The Loudness Wars Again... And a study

[Beck]

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same.

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official | Reuters

Ironic after all the twists and turns over last 30 years or so as digital became the dominant format, we are now in a situation where standard Philips cassette with Dolby B has greater dynamic range than the lossy compressed digital formats now in vogue.

 

[gecko zzed]

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same.

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official | Reuters

Ironic after all the twists and turns over last 30 years or so as digital became the dominant format, we are now in a situation where standard Philips cassette with Dolby B has greater dynamic range than the lossy compressed digital formats now in vogue.

I agree that pop music is too loud and sounds all the same. I agree that the current fixation with loudness has robbed material of its dynamic variety. I also agree that the use of digital technology has made it easier to do that.

I am not sure about this idea that a cassette has greater dynamic range than some digital formats. Because the material might have a small dynamic range doesn't mean that the media has a small dynamic range.

 

[Chili]

The one good aspect about the loudness wars is we know longer need to be fiddling with the volume knob all the time. So now when you're driving, instead of one hand on the wheel and one hand on the volume, you can now have one hand on the wheel and one hand on the iPhone.

and good observation GZ!!

 

[Tim Gillett]

we are now in a situation where standard Philips cassette with Dolby B has greater dynamic range than the lossy compressed digital formats now in vogue.

I suggest readers read the actual article. Loudness was only one of its points. The study also noted the decreased musical complexity of modern pop songs in terms of chords, melodies and types of sounds used.

The article said nothing about audio formats, whether digital, analog, lossy or non lossy. It said nothing about analog or digital audio.

But on lossy formats, of course the really low bitrate formats will have less dynamic range that a Philips cassette. They were designed for very lo fi applications.
The higher bitrate lossy audio formats equal and exceed the dynamic range of a Philips cassette with Dolby B, just as we would expect them to.

The advent of the CD, 30 years ago, brought in a consumer format with far greater dynamic range (over 90db) than a Philips cassette (barely 60db), Dolby B or not - and regardless of the loudness wars.

So what is your point Beck?

 

[Tim Gillett]

Does anybody today seriously advocate a return to Phillips cassette based Walkmans?

Compare apples with apples:

The contents of a C90 Philips cassette will easily fit uncompressed on a tiny 1GB flash card. Today, 1GB is nothing. The kids are using much bigger capacity cards than that. We all are. So we can fit the contents of multiple C90 cassettes, on one tiny card, in a personal player.

Better sound quality. Smaller. Lighter. Much longer playing time. Total freedom from wow and flutter due to jogging. Random access. Much faster download times.

And we dont even need to use lossy compression.

Beck, what have you been smokin'?

 

[jaynm26]

Yep, We Lost and the public won lets bust ear drums they dont care obviously, I bet I bust more ear drums than Chili, Massive, Red and you gecko. Im gonna be the new spokes person for Blue Cross Blue Shield.

 

[A Reel Person]

I love my cassette Walkman style players,...

I love my cassette Walkman style players,... both genuine Walkman(s) and me-too clone players alike! I collect them. I seek them out and love to find them at thrift stores. They still sound great to me. Cassette sounds good, and I have very discerning ears,... so pls don't go there!

Yeah,... I have an Ipod, but it was a gift. I'd never have bought one. What I like about the Ipod is the total amount of storage on such a little device, but overall I think cassettes sound better. I don't mind changing and flipping tapes. I make mix tapes for the car and they do roughly equal time with the Ipod using a cassette adapter. I've ripped my CDs to my puter @ 320 Kbps and it sounds alright. I use the Ipod a lot, but I'm sure I'm the only person at the gym with the tape player Walkman!

I don't like overly loud or compressed audio, tho. I find it doesn't hold up well at boosted volumes, if that makes any sense. F/I, to turn up a 70s era John Lennon album up loud it just sounds nice and creamy, very coherent and pleasing to the ear. To turn up a Metallica album similarly, the sound quickly turns to shit and practically makes my ears bleed. And yes, I'm a big fan of very loud music, I've often turned up my stereo to nearly live music levels, but the brick wall compressed nature of contemporary recordings is what I find most horrid.

That's just MO, and I'm not hopping in on any debate. I know what my senses tell me is good or bad.

 

[A Reel Person]

OTOH, the article was interesting,...

The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a 'loudness war' but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.

Accused? Was this something legitimate scientists had to verify? Geez, give me a break!

The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.

Here's where I think the author ventures off into whimsy.

Old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable. The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.

This was either obviously tongue-in-cheek, or a not-so veiled swipe at the Stones, who have never failed to be relevant to the music industry without subjecting themselves to oversimplification or the maladies of the loudness wars! OMFG! Give me a break!

I take issue with the author and their slant, and I surely don't think there was ever a need for formal study to determine "officially" that "Pop music too loud and all sounds the same". Geezus. What a dumb piece of fluff!

 

[Beck]

I am not sure about this idea that a cassette has greater dynamic range than some digital formats. Because the material might have a small dynamic range doesn't mean that the media has a small dynamic range.

Right you are about the difference between potential dynamic range and how much dynamic range is used. So to clarify, the way production is done today, our lowly Philips cassette releases of yesterday had more dynamic range actually used even though cassette has less potential dynamic range than say CD. But also keep in mind CD is a dying format... all but abandoned.

And it's not being replaced by a better format like SACD as many of us had hoped, but rather the end medium of choice is lossy compressed files like mp3. Both the potential dynamic range of mp3 and that which is actually utilized is inferior to high quality high bias cassette on a decent deck. mp3 is of course more convenient. There's a lot of irony in this since we began this digital journey back in the 80's with dynamic range being a big selling point. Now nobody cares. The reasons why nobody cares should be of interest to the recording professional and the audiophile alike.

Of course the loudness wars would not have occurred if it weren't for the digital technology that makes it possible... but that's understood if the different technologies are understood. In the analog world... both tape and analog compression it was not necessary to hard limit things and stuff it all into 6 dB of dynamic range. The gentle compression of tape and outboard analog compressors allowed for much greater dynamic range compared to how things are done today. Again, one can't help but be amused by the irony.

This is a short article. The study goes into much greater detail.

 

[mdainsd]

Its no coincidence that the decrease in quality of music, especially pop, as indicated by the study, tracks the adoption of digital technologies. The technology per se isnt the problem. The problem is anyone can do it, but everyone cant do it well.

On dynamic range. i record a death metal band, and seriously, from start of track to finish, the level is within a 3 dB range.

 

[ofajen]

In the analog world... both tape and analog compression it was not necessary to hard limit things and stuff it all into 6 dB of dynamic range. The gentle compression of tape and outboard analog compressors allowed for much greater dynamic range compared to how things are done today.

In the analog tape world, stuffing the signal into 3 dB of dynamic range just below the "maximum" level is not only unnecessary, it's totally unacceptable, because the distortion penalty is too high. The unfortunate, enabling characteristic of digital audio is that there is no such progressive distortion penalty, so long as you don't go over. There are other adverse consequences that make the sound far less enjoyable, but it isn't harmonic distortion.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[Tim Gillett]

Its no coincidence that the decrease in quality of music, especially pop, as indicated by the study, tracks the adoption of digital technologies. The technology per se isnt the problem. The problem is anyone can do it, but everyone cant do it well.

On dynamic range. i record a death metal band, and seriously, from start of track to finish, the level is within a 3 dB range.

Exactly.

And your Death Metal music is meant to have a narrow dynamic range. The 1812 Overture is meant to have a wide dynamic range. A John Lennon 70's album is probably somewhere in between those two extremes.

Musical genres arent all meant to have the same dynamic range.

Then within one genre there's personal taste, mood and occasion. Sometimes I like my music loud and other times I play the same music softer.

Then there's the problem of background noise. Much music these days is listened to outdoors or in noisy subways, buses, on motorbikes etc.
In my quiet living room, I can have the playback level quite low as there are no competing sounds. But in my car at 70mph I need the same piece of music dynamically compressed by maybe 10 to 20db.

For as long as I can remember, FM and AM radio have compressed the dynamics of the music they play, more than it already is. AM more than FM because it's a noisier medium. They strike a compromise because they know they cant hope to cater to everyone's personal listening situation.

Dynamic range requirements vary enormously. No one size fits all.

 

[gecko zzed]

Ironic after all the twists and turns over last 30 years or so as digital became the dominant format, we are now in a situation where standard Philips cassette with Dolby B has greater dynamic range than the lossy compressed digital formats now in vogue.

Actually this raises an interesting train of thought that dwells on the difference between the theoretical and the actual.

Here is an example.

Some time ago there was a debate about powered versus passive PA speakers. One argument (amongst others) against powered speakers was that they were heavier than passive, given that they had an amp built into the cabinet. This seems sound; all things being equal, a powered speaker would be heavier than its non-powered equivalent.

But, in reality, things aren't always equal. If we take into account what people have, rather than what they could have, I could maintain a case that passive speakers were heavier than powered speakers. This is because speakers are expensive, and people don't buy new as soon as new arrives. They wait until they actually need to (or can afford to). This means that many operators are working with older passive speakers that are actually heavier than current passives with neodymium magnets, or current powered speakers, with class D amps. For example, a powered 1000watt QSC K10 weighs just 14.5 kg, where as a, say, EV sx200 passive speaker weighs 18kg.

Similarly, we can view the tape versus mp3 thing in the same way. Although a 16/44.1 CD track can deliver a greater dynamic range than an SA90 cassette, that doesn't really amount to much if (a) recordings are not using that range, and (b), users are not listening to that format, and are instead listening to poor quality MP3s through poor quality earbuds.

The argument that you should compare like with like is sound. But it doesn't always apply. You can equally validly compare what people are using at the time. But in either case, it is helpful to be clear about what is being compared, and not to slip into transferring a conclusion from argument to the other.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Gekko, I agree,

It's also important to see things in their historical context.

CD's came out around 1982. mp3's didnt appear until the 1990's because the software hadnt been developed until then.

mp3's were never meant to be the equal of CD's and uncompressed in general, in terms of sound quality, let alone some sort of improvement. mp3's were a convenient trade off and always will be.

To suggest that CD's were some sort of high point and then it all started going downhill when mp3's arrived is to misunderstand the history and the reason for developing the technology in the first place.

Also, as mentioned earlier, a lossy audio format such as mp3 is a bit like analog tape formats. With analog tape you can use wide tracks, and fast speeds for good quality audio, or you can use narrow tracks and slow speeds where quality doesnt matter that much. In the same way, an mp3 can very mildly data compress, with little or no audible degradation, to heavily data compressed, with massive loss of audio quality, but perhaps useable for the purpose in mind. And everything in between.

It also depends on the quality the original material being compressed. You "cut your cloth to suit the garment".

Yes, a Type II cassette using Dolby B (properly set up and executed) can give very good audio playback of a finished music production. I would happily listen to music all day long on such a format.

I should know. I own three Nakamichi cassette decks, all personally maintained and working well. One (LX1) is on a small table next to my bed where I can listen through good quality AKG headphones to my big collection of cassettes. Been doing it for years. Two out of my three Naks have user adjustable play head azimuth (a modification I designed and installed) so that I can maximise playback quality and minimize Dolby tracking errors.
I also have three Tascam 122 MkIII machines, ex some analog recording studios which I used to maintain.

Even an uncompressed file such as a wav or AIFF can be made to sound worse than the cassette (by using a mere 22.05khz or lower sample rate), but what does that prove?

mp3 is not a fixed audio quality. It can be tailored to whatever quality trade off you want.

In any case, these days, people can use much higher mp3 bitrates than they used to because of improvements in software, network speeds, players, flash memory capacity etc. What might have been an audio quality constraint 15 years ago no longer is.

In 2012 should we even be having this discussion? Oh well, the good thing is people will end up learning, which is the whole point of a forum like this, so it's a worthwhile discussion ultimately.

 

[Hammerstone]

mp3's were never meant to be the equal of CD's and uncompressed in general, in terms of sound quality, let alone some sort of improvement. mp3's were a convenient trade off and always will be.

To suggest that CD's were some sort of high point and then it all started going downhill when mp3's arrived is to misunderstand the history and the reason for developing the technology in the first place.

If I may chime in here...

I'm reading a biography of George Eastman at the moment, and it's interesting how he was able to almost singlehandedly create the amateur photography market, through the use of inferior but more useful technology. Meaning, that to be able to carry a smallish camera that took 100 exposures before needing to be reloaded, appealed to people much more than lugging around a large tripod camera and a shit ton of 4x5 glass plates. And hey, the reason I have an ipod today is that it's easier to carry around than the 800+ cd's I own - other formats than mp3 are for home listening where the stereo is. Most new technology is about CONVENIENCE and nothing else...it's an important lesson to learn, and one that fortunes are built on.

 

[zorf]

Off topic a bit, but the compressed files led to easy downloading, which led to to mostly free downloading, which led to massive music collections.
Only a few nut heads in the vinyl days would have 800 albums, because that would have cost a lot, and would take over your house.
That's one of the reasons music has become devalued, because it doesn't represent any effort.
You dont have to go to a store and buy it and take it home and see it in the bookcase.
It's invisible lurking in a teeny flash drive.

 

[A Reel Person]

Wow! Good One!

Seriously,... that's not OT!

I appreciate the logical and salient point which you're making, which in it's essence I agree with, but...

I'm wondering if you realize who you're calling Nut Heads!



PS: Here's an OT adjoinder,... I'd often said or thought the same thing about home recording itself, when you had to present "effort" and "determination" to enter into the ground floor of such, when the original Tascam Portastudios cost around $1000! You had to really want it and value it. Now, 4-tracking like that is devalued and almost dismissed out of hand, or as one disgruntled member once said, are... "child's toys!"

Good Morning!

 

[zorf]

I agree.

i'm partial to the analog sound, which is why i lurk here, but with built in effects, editing features, low noise floor, and easy export options,
the cheap 4 track phone apps would kick sand in the face of the typical 1970's home studio.

The good news: It's easy to make an impressive recording.
The bad news: It's easy to make an impressive recording.

Snap to grid, loops, drumagog, samples, auto tune, cut and past, micro editing, harmonizers, etc. mean you dont have to compose or perform in real time. Any hack can fake it.
And the average person can't tell the difference or even cares.

Oh well.

 

[Chili]

i'm partial to the analog sound, which is why i lurk here,

OMG, did I post in the Analog section??? Well, at least it was only to make a joke about texting and driving.

I'll be more conscientious in the future about what forum I'm posting in....

Carry on...

 

[Beck]

Actually this raises an interesting train of thought that dwells on the difference between the theoretical and the actual...

Very good points indeed. When I consider these things I look back to the advent of CD most of all because as I mentioned one of the big selling points was all that dynamic range. However, that’s always been more of a potential rather than a reality. One of my pet peeves is that the marketing of digital, both on the studio recording side and in regards to the end medium has been about how it’s measured by test equipment rather than the human experience. Music is after all made for human consumption not for scopes. Psychoacoustics are more important because that addresses human perception. The fact is we don’t need or use the available dynamic range in most cases, and that includes orchestral, string quartets, classical soloists, etc…. all of which I recorded on location as a young engineer. But in the studio I primarily recorded rock/pop, and still do that almost exclusively.

The 61 dB of TDK SA and the 63 dB of SA-X cassette tape is a lot of wiggle room for most music. Add noise reduction to that and you have all the dynamic range anyone could want. If you’re using dbx you can match or exceed the dynamic range of Redbook CD. And again, since our focus should be human perception we measure this on a weighted curve that is adjusted to how humans perceive sound rather than gauges and scopes. So a few dB up or down may look impressive on a spec sheet in the hands of a fast talking salesman, but the difference its actually imperceptible to the human ear.

Then we have the eternal debate on what sounds better. For my tastes that will always be tape or vinyl. In the final analysis music is for the enjoyment of the individual. This individual hears a harshness in all digital formats. I listen to them for convenience, but I also listened to music on AM radio back in the day. When I want to really sit and focus on the music for pure enjoyment I curl up with a nice tape or LP.

So in short, a lot of the hype used to pitch CD was never relevant to how people actually listened to music. Granted the CD was pin drop quiet and that impressed me too at first, but no one used the potential dynamic range, nor was it necessary.

Here’s a little secret everyone should take note: Part of the magic of recording is to shrink the dynamic range just enough so it is more pleasant to listener. Humans don’t want to strain to hear as the music disappears below the ambient noise of the environment. And they don’t want to experience pain on the other side when music gets too loud like it does in a live situation. Recording is a different way to experience music and should not have to sound in every way like a live concert. A live concert can be downright unpleasant. Recording tamed the extremes and brought a new way of experiencing music into our homes, cars, etc. However, that has now gone overboard where there are virtually no dynamics at all. That ain’t good. We can fix it, but right now it ain’t so good in the way popular music is processed.

I would comment in detail on why I prefer passive monitors to active, but I don’t want to get too far off topic. I will tell you a little story though. About the time actives first started getting popular I just happened to be in the market for a new pair of monitors. I was walking around my local well-stocked music store looking at the options when I walked behind a row of monitors to look at the inputs. The Zipper of my open leather jacket (A black jacket just like the Terminator) accidentally brushed across the heatsink on the back of one of the active monitors causing the heatsink to ring like a bell. A sales person came up to me and asked me what I thought of those monitors and without hesitation I said, “Uh… no, I don’t think so.” I then flicked the heatsink with a finger and it was still ringing as I walked away. He didn’t argue, but perhaps that’s because I was wearing my Terminator jacket, leather boots and dark sunglasses. One never knows in a situation like that.

Anyway I ended up with a pair of Yorkville YSM-1i passives (AKA ART SLM-1) and they are still in my top three of the best nearfields of all time. I still have them, powered by a vintage 1981 Yamaha P2050 Natural sound power amp. The combination is absolutely golden. I have an Alesis RA-100 power amp as an alternate and that too makes a sweet combo with the Yorkies.