Stronger Than Pride

[GuitarLegend]

Since A/D & D/A converters sound best when not 'banged' too hard with incoming/outgoing audio, the artist/producer/engineers may have been striving for pristine sound vs. volume. These subtleties, of course, will not be heard when squashed to MP3. It could also be that the artists wanted to capture their original dynamics for artistic reasons. You can test this by importing the track into a DAW and see if the waveform looks like a solid bar across the timeline. If you see the peaks & valleys in the waveform, then dynamics were considered important & were maintained. If you simply want it to be louder, try normalizing it. If after that, the volume still seems the same, then you know that dynamics were considered important.

Did you see the waveform posts earlier in the thread? That should tell you heaps. I raised the level mildly with a limiter so that the dynamics were barely affected, only the loudness increased. I could have turned it into a brick wall but I was also mindful of the dynamics and wanted to maintain them. I just thought the level as it came off the CD was very low compared to other CDs that I have.

 

[ric3xrt]

All I can say is that PHUCKING BASS IS AWESOME

 

[Supercreep]

Great song.

 

[dobro]

Thanks RAMI

Here is the original as it came off the CD. The highest peak from a drum hit is at -6dbfs. The rest of the audio peaks around -21dbfs.

Original

This is the same track boosted 9db, certainly not maxed out by any means

Boosted

Yeah, it's an old thread, I get it.

I preferred the quieter play. My guess the reason the producer or Sade had it mastered at that level was because they liked Sade's music on the quiet side. I do.

 

[CalgonStudio]

Amen to that.