Music Into Noise: The Destructive Use Of Dynamic Range Compression

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LOUD AS POSSIBLE AT ALL TIMES

The exciting crescendoes get flattened out...the drums lose their impact and punch...nothing "jumps out of the mix" anymore...nothing can build up to a climax because there is nowhere left to go...isn't this crazy?!?!

It is a pity that in the past few years this race to have the loudest CD possible - sacrificing dynamics and rich sound - is spreading even to artists whose CDs will never be played on the radio nor ever have to "compete" with loud-as-possible commercial products...not to mention that more compression on a CD doesn't make it "louder on the radio" anyway, but that's a different story...

The technology used to make our standard 16 bit, 44.1 CD continues to improve: better A/D converters, better bit rate and sample rate converters, quantum leaps in recording software quality etc... thus making it possible to produce better sounding CDs than ever before. The trend for hypercompressing the final master in order to make it as loud as it can possibly get means that most of these sonic advantages - which can give us better sounding CDs - are simply thrown out the window in favor of LOUDness. (Yes there are some kinds of music which do work best when the whole mix is flattened out dynamically, and I am a big fan of lo-fi and wrecked sounds...but that's done for musical reasons, not simply out of fear that your CD won't be the loudest in the CD changer. )

Compression is a great thing. It can be used to create very cool sounds and can help make the sound more "electrified" and exciting, it can make an ordinary sound into something completely new and strange. The problem today is overdoing the compression of the final mix for the "unmusical" reason of making it as loud as possible...only so it can "compete" with other CDs which have sacrificed sonic quality for sheer loudness. Artists, recording engineers, mastering engineers and producers have to start standing up for better sound as opposed to running the sonic equivalent of a steamroller over the music in order to flatten it out simply to make it as loud as _______(fill in the blank loud CD).

I could go on and on about this problem and why I think it is stupid and sad, but mastering engineer Bob Katz has already written some excellent articles on the subject:
Digital Domain (click on "Articles", then "Compression".)
Here is another good article by Rip Rowan on the same subject:
Over the Limit. This guy is obviously a very big Rush fan, so put up with his glowing comments about them because he uses their albums to clearly demonstrate the increasing problem to very good effect.

Bob Drake, December 2002

Like the Jazz/Classical section in your Virgin megastores?

Because itd be funny to compare that to like, the new Bon Jovi if Bon Jovi actually was LOUDER.

Flicked thru Uncut in the newsagents and their's an article on this issue. SOUTHALL TAKES THE DAD ROCK MARKET!

Where I lead, IPC follows. TOOK THEM A YEAR.

wow i fucked up there and their there.

You certainly did.

It'd be better if you'd fucked up they're and their there, tough.

What a cunt I am.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1878724.ece

Whole lines of that are lifted from Imperfect Sound Forever.

There's also this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/news/newsbeat/galleries/1593/1/#gallery1593

article is slightly more telegraphed & technically incomprehensible, but it gets it's main point across

also good to see the times cover that story about the consumer's personal data getting watermarked in those 'non-DRM' files

fig 1

pavement - summer babe (winter version) 1992

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1125/530522654_2611bab03f_o.jpg

fig 2.1

the hold steady - stuck between stations 2006

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1089/530522686_8b81c63f4c_o.jpg

fig 2.2

the hold steady - chips ahoy! 2006

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1013/530522668_b28cfe6cc2_o.jpg

fig 3

ame - fiori

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1062/530536134_4f59fb4151_o.jpg

To what extent do the complaints about loudness/compression apply with vinyl releases of albums in the past decade or so? How often are different mixes used for vinyl? Do vinyl releases seem to have better dynamics than their CD counterparts (despite the limitations of the medium), or are they just not as loud overall (since they can't be)?

I'm trying to think of examples I know of. The Fall's Marshall Suite, pretty darned loud on CD (in a pleasing way, to me at least) is actually also quite loud on vinyl. But since vinyl isn't generally made for commercial radio stations to play from and since it is in some ways an audiophile format these days (heavy vinyl pressings never used to be so ubiquitous, anyway), one would expect LPs to be as well-mastered as possible.

Apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere.

i have personally noticed from doing transfers from vinyl that a lot of vinyl is fairly heavily compressed. not quite to the levels of many cds nowadays, but way way louder than most 80s and early 90s compact discs. compression is a lot more important for vinyl mastering to help keep the audible surface noise relatively low.

the guardians take on all this

today on the current our local public station which plays mostly indie rock, they played some band called the Fratellis (sp?)

it struck me just how horrible it sounded. It's really bizarre, especially when I turned up the car stereo, everything gets this very unpleasant quality...really hissy...the symbols and the vocals are audibly hitting this weird "ceiling" (sorry I don't know the technical terms)...also I've been involved in mixing a few records and we always think about "Front to Back" depth, the idea of not just right-to-left stereo panning but a depth to the mix, and there is NONE here...everything is on this same flat plane...then when i got to work i listened to an old Stax Delaney & Bonnie record w/booker t and the gang as the band....it's amazing just how much BETTER, more human and pleasing to the ear everything sounded....songs aside, just the quality of the sound was better to listen to...

also, i'm not surprised to see that hold steady record on there, that new one sounds atrocious. same w/the third strokes record in comparison to the first and second.

That Guardian blog piece really upsets me.

it upsets me too (over-compressed CDs don't seem to bother those people at that live concert!) but it's got a point

recorded music is traditionally engineered to sound best on the most popular playback system of its day. 78's sound horrible on a Technics turntable, but play them on a horn and it sounds pretty great. 60's 7" singles have no bass and a shrill top end, but play them on one of those portable 7" turntables with a built-in speaker and they just belt right out. 70's album rock sounds incredible on hi-fi systems, 90's CDs sound pretty great, and... hyper-compressed music sounds better on an iPod (at the expense of those masters sounding good on a home stereo, but... who cares)

it's worth mentioning again -- anyone presented with a louder signal in an A/B 30-second listening test will choose the louder signal, even if it's incredibly distorted -- in fact usually the distortion sounds like pure energy and is preferable, and many of today's engineers are not being _forced_ to compress or limit, they are intentionally introducing that energy into their songs. to them it is irrelevant that most people over 20 can't listen to more than 11 minutes of it without burning out -- people who want to listen to albums these days are in the minority, and they're going to be told they're old if they try to speak up

I'm surprised this pushback didn't come sooner actually

I accept that, but, for instance, the new Electrelane sounds a damn site better even on cheapo headphones and an iPod than The Good The Bad & The Queen; the LCD Soundsystem similarly sounds better, more exciting, moe involving, than the Simian Mobile Disco; the Electrelane and LCD aren't quiet, they're just more natural, more preicse, more detailed.

I dunno. Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting for a cause no one else even knows exists, let alone cares about. Which is the case...

I do almost all my listening from my ipod through Grado SR60s with most files ripped at 192. All these sonic issues definitely still exist in this scenario. Though maybe not so much if I was using the comes-with earbuds.

Just off Portapros the issues exists. Bundled earbuds, maybe not...

Was in an HMV recently, new Arctic Monkeys album being played - sounded atrocious, as if the music (which I like) was being immersed forcibly in a bucket of water; would that be an already heavily compressed signal being further compressed courtesy of the in-house DJ systems ... ?

Possibly, but just as likely a really shitty in-house Bose system that sounds shitty anyway and is probably fucked from over-use at loud volumes. The system in our local Virgin Megastore used to be utterly intolerable at anything above 'quiet' volume, such was the atrocious state of the speakers.

Wow that Guardian blogger is a complete ignoramus & blatantly misses the point.

and... hyper-compressed music sounds better on an iPod (at the expense of those masters sounding good on a home stereo, but... who cares

yeah i disagree totally...the delaney & bonnie album i just mentioned i was listening to on ipod/earbuds and the fratelli's track was in the car...it's the quality of how the instruments sound, the character of the song, not a volume thing...

yeah that guardian thing was horrific.

i have a friend who masters records professionally, and he says there is a lot of pressure from some accounts to master louder, which he resists as much as he can.

her main point is 'music sounds fine to me, and you guys sound old complaining about this'

slightly unrelated anecdote -- when missy's 'under construction' came out, I brought it over to my step-nephew's house who was a huge fan and I mean a huge fan. he asked if he could rip it, I said 'oh sure'. he put it in iTunes and pre-screened the album, listening to the first ten seconds of each track, and if a track didn't grab him in ten seconds, he unchecked it -- didn't even rip it. each track had _ten seconds_ to make an impression or else he didn't even want to come across it again later.

that's how important the first ten seconds of a track has become for these KIDS these days

and part of me sympathizes, the flood of free music coming in is so vast part of me understands the urge towards pre-screening before the thing even reaches your iPod -- make your quick decision now. but these listening habits are precisely what over-compression is attempting to overcome. you're definitely not alone and I really appreciated your article, Nick, it was the first one coming from a music-listener standpoint and not an audio-engineering magazine editorial or message board -- I think you should continue to state the importance of how people who like to listen to albums, or listen to _anything_ for more than 30 minutes are getting shafted. but you are going to sound old if you don't anticipate the counter-arguments, which range from very well thought out to 'you sound like an old man'

That's one of the recurring problems with this issue: people don't actually follow the description of what's happening, so they just pretend to understand by turning it into some other issue they know how to feel about. The comments box for Nick's Stylus article on this was occupied by at least one person who kept framing this as an analog vs. digital debate; plenty of people who comment on it seem to think it's just a strict and simple issue of loudness (or, worse, an "old people don't like loud music" issue). It's actually equally ridiculous for people to say "oh well, the kids these days don't seem to mind it," because the adults don't follow its existence enough to mind it, either. But what you do find is that anyone who actually pays attention to these things and understands the complaint -- in all age ranges, in all styles of music, just anyone with some knowledge of the topic at all -- sees the problem, even if they don't think it's a huge one yet.

I am young & I support your cause completely Nick. Records sound horrible these days.

And Milton your step-nephew is mental. Why couldn't he just rip the songs, listen to them later, and delete them (or just not listen to them) later if he didn't like them? I say this as a "kid these days."

I listened to the new Shellac today, and the lack of compression was very noticeable. Too bad they didn't write any songs.

obv. downloading has a lot to do with it, but i think this type of mastering is a big reason music is so "disposable" now...it's so harsh sounding that it wears you out after a few listens...

i've been thinking about this a lot, esp. as someone who works in the video game industry, and music is odd that it's the only major entertainment media that's run headlong into technically WORSE presentation. Like, for example, video games now have a lot of thing - like texturing, sound design, hi-res displays, that are just BETTER than the previous generation of console's games...same with movies - DVDs are just BETTER than VHS as a home playback form...whereas music is running towards MP3, which is just - on a base level - a less representational, worse playback format than LP or even CD...I sometimes wonder if that's a hidden cause of at least some of the industry's woes....it devalues the product, where video games have made a big effort to improve the presentation of their art form in a number of ways.

(actually maybe the cassette format was a precursor to that - a portable, easily to copy format that was much lower in fidelity)

The number of errors in the first two paragraphs of that Guardian thing is kind of dizzying. You don't really know where to start.

As to devaluation of the format, I think cd played a role as well--small size kept cds from taking on the fetish value vinyl records had.

But music as an art form is more fluid and varied than video games in general. There are more people making music than making video games. These days the creation of music is practically as accessible and immediate as the consumption of music, whereas creating video games takes much more effort and is primarily a capitalist/corporate endeavour rather than just doodz hangin out jammin. Obv. there is a market for DIY video games but it's much more obscure than DIY music.

I guess "fluid and varied" is the wrong term, I mean more like "democratic"

and re: movies and television: you forgot Youtube, which I think follows the same trends that you're describing about CD->mp3

Eh, posted a reply to the Guardian piece ("ColleenMoore"), much good it'll do, probably.

the tempo plot is super interesting btw

http://i.imgur.com/0wNMcw9.png