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Loudness (2007)

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Re: Loudness (2007)

#31

Post by ryandrake »

trevyn wrote: post #11
morecoffee wrote: post #4

Tangential, but for the longest time I couldn't figure out why VLC always played music / DVDs at such low volume. Setting the system volume to max and overdriving VLC's volume slider was the only way I could actually hear the soft parts. Recently I found out about the volume compressor, which with a single check box does exactly the right thing. I asked myself "why the heck isn't this box checked by default?" I think…

Movies generally have a wide dynamic range so that loud action scenes are very loud. You don't want your normal dialogue to be at the same volume as your explosions, unless you're watching at home with the volume down.

Much to the chagrin of people like my wife, who, during scenes with just dialog will remark, "I can't hear it, turn it up!" and then when the action starts, "Too loud!" I end up adjusting the volume up and down over and over throughout a 2-1/2 hour film. As much as I appreciate good dynamic range in recordings, I wish my sound system had a "constant loudness" function that I could just engage and put the remote down.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#32

Post by thatswrong0 »

This is pretty funny to me because I mostly listen to (and produce) electronic music.. and there are pretty much no rules when it comes to electronic music and loudness. Stupidly loud music can actually sound pretty dang good [0][1]. The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS.

If you have the right source material, you can brickwall the hell out of tracks and not notice the distortion.. or perhaps the distortion will even add pleasant artifacts. One of the more prominent issues with making things stupid loud is intermodulation distortion, but that really only becomes noticeable when you have pure tones or vocals being mashed into the limiter. If the source material is already distorted (think screechy dubstep synths), then it probably don't matter.

But yeah, when you're dealing with more traditional kinds of music, which often times involves vocals or a lot more subtlety to the timbre of the instruments, brickwalling is probably not the best call. It seems that the Search and Destroy "remaster" sounding terribly distorted was intentional.. but IMO it's not very listenable nor does the distortion really bring the grungy character than I think they were going for. It just sounds bad.

[0] https://soundcloud.com/moodygood/mtgfyt-vol1

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY

Re: Loudness (2007)

#35

Post by microcolonel »

cromon wrote: post #30
microcolonel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. It is technically the case that vinyls have less frequency response (basically a low pass filter) than good (really effectively perfect) reproduction formats like CD. That certainly means that the maximum loudness value is lower, but dynamic range is not required for loudness, gain and frequency response are. If anything, having less dynamic range would encourage people to make louder records.

A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards.

> A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards.

The only reason to sample at 96/192k is to make cheaper analog filter hardware. While technically vinyl can reproduce frequencies in excess of 50kHz, it has limits on amplitudes at high (audible) frequencies because of the physics of the needle and groove, especially on less-than-excellent cartridges. Nobody wants to listen to something with that much energy in the highest audible frequencies (16-20kHz) anyway, so it's a moot point.

There is absolutely no point in representing frequencies in excess of 22.05kHz. Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be capable of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to manifest and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous years in their life and never return.

There is no difference between discrete signals sampled at 44.1kHz, and continuous signals, that has any bearing on human hearing. In addition, 14 bits is about enough to represent all discernible dynamic range in human hearing, 16 bits is more than enough. Vinyl has considerably less dynamic range than this. Any vinyl on any record player has poor performance for reproducing audible signals when compared to an about-average CD player. LP vinyl is an excellent final form of the phonograph, but a mere intermediate to poor form in all of audio reproduction, especially considering that CD is essentially perfect.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#36

Post by quakenul »

Mastering is in a way comparable to capitalism. You can certainly try and be nice about it but pushing harder will usually get you further, because most people care more about one aspect than all the others aspects combined. In capitalism it is getting a great product for a great price. In mastering, it is loudness.

Loudness is a bastard. There is a reason, why all the pros are usually very, very careful about level matching when doing any sort of audio comparisons. Even when you know that louder can easily fool you into thinking something is better (which most listeners don't), you're still susceptible, if you don't counter act it. Wanna convince a recording artist in the studio it's great? Turn up those big speakers. Instant gratification.

When it comes to music consumption I like to think this is not really a problem: The sound of compression and distortion is the sound of current music and there is nothing inherently bad about it. Older generations will tend to oppose any new musical trend for various reasons, which all end up being subjective. The younger generations that grow up on this new sound do not care about brickwall limiting, because there is nothing to fucking care about.

Music production has been and forever will a mix of mostly people copying other people and flowing with the stylistic currents while adding a little something themselves. Sometimes something radical will happen. Mostly not. If you wanna stay relevant you go with the former and keep reaching for the later. Pretty much the same, as with coding or design.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#37

Post by jsjohnst »

ryandrake wrote: post #31
trevyn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Movies generally have a wide dynamic range so that loud action scenes are very loud. You don't want your normal dialogue to be at the same volume as your explosions, unless you're watching at home with the volume down.

Much to the chagrin of people like my wife, who, during scenes with just dialog will remark, "I can't hear it, turn it up!" and then when the action starts, "Too loud!" I end up adjusting the volume up and down over and over throughout a 2-1/2 hour film. As much as I appreciate good dynamic range in recordings, I wish my sound system had a "constant loudness" function that I could just engage and put the remote down.

Most good quality receivers sold in the past decade have a volume limit setting. It also sounds like you might not have the gain set right on your center channel. Two things to check which might help!

Re: Loudness (2007)

#38

Post by jsjohnst »

microcolonel wrote: post #35
cromon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards.

> A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards. The only reason to sample at 96/192k is to make cheaper analog filter hardware. While technically vinyl can reproduce frequencies in excess of 50kHz, it has limits on amplitudes at high (audible) frequencies because of the physics…

> Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be capable of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to manifest and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous years in their life and never return.

When I was in my twenties, I could easily identify sounds in the 23-26k range (tested using professional gear more than once). When I was younger it was quite painful to hear as my ears were so sensitive to it (as a young teen, I would wince in pain when a monitor was left on without an input signal even in a room of people yelling noisily at each other). Even now in my late 30s I can still readily hear in the low 20k hz easily.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#39

Post by coldtea »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #32

This is pretty funny to me because I mostly listen to (and produce) electronic music.. and there are pretty much no rules when it comes to electronic music and loudness. Stupidly loud music can actually sound pretty dang good [0][1]. The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS. If you have the right source material, you can brickwall the hell out of tracks and not notice the distortion.…

>The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS.

It's about the dynamics (or lack thereof), not just about the distortion (if it's not clipping to just white noise 0dBFS is not the DAW limit anyways).

Re: Loudness (2007)

#40

Post by mmmpop »

santoshalper wrote: post #3
amelius wrote: post #2

Was there any way we could have prevented the "loudness war"?

There is research that shows that on a casual listen, people believe louder music sounds better. Similarly, people tend to find brighter pictures more appealing at a glance, even though both of these can be fatiguing and cause discomfort. That's why stereo stores (in so much as they still exist) crank up the music to very loud volumes and all the TVs at Best Buy are grossly mis-calibrated. Unfortunately, most musicia…

> there may never be another version of "Is This It".

Which is a shame. Hell, their first three albums strike me as pretty poorly mastered with all of the clipping on some of the louder tracks.

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