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YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
101–110 of 130 posts
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#102Volume is one thing but quality should be also important for music videos, and even HD VEVO videos has noticeable worse quality than a 256kbps MP3. Probably due to the re-encoding, and the lower quality settings at YouTube. So YouTube is still not good for music listening if you are sensitive to the quality.
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one which had me sad recently is the soundtrack to the game Bastion: http://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/bastion-original-s... It's noticeable on almost every track basically as soon as the drums kick in. (About ten seconds into "A Proper Story", for example). It's depressing that this has occurred even on a piece of indie content for which so much care has otherwise been taken— Darren Korb was the sound de…
I always thought that drum sound was on purpose. I kind of liked the way it sounded.
Yeah, I'm fairly sure this was entirely intentional. Fits the futuristic western sounds nicely.
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed! I am a bass player who now happens to write software in the audio industry (I work for a company that makes hardware). But I noticed before coming here. Some of the worst CDs in my record collection are: 1. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (this is the worst album I own - considering Sir Paul left The Beatles over the mix of The Long and Winding Road, he should leave his own band over his master of this…
Fellow bass player here too, though I'm still learning! Just out of curiosity, did you ever listen to the Vapor Trails remaster that came out last year or so? What were your thoughts on that?
No I didn't. I thought that Rush had taken my money in the first place for the album, and should have done a good job on that so didn't deserve me buying it again!
It would be interesting to hear it though. The bass drum is completely lost in the first one (no punch at all).
Their most recent album was also full of reverberation and distortion, which made listening to it in the car very very difficult. It fared better in a quieter environment I thought.
How long have you been playing bass? In a band or anything? All good fun!
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#105>[on YT] Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed. None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and sound engineers may have; take this image comparing the dynamic range of the CD and youtube releases of Pharrell's "Happy"[1]- I thought at the time it might just have been a mishap or random occurance, but now it looks like it was a very deliberate move. So, rat…
Wait, the audio in YouTube doesn't come from the CD? I never suspected that. I thought the article referred to that they took the audio, sourced from the CD, and lowered the volume if it was too loud (which obviously can't bring the dynamic range back).
That's what they're doing to the music that people upload, yes. Nobody's literally sticking a CD into a YouTube server, so what's on the CD is kind of beside the point.
The parent poster's observation is that labels are uploading different, less-compressed mixes to YouTube now than the mix they release on CD, so that they sound better given YouTube's normalization.
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed! I am a bass player who now happens to write software in the audio industry (I work for a company that makes hardware). But I noticed before coming here. Some of the worst CDs in my record collection are: 1. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (this is the worst album I own - considering Sir Paul left The Beatles over the mix of The Long and Winding Road, he should leave his own band over his master of this…
Have you listened to the remixed Vapor Trails? It's phenomenal IMHO. There are tons of little quirks in the songs that you just couldn't hear before. Plus they might have added a few tracks to each song. I'd love to hear what somebody who actually knows what they're talking about compare the original with the remix. I'm a huge Rush fan and could discuss them for hours.
No, I will consider buying it again at some point perhaps, but it is sad they didn't do it right the first time, particularly as they're a 3-piece and there is so much space for them each :-(
It's odd how much difference a mix makes: listen to Deep Purple's Roger Glover remixes of earlier DP albums (subtle), or Dream Theater's "official bootlegs" of Scenes From A Memory (massively different, like a different album).
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#107>[on YT] Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed. None of us noticed; it seems like the labels and sound engineers may have; take this image comparing the dynamic range of the CD and youtube releases of Pharrell's "Happy"[1]- I thought at the time it might just have been a mishap or random occurance, but now it looks like it was a very deliberate move. So, rat…
Both of your links ([2] and [3]) are to YouTube; if they are normalizing the audio (as claimed by the author), then you shouldn't be able to hear a difference, right?
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed! I am a bass player who now happens to write software in the audio industry (I work for a company that makes hardware). But I noticed before coming here. Some of the worst CDs in my record collection are: 1. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (this is the worst album I own - considering Sir Paul left The Beatles over the mix of The Long and Winding Road, he should leave his own band over his master of this…
Really interesting post thanks. Even as an audio novice I've noticed the terrible loudness trend in music, particularly in Foo Fighters releases. It literally makes my ears tired.
The Foo Fighters are mastered loud a lot of the time. One trend they have is to have a massively gained snare drum shoved through a compressor so it chops the peaks of the snare off and has no crack like a snare should, so it sounds like this: PFFFFFT
Older recordings from the 70s (perhaps early Kansas) have a different sound (not such harsh compression), so the snare drum has a sharp crack on them and they sound like this: CRACK
To get that "sound" Foo Fighters layer distorted guitar on top of more distorted guitar (they use Vox AC30s apparently!). Doing this does make it sound thick but you'll get tired listening to an album of distortion. The bass is also distorted (a tube/valve amp in use). Then Dave Grohl will resort to shouting all the way through the song (In Your Honor was the worst), so his added edgy raspy voice will be added to the distortion soup for maximum distortion.
Listen to some Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin and compare the snare sound to the Foos. Led Zeppelin is a good example because even though Led Zep 1's drums were only recorded with 2 (or 3) microphones, there is real dynamics in the drumming (listen to how the drums come in on Good Times Bad Times). You can tell how few microphones were used because the panning on the drum fill for the toms at the end of How Many More Times pans the entire drumkit, not just the toms. Modern setups would perhaps have close-miked drums panned around the stereo image so as the drummer does a fill on the toms, it doesn't take the entire kit with it (8 microphones for a kit, one for each drum + hi hat and overheads).
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think we (the consumers\audience) are ever going to win that war.
Actually, it's already illegal in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudne...
On broadcast TV, or maybe on Cable TV. Advertisers play the same games at Spotify, Youtube, etc.
Re: YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what he's alluding to, even though I'm very familiar with the issue and quite familiar with the ITU loudness standard. I posted mainly because I had noticed the change myself over the last few months. Maybe he means the fact that if you don't have an adblocker YouTube ads seem to be as loud as the ones on TV used to be. It might be that this will now fall under the aegis of the FCC :) but I'm not really…
So should they stop advertising, and take down YouTube?
Did I say that? No.