This includes CD remastering being decried as "over-compressed" when the overall volume of the recording is raised from where it was during the "chuck 'em out the door as quick as possible" early days of the format. And that's just one bias that I don't believe (it's a problem of nearly religious conviction complexity and that's not a good thing) is helpful. Some folks judge it by what "feels" right in terms of where the little marker on their volume knob is set.
Simply raising the volume by amplifying everything isn't going to change the nature of the sound. And neither is a bit of limiting as
@jimfisheye said.
But when you have songs that, for the most part, do not change their volume at all despite the music actually suggesting that, then you're removing a fundamental human element of the music. IMHO, the loudness war is as damaging to music as global warming is to the planet. (Not coincidentally, compressed masterings have long since been referred to as "hot".)
When music remains at a constant level, then it automatically turns into audio wallpaper. Look at the history - people started downloading songs for free a few years after the loudness wars really took flight. Again, this is not a coincidence. When you remove the music's possibility to move you, it gets devalued and nobody wants to pay money for it anymore.
I think this quote comes from the SH forums: "A good friend worked for a record store in the early/mid 90’s and said many artists seemed obsessed with having their CD’s louder than others when strolling through the store. Sadly, that obsession may have caused the death of the music industry as we knew it. Soon after, I remember losing enthusiasm for purchasing new music. Why pay for something that no longer soothed my ears and soul? From then on, I consumed more older CD’s and vinyl…which pushed me even further into music from the 50’s-80’s."
Bob Speer said this in 2001: “The record labels blame digital downloads, MP3s, CD burners, and others for the lack of CD sales. While there is some truth to their constant whining, they only have themselves to blame for the steady decline in CD sales.
Much of the music being produced today isn’t music at all.... It’s
anti-music because the life is being squashed out of it through over-compression during the tracking, mixing, and mastering stages.... It’s no wonder that consumers don’t want to pay for the CDs being produced today.
They’re over-priced and they sound bad.”
IMHO, Music destined to be consumed in hostile environments may benefit from excess compression. (Cars, Subways thru earphones etc)
Yes, I see that point. I've had the same experience with earbuds in crowded places - the songs that sounded worst on my CD player were the most listenable in that environment.
But it should simply be possible to have a DSP compressor/limiter effect built into car systems or mp3 players, instead of mastering even a hi-res download or concert movie blu-ray for garbage equipment.
That brings up another possibility (tin foil hat time, kiddos). Was brickwalling less about over zealous engineers than it was about planned obsolescence? The industry knows that you get maybe 40 years of robust sales from a strong release. The switch from vinyl to CD in the early 90s gave customers a product that doesn't wear out over time the way vinyl can (at least that was what they wanted you to think). So they just sold you a 40 year product. What now? Then they made some REALLY great sounding remasters and got people into re-buying their CDs. So now what were they going to sell them? Twenty more years of commercial viability wasted. So perhaps the loudness wars were created as a marketing took. A deliberately defective one. They sell another batch of CDs then 15 years later say "whoops! turns out those weren't so good, so now we've fixed it and we will sell you yet another version".
Ruining the market short-term so you can sell more long-term isn't smart. And indeed, only a fraction of originally brickwalled albums have actually been improved with reissues.
Anyway, I think the real reason for the volume wars was being louder on the radio. No more, no less. You could try to sit these guys down and explain that they're really just ruining people's music but they just come back with "but ours go to 11".
And that is stupid! The radio applies its own processing and tries to keep its levels consistent. So what happened when e.g. I recorded the radio debut of Tears for Fears' comeback single "The Tipping Point"? Why, the old song they played before it ("Pale Shelter") sounded louder
and crisper.
Unfortunately most people - and remember the vast majority of music listeners are not fanatical listeners with expensive, calibrated systems - prefer compressed, limited music when given a simple A-B test because the brain reflexively prefers louder.
This is missing the point that every listener normalizes the music to a preferred level. Give me an old Saga CD and I'll turn it up. Give me a new Deep Purple CD and I'll turn it down. I did this long before I knew about the loudness wars. Especially if something sounded too loud to me.
Believe it or not, the most painful example of a bricked CD I've ever heard was a remaster of Gino Vanelli - Brother to Brother. Smooth AOR turned to fingernails on a chalkboard. I borrowed it from the library and couldn't believe what I was hearing. I would have been really upset if I had paid money for it.
Well, yikes.
Album list - Dynamic Range Database
