Thread [Getting started] Louder Doesn't Mean Better

This is such a problem... Nobody want it, but everybody is doing it because they will never score a hit record and only because people think it has been mixed bad/soft.

My little girl hates the modern music. She covers her ears and ask me to turn it of.
She has very sensitive hearing.

She loves the old school music, classical music and folk. Those are just the music types with a lot of variation of punch and volume.

There are so many post of the loudness wars. Available on the net. It is time we stop this madness and start to learn mixing all over again so we can enjoy music again and stop over loading our ears with volume and brain with crap.....

- Angelie

To bad the most tutorial site just do the opposite thing.. :@

Guess what miss ? You nailed it

To be honest 1 minute, nobody gives a sh.. about loudness war. Let's be honest with ourselves... Except a few audiophiles (I really hate that term, it means nothing to me), who cares ?
Just a few people are aware of this obviously, but it touches only a very small microcosm. Lambda listener expresses exactly what you mentioned above. "This song doesn't sound really loud. Well, I guess it won't be a good hit."
That's all. Pretty simple.

Btw, I don't think it's a good idea to compare a song from 1985 and another from 2015. 20 years of techniques have passed since. It's like comparing carrots and bananas... just sayin'


But don't get me wrong. I don't say it's a good thing, all the contrary. Like you did with your daughter (and that's certainly why she can't stand actual music & you can be proud of this ), I try to educate people against the bad sides of this volume race.
Some of them understand completely and do agree, some don't. That's the way it is.

2 days ago, I had a quick conversation with a friend I sent a master of his track.
Him : It's loud mate.
Me : In a bad way ?
Him : Yes, a little bit...
Me : Great ! I'm sorry, I did it also for the others and thought it wasn't loud enough but I will go back to the first and I send it to you right now.

So yes, it happens and it pleased me. For info, the first master reached -10db RMS and the second one I sent reached -12db. You can see that I'm faaar from nowadays releases.


On the other hand, have a quick look to a recent release and read the comments :

https://soundcloud.com/celldweller/metropolitan-zardonic-remix



Quick info about it :




Does people know how to read these infos and do they really care ? Answer is no.
So, instead of complaining on different forums like I see all around since a moment because it seems to be fashionable to rebel, try to educate people all around us because they won't come here to read this kind of topic.

Even if I saw Ian Shepherd's article about loudness on different papers, I don't know if people really take attention of it. Nonetheless, it deserves to exist and it's a good starting point.
Now, let's see what happens with YouTube's normalization... I spend a lot of time on it and I can say that 95% of the songs don't have the same level. Moreover on platforms like Soundcloud.

I love dynamics, but I also dislike some of the more modern records who are standing up against the loudness wars. It's like they are overcompensating and trying to force dynamics, which ends up getting too loud and too quiet. It'd be fantastic if I was sitting in a comfortable chair in a great listening environment, but it's horrible with earphones in the gym or in the car. There has to be some middle ground.