The Loud thing

[NobleSavage]

I've seen countless comments around fussing about the current trend in extremely loud recordings. I was wondering why it didn't bother me or most of the music listeners out there and then it finally came to me.

Popular music(rock,pop,rap,metal,soul,country) is all about trends. Listen to any cd today that isnt jazz, bluegrass or classical and you'll hear so many similar tones. Vocals are all processed in a similar fashion, drums are mixed pretty much the same, guitar tones all fit into nice little genres... it's all a very packaged medium. As it always has been. And extremely loud mixes are part of that package as well. And just like the particular vocals, drum, keyboard and guitar sounds - if you dont have that loud mix, you won't sound as much like the other product out there and will obviously not appeal to as many people.

20 years ago, everything was just starting to get covered in layers of reverb and huge drums and cheezy keyboard sounds. It was the sound that everyone chased. Nowadays it's a cliche to sound anything like that, and listeners will automatically pigeonhole any record that has similar sounds.

So, that's my argument as to why loud mixes are no worse than any other ingrediant in popular music. If you aren't interested in hitting the masses, then don't mix that way... but if you are trying to be successful, going quiet is just one more difficulty in your path.

 

[Lt. Bob]

That's certainly true......popular music is all about the sound of the week.
However, that's why only the masses , who are freakin' idiots, like a lot of the current music. After all....dynamics are an integral part of music and have a lot to do with emotional content.
So the very good audiophile type producers like Don Was, almost uniformaly decrie the current trends in mastering.

Since I could give a crap about commerciality........I have nothing to fear from having a bit of dynamic range in my recordings.
Also......don't forget that the recordings from earlier eras that didn't bow to the pressure to have phase shifting on every single guitar are the only ones that have aged well.
Like you said, the stuff that followed the cliche are the ones that we laugh at today.
As an audiophile......I don't need approval from the cow-eyed masses to decide whether something sounds good......I can decide that for myself.

You certainly have a strong point about what it takes to sell stuff to the masses and I don't think that anyone should ever compromise their vision for their own music. If whatever the currently accepted sound for commercial recordings is what you desire to achieve.....then that's exactly what you shoud do. After all.....beauty ( in vision or sound) is in the eye (ear) of the beholder and I don't believe in absolutes very much so if that sounds good to you.....then for you it sounds good regardless of what anyone else says )( myself included ).

But I think a case can be made that having no dynamics in music lessens the emotional impact it might have.

 

[willovercome]

i mixed a song just for fun to see how loud i could get the mix and had a few surprising results...

there was an acoustic guitar/vocal part in the middle of the song. everything else cut out and i pushed the volume so it matched the rest of the song...surprisingly there was no perceivable volume change even though it was now loud enough to compete with the rest of the song, but i still noticed the dynamic change.

i did the same thing for the first verse and the chorus (which are softer than the rest of the song). when i pushed the volume i didn't notice a loss in dynamics.

overall i think it's a bad idea to do this, but my conclusion is that a lot of what we call dynamics are psycho-acoustic perceptions. i typically mix for indie sort of stuff, so i don't compress a lot and i don't push volume much, but i think we can make songs louder without losing many of the dynamic components. the ONLY cool thing about loud mixes is that we can listen to them in the car without constantly adjusting the volume.