Why do audio formats use a linear scale, instead of exponential (like our ears seems to use)?
Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
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Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#12I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
If you can find it, listen to the original version of the Dire Straits album "Dire Straits" -- Then listen to it with volume normalization. Dynamic range is good...
But this isn't changing the dynamic range. It's not normalizing the song on it's own. It's normalizing the with regard to the rest of the musical catalogue, which simply amounts to turning the volume down a certain amount on the whole song. So, to repeat, that changes noting about the dynamic range of the song.
In fact, if music producers stopped trying to make their music so loud, there would be more room for dynamic range in the music. The goal of this site seems to be that they wouldn't mix a whole song to be top volume, since it won't play any louder most places anyway. This in turn could lead to the return of using more dynamic range. I have my doubts that this will actually happen.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis: "Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results." and "We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this…
Ironic you pick on Metallica as example as they basically "won" the loudness wars[0] with the release of Death Magnetic. So ridiculously overblown and compressed that it was clipping constantly and heavily featured in mainstream media. Even one of the album's mastering engineers complained. Lars thought it was great. [0] http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the-loud...
Just to be clear, it is the site authors who wrote that about the two Metallica songs, not me.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#14I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
At one time, television used to allow advertisers to up the volume for their commercials. I don't recall if that was broadcast or cable. I thought a regulation was put into place for that, requiring a constant set volume, but like many things, it's either ignored or gone away.
My understanding is that the rule put a maximum volume in place for shows. An average show will run the gamut, and may only hit the upper limit once or twice (for example during some action or music sequence). Commercials are engineered to be as close to the upper limit as possible for their entire duration. It doesn't matter that there's an upper limit to the volume, because it sounds relatively much louder than whatever was on just before it, and it sounds as loud as the loudest most exciting and dramatic bits of the show.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#15Why do audio formats use a linear scale, instead of exponential (like our ears seems to use)?
I'm not sure what you are referring to with audio "formats," but audio programs work in dB, which is logarithmic.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#16Ironic that Spotify will apparently penalize the music for being "too loud" when their ads are regularly ear-splittingly loud. It's egregious. When listening with earbuds, I have to have a quick reaction on the volume control because the commercials literally hurt my ears.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#17Ironic that Spotify will apparently penalize the music for being "too loud" when their ads are regularly ear-splittingly loud. It's egregious. When listening with earbuds, I have to have a quick reaction on the volume control because the commercials literally hurt my ears.
Have you considered that this may be by design? Have you considered paying for the service?
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#18Why do audio formats use a linear scale, instead of exponential (like our ears seems to use)?
I don't know what audio formats use, maybe some of them do treat volume logarithmically, although I think this only makes sense after transforming to the frequency domain, otherwise your time signal goes through 0 all the time, which is not ideal when using logarithms.
For the raw sample data it's also kind of inevitable to use a linear scale when you want different sounds to add nicely, if you use a logarithmic scale then adding two sounds would distort them, which isn't ideal. When using a linear scale you can hide the quantization noise pretty easily with dither which just sounds like you're adding white noise.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#19Ironic that Spotify will apparently penalize the music for being "too loud" when their ads are regularly ear-splittingly loud. It's egregious. When listening with earbuds, I have to have a quick reaction on the volume control because the commercials literally hurt my ears.
Have you considered that this may be by design? Have you considered paying for the service?
Of course it's by design. And sure, I've considered paying for it, but I don't. Does that mean my complaints about the free service are somehow invalid? I'm still a customer, just a different kind of customer, and if they make the experience bad enough for me that I avoid it in some circumstances, that's relevant to their interests. If they didn't want free-tier customers, they wouldn't be offering the free-tier service.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can find it, listen to the original version of the Dire Straits album "Dire Straits" -- Then listen to it with volume normalization. Dynamic range is good...
But this isn't changing the dynamic range. It's not normalizing the song on it's own. It's normalizing the with regard to the rest of the musical catalogue, which simply amounts to turning the volume down a certain amount on the whole song. So, to repeat, that changes noting about the dynamic range of the song. In fact, if music producers stopped trying to make their music so loud, there would be more room for dynami…
it is limiting the high end volume which.... changes the dynamic range. [0]
Listen to a good recording of something like The William Tell Overture and you should notice that the quiet parts are less than 10% or so of volume of the loud parts.
Listening to that Dire Straits album really illustrates the point.