pfarrell;361008 Wrote: > Google "Loudness wars" > > Nearly all recording engineers try very hard to eliminate clipping in > the digital domain. Mastering engineers have a gun to their head with > the client yelling "make it louder". A few years ago I would have agreed with you. But I fear that we've fallen off the cliff recently. The race for loudness at any cost seems to have become recording industry dogma (at least in the pop & rock world). I get the uneasy impression that there are a large number of so-called engineers who actually believe that the way it's done these days is how it should be.
And why do I believe this? Loudness for its own sake is really only relevant in the mass market, where attention-grabbing radio play is required. But every single "remaster" of old obscure albums that will NEVER get radio play has the same treatment. Sure, they haven't been "Metallica'd", but they are over-compressed nevertheless. If the engineers responsible really understand the damage it causes, then considering the marketplace for these releases, the damage would not get done. But it does. There is the beginnings of a backlash - reactions to Death Magnetic being the most famous recent example. But I fear that even if the message gets through, the compression will only be backed off a smidgen. We'll never get back to realistic dynamics until the RMS levels of rock & pop releases go down a full 10dB or so. -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=55212 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
