Luodness or dynamcs - what would You sacriifice?

(sound of my $0.02 hitting the table) ;)

For what its worth, I have been noticing more and more that music that has been limited to make it as loud as possible for radio (the waveform usually looks like a huge square wave) is the most tiresome to listen to for any length of time. The lack of dynamics is very fatiguing.

If your track gets taken to a mastering house for release alongside other tunes, the engineer will usually prefer having plenty of dynamics to work with as he/she can bring all tracks up to a standard 'perceived' volume so they play well together on the album.
(And they have some of the most amazing toys to play with too!) :D
If the track is already squashed to buggery then they have nowhere to go.

I guess the goal (as has already been stated) is to find a happy trade-off between perceived loudness and dynamic content. If you can hear the compression/limiting kicking in, its probably being squashed too much.

Have fun experimenting!!

Dags


Here's an interesting bit of info I found after posting
The Loudness War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
 
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If you have fears that you costumers won't understand why your CD might be a bit quieter than others, just inform them of the used dynamic and its advantages: http://www.dynamicrange.de/
deejaytrixx said:
But once you get commercial, opinions go out the door and you must succumb to the borg or not sell.
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No way. Look at the figures from Universal: http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090302/universal-music-we-dont-sound-as-bad-as-everyone-else/
They are about 3 dB quiter on average for the past few years, indeed. Still not perfect mastering, but a noticeable difference.
deejaytrixx said:
Try giving a dj a song that isn't as loud as all the other songs he plays already..u will go in the crate of s%^t that doesn't get played...Just my one cent.
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Then the DJ sucks. When I select songs for public listening occasions, besides demanded style, I select them by quality. I just don't play overcompressed crap. That sure was no mistake, as people seem to enjoy my selections indeed.
 
LogicDeLuxe said:
Then the DJ sucks.
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Thank you! I absolutely agree with this.

Christ, one of the DJ's main jobs is - or at least is supposed to be - pre-cuing the songs and setting the proper playback volume for the next song to get a smooth mix.

The other part of that job is to select music that *makes musical sense*; i.e. is the "right" song to play next to fit the current energy or mood (or even timing) of the mix. If you get some mook that's selecting songs based upon loudness first and musical appropriateness second, that's not good DJing.

If he's not going to bother doing those things and is automatically going to take a pass on a song because it's not slammed against a wall, you might as well just replace him/her with Winamp or Media player set to automatic random playback.

G.
 
Pykon said:
Well...

Since it's gonna be my first, say, "mastering" job, and I'm inexperienced in this area, the best way to show You what I'm talking about is to drop all three songs on Soundclick and paste link here.

Then you could say if they are too quiet indeed.

That ciuld prevent them from further dynamics-killing, overcompressing destruction.

peace,

mike
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I would retrack the guitars. It's an acoustic/electric that you DI'd, right? Unplug it and mic it. The sound is brittle and thin. And go for dynamics over loudness. With music like this, you want the quiet passages in between the vocal lines, to allow a good building tension. Won't get that on a over-limited, compressed to death track.
 
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