I think everything that has been audio has been a step forward. There has to of been trial and error to get us were we are today.
my question is what the hell are people doing these days? audio quality is very good these days but there is no dynamics to anything anymore. the audio mix in most films are terrible one minute everything is booming with explosions and gun fire then all of a sudden some one talks and your struggling to hear what the hell they said!!!!
this loudness war has to stop and bring back the dynamics to everything
Yep, it's an old thread, but I have to hit this.
The phenomenon described in this post implies that there is actually too much dynamic range, a point that I agree with to an extent, but is the exact opposite of what he claims to be ranting against.
It actually leads to a discussion on mixing and mastering in general. The loudness wars are still in effect, but we also seem to have growing "anti loudness" war happening as well. Some folks are pushing to show off just how much dynamics and transient response they can keep in a mix.
We must be careful, though, as the post above illustrates. When you have a captive audience in a controlled environment and enough headroom in your playback system you can get away with pushing the dynamic range. A movie theater is quiet to begin with, and all of the listeners are sitting quietly and attentively. You can get away with going from a whisper to a nuclear explosion and have everything heard without the explosion bursting people's eardrums or destroying the speakers.
However, that's a best case scenario. Most listening environments have 40 to 60 db of ambient noise, whether it's the general buzz of things around the house or road noise in the car. If a comfortable listening level has peaks around 85-90db, that doesn't really leave a lot of space for us to mix in. Sure, we can handle peaks up above 100db, but very few people are willing to go to concert levels in their everyday listening. My wife was one of those who would happily sit with remote in hand, turning up the TV so that we could hear the dialog over the furnace, and then turning it back down in the battle scenes. I was perfectly happy to just crank it! There are reasons we divorced...
If you've ever tried to listen to PJ Harvey's Rid of Me album in a "real world" setting, then you know what I'm talking about when it comes to music production. I really do appreciate how it draws you into a gentle, intimate thing and then suddenly hits you over the head with crushing noise. It's great when I'm sitting in the studio alone. Try to play it in the car and still be able to talk to the person next to you, and half of the album is essentially silence.
