Music Into Noise: The Destructive Use Of Dynamic Range Compression part 2

I don't disagree with Jak all that much.

I was just listening to "Don't Just Do Something" by Spiritualized (2001) and was marveling at how subtle a lot of the orchestration details are. I think Spaceman could have easily have beat me over the head with his flugelhorn or whatever, but instead it was such a subtle detail that I could only appreciate it on a subconscious level unless I was really paying attention. And maybe this is part of what this comes down to: music today is competing for your attention in a way that it never has had to do in the past. There is no room for subtlety in this consumer environment.

The substance found in pop music can be measured by how many values the final product shares with a jingle.

Again, to say there can't be subtle elements in loud music I think conflates the arrangement with the technology. You can have quiet parts or elements buried in the mix in heavily compressed music just as easily as older music, it's just when your music is firing on all cylinders it will be louder than other records.

And I know the issue of loudness in music often goes beyond that, but these things you're mentioning seem more like production choices rather than a side effect of the overuse of mastering compression.

That all was worded a little oddly but I think the point is there

not really

xp

production choices in pop music are kinda inseparable from the overuse of mastering compression. the choices are made because the music must be streamlined in a certain way.

not really

xp

― queeple qua queeple (Jordan), Monday, February 25, 2013 3:39 PM (3 minutes ago)

To me?

FWIW I'm not urging that all music be smashed through a maxi-limiter regardless of content, I'm just saying the idea of loudness as being a problem, avoidable or not, doesn't ring true to me for most music or most consumers. I listen to a lot of pop, rap, indie rock, all that stuff and it never enters my mind. I think the only time it's really jumped out at me other than on Death Magnetic is on the last Red Hot Chili Peppers album, and neither of those got a lot of spins at my house.

You can have quiet parts or elements buried in the mix in heavily compressed music just as easily as older music, it's just when your music is firing on all cylinders it will be louder than other records.

no, i was referring to this. if a track is really crushed at the mastering stage, then even sections that are sparse or "quiet" (i mean, that give the impression of being quiet because of the tones or instrumentation) will be at the same level (or nearly the same) as the loudest/most dense sections.

Ha, it's funny that 10 years ago, I didn't see the problem with Vapor Trails whereas the production of that seems unlistenable to me now. Obv my perspective has been changed by actually doing more sound design/mixing/mastering since then - and that's the thing: I don't think anyone is saying that this is something that every listener is aware of but this can be (and is) frustrating for those of us who are serious to varying degrees about certain audio values. I don't notice digital colour grading issues when I watch movies but I don't doubt that those are real things that can make a real difference to people who are more aware of the details of film.

no, i was referring to this. if a track is really crushed at the mastering stage, then even sections that are sparse or "quiet" (i mean, that give the impression of being quiet because of the tones or instrumentation) will be at the same level (or nearly the same) as the loudest/most dense sections.

Yes, I do understand that. But within sections, instruments that are mixed quiet or loud relative to other instruments will remain so. Mastering compression doesn't automatically make every element of the mix 'loud' even if it results in music that is relatively loud throughout.

xp I do a lot of audio work too, and I would consider myself more attuned to compression or unnatural sound than the average listener to some small extent. Loudness is a part of the sound for a lot of music, for some it works and I guess for some it doesn't, but I almost never find myself put off by it. But if these artificial enhancer things are indeed more appealing even on a superficial level to the 'uneducated' listener or watcher, does it matter if they are intrinsically 'wrong' to the purists?

Well, obviously, it matters to the 'purists'. It's just as obvious that there is a market for this sort of production or else it would not have become so prevalent. Overcompressed recordings do often sound appealing on first listen to me but the appeal quickly wears off (again, for me).

i agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and there can be good + appropriate masters that are really loud and aggressive. it can also be done really badly and applied to the wrong record. i know i can point to records i love that have super hot masters, and records that suffered for it.

Yeah, I'm not saying that there's no place for it at all.

I totally agree with both y'all that overcompression can adversely affect certain music. My only objection is the weird hyping of a production trend into a DEADLY PROBLEM WITH YOUR KIDS IN SIGHT in music. I remember the article in the OP that's no longer there, it was like, "Here's Bolero. Now here's Livin' La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR PRECIOUS MUSIC digital limiters. Martians. Rayguns." It was kind of ridiculous imo.

still-- I don't think it's some bullshit fad that hipsters talk about just to be on the cool side of some cultural trend. it actually makes shit sound like shit.

from the Bob Ludwig interview linked upthread:

At an Audio Engineering Society workshop I was recently in about loudness, Susan Rogers from Berklee College talked about the hair cells in our ears that receive music and she pointed out that loud compressed music does not “change” as much as dynamic music and notes that “we habituate to a stimulus if it stops changing. Change ‘wakes up’ certain cells that have stopped firing. This is cognitively efficient and therefore automatic.” In other words, there are very physical reasons why too much compression turns off our music receptors.

So yes, this is a real thing that can be physically measured.

That is total bullshit though (and I know how highly respected Bob is as a mastering engineer). Volume changes are not the only way to create dynamic changes in music, that is like saying brightness or something is the only variable that affects dynamics in visual art. ILX favorite Skrillex is a perfect example of someone whose music is smashed to hell in mastering, but imo he is widely known to the public essentially due to the dynamic changes of his music. The RMS barely changes from verse to chorus (or pre-drop to drop) yet there's a huge shift there that is obviously perceivable by anyone listening. Kind of a dorky example but it's the easiest way to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

the "problem", if you want to identify it as such, is that people are identifying textural and timbre changes as changes in dynamics

They very definitely can be! One of the wonders of recorded music, dynamics transcend the marking on a page in a number of ways. It's what I'm saying with Skrillex, literally anybody listening to "Cinema" or whatever is going to perceive a 'quiet' verse part and a 'loud' robot part, but there's really very little qualitative volume difference between the two parts if you measure .

But some of us want actual dynamics, i.e. changes in volume, too!

I wonder about the extent to which I've always liked pop singles for having a smashed sound. Like liking Phil Spector or Motown. I wonder about the extent to which I mix my own music so that's inherently smashed (just in the mix, without even considering adding compression afterwards).

One thing that's struck me about compression in contemporary pop music is that I do sometimes like it. I like it just for stylistic reasons. Like when the chorus comes in on the big One Direction hit and it's no louder - I actually like it in that case.

yeah sometimes i feel like there can be a counterintuitive and ultimately pleasure-enhancing tension when the chorus is the same overall volume as the verse but the balance between certain elements suddenly shifts.

the compression/loudness thing probably doesn't mean much of anything to anyone listening in a car or on an ipod or a computer or a phone or computer speakers. you aren't going to get great sound from any of those things (okay if your car is fancy i guess you can get decent sound but most standard car audio/speakers leave a lot to be desired). but i listen to music on home stereo loudspeakers and if i play a cd that sounds distorted when i turn my stereo up (to a reasonable degree) i never play it again. to me its a faulty product. and a LOT of modern CDs are made this way.

overcompression is shitty and lazy but is useful if you listen to music in environments that have a lot of other noise, and music is often played these days in sonic environments where it has to compete for space. the idea that dynamic range compression might be a desirable for stuff you'll be listening to at home seems completely ridiculous, obviously you want full dynamic range when you can get it or several key musical effects will be effectively unavailable to you as a listener. unless you live above a train station or something I guess.

xp wow scott and I were thinking about the exact same thing at the exact same moment

we finally have a car with a cd player (and a dvd player! first car from the 21st century we have ever owned) and i bought the who's tommy at the thrift store this morning and put it in and i was kinda enjoying how fucked up it sounded. bonkers separation and acoustic guitars that sounded like they were made out of glass. so brittle. and very digital. i dunno, sounded like 1988 in the car. very loud and harsh and ringing and echo-y but kinda cool anyway just cuzza what they decided to highlight on the cd. like a fan-made remix.

You knew I was gonna ask: which remaster?

(there've been, literally, five)

obviously you want full dynamic range when you can get it

It's not obvious to me, though. It's not what Phil Spector was going for in his arrangements, I don't think.

Or how he recorded/mixed those arrangements, I mean.

"You knew I was gonna ask: which remaster?"

it was pretty old! like, might have been 80's vintage. so, just a stock copy, i think.

i got a bunch of old rock CDs in at the store - 80's vintage - including some paul mccartney remasters and i kinda want to test them out in the car now. i have no idea how many speakers there are in the car. 4? 10? 20? sound in the back and front and everywhere. dodge caravan. from 2007. the dvd sound is actually pretty sweet too. when the kids watch loony tunes i gotta duck cuzza elmer's bullets flying everywhere.

really wish y'all could come over and check out these unplayed first pressing sinatra records on capitol that i scored. jesus christmas do they sound nice. minimal surface noise. never seen nicer copies.

yeah sometimes i feel like there can be a counterintuitive and ultimately pleasure-enhancing tension when the chorus is the same overall volume as the verse but the balance between certain elements suddenly shifts.

I just like the TIGHTNESS of a record like "Da Doo Ron Ron," which is as flat as a pancake as far as dynamic range goes.

Dynamic range compression did not exist then

In terms of what's used today software wise, there were tube compressors etc but it's not the same thing

I'm not saying it did; I'm just saying those records are flat dynamically and comparing that to the flatness attained with compression on modern records.

it was pretty old! like, might have been 80's vintage. so, just a stock copy, i think.

Got it. Of the five remasters, one was a complete remix which isn't generally thought highly of, so I thought it might be that (there's audible digital artifacts throughout, and crazy-ass separation). One way to tell is, if the band's faces don't appear in the cover art, it's the remix.

ah, i'll look later. that might have been the one!

it definitely sounded worked on. shiny. and weird.

Just listening to the mono mix of "Penny Lane" on an old 45 - flat, flat, flat dynamics all the way through. Squashed. Sounds great.

(Sorry if I'm coming off as argumentative. I know that the mindless use of brick wall compression just for the sake of loudness is not a good thing.)

Hm, I definitely would not say that "Penny Lane" has flat dynamics on the 2009 stereo remaster of MMT.

I would like resolution regarding whether Phil Spector's stuff is dynamically flat or not. Can anyone actually confirm one way or another?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8hjtFq3vE0

50's/60's/70's music also massively distorted in so many many ways, but the type of distortion that rockists approve of so it's ok

timellison I think I read you re: Spector 'anticipating' dynamic range compression with his dense arrangements.

This is an impossible topic btw, it's like asking "how much dissonance is too much"?

I am mixing things one day out of seven and I'm amazed every time, every time! with something to do with volume, like some insane popping electronic doodles will sound so terrifyingly loud and yet be barely touching the faders. Then a snare drum will come in and be not-loud-enough but actually too loud. It's so much more complicated than can be distilled to a "compression good" "dynamic range good" kind of argument. I love compression, there are lots of records I wish were, well, I would just say "mixed better" but I do specifically mean I wish they had less dynamic range, and had some compression on the final mix. The rimshots on D'Angelo records are too fucking loud, you can't hear what's going on on those songs unless you make your ears bleed with those offbeats, i.e., call me crazy, but I'd argue that you don't know anything about that album except that beautifully recorded snare drum. The listening environment zeitgeist (and age) is a huge factor, too, of course, I was so into a lot of music as a teenager that sounds sibilant these days, with the voice mixed way too high, was it the 90s? or has my taste changed? Anyway I'm a better musician I went to a top music school etc.

looking at the waveform of da doo ron ron from the back to mono box, it's not crushed at all. musically there aren't a lot of dynamics, but the recording itself isn't crushed into a rectangular waveform.

but if you heard the song on the radio when it first came out, the radio station was probably adding more limiting (uppermississippi's claim that "Dynamic range compression did not exist then" is demonstrably false). And if you cranked it up real loud, the tube amp in your radio would compress a bit as would the speaker cone itself. there are lots of different causes of compression and distortion, and a contemporary digital master of an old record doesn't necessarily represent the experience of listening to the record when it was first released.