Alex wrote:

Listeners will just end up turning the volume knob down if they find it too loud anyway, so what's the point in making records so loud?

Because of radio. Heavy compression -> your song sounds louder than the other songs played. That's how it started.

Also, when (mainly commercial) radio stations began to compress their output heavily by the use of limiters, many record labels thought it was better to do deliver an already multi-band compressed track to avoid the track being mangled by the radio station's limiter.

The (heavy) compression/limiting used to be applied in the final mastering process but nowadays when much popular music is produced and mixed in-the-box, the multiband compressor seems to have become an integral part of the recording process - in other words: the compression is nowadays often applied already in the recording and mixdown processes, making it impossible to get a great (=more dynamic) remaster in the future :-(

Puncher wrote:

tournedos wrote:

Alex wrote:

It seems to vary. Take for example the remastered versions of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours; the original master (which is or was available on CD) sounds fantastic. Very dynamic, all the instruments/guitar strums are still there as they should be, jumping out of the speakers at you, and the drums still sound fantastic/dynamic/punchy. Compare this to the latest 'remastered' version and you'll find a lot of the 'realness' of the original recording is gone.

What a coincidence, just this morning I dug that up on Spotify - haven't heard the album in 20 years or so - and was badly disappointed. None of the lovely sound of my memories left. Dreams was just about the only track that I bothered listening through, just because it's such a beatiful tune. "Destroyed" would be the word I'd use...

There was this brilliant TV series (can't remember the original English title) that in each episode dissected a classic album track by track, telling how it was made, and even let the recording engineers pick up single instrument tracks from the master tapes and tell what had been going on behind them. Rumours was featured in it as well. It really made me appreciate the hard work that was done in the old days.

 

It's called "link"!😂

My favourite was either "Graceland" or the  "Songs in the Key of LIfe" episode.

Wow! - I've just read my own link and found out that there is a "Rush" episode too! "Moving Pictures" is my favourite Rush album😐

It's been a multi-tiered mess.

First, the radio stations began compressing all their content, pushing it up in volume, in order to "out-shout" other radio stations they were competing against (and of course they left an extra 3dB ceiling for the ads.)

Then the radio stations discovered that they couldn't play music which wasn't pushed, as well. Because this music would suddenly seem as if a hole in the wall of sound they created.

This probem is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people use radio to provide a background drone (at work, leisure, etc.) Radio managers noticed that stations with dynamic content wouldn't be selected for this kind of use, because the suddenly "silent" music would make them swith to another station.

So radio stations began fiddling with the music, reducing the dynamics, to provide a WALL OF SOUND!!!

And then record producers and bands decided to do the fiddling instead of letting the radio stations do it. We're now at the ludicrous situation where a lot of people have excellent sound systems, capable of reproducing very large dynamic ranges, right in their homes - and this equipment is being used to play back music with 4-5 dB dynamic range!

If you've seen the "Sound leveling" function in iTunes, you will have seen the offshoot of this development: people are so used to all their music droning away at the same loud level, that they want their home playback to do the same. This function adjusts all the music on your harddisk to one volume level ... (sigh).
Never use it, please. There's even software around that is supposed to "improve" upon the built-in volume leveling feature in iTunes.

This animation shows you what's happened - and this is actually a fairly mild example:
link

If you're serious about your music listening, you need to be aware of this. I had the same reaction to the "Rumours" release as Alex had, but I've come to be skeptical of all "remasters" and have found that it is useful to check reviews on the net before making a purchase. Now that people have become aware of the Loudness Wars, what's been done to the music is often evaluated.

If you want to check your music, Tischmeyer Technology has given us the tools we need. They've taken a definite stance in the Loudness Wars:

link

thank you for the link🤒

Alex wrote:

SACD/Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for listening at home. PWM is a much smarter way of doing things than the conventional way of recording/storing/reproducing digital audio - it almost always seems to sound less angular and edgy! Unfortunately, PWM recording takes up a lot more processing power than the conventional digital format and would make a lot of modern recording techniques impossible to do!

Incidentally, PWM is actually how B&O's ICEPower amps work. Very clever technology!

 

Hope I haven't confused people.

Reading back through this post, I probably have. Oh well...

This is quite an interesting thread.  

For background information there's an article on my website that you may find useful:

http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/taming_wild_mastering_levels/P0/

It is writeen for audio professionals, not consumers, and it discusses the problem from the standpoint of mastering ngineers.  Nonetheless, you all may find it interesting.  

A couple of comments: the Wikipedia piece the Soundproof cited has a fundamental error, in that it confuses "loudness" with "audio level."  They are not at all the same.  This is a general media misunderstanding.  

"Loudness" is a subjective impression we have of what we hear.  Our sense of loudness, as many of you have pointed out, is under our direct control via the playback level control.  

"Audio level" is the magnitude of the audio signal PRIOR to playback.  When we complain about those levels, we are complaingin about something entirely different than "loudness", as many of you have correctly pointed out.  

The comments about changing dynamic range and tonal quality in remastered recordings are well taken.  Interestingly, many early CDs were not mastered as CDs but as vinyl discs.  Bob Ludwig has complained fairly bitterly that he was usually not allowed to "remaster" a recording for CD after he'd done the vinyl (not budgeted for), back in the '80s.  So, all the things he did to make it sound good on vinyl tended to not sound so good on CD (a different medium, after all).  We've all gotten a bit better at that, but we're still wacky about overall level (at the behest of our clients).  

I've now backed down my reference CD playback level by 5 dB, just to accomodate that nuttiness.  

I hope this is of interest.  Thanks for being concerned about thse things.  

Best regards,

Dave Moulton wrote:

The comments about changing dynamic range and tonal quality in remastered recordings are well taken.  Interestingly, many early CDs were not mastered as CDs but as vinyl discs.  Bob Ludwig has complained fairly bitterly that he was usually not allowed to "remaster" a recording for CD after he'd done the vinyl (not budgeted for), back in the '80s.  So, all the things he did to make it sound good on vinyl tended to not sound so good on CD (a different medium, after all).  We've all gotten a bit better at that, but we're still wacky about overall level (at the behest of our clients).  

Interestingly there are quite a few albums where I prefer the 'vinyl-master-but-on-CD' version as opposed to the remastered CD version. For example, Dark Side Of The Moon (the original Remaster is horrible IMO) and Rumors. Same with a lot of The Beatles' recordings!

Dave Moulton wrote:

I've now backed down my reference CD playback level by 5 dB, just to accomodate that nuttiness.  

Out of interest, as I really want to increase my level of knowledge about mastering, what do you actually use as a reference CD - a technical recording with test tones etc... or musical content. If the latter, what do you actually use, and how do you choose it?

Cheers.

Alex wrote:

 

Out of interest, as I really want to increase my level of knowledge about mastering, what do you actually use as a reference CD - a technical recording with test tones etc... or musical content. If the latter, what do you actually use, and how do you choose it?

Cheers.

Read

Puncher wrote:

Readlink and, as Dave says, visit Bob's website.

I have it, but haven't yet read it! It's on my to-do list...

Alex asked:

"Out of interest, as I really want to increase my level of knowledge about mastering, what do you actually use as a reference CD - a technical recording with test tones etc... or musical content. If the latter, what do you actually use, and how do you choose it?"  

About five years ago, I created a CD for this very purpose.  It includes some very carefully documented Pink Noise signals (including a set of octave band noise signals) plus a library of excerpts of commercially successful recordings (12 examples) and 2 evaluation sequences created for in-house use by B&O.  

Because the CD uses copyrighted materials, I do not sell it, but I do hand it out for free to students and colleagues for the kind of study that Alex is interested in, as a matter of course (it falls under the "Fair Use Doctrine of the US Copyright Law).

I'm not sure how to get a copy to you, Alex, but I'm happy to try.   Let me know if you want one.  

Best regards.