How loud is a piece of string?

PSP XenonI’ve been charged with the job of mastering audio recently, which is a job that I’m completely unqualified for but am finding really interesting.

Mastering is the process that recordings go through after leaving the mixing engineer and before arriving at the replication plant. A record might contain a whole bunch of mixes from different sources, at different levels, with different amounts of energy. It’s the mastering engineer’s job to make these mixes coherent.

There are many parts to this job, including; equalisation, microdynamics, macrodynamics, arrangement/spacing of tracks, and noise reduction/removal.

I’d like to talk about dynamics, and specifically, the loudness race.

Since the mid-nineties, CD mastering has become so aggressive that we’ve effectively backed ourselves into a corner. With each new hit wanting to push the loudness barrier a bit further, we’ve run out of headroom, with the majority of releases being first heavily compressed, and then brick wall limited, resulting in severe clipping. Which incidentally is a Bad Thing. 

Loud masters are fatiguing on the ears (which I think contributes to our impatience with music these days), and lack a major feature that I really look for in music – dynamics.

I can understand the reasons for the loudness race. Record companies want their track to sound fresher and bigger than the competition. But the trouble with all of this, is that perceived loudness is really just relative. Humans are pretty bad at judging absolute levels of sound pressure – or rather we’re pretty good at adjusting to what we’re hearing, zoning out noise, and focussing on what we want to hear.

So before I rattle on about this (more posts to come), I’d like to ask of anyone who might be reading…

  1. Does the perceived average loudness of a recording make an impression on you about the quality of the recording?
     
  2. Do you mind adjusting the level of your stereo/iPod from record to record?

I’m just curious really, to hear other opinions on the subject of loudness. Have a lovely xmas!

2008
24/12
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    • adam butters
    • December 24th, 2008

    1 not really i like to hear the parts of a recording in a natural way i dont think loudness= quality in fact most of the time in my opinion it spoils the listening
    2 i dont mind changing volumes between recordings at all after all its not that much of a inconvenience

  2. 1. I think maximising loudness does create the illusion of strength or fullness in a recording but can definitely be fatiguing after a while. It depends on the style of the track though – it’s particularly important with upbeat/dancey tracks. It’s a shame that we’ve almost become dependant on a minimum level of perceived loud/fullness in order for a track to sound professional.
    2. I rarely find that the perceived volume of individual tracks varies so much that i really feel the need to adjust the volume. If this were the case i think it could get pretty annoying. Most of the time i think ears are pretty could at readjusting to the volume without much disturbance.

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