same loudness. This makes "loudness" compression pointless, although it doesn't get rid of the compression. So, looks like you're the one making false claims.
You're confusing loudness with dynamic range compression, and it's that compression that is the problem. Normalising does absolutely nothing to cure the problem, as it can't uncompress the dynamic range. Loudness can be averted by simply turning the volume down, and normalisation basically does that, making the volume consistent across tracks. Compression is a one-way curse. This video is nonsense, and music is still fu.., erm ruined.
@@TheGoodStuff Is this where I say 'Oh, yes you are!' and we go on like that for several pages? Because it's seems rather silly, and doesn't actually have anything to do with my comment, so I'd rather not, if that's all right with you.
He never said it cured the problem, lmao. He said the war was over, there’s no reason to make your tracks louder because they’ll play at the same level anyways. This doesn’t save old tracks, but if you actually check mastering tutorials on youtube, the advice has changed significantly when the goal is mastering for spotify, and this definitely shows on new records.
So... It's boomer to want musicians to get a decent royalty rate? Or are you referring to the matter of musicians being at the mercy of the recommendation algorithms for publicity? 🙄 RIAA blows, as did the adpocalypse.
Ever since the beginning of recorded music, we've wanted to make songs as loud as possible. But it wasn't until the development of CDs that it became possible to push songs louder than ever. Over the decades, that's just what happened. Music got louder and louder--at the expense of musical quality. This was the Loudness War.
And streaming music put an end to it (more or less).
Here's how.
Enjoy!
Ironically, the speech in this video was quite loud. Please do check your input levels next time!
@@FindecanorNotGmail yes, was about to mention how heavily compressed in dynamics the audio in this video is( squashing loud/ boosting quiet noises) which is what they were explaining was the primary tool in the loudness wars😂. Maybe it’s an intentional Easter egg?
Streaming Music presents another problem entirely. With streaming, Songs or Albums can be pulled from the service due to licensing, Artist refusing to use the same mainstream media talking points, etc.
The loudness war is not over, nor will it ever be. That is, so many people have become accustomed to that flat, over compressed sound that dynamic music seems too quiet and distant to them. The unfortunate fact is that the loudness war has caused permanent damage.
RHCH still loud as hell and still clipping, no wonder why Blood Sugar Sex Majik is their best album, because they are most normal volume album ever
@@JackMarston-hn4qn BSSM is produced beautifully. And if I’m not mistaken, it was actually produced by Rick Rubin. One Hot Minute sounded ok but it’s when they started to engage in more compression. Californication is an audio disaster. It’s just sad that even though there’s no need for the loudness war anymore, it’s still alive and well because younger people have grown so accustomed to the over compressed sound that they can’t appreciate dynamic range.
@@mikecassell8953 The Californication is clipping even on reissue vinyl, can't believe it. Once i know this fact that most song I've listened is clipping I can't even listen it with smile on my face no more, damn you who think it's great to sacrifice quality for loudness.
Yes, the overcompressed voice is right!
Was just about to comment this haha
The loudness war isn’t over. Have you listened to pop music recently? Heck, on her newest album Miley Cyrus pretty much never stops wailing into the microphone at full volume.
Also LUFS or normalisation won't restore dynamic range, I ask for DYNAMIC RANGE!
@@JnL_SSBM Normalization makes it so there’s no reason to sacrifice dynamic range anymore. Whether or not master engineers will use it to their advantage is up to them.
@@iurigrang If songs weren't *analog* limited (like Oasis), very different to digital clipping like 95% of artists like Metallica or RHCP. Even with declippers it won't restore clipping, because it's soft limited three times, different to clipping, clipping cuts the wave, and limited waves, lowers down the highest peak underneath, like it was by nature, but it's not. In this particular case is irreversible. Red Hot Chili Peppers has hope... is just clipping and period. Just like Metallica. Oasis loudness war was already from master tapes... specifically on Definitely Maybe, RIP. This is what I call it: Going too far... enough.
@@JnL_SSBM do you realise how your comment is a complete non sequitur to mine?
@@iurigrang The whole thing is what I said is truth. Did you know loudness war invaded vinyl? Look at oasis remastered. Even on vinyl, cassette, streaming normalisation, it won't restore clipping and even worse, limiting; from very first source (like half master tapes)
I am aware I may be a non sequitur, but loudness war isn't gone, producers know secrets tweaks to shortcut/skip normalization.
The tire analogy was worse then any analogy I've ever made.
It's just so bad, and you kept using it.
New releases are still loud, and most uploads on streaming systems are the latest remaster. They also cut out silence between tracks in "gaps left out" ripping mode. Normalization in collections was introduced with ReplayGain years ago; radio normalizes everything. That didn't end the war, and I don't see it happening now. Producers and mastering engineers think that most contemporary genres benefit from compression.
Yep people are not buying good audio equipment anymore, just think about how much people buy little speakers with a stereo so little that doesn’t matter, or Bluetooth headphones/speakers, it’s good but it still haves a long way ahead of it, the big companies know that and instead of making good quality music they just use loudness because less money
Was listening to led zep 4 on AM and then the new green day album. The loudness war is back, it deafened me. No need to be ten times louder than black dog or rocknroll! Whoever mixed it must be deaf or wanting to compress it to fook
I wouldn't say that normalizing fixed it. It just added a bandaid on top of the issue so we wouldn't be assaulted by our music playlists.
Normalizing made it so there’s no reason to do it anymore. Your song wont sound louder if you limit it to hell and back, so there’s no reason to do it anymore.
@@iurigrang There is plenty of reason. Normalizing destroys the intended dynamic range of the song to bring it into range with everything else. It's not an ideal solution, but it does work for casual listening.
@@kevincomerford2242 normalizing doesn't change dynamic range. The difference between the loud and quiet parts of the song is still the same.
@@iurigrang It does exactly that. You only have a certain range between 0-100. Normalizing brings down the peaks and evens out the RMS to fill out more of that range. If you want soft talking and loud explosions like in a movie, it will not read the same.
@@kevincomerford2242 Normalizing the volume of a track brings the OVERALL volume to the same AVERAGE level. It does not alter the track itself. It's basically just a volume knob. It does not alter the level of individual moments in a track, so if there's a louder and quieter part in the track, it's still there just as normal, but if there's a track that is SUPER LOUD all the time, that track will be reduced to the same average loudness of the quieter track.
Again, this doesn't raise and lower the volume of different moments in the track, it only turns the overall volume of the track down the same way lowering the volume on your sound system would. You can demonstrate this by downloading a track from RUclips and examining its waveform in Audacity. All the peaks and valleys will still be there, despite the fact that the track has been normalized.
But now there is an attention span war
Oh I wish, Wish, WISH RUclips would normalize their audio. But no, you go from one inaudible video to the next blown out one. Even worse. You get two people in the same video were one is quite and one is loud. I grant that that last one may be hard to program for but the rest should be no problem.
right click -> stats for nerds -> 4th statistic [volume/normalized]
it doesn't always work perfectly, but it tries.
@@ManDoorHandHookDoor Well, it's very interesting that they are at least tracking that information. Maybe some day they will actually try and do something with that data. :p But seriously, My comment was about what they where actually accomplishing, not what they where trying to do. Man they need to do better.
All videos are normalized on YT. It's just not very effective sometimes, and I think ads are excluded or something because they can be very loud (for example Wish)
@@xWood4000 I use the premium service so I can speak to adds but it doesn't matter whether they don't do normalization or they are not affective at it. The end result is the same. Different volumes for different videos.
@@ManDoorHandHookDoor "doesn't *always* work" haha. I get so many videos with WAY different volumes, it seems to be a coin flip whether it works or not~
I remember running some software for hours to normalize my whole mp3 collection in mid 2000s, otherwise some songs where too quiet and others made my ears bleed. I also had a special tool to fix the file tags in bulk, to make them consistent because mp3 players though that "KoRn" and "Korn" were two different bands. Keeping my mp3 library nice and organised was a substantial effort back then. Discovering new music was also very time consuming.
Streaming is way more convenient, but I'm getting tired of missing or disappearing albums, bonus songs and artist. I might need to dust off my old archive some day.
this is my biggest gripe, i used to use itunes before jumping ship to android rendering my music useless almost, so i had to upload my massive library to google play music and i lost hundreds of songs, songs were mismatched and had completely different tracks, some songs changed version, for example acoustic songs were replaced with the studio versions etc.
streaming killed the nuance of peoples playslists, now its just whatever apple music, spotify or youtube decide you should listen to.
@@Slippergypsy If you still have those archives of music, you can put them into a Spotify playlist using the Local Files feature on a PC, and then download that playlist on the mobile app. This will download the local copies of that music to your phone, so you can listen to all of your favorite music through one singular app, and don't have to rely on Spotify's Recommended lists. It might take a while to set up the playlist, but... it always has, and you will only ever have to do it once
Mp3 Gain for normalizing audio volume, and either Media Monkey or Mp3 Tag for organizing tags.
even normalizing you are changing the dynamics and as bad as loudness
@@atta1798 He's referring to changing the volume of the entire file. The dynamics will be kept, it will just lower the overall volume, the same as just turning down the volume knob.
Nope, streaming services and new vinyls only normalized music volume, dynamic range is still low in vast majority of modern recordings
Loudness is not just volume/amplitude; it's also the volume/amplitude of each frequency band. Check out the Fletcher-Munson curve. We hear different frequencies at the same amplitude as being louder or quieter. Our sensitivity to sound is not flat across the spectrum. For this reason and for other psychoacoustic reasons (i.e. if a sound is droning/not changing over a long period of time, then your brain tunes it out or reduces it's loudness in your mind), a lot of really smart people developed an algorithm for measuring loudness called "LUFS". It's not perfect and there is no such thing as a perfect measurement of loudness (everyone hears things slightly differently), but it's what most services use, including youtube, to calculate loudness. But there's actually still plenty of services which leave the audio untouched or not normalized. While RUclips, Spotify, iTunes, etc.. all normalize LUFS... Soundcloud, TikTok, Instagram, etc leave the levels where they are.
I would argue the loudness was a response to how we were listening to the music. Radio became more and more a car experience which is where most music gets discovered. The car is very noisey which doesn’t allow for enjoyable dynamic music as you wouldn’t hear the quiet bits.
Yeah, but you're wrong. Every single example of a "louder" track has forced me, on my computer, to turn down the volume or risk hurting my ears.
If I was driving, I would've crashed the car and died.
This is why every single radio station has a limit for how loud, or perceptually loud, a track can be over the radio waves.
Meaning all the tracks were made closer to the same volume over the radio.
"The car is very noisey" Depends of your car
@@Spyker8921 Ok well now we have electric cars.
@@andyosully No need of an EV.
@@Seth9809 Why would you have crashed your car and died?
I didn't stick with the crowd when everyone migrated to Spotify. I still buy albums, directly from the artist or on Bandcamp, and I keep all my artists and albums organized in folders on my computer and phone. I only use RUclips and Pandora sparingly to discover new artists, whom I then go and support directly.
Congrats
@@bigboy9661 - If every did what I do, artists wouldn't be forced to sign shitty deals with labels that abuse them, getting paid pennies per week for your Spotify hits, and we wouldn't be inundated by vapid musical artists that only get famous because they're sponsored by clothing and beverages. I'm not patting myself on the back. I'm angry that more people don't understand what I'm saying.
Spoiler : it didn't end the loudness war.
Sadly. Though now it's like a bunch of people running around the battlefield, clumsily flailing at the wind.
But these dials go up to eleven.
Can someone explain how streaming fixes this? That makes no sense to me. Just because they normalize it doesn't change the fact that it would be compressed to shit... Or am I wrong? That sound quality is still going to be shit.
Let me use an analogy this video in no way employs: when a war ends, all of the people who died or were injured aren’t suddenly “fixed.” But it does prevent further casualties.
@@TheGoodStuff gotcha. "The damage has been done" kind of thing
I do not really think they normalize the music for instance Spotify has a -14dBFs if not subscription if if so -10dBFs so you can make it as loud as you want...they will control the loudness to those two numbers
@The Good Stuff Yes the Loudness Wars are over and loudness over dynamics won the battle a very long time ago. The only thing that streaming service providers have done is adopt a loudness standard (in this case LUFS) and while this is a good step in the right direction, it is only one of many steps that need to be taken to truly resolve the Loudness Wars. I can do the exact same thing these providers are doing by taking a modern, hyper compressed recording and put the track through Audacity and enable the 'Normalize' feature. Sure it lowers the volume of the track, but it still sounds bad because the damage was already done during the mixing and mastering phase of the recordings (extreme compression/limiting, clipping and bad EQ). The main issue lies with modern recording practices going all the way up to the mastering chain. We need to re-educate the recording industry going from the record labels/Producers/Mixing Engineers/Mastering Engineers to adapt and adhere to these new LUFS standards in order for the issue to be corrected. Of course the excuse for loudness is always going to win out where they say its "a purely artistic and musical decision" when they do not need to follow this process anymore. Mastering Engineer Bob Katz addressed all of this in the following article published over 7 years ago: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
Exactly
You've shown four different visualisations for "loudness": two absolutely pointless (non-functioning) visualisers, the increasing and colour-changing note and the tire analogy. What you haven't shown IS AN ACTUAL WAVEFORM OR SPECTROGRAM. Why would you make a four minute video with lots of talking without actually showing what this is all about? Sorry for the all-caps, but videos that contain lots of animations but leave out the most relevant information on purpose just infuriate me. You've got the animation budget, you've got the script writers - why keep the most relevant piece of information to yourselves?
I think it works fine, it gives a good understanding without having to go into a lot of detail, and it looks like he was aiming for a 4 minute video. I actually thought the tire visualisation was one of the best I've seen for limiting.
@@hattie_burns I thought the tire analogy was a bit off since you typically want a fully inflated tire...
The tire bit made no sense and they could've just explained hills and valleys, ehh, I would accept some lewd humor if it was better.
@@xBristypically. Not in off-road applications.
I hate the loudness war, I am a non audio engineer weighing in but back in the day I used to listen to FM radio in my car and FM stations would lift the softer sections with compression, driving 70 miles an hour I thought that was a good idea, that was bringing up the softer parts of the music above the road noise.
I agree with over limiting and compression has ruined dynamics, it’s gone to far.
0:08 - we shall not ignore the fact that artist had to cope with record labels, tv and radio stations and their request. before the internet a song would not be played on mainstream media even if it was a masterpiece. only a couple songs broke free of the three minutes rule - one of them was "bohemian rhapsody"
has a musician's life got better over the last years... i dont know, but the mcd cheeseburger is the most purchased hamburger where i live and no one ever in the history of humanity has called it a masterpiece of cuisine.
it ended?
KEKW
Replaced by the LCD (lowest common denominator) war.
0:05 “songs and ablums”?
I am so glad this has a name. I HATE how music is so loud. I don't listen to streaming music really, mostly just songs I like from RUclips (I agree with @Lucid Moses, they need to normalize badly). However, this makes me think of how almost all audio on any website/game/software/whatever is DEFAULT to the MAX volume. WHY?? Why not just start at 50%? Even very common console games (Minecraft I'm looking at you) have their default volumeS (yes, there are multiple individual volumes for ambiance, monsters, etc.) as well as their primary volume always set to maximum. It needs to stop.
I'm not even convinced by your main thesis. One can still make a track sound louder for a given peak waveform level. Unless streaming services use an algorithm that figures out perceptual loudness, there will still be producers compressing & maximizing their work to sound louder.
I don't even know what you're saying here. Levels are levels.
Yeah, what you're saying doesn't make any sense.
Yes, but it eliminates the reason for increasing the loudness of your song using all kinds of goofy compression techniques, because in the end the streaming service is going to lower the volume to the same as everyone else's.
The final result. If you turn down the scream it won't start to sound like a whisper
Good video, but honestly, the amount of compression on your voice seems to follow the trend you are explaining....
set the multiband compressor to "internet delivery" :D
The irony of how overly compressed the voiceover is in this video 😂
the loudness war is far away from bein over !!!
Watch this become a trend in some years. Artists will claim it creates a sound depicting something.
Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but what you're describing is called hyperpop, and it's already here.
you didnt mention the effect, that players like the ipod shuffle had on the loudness war. People listening to random playlists tend to skip the songs that appear to be less loud. And playing tracks on "shuffle"" stopped people listening to albums, which have musically composed loudnesses between the tracks.
How were the labels monitoring which tracks users skipped on their iPod shuffles?
@@DWJ2 I don't know. I just know that mastering engineers told me so. I guess apple already knew which songs people listened on their iPods and which they didn't.
No Spinal Tap jokes?
It didn’t end the war, me, my bus compressors, limiter, and enhancers entirely disagree. I’m working every day to be just a little louder then the next guy. If you need proof go look at Nipsey Hussle Vs. YGs music
Try the volume knob. Your "louder" music sounds flatter than stuff they were doing in the eighties because your drums have no punch and your sound-stage sounds about as broad as a girl's shoulders. Cut the fakey "loudness" and introduce actual volume dynamism. You can't have loud without quiet.
@@Selrisitai some of the 80s songs were the same
@@atta1798 I think "some" is an overstatement, myself.
@@Selrisitai ok what would you say the loudness was in average? -10dBFs ...what was the dynamic range/ceiling left? Alan Parsons.....one of those songs was squashed to death ... just look a the resulting audio file print
You are doing it all deceptively ....you destroy the dynamics and intended Art in the Mix by doing that....the loudness war lost...and will be further controlled....examples...Spotify,,,,etc etc etc
Actually hasn't, people still producing super loud records
Garbage loudness war. Maybe music industry itself is garbage now.
think....who produces it.....
@@atta1798 Not me for sure.
@@LittleRadicalThinker Indeed 🙂
I find Loudness mixed rock music sounds like shit on modern car stereos. Have to EQ the hell out of it and you still can't decipher the dynamics. Generally true for albums recorded in 1992 and onwards. I initially thought it was CDs just done after 2002, but no its 1992. I used to stream from FLAC2 which is done directly from CDs and the catalog after 1992. But now they charge, so thats shit
Is the loudness war what gave us 'uuuch-uuuch-uuuch' music?
I've often asked "when did volume become more important than quality" ... now I know. thanks.
Nothing to do with LPs or CDs... In fact, a "loud" track would be *easy* to cut to an LP.
I'm probably going to regret responding to this, but I'm genuinely curious how exactly you think you can make a vinyl record just as loud as a CD.
@@TheGoodStuff An LP can't handle as much dynamic range as a CD, but "loud" music has virtually no dynamic range. Perfect. What don't you understand exactly?
@@TheGoodStuff Wider than normal space between groove turns, 45 RPM vs 33, and the ability to over modulate. Digital tops out at 0, thus can't be cranked to to saturation/distortion.
Yes, digital does have more headroom/dynamic range than an LP or 45 but it's not because it get get "louder", bur rather a lot "quieter" than records can reproduce do to surface noise, thus there is potential for more of a difference between the lowest and highest sound levels.
BTW radio is all about outright LOUDNESS. Every station has an audio compressor/processor that cranks up the sound as loud as possible without going into distortion.
Why?
It helps get the strongest signal out as possible. Without audio processing you would hear noise (yes, even on FM), and the signal wouldn't travel as far.
If you want to hear a "loud" record put on the 45 of Land Of 1000 Dances by Cannibal & the Headhunters or Tonight by Raspberries.
I think we're probably not talking about the same thing (or using these terms differently), but you can definitely distort a digital recording. And a vinyl record cannot be pressed louder than a CD. It's physically impossible--unless there's some new kind of material that's come out that I'm not aware of.
I think you're talking about compression--which is integral to the loudness war--but yes, you're right, you can quietly compress something so it has no dynamic range. But it's still going to be quieter than a CD.
alblums
This video just made me tho l of Espresso by Sabrina carpenter
I’m so happy you keep making these. I know it can’t be easy without the resources and time y’all used to have. I know that behind the scenes, each of you has grown into your own lives, with children and cool opportunities, like moving across the country or getting involved in other projects. It means a lot that you still take the time and effort to make these. It brings a smile to my face every time a new one pops up in my feed. Awesome video! Keep up the great work.
Hey, thanks! That's great to hear.
Luckily, youtubers are the only ones affected.
???
wonderful vid
Wow, quite a few false claims here. CD's have volume limits the same as vinyl regardless of analog vs digital and normalisation doesn't have much to do with the loudness wars, its all about audio compression!! You guys should probably do some research or at least run it past your audio guy... bad form.
That's absolutely wrong. You can't master for a vinyl record the same as you do for a CD. There are level limits to a vinyl that a CD is not subject too. Hence, you could compress the shit out of a CD master, brickwall limit it all to hell so the all the levels are smashing their brains into the ceiling, but you'd have to reduce the level for a vinyl master. The lathe just wouldn't be able to handle it. Normalization (as I explain in the video) lowers levels so all the songs in a playlist are pretty much the same loudness. This makes "loudness" compression pointless, although it doesn't get rid of the compression. So, looks like you're the one making false claims.
@@TheGoodStuff Plenty of vinyl still uses massive compression, oftentimes the same masters as the CDs. It doesn't need to sound any more dynamic.
You're confusing loudness with dynamic range compression, and it's that compression that is the problem. Normalising does absolutely nothing to cure the problem, as it can't uncompress the dynamic range. Loudness can be averted by simply turning the volume down, and normalisation basically does that, making the volume consistent across tracks. Compression is a one-way curse. This video is nonsense, and music is still fu.., erm ruined.
Uhm, no, I’m not.
@@TheGoodStuff Is this where I say 'Oh, yes you are!' and we go on like that for several pages? Because it's seems rather silly, and doesn't actually have anything to do with my comment, so I'd rather not, if that's all right with you.
Fine by me.
He never said it cured the problem, lmao.
He said the war was over, there’s no reason to make your tracks louder because they’ll play at the same level anyways. This doesn’t save old tracks, but if you actually check mastering tutorials on youtube, the advice has changed significantly when the goal is mastering for spotify, and this definitely shows on new records.
The "loudness war" is all about compression, and that's what the video is about.
Make more videos
The first 3 seconds are boomer af
So... It's boomer to want musicians to get a decent royalty rate? Or are you referring to the matter of musicians being at the mercy of the recommendation algorithms for publicity? 🙄 RIAA blows, as did the adpocalypse.
no, you just don't understand what you are talking about