The Loudness War Developments.

BigD1977

Power User
Following Bob Katz' declaration that 'the Loudness wars are over' in a press release at the AES convention in New York, Sound On Sound magazine have run a piece on the end of the Loudness War in it's February edition.

Basically, it details how ITU-R BS.1770-3 uses time averaging, frequency weighting, gating and inter-sample peak detection to attain a more accurate loudness measurement of audio that corresponds with how our ears perceive how loud a track/program material is, but more importantly, how this new (as of August 2012) standard would affect mixing and broadcast. In effect, broadcast material that is hyper compressed would appear to be subjectively quieter and less interesting than more dynamically rich material. Given that broadcast studios and some streaming services employ loudness optimisation, the hope is that this standard will mean an end to the (IMHO) insane overcompression of masters after, and a lot of the time, during mixing.

I was just wondering if anybody else had read any articles on it, or even if you have started to mix or master in a different way because of it.
 
It's not in effect at the moment AFAIK. Every new production I hear is still unlistenable and squashed to death.
I'm 45 and I just can't stand it anymore, especially when I have to do the same because my clients demand it.
I pray for the new standard to become reality ASAP.
 
It's not in effect at the moment AFAIK. Every new production I hear is still unlistenable and squashed to death.
I'm 45 and I just can't stand it anymore, especially when I have to do the same because my clients demand it.
I pray for the new standard to become reality ASAP.

I'm 55. Imagine how much I can't stand it! *LOL*
 
It's not in effect at the moment AFAIK. Every new production I hear is still unlistenable and squashed to death.
I'm 45 and I just can't stand it anymore, especially when I have to do the same because my clients demand it.
I pray for the new standard to become reality ASAP.

Seemingly, Apple have had the option in iTunes for quite a while, although they use their own :)roll) standard that's not as comprehensive as BS1770. Spotify uses loudness optimisation AFAIK, and as with any development, it will take time for the practise of not squashing the shit out of mixes to filter down to musicians and engineers. I too cannot wait.

A lot of artists at the moment do differing masters of tracks, one 'loud' master for CD and mp3 duplication, and a second for broadcast which is less limited and will hold it's interest after the loudness optimisation standard that broadcast studios are subject to. Some others do a third master specifically for vinyl duplication.

I'm thinking of setting up a project with two mixes, one of a hyper compressed wall of sound, and one of a track engineered in earlier days, bringing them to the same LUFS (LKFS in the U.S.) and letting the client listen to each to determine which kind of mastering they want to go for, describing how over compression and limiting will affect the listenability of their tracks.

I'm hoping to change at least some minds.
 
They'll pick the one that sounds louder. :)

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

LOL!

The concept here is that when normalised according to BS1770 standards, tracks that are hypercompressed tend to sound duller and more lifeless than a more complex dynamic track of the same loudness.

It will be interesting!
 
Although I "squeeze the shit out of my master" (because I have no clue about it and just make my mixes louder with the "Loudness Warlord"-Preset from Ozone) the problem increases, if stuff is played in the radio. Most radio-stations use Highe-End Limiting Systems by default, and if they get a loud master, they just push it up again....

My personal conclusion in the last months was, that I really try to keep the loudest peaks in my mix at - 6 db in the Master, so there is enough room for it to "breathe" and you can't destroy as much as you would do with a mix that is already next to 0 db. (Best No-Go Example is still "Death Magnetic".....Ted Jensen had no chance to improve the sound, he already got complete "Over-the-Top-Mixes" where there was no dynamic left.)

Beeing satisfied with the mixing of my own project by now, I'm still far away from ideal knowledge regarding "Mastering", which is and will be underrated most of the time. But, like Phostenix said, "They pick the one that sounds louder"....As long, as the leaders in the industry don't fight against it, the small home-recording-buddy will not see any reason for not doing it otherwise.

Just like environment protection - everybody is talking about - but no one give's a shit.....
 
It doesn't matter where you peak (-6db, -1db, whatever). That says nothing about the dynamic range. If the crest factor below the peak is 6db it's "kaputt".
 
I started a thread about using the Waves Loudness Meter to level the perceived loudness of Axe presets based on articles from Bob about the loudness wars.

Digital loudness measuring algorithms do work.

It's pretty cool stuff.
 
The introduction of desk-monitors and Waves Maximizer killed dynamics at first.

It was rolling far before that, though those didn't help. MP3's also lowered the bar and also helped to make it 'okay'. It's sickening to hear this stuff on a serious studio reference level. And painful. It's like watching a Spongebob cartoon - everyone screaming all the time - instead of MUSIC.


Dear music industry:

Dynamics are not your enemy! Stop the madness!

As noted above, there are often now multiple masters - one for MP3, one for release, one for vinyl, etc - now. I hope, please, that Katz gets what he's championed for a long time. And Bob - if you are out there reading this - thank you from the bottom of my heart. I was/am still an early adaptor of K-14 and hold that standard on my own stuff though that doesn't mean much.
 
+1 Scott

It was really the lack of standards in the audio / radio / music broadcast industries that led to "louder sells more" = "better"!!! That goes for program material and advertising.

Note that film has standards for audio loudness levels that have worked pretty well (though not perfect)
 
+1 Scott

It was really the lack of standards in the audio / radio / music broadcast industries that led to "louder sells more" = "better"!!! That goes for program material and advertising.

Note that film has standards for audio loudness levels that have worked pretty well (though not perfect)

Bingo! I was in the Broadcast industry for 7 years back in the 80's and they squashed the crap out of everything in the studio, anything they coud do to make the commercials pop during brake.
 
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One thing I do (as do most of my friends) when the commercials are much louder that the regular program is get the remote and turn it way down or switch to another channel. Too loud commercials work against themselves.
 
One thing I do (as do most of my friends) when the commercials are much louder that the regular program is get the remote and turn it way down or switch to another channel. Too loud commercials work against themselves.

This is seemingly the reasoning behind the automatic monitoring of the loudness levels of the broadcasts. Previously manpower was employed to monitor and turn down loud commercials and to keep the levels consistent, but as it became too expensive and as automatic level analysis and adjustment became possible, companies started to use crest factor minimisation to make their commercials louder. This standard is an effort to combat this, and has been adopted by most TV networks, including Sky, BBC, and all HD channels.
 
Although I "squeeze the shit out of my master" (because I have no clue about it and just make my mixes louder with the "Loudness Warlord"-Preset from Ozone) the problem increases, if stuff is played in the radio. Most radio-stations use Highe-End Limiting Systems by default, and if they get a loud master, they just push it up again....

My personal conclusion in the last months was, that I really try to keep the loudest peaks in my mix at - 6 db in the Master, so there is enough room for it to "breathe" and you can't destroy as much as you would do with a mix that is already next to 0 db. (Best No-Go Example is still "Death Magnetic".....Ted Jensen had no chance to improve the sound, he already got complete "Over-the-Top-Mixes" where there was no dynamic left.)

Beeing satisfied with the mixing of my own project by now, I'm still far away from ideal knowledge regarding "Mastering", which is and will be underrated most of the time. But, like Phostenix said, "They pick the one that sounds louder"....As long, as the leaders in the industry don't fight against it, the small home-recording-buddy will not see any reason for not doing it otherwise.

Just like environment protection - everybody is talking about - but no one give's a shit.....

An interesting point about loudness peaking is that frequently this isn't a true peak once the waveform has been reconstructed in the analogue world. For instance, if a HF wave has two consecutive samples at 0dBFS, it's likely that the reconstructed waveform will peak above this. This is even after digital clipping has been a destructive factor.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, you can have a hyper compressed mix peaking at -6dBFS. It's the crest factor that's important. The higher the crest factor (generally) the more dynamic the mix, and it's this ratio that is the dynamic 'breath' in a recording.

I also think that as soon as the leaders in the industry realise that overcompressed mixes sound quieter and duller than more dynamic ones when put through a system that uses BS1770 they won't be long about changing their minds.

Personally, I look on mastering as the crafting of the album/release. Sound shaping EQ to make everything consistent, compression to tighten, reverb to subtly increase ambience, high quality filtering and dithering for specific media... unfortunately most home studio owners view mastering as multiband compression to make it loud, or worse, brickwall single band limiting, when mastering can do so much more for a mix that you're already happy with.

I've got my fingers crossed. :)
 
One thing I do (as do most of my friends) when the commercials are much louder that the regular program is get the remote and turn it way down or switch to another channel. Too loud commercials work against themselves.

Ahh, mute button. Of course, that's only when I'm at the folks house, as they're watching it but are amenable to me killing it during program break. I don't watch TV at home.
 
It was rolling far before that, though those didn't help. MP3's also lowered the bar and also helped to make it 'okay'. It's sickening to hear this stuff on a serious studio reference level. And painful. It's like watching a Spongebob cartoon - everyone screaming all the time - instead of MUSIC.


Dear music industry:

Dynamics are not your enemy! Stop the madness!

As noted above, there are often now multiple masters - one for MP3, one for release, one for vinyl, etc - now. I hope, please, that Katz gets what he's championed for a long time. And Bob - if you are out there reading this - thank you from the bottom of my heart. I was/am still an early adaptor of K-14 and hold that standard on my own stuff though that doesn't mean much.

The process of loudness optimisation actually started in TV broadcast studios in the 1970's (AFAIK) when people trained to turn down loud advertisements started to be replaced by machines. The advertisers quickly realised that the loudest sells, and started to use drastic compression techniques to bring up the subjective 'human' loudness levels while not affecting the loudness monitoring of these automatic systems.
 
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