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RAMI
Guest
Yeah, I hate Hollywood movies and this is one of the reasons why. You can barely hear people whispering, and then the music sends you flying to the back of the room a la Marty Mcfly.
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
I've gone so far as to put my compressor in my TV playback system in the past. Now it's in the studio miles (davis) away from home, so I can't do that anymore without buying another compressor, but frankly, I don't watch enough stuff these days to make it worth it anymore.
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Greg_L
Banned
Yeah you damn near have to turn surround sound off and go old school mono straight from the TV speakers to avoid having to ride the volume on the remote.
Sports are bad too. It's all crowd noise. It's a catch-22 because anything that drowns the dumb announcers out is good, but the constant roar of crowd gets annoying too.
Sports are bad too. It's all crowd noise. It's a catch-22 because anything that drowns the dumb announcers out is good, but the constant roar of crowd gets annoying too.
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Chibi Nappa
New member
Somebody needs to point me to this competition. I keep looking for it but I can't find it. Anyway, I've got a full-scale square wave at 2 kHz that is going to blow the judges away.
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Chibi Nappa
New member
Dude, I LOVE this about movies. Quiet is supposed to be hard to hear and loud is supposed to be shocking and uncomfortable. That's why it's called quiet and loud instead of low medium and high medium. I live in a house with a few feet of yard between me and the neighbors so I can get away with the ruckus. For everybody else, every TV for the past 10 years has a heavy compressor built right it. Turn it on and your problems are over.
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Greg_L
Banned
Turn off Lawrence Welk and turn on the radio. Buy a modern CD. Download some crap off itunes. You won't find any softy dynamics anywhere. That's what most people are competing against....if they're even interested in making a living off this hobby.
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Chibi Nappa
New member
I'm not arguing that modern stuff isn't all loud all the time. I'm arguing that there is no reason for it to be all loud all the time. This loudness competition simply doesn't exist no matter how many people are showing up with their entries. In the real world, people are competing against other melodies. They're competing against the lyrics, performance, engineering, mix, instrumentation, editing... and sometimes volume. All that stuff.
But there is no competition for loud on TV, radio, or in clubs since an engineer or DJ will level-match everything. The only competition for loud is in a person's own collection, and they already own it in that case. And if they don't already own it in that case, they already stole it so fuck 'em.
The real competition involves dozens of factors at all times. Loudness only factors in some of the time. And loudness directly hinders many of the other competitive factors like impact and overall sound.
Again I ask, where can I find this loudness competition so I can enter my 2k square wave?
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Greg_L
Banned
I just told you. Pay attention.
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Greg_L
Banned
What you audio snobs fail to grasp is that if loudness somehow wasn't important, it simply wouldn't be happening. It's totally not necessary and hurts the quality of the final product, bit it's done all the time every day anyway. Why is that?
You guys make up all these dumb scenarios as to why it's not important, but again, it keeps happening and has been going on for over a decade. It's like car racing. It's monkey-see monkey-do. If car A goes faster and wins with a certain camshaft, everyone else scrambles to get the same cam. You don't have to use that cam, but if you wanna win, you better try it. Loudness is just one part of the package, but without it, you sound small and weak to the unwashed masses. I can't believe I have to keep explaining this to you "pros".
You guys make up all these dumb scenarios as to why it's not important, but again, it keeps happening and has been going on for over a decade. It's like car racing. It's monkey-see monkey-do. If car A goes faster and wins with a certain camshaft, everyone else scrambles to get the same cam. You don't have to use that cam, but if you wanna win, you better try it. Loudness is just one part of the package, but without it, you sound small and weak to the unwashed masses. I can't believe I have to keep explaining this to you "pros".
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RAMI
Guest
There's no problem.
Volume is only one of the many reasons I hate Hollywood movies.
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Chibi Nappa
New member
I don't have it in me today to fight this one. I'll just leave it at this:
It is patently retarded to believe that professional music is not permitted to vary in volume to the point were even percussive hits don't rise above anything... even in pop genres that depend on percussion to drive the song.
It is patently retarded to think there is anything snobbish about changes in volume during a song. Can we start calling changes in pitch "tyrannical" as long as we're assigning negative groups of people to basic music properties?
It is patently retarded to think that anybody will not buy a song they love because the master is 4 db quieter.
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Greg_L
Banned
Hey I agree with you completely. That doesn't change the fact that this has been going on for over a decade, with no end in sight, for a reason. To deny it and whine about it is patently retarded. Loudness is now part of the deal. Play along or get left behind. Or better yet, stick to your priniciples and make your music for a tiny handful of fellow audiophile snobs. Don't blame me, I didn't make it this way. The "pros" did.
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contactdannyd
New member
This is the original poster. Actually I do not have any preference as to "hot" mixes. Personally, I prefer more subtle mixing. However, I will be submitting to about 9 internet retailers. What I think is not as important as what the consumer thinks regarding loudness, and the retailer. I do feel that since a lot of the playback venues will be small inexpensive speakers, the issue should be addressed one way or the other. To try to arrive at an answer I did three things: asked the question on this forum, wrote to Tunecore the distributor, and this weekend I will listen to two versions of my song, the hot mix and the normal mix. Admittedly, I did listen to the "hot" mix version last week and it was not distorted at all. All the frequencies were clear as a bell, although the wav looked quite square and compressed to hell. I'll do the side by side comparison this weekend. Also expecting an answer from Tunecore.
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Greg_L
Banned
It doesn't really matter off the bat. Submit the best sounding mix. If people buy and like it, they'll maybe buy more. If they don't like it, they won't. You at least got their money once. If they preview it and it's quiet and timid compared to what they usually listen to, they may pass.
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Greg_L
Banned
By the way, realistically, do you plan on selling many singles/albums? Be real. Seriously. Tunecore may not be the best "agent" to deal with if you don't.
PDP
There once was a note
In the 70s and 80s it seems it was more common place for people to have decent speakers and a fairly powerful stereo amp. In the past 10 years many people have switched to small computer/TV type speakers. I personly think loud modern mixes sound better than older stuff on these little systems. On other playback systems It's not always the case.
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
The reason you have to keep explaining is because your "explanation" just doesn't hold water.
The argument you keep going back to is that if it wasn't a good idea, everybody would not be doing it, and the pros would not be for it. As for the first part of it, all one needs to do is step back and look at human nature in the modern world to see that the planet is rife with mass numbers of people, including "the pros", following a bad ideas. The Loudness War has no corner on that market.
As for the pros doing it, look at it close enough and you see that that is a fallacy argument. Ask any engineer or producer what they would do if they wanted to make their stuff any good and not just Big Macs to sell to tweenies, and they HATE the loudness wars. The only MEs who support the Loudness wars are doing so out of self-preservation; because there's a huge market to be seized making a living out of making things louder, all while the "standard model" of mastering for media distribution is disappearing along with the disappearance of CD sales.
And speaking of CD sales, and in fact, sales in general, they've been on a steady decline ever since the latest version of The Wars began, sometime around 1990 or so. The decline started years *before* the Internet became public, so it can't be blamed entirely on the 'net; there was a trend already well in place by then.
And now that most people have managed to fill their iPods and other doohickeys with pretty much all the MP3 replacements of their CDs and albums they want, even e-sales are flattening out or declining (and, no I'm not making that up; there have been whole programs on the radio and TV with the talking head experts talking about this in detail).
Something's gotta change. That's business, if nothing else. And one of the first things that has to change is the general dissatisfaction the buying public (including the kids) with what they perceive to be the quality of music these days. While they may be initially attracted by a nice shiny object like a loud song, it doesn't keep their interest for very long. Song fatigue sets in quickly. Loudness hasn't worked, because the public just is not buying anymore.
So enough of "the pros know what they're doing" argument, because things aren't working any better for them than they are for you and me.
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Greg_L
Banned
Dude, that's what I've been saying all along. Literally, all along. This whole time. You argue just to argue.
Everyone allegedly hates loudness, but it is a piece of the product that can't be left out.
As far as the buying public goes, if they're tired of music it's because music sucks now. Nothing is believable. Everything is contrived and manufactured. It's not because their ears hurt.
legionserial
New member
I don't hate loudness. I hate things that sound like shit. Sometimes in making something loud they make it sound like shit. Other times, they don't.
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Greg_L
Banned
Lol. Exactly. That's another part of my gripe against these guys. It's trendy to bitch about loudness in any capacity.
The internet's top 3 cliche gripes:
1 - autotune
2 - loudness
3 - MIDI vs real