I wish I'd thought of it.

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I don't see the point you are trying to make. I was using my brother as an example of how your average kid aproaches sound quality. To him decibels seems to be all that matters. He spent several hundred dollars making his stereo as LOUD as possible, but his speakers suck and his stereo sounds like crap. This is the way comercial albums are approached because this is the way the target demographic thinks.

So what are you trying to say? You had a nice stereo system in your car but it only sounded good when it was loud? Then given today's standards, you may have a very promising career ahead of you as a mastering engineer.
 
I must not get it, cause i think these bass heavy , thumpin car stereo's sound like shit! I know lot's of people who have spent big bucks on thier car stereo's,and think they sound great...( of course they think it sounds great, they just spent a grand on the fucking thing! ). I think my stock cd player in my new pick up sounds better! The car stereo industry is making a killing...to each his own i guess......then again, mabey i'm gettin old....naaaa. What were we talking about??
 
what I'm saying is most cars that get subwoofers installed usually have bass blockers on the smaller speakers...i put the bass blockers on my front speakers before i put the subwoofer in and to get a full sound of the speakers i had to turn them up....when i got the subwoofer put in i had to change the bass levels depending on how loud i wanted it so i could get a good sound.....at lower volumes i would turn the subwoofer up to 4 or 5 to counter the loss of bass from the smaller speakers and higher volumes i can pull it back to -2 and get a full sound. if you dont understand that...i dont know how i can simplify it any more.
 
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I've heard talk on these boards before about a "loudness race" in popular music currently, and I generally agree, although listening to the radio these days makes me feel ill, so I haven't paid too much attention.

I do know for sure though, being 21 and only three years out of high school, that the huge bass car audio system phenomenon is definitely a loudness race. That is the only explanation for it. I know people who are like this. At first 10"s were more than enough, then you had to have 12"s, now 15"s and 1000s of watts of amplification, and who knows whats next. It really is all about being louder than the person at the stop light next to you.

I hope this stops very, very soon...please make it stop.
 
Well you'd have to change society first. This is no different to the way some people compete over other things, the latest DVD player, the most up to date Mobile phone, the most expensive training shoes, the fastest computer/car, been in the cinema for the first showing of THE new film, etc etc. In short, being a dutiful consumer.

Best way to deal with these people is not to play the game yourself, don't compete with them and don't show that you're impressed with anything they have bought. Only buy what you need & be wise enough to know what you really need, not what the ad men tell you you should have.

It's sad really. When these people stop at traffic lights and blast the nighbourhood out they are saying 'look at me, hey over here!'...they want attention. Of course this is nothing like goiung on stage to play music and saying look at me, that's totally different ;-) LOL

When i was a kid we all asked my English teacher why he hadn't been to see the latest blockbuster movie. he replied that he would see it later, when all the advertising had died down and when people stopped telling him he should see it. he would not play the game of the ad men. That was cool advice, which i have tried to follow ever since (saves you a shed load of money over the years too!!).
 
there are ways to deal with this....the police where i live have passed a noise ordinance.....if your car's system can be heard 30 yards from the car.....you can be fined 150 for the first offense and it goes up from there......the second way this is dealt with is by people stealing the system out of your car and the cops dont seem to bother following up on it.
 
Yeah, I have my '94 Aerostar boobie trapped so nobody'll steal my factory AMFM.
 
See, here's the bee-otch...

This isn't what the public demands - This is nothing more that bands & labels trying to "keep up with the Joneses" with volume. Radio stations couldn't care less, because they're all trying to do the same.

Ask most people on the street - They don't care if they have to turn it up a bit. If allowed to "think" about it, most would prefer it that way because it usually sounds better cranked if it's more dynamic to begin with.

Anyone with a sub cabinet should know the difference too. Smashed mixes give you distorted low end, too. Clean, dynamic lows coming through a sub sound kick-ass, while crappy smashed lows sound like... crappy smashed lows.

All of a sudden, everyone in the industry feels obligated to provide volume even at the expense of quality. Now, we're just loudly beating a dead horse.
 
It's a curious situation: even dorks like me can record good [given a modicum of talent] clean digital audio, make decent mixes of it [always with the qualifier that it takes experience], and burn to CD. What a paradise, right?

So there are 2 routes music takes from here:

1) run it through MP3, which takes your pristine digital audio and turns it into the equivalent of a cassette played back on a boom box*, or

2) normalize/compress the tar out it until all musical value is lost, or

3) both, then

4) play it back through 18" subs that sound like an amplified bass drum, or

5) play it on a radio station with the compressors cranked to "Vaporize".

Is everyone deliberately trying to subvert the capabilities we have?
_____
*Any day now somebody'll invent the 8-track cartridge algorhythm, which will introduce random wow and flutter to your playback!
 
America "can't have too much of a good thing!" a little compression is good..but if we can compress it enough to make the audio version of Spam, then we got something!
 
Massive Master said:
...All of a sudden, everyone in the industry feels obligated to provide volume even at the expense of quality. Now, we're just loudly beating a dead horse.
Click to expand...

Hopefully it will pass. But what's also scary is the prospect of a whole generation coming up thinking it's supposed to sound like that.
 
hey maybe when their all 40 and damn near def they'll sue "Big Record Company" saying they didnt know loud would permanently damage their hearing
 
One of the main reasons the engineer at a local studio I worked with said about the loudness craze is that producer's feel they need to compete for attention on air waves. Its kind of like how commerical ads on TV are louder than the actual programming--they do this to get you to pay specific attention to the ad. The thinking behind some producers is that if their band's song stands out above the rest more people will pay attention to it. But it has to end somewhere, music can only get so loud as the human ear can only take so much before it all goes to hell. Its like a sonic cold war.
 
oh god....people will form their own coalition probably named "the resistance" who will probably revert back to that fun lovin one or two acoustic guitar hippie music...it could go back even further and all they'll play is 30-40 minute pieces by bach and mozart
 
I'll check 'em out when I get hooked up to my other computer.

You know, maybe there'll be a backlash. Maybe someday music consumers will associate flavorless music with their elders saying "huh?" a lot and there'll be an exodus back down the compression highway...

...but I don't really believe it. Producers want music LOUD so it attracts attention; all other criteria fade into insignificance. (It's like the dilemma of why television programming is so stupid: it's stupid so it'll appeal to those stupid enough to base their purchasing decisions on what they see on tv! There's a vicious circle there.) Commercial music is aimed squarely at the 14-year-olds, and what do they know? They only know it's LOUD, which is GOOD, and it's HAPPENIN, which, you may have noticed, most of us aren't.

On the other hand, maybe the proliferation of people like us will lead to an underground of radio non-listeners, just as there are pockets of people here and there who don't watch tv. I haven't listened to anything but NPR for years now, and when I turn on a commercial AM or FM station I am astonished at the sheer noise level.

I'm starting to repeat myself. Nurse, nurse! I need my gruel!
 
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dachay2dnr, those samples are gruesome. The interesting difference is when you play the whacked version, then the original: it's as though you played it first on a cheap box and then on a decent stereo. That seems to be the stealth element in all this: if you just notice it's louder, you're already a lost soul.

Of course, I'm an old cranky guy (it's been YEARS since my kids let me buy CDs for them) but I seem to have spent a lot of money over the years on upgrading speakers, amps, decks and what-have-you (and now I'm doing it all over again in my studio!) in order for the music to sound better. The current trend seems to be to make it sound worse.

My pappy was right. The world IS going to hell in a handbasket.
 
dachay2tnr said:
I'll contribute this to the discussion.
http://www.loudnessrace.net/victims/examples.htm

I haven't had a chance to listen to the samples yet, but it appears to be right on target.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dachay. I had no idea that was out there.
Just going from the graphic time-line examples on the home page, I'd estimate that one could easily approach the '1995' levels where only a minor percentage of the peaks are lost, with little damage to the mix.
wayne
 
Ain't it the truth? Back when I was doing customer work, I had this big presentation down about why mastering at a pro facility was necessary,all about the 6 figure signal chain, super accurate monitoring and acoustical environment, super experienced enginer with fresh perspective etc. etc.

Now I hear all this big-label stuff come out that is squashed into a frenzy of white noise and ruined transients and I think "shit,I could have done that to it!"

A friend of mine sent his blues project off to some hot-shot a while back,can't recall who it was just now. Anyway, it comes back compressed to thrash-metal extremes. I'm thinking what part of "blues" did the ME not understand? I guess it has become such a standard practice these days that they do this shit automatically.
 
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