A Win-Win-Win-Win Solution to The Loudness Wars
Actually something else I've noticed about the volume wars that pisses me off is how it has contributed to things like mp3 players and discmans. I don't think they need to make them as loud anymore because the music being made these days is already super-loud.
My last mp3 player was not capable of reaching the volumes neccessary to make older recordings satisfactorily audible. For example, listening to an old Megadeth album from the mid 80's or so, I'd have the player on full blast and would actually have to boost it with the EQ to make it audible on a train. And even then I could have done with having it a little louder. Of course, I have the thing on shuffle, and the next tune is from an album post 2005, comes on before I have the chance to adjust my volume, and inevitably, I nearly end up blowing my fucking ears into my skull. Especially with what they do to metal these days.
Obviously I don't want them to make the tunes louder, I want them to make all the tunes quieter, so they will make things like mp3 players louder.
That said, I don't entirely beleive in the idea of a standardisation similar to what they have in the movies. I think that would somewhat suffocate the art. This is something artists and labels are going to have to do off their own backs.
I put a potential solution to all this on the table a year or two ago. Unfortunately the table was back in the corner by the kitchen in a restaruant not often frequented by Those Who Matter in this issue
:
It makes total sense to me for both sides of The Wars to agree not on a content standard, but on a petition to the playback hardware manufacturers to bring back a modern version of the old AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuit in the playback devices. These used to be fairly common on portable AM/FM radios and tape players 30-40 years ago.
On a basic level, AGC was little more than a hard limiter, sometimes with gain boost, sometimes not, depending upon the circuit design. IOW, it performed on the playback end what producers and engineers are now doing on the production end with the Volume Wars.
Granted, the old AGC circuits were cheap, low quality curcuits, but with today's digital technology they could pretty easily be made just as cheap or cheaper, but quite higher in quality.
The modern AGC would be switchable On/Off by the user (as many of them were back then too), and the better quality ones might even include a simple gain control knob. The idea is that the producers would be free to make the music as they see fit, and they can give the listener the choice of either listening to the full dynamics (AGC off) or everything equally loud (AGC on).
The new AGC could even include an "Auto/Manual" switch setting. "Manual" means that the user/listener can manually decide whether the AGC is on or off at any given time as described above. When it is switched to "Auto", however, the AGC circuit would read a single info bit embedded in the P Code of the disc or track that the mastering engineer could encode to automatically instruct the circuit to turn on or off based upon the desire/recommendation of the label/producer/artist.
Everybody would win IMHO under this scheme: the listener would win in that they could listen to what they want how they want, the dynamics advocates would still be able to produce their music The Way God Intended It, the loudness advocates would be able to still offer bricks on playback to still compete on the Loudness field if they wish, and the manufacturers wold have another gadget they could use to sell new gear and to compete with (our AGC is better than your AGC).
G.
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