Fuck the loudness wars

[life after math]

In the last few weeks I've been going back and re-purchasing a lot of my favorite DJ'ing tunes in .wav format. When re-acquiring my Eskmo collection, I stumbled upon a new Eskmo remix of a Spor tune. Excited about the prospect of a delicious new Eskmo tune, I purchased it after giving a brief listen on the site's shitty lo-fi audio player. Listening to the tune today, I noticed it sounded fuzzy every time there was a bassline note or a sub bass hit. I opened it up in a wave editor to see this:



Fucking outrageous. The audio is in the red for about 95% of the entire song. There's a lot of brickwall mastering these days where people put a limiter RIGHT before it peaks and crank the gain way up so it's not quite peaking but it sounds OMG SO FUCKING LOUD & HARD HITTING, effectively ruining dynamics and sound subtleties in the process. This, however takes it to a whole new level. It's just peaking...for most of the tune. It sounds fucking horrible. Listen...

http://radio.earstroke.com/shitwall.mp3
http://radio.earstroke.com/shitwall.mp3

It's not something like Clark's crazy sound auteur idea of using compression & limiting as a type of dynamic instruments in the song, it's straight up ignorance on the part of sound engineers and the producers who just say "yeah that sounds heavy, bro, awesome"). Why doesn't anybody realize that a DJ or a home listener CAN EASILY JUST TURN THE VOLUME KNOB UP IF THEY WANT IT LOUDER without the track having to be totally butchered before it even gets to the consumer?

This is why all the DJs and clubgoers are deaf anymore.

[lowpass]

Not me, I wear ear plugs

[-[2]DAY_-]

http://turnmeup.org/


Might find this interesting.

[daft cunt]

I didn't listen to the tune but the wave on the picture doesn't look that bad. You sure the fuzziness isn't intended ?
If it was really brickwall limiting you'd just see a rectangle for 95% of the tune.

[gnome]

I didn't listen to the tune but the wave on the picture doesn't look that bad. You sure the fuzziness isn't intended ?
If it was really brickwall limiting you'd just see a rectangle for 95% of the tune.

Yeah. and the rest of the wave seems nice aswell

[life after math]

Ok, thread title adjusted accordingly.

[vly]

Who cares if this tune looks red on the wave editor
The track is awesome and probably one of the worst examples of bad engineering and mastering..Actually it's quite the opposite

[deadly_habit]

yea that isn't loudness wars at all
see metallica death magnetic for that

[Depone]

yea that isn't loudness wars at all
see metallica death magnetic for that

Thats tragic isn't it...

[alex_l]

You know they did a terrible job because of all the people downloading the Guitar Hero version

[setspeed]

yeah that first pic looks alright to me! this was the final CD version waveform of one of the tracks from the last Metallica album:

[rdubz]

I understand exactly what ur saying, there's a reason why venues have limiters and compressors, in terms of loudness when playing out theres just no need, the true audiophile is going to be disappointed at the compromise of 0db throughout, honestly I see it more of a selling point these days, things sound as loud as poss at the point of purchase to make it more interesting to the consumer, it's everywhere, some of the most successful synths presets already have a compressor, reverb and echo to make more of an impact of the consumer prior to purchase, regardless of how it's actually going to fit into a tune, (of course u can take these off but that's not the point I'm trying to make).

A lot of ppl want to sound like Nero and Reso, I don't blame them, but I've learnt the hard way not to substitute time on the mixdown with a quick gain and limit, some ppl would say there's an art to getting a brickwall that sounds good, I wouldn't nessercarily argue, but there's a time and place for it, it doesn't have to be every tune, but hey, that's fashion for ya! It's what the kids want, people wanna sell records so they do what they gotta do, personally u may hear a few tunes of mine attempting to get that sound, but it definitely won't be a standard to meet for my end product, it all depends on the vibe of the tune for me. 

[Recessive Trait]

yeah that first pic looks alright to me! this was the final CD version waveform of one of the tracks from the last Metallica album:

is that for real?

[Capture pt]

^^^

holy shit haha, what album was that? i gotta hear this.,...

[skimpi]

yeah that first pic looks alright to me! this was the final CD version waveform of one of the tracks from the last Metallica album:

that looks alright, theres a single moment of dynamic change near the start lol

[setspeed]

that was Death Magnetic, the CD version. Apparently the version on Guitar Hero wasn't so bad - seems like they listened to fans concerns.

here was a pretty good post about it by a mastering engineer

http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/200 ... dness.html

[abZ]

Yeah the tune at the top looks pretty standard. But this type of mix down and mastering dictates the way everything sounds now. It's why snares look/sound more like kicks than snares. I miss that crack you used to get from jungle and garage snares back in the day. It's damn near impossible to do and still get the loudness out of the track that is expected today. I do beleive the loudness war will begin to go in reverse eventually. Dynamics in electronic musi could really open things up IMO. Dance music will always be loud but not all electronic music needs to be made for the club.

MetAllica makes me want to cry. I used to idolize them in the 80s

[gnome]

MetAllica makes me want to cry. I used to idolize them in the 80s

they been beatin' a dead horse for too long

[3za]

use this

[Sharmaji]

Yeah the tune at the top looks pretty standard

not even mate, half the time if I send a client a master w/ peaks like that, they send it back saying it's not loud enough :S

-6db RMS. that's what we're working at in electronic music. fucking -6db RMS. I scan some stuff that's popular on beatport, etc, and it's even pushing -3. we're really at the point where there's nowhere else to go.