I was delighted to find out that today is Dynamic Range Day (click here to see the website). It’s good to discover that a lot of people feel passionately about this subject.
There’s a dude called Ian Shepherd, who’s a mastering engineer and music producer in the UK, and he’s organised Dynamic Range Day for today, March 25th 2011. A quick scout around online shows that he’s got a lot of support and there are a lot of people writing about it.
His basic premise is that today’s recordings are being over-compressed in the mixing and mastering stages, and that records would benefit from having a bit more dynamic range left in them, and frankly, I couldn’t agree more. Can’t we just ge used to turning the volume up on our stereo or media player?
Here’s an example:
I don’t think it’s helpful to describe it as a ‘loudness war’, even though I’ve used the term myself – there’s a discussion on my website called “On the loudness wars“.
The problem is that as soon as I declare a war against something, then that makes the thing I’m having a war against wrong and bad, and it makes me right and good, which may feel great in the short term but it isn’t very constructive in the long term.
How loud we should make a record is an artistic decision, and there is no right or wrong answer. Some people may have very good reasons why they want a very loud record.
If a band is sending copies of their record to a label looking to get a deal, a promoter looking to get gigs, a radio station looking to get airplay, or they’re aware of their songs being played on shuffle on a media player, then there’s a strong argument for making sure that it lies at least in the same volume range as everybody else’s records.
But while it’s perfectly possible to make a loud record sound good, you can’t escape the fact that if you make it less loud, it’ll just sound better if you turn it up when you play it.
As a professional service provider, it’s my responsibility to talk to my clients, give them as much information as I can to help them make an informed decision, and then respect that decision and do whatever I can to make their record sound as good as I can within those parameters.
It’s encouraging that there seems to have been a shift in attitude over the last couple of years, in m experience at least. Two or three years ago, most bands would say, “Yes, I understand that the louder we master this record, the less dynamic range there will be, and that it may not sound as good as a result, but we’d still like you to make the record as loud as possible.”
These days, most bands say, ” I’d like you to get this record respectably loud, but not to the detriment of the music.” The difference in volume between those two points might only be 2-3dB, which isn’t huge, but the difference in sound quality is significant.
There are also arguments for dropping the volume further still. For example we made Jonny’s album (a collaboration between Euros Childs from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub) 2dB quieter still and it sounds awesome. If you have Spotify, listen to it here. I’m certainly optimistic that, in time, more and more artists will feel confident enough in their music and their recordings to take that extra leap of faith and choose to make their record more dynamic.
I saw an article written by another mastering engineer, Greg Reirson, entitled The Loudness War Is Over, which makes the case that as media players start implementing automatic playback volume (Sound Check on iTunes, “Set the volume level for all tracks” on Spotify, Replay Gain is another) then you can make your record any volume you like because it’ll get adjusted automatically on playback.
“Sound Check measures the apparent loudness of each song and assigns it a a playback volume setting. When Sound Check is enabled, the playback volume is adjusted up or down based on that number. When Sound Check is not enabled, the song plays normally. The quality of the volume estimation algorithm has room for improvement, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.” (Thanks for the clarification, Greg.) Spotify’s level equalising system leaves a lot to be desired, but in time these systems will get better and hopefully this too will help artists make bolder dynamic decisions.
What’s great about movements like Dynamic Range Day and TurnMeUp.org is that they’re promoting debate about the topic, they’re contributing enormously to the information that’s available, and they’re trying to get the point across that an artist has a choice and that they shouldn’t feel they HAVE to make their record as loud as possible just to conform.
Right, I’m going to go and download the TT Dynamic Range Meter that the clever guys at the Pleasurize Music Foundation have developed, and I’m going to measure some of the records that I’ve mastered recently and see where I am on their scale. I shall report back!
Oh, and I’m going to change the heading “On the loudness wars” on my website to “On loudness”. There are enough wars going on already without starting another one.
Like this:
Tags: Compression, dynamic range, Dynamics, Limiting, Loudness, Loudness Wars, Mastering, Volume
March 26, 2011 at 8:59 pm |
Hey Donal,
Great article. You cited my MIX article and I’d like to make a small clarification. You said:
“apparently Sound Check goes through your entire iTunes library and changes the level of all your music files, which isn’t ideal.”
Sound Check does not change the sound file. What it does is measures the apparent loudness of each song and assigns it a a playback volume setting. When Sound Check is enabled, the playback volume is adjusted up or down based on that number. When Sound Check is not enabled, the song plays normally. You probably know that, but I’d just like to make sure your readers are aware of this small but significant clarification.
The quality of the volume estimation algorithm has room for improvement, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Thanks!
Greg Reierson
March 27, 2011 at 10:39 am |
Thanks Greg. I’ve corrected the relevant part and quoted you, hope that’s ok.
I liked the optimism in your article, and things are definitely going in the right direction. I don’t think we’re there yet by a long shot, but debates like this can only bring it on sooner.