Getting songs up to a commercial volume??

[Elton123]

Unfortunately like many things in our society, commercial music has succumbed to the lowest common denominator. Meaning, record companies are only in business to sell records. So my only guess is that they tell the MEs to make it as loud as possible, because that is what "civilian" listeners want. I'm amazed sometimes at what good artists allow record companies to do with their music. But, if they sell records, I'm sure it's not a priority.
I still listen for great "recording" and "mixing" unique arrangements, melodies, voices and sounds.

 

[Crow_]

I find it annoying to mess with my volume knob every song, especially when I just have music playing in the background of something else I'm doing.

 

[junplugged]

That is funny. lol.

...
I always like this gif, Im around 2000 lol

 

[mixsit]

I find it annoying to mess with my volume knob every song, especially when I just have music playing in the background of something else I'm doing.

Hey I hear you there. Really pisses me off all this uber loud screwing things up like that.

 

[SafeandSound]

There are no real secrets, only choices which take time to learn what is going to work
for any given material, the more often you do it the better you get at making the right choices.

Mix compression, good eq choices and great mixing.

In mastering:

Compression
Equalization
Saturation
Harmonic excitation
Adjustment of low frequency energy (which could encompass eq)
Clipping A/D converters or a dsp plugin
Limiting

Thats it, however the caveat is that no single chain or combination will work or give optimized results for differing material so there is a need
to re-work the plan each and every time to reduce artifacts and side effects or increasing perceived levels.

cheers

Barry

 

[akpcep]

Regarding the use of iTunes/iPods - if I recall correctly, they have something called "soundcheck" or similar, which is meant to set all the tracks you sync across to the same volume level.

If I'm not talking out of my hat about this, could this actually help those of us who don't want to smash our recordings?

Not that I'm defending iTunes, I think it's one of the worst pieces of software ever released.