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Loudness (2007)

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Re: Loudness (2007)

#41

Post by coldtea »

mortenjorck wrote: post #13

For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite. With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make…

>With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make louder sections more comfortable to the ears, depending on the listening environment.

Softer sections are created and meant to sound softer though. Boosting the volume only in certain sections is more like making your own mix...

Re: Loudness (2007)

#42

Post by sfled »

amelius wrote: post #2

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

Marty: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel: (pause) These go to eleven.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#43

Post by swiley »

pdkl95 wrote: post #19
mortenjorck wrote: post #13

For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite. With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make…

> boost the clarity of softer sections or to make louder sections more comfortable to the ears You can create these effects during playback with a compressor, which are available in many players[1]. Knowledge about compressors isn't as widely known as it should be; it's an important feature that would help a lot of people, especially anyone dealing with hearing loss. > headphones Maybe try better headphones (or a dif…

I knew about them and the copy of Android I had installed on my phone included compression.

Like most things in that OS it's very buggy, one day it just dumped full volume noise into my headphones and that really hurt. After that I hardly trust anything in Android to handle audio and don't like plugging headphones into my phone.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#44

Post by ktRolster »

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.

Just give her the remote.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#45

Post by chrismealy »

It's not just about volume. Tracks mastered with a ton of compression trick your brain into sounding louder than they really are, which is great for a song or two (or if you want pay people to pay attention to your tv commercial), but for listening to a whole album it wears you out. If you have an album you love but somehow never make it all the way through this is probably why. The perception of full volume gets your lizard brain aroused, which is great if you're in the club, but not if you're in the mood to listen to the first three Led Zeppelin records in a row.

On the other hand, older recordings with more dynamic range might sound thin at low volume, but are much richer at higher volumes (you can hear the individual instruments better and feel the space in the sound). If you try comparing older and newer masterings at a good volume the newer mastering usually sounds kinda mushy.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#47

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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.…

I (only half jokingly) think (music like) that Bassnectar track Into The Sun is Lorin Ashton's attempt at hitting The Brown Note when played on a big rig sound system. It's just constant rolling thunder, break down around 2 mins in, followed by more rolling thunder. Sounds like the melody is playing on a different sound system half a kilometer away at the same festival.

Ah, music is weird because even the stuff I like is fun to criticise.

On that note, have you come across Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music?[1] It hasn't been updated in a long time, but still highly amusing.

1. http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

Re: Loudness (2007)

#48

Post by rplst8 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #13

For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite. With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make…

The effect you want - roughly the same volume through a whole track, can easily be achieved with tasteful use of compression. Some genres hardly need any to start with.

There are a number of albums that were mastered quite well that have a good dynamic range, yet still sound good in my car, on headphones, or at home on the big stereo.

The heavily compressed stuff just sounds bad all around.

Here's another good article that covers this: https://riprowan.com/over-the-limit/

Re: Loudness (2007)

#49

Post by jsmthrowaway »

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.

That function exists generally in audio, and is called dynamic compression or just compression. I've seen some TVs with that functionality and I know Apple TV can do it, so I would guess you might have that option lurking somewhere in your system. When you turn that on, you're taking a wide dynamic range and squishing it, which essentially just pulls up quieter content, so you have to consider how pure and accurate you like your content playback to be when doing that. Well-crafted films in particular occasionally play with audio level for effect (Interstellar being a dramatic example of that), so you might subtly suck a bit of air from a director's intention which might matter to you.

If you have a nice 5.1 setup, try boosting your center channel, too. That might help.

Re: Loudness (2007)

#50

Post by mark-r »

coldtea wrote: post #41
mortenjorck wrote: post #13

For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite. With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make…

> With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make louder sections more comfortable to the ears, depending on the listening environment. Softer sections are created and meant to sound softer though. Boosting the volume only in certain sections is more like making your own mix...

Listening conditions make a big difference. I have a very dynamic version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (source: MFSL CD) that sounds absolutely great at home but is unlistenable in the car. The average volume is just too far below the peaks, so you strain to hear most of the song with a noisy background.
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