Loudness Wars...redux

[cuttime]

Nothing new here, but food for thought and some intelligent comments to boot:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opin ... -wars.html

[frankf]

+1 on this article written for the non audio pro. I liked the charts.


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[HCMarkus]

It is great to see information like this making its way to the consumer level.

One thing I like about the streaming services... they do not want hyper-squashed masters, and if they receive them, they simply reduce the volume on their end, so there is no "impact" advantage to be gained by over-compressing/limiting. Mixing and Mastering for Spotify is much more fun than dong so when clients want every hint of the last dying gasps of dynamics squeezed from their recording's tortured lungs.

TV is similar... broadcasters have very strict level limits they must work within. Remember when TV commercials were way "louder" than the program you were trying to watch? This has been at least somewhat curtailed by current broadcast standards that focus on long-term perceived loudness. If interested in the subject, check this article out:

https://www.izotope.com/en/blog/mixing/ ... dcast.html

It follows that, when mixing songs for TV, squashing to the extreme is neither necessary nor desirable.

In another thread, I mentioned Waves WLM Plus Loudness Meter is a plugin that really helps one understand how loud a track is perceived to be. The inclusion of a true peak limiter (to catch those pesky inter-sample overs) makes WLM Plus a very nice final plug on one's mastering chain. iZotope Insight looks like a fine metering program too, but may be overkill for audio-only folk. I know there are many others as well.

[bayswater]

Would be interesting to see these charts on the original and 50 year remix of the White Album (other remixes or remasters of older material). I started listening to the remix today and the "clip" line is the first thing you notice.