Over compressing/the loudness war

[nosignal]

okay I've been reading in magazines and online about how the record companies make the bands compress their music insane amounts, and i just thought id share this picture i just took, its a comparison of a song off the new between the buried and me album and a beatles song off sgt. peppers. i thought this was ridiculously hilarious

anyone else have any they'd like to share? i enjoy seeing how crazy some of these are.

 

[carlosguardia]

How about this comparison:
1st track: Queen - We are the Champions (One of the most played songs of all time, From News of the World released in 1977).
2nd track: Michael Jackson - Beat it (From the best selling album of all time, Thriller released in 1982).
3rd track: Gwen Stefani - The sweet escape (2006).
4th track: My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade (2006).

 

[ches1]

I heard livin la vida loca was also a big offender.

 

[TerraMortim]

who cares what a waveform looks like. Nobody buys a record to rip and stare at the waveform. Over-compressing inappropriately music sure is a bad practice, but really, if the mix sounds good who gives a flying fuck if it looks like one giant square wave?

 

[M10K]

who cares what a waveform looks like. Nobody buys a record to rip and stare at the waveform. Over-compressing inappropriately music sure is a bad practice, but really, if the mix sounds good who gives a flying fuck if it looks like one giant square wave?

AMEN!

 

[nosignal]

im not saying that the newer mixes sound bad or anything i just find it interesting seeing exactly how much compression has come into play. im not trying to put any music down. sorry.

 

[TerraMortim]

that's fine There's just a lot of people in the audio industry who shit bricks over this kind of thing... I can appreciate if it's a bad mix or something, but if it sounds good, who gives a toss? It's like, a different version of the concept of "what's with these kids today".

 

[Seafroggys]

It doesn't sound good.

Whenever I listen to any modernly mastered music on my headphones, my ears practically bleed. Overcompressed drums and acoustic guitar sounds like crap, regardless on how well it was mixed.

 

[madmax25]

An interesting observation i've made is out of the 6 or 7 demo CDs I've done for my friends' bands, they always prefer the solid brick version to the Sgt. Peppers dynamics version. I think my generation growing up with commercial stuff being so compressed has created a mindset that that's what a CD is supposed to sound like. Like now that it's where it's at, any move away from that would piss people off to a degree. It's what people expect now.

Honestly, until I fully understood compression and realized what the loudness war was all about, I preferred the sound of newer CDs just because it sounded louder and fuller and more intense. I guess it shows how simple people are about their music. "this one sounds cooler".

Hardcore reckless overcompression actually kind of made one of the demos I did for my friend's band recently. They're a very 'dirty' grungy hard rock band, and pushing the songs really really hard totally captured the trashy garage sound I was looking for. Funny thing is, I was just trying to make it louder and didn't realize I was compressing the f out of it during the bounce to wav...

 

[carlosguardia]

... but really, if the mix sounds good who gives a flying fuck if it looks like one giant square wave?

If it looks like one giant "square" or rectangle, it will NOT sound good; PERIOD.
To illustrate it in terms you might understand, my math behind that is:
Rectangle=No Dynamics=No breathing=No life=DEAD MUSIC.

 

[jaybriggs84]

We'd better get used to it, cause it's not gonna change

 

[Dani Pace]

Maybe I'm a bit outdated in my thinking but I DO NOT equate loudness with intensity. A little compression can work wonders while over compressing just slurs things together. I think some bands who play really loud live try to convey the idea to their recordings by over compressing in an attempt to make them play louder. Maybe industry standards have changed over the years (I wonder what Tom Dowd would have to say about it.)

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

who cares what a waveform looks like. Nobody buys a record to rip and stare at the waveform. Over-compressing inappropriately music sure is a bad practice, but really, if the mix sounds good who gives a flying fuck if it looks like one giant square wave?

Because a giant square wave NEVER sounds as good as a normal feather duster wave. It's not what it looks like that matters, you're right. But when it looks like that, it's going to sound like crap no matter how you parse the argument.

It's like saying, who cares what the lines on the seismograph look like, as long as there isn't an earthquake. Well, if the seismograph is drawing squarewaves, there's an earthquake.

We'd better get used to it, cause it's not gonna change

Sure it is. It's like fashon, it goes in cycles. in the 80's everybody though that synth rock was both the present and future; electronics and electronic sound was here to say so you'd better get used to it. Now you listen to Flock of Seagulls or The Tubes and it sounds so incredibly dated. No, the next fashon came from Seattle, and instead of using synths and space suits and hair gel, it was about a guy who needed a shave wearing a dirty flannel shirt and playing an acoustic guitar.

Engineers are rebelling and fighting the square wave, word is getting out, and the bleeding edge producers are already starting to re-discover texture and dynamics in some of the leading edge mixes. The pendulum is starting to swing. It's s slow swing, but it's coming. In another 5-10 years we will be listening back at the square waves of the turn of the century, and they will sound just as dated as the second Tears for Fears album.

G.

 

[mixsit]

.. I think my generation growing up with commercial stuff being so compressed has created a mindset that that's what a CD is supposed to sound like. ... any move away from that would piss people off to a degree. It's what people expect now.

Exactly. The perception change has already happened..

If it looks like one giant "square" or rectangle, it will NOT sound good; PERIOD.
To illustrate it in terms you might understand, my math behind that is:
Rectangle=No Dynamics=No breathing=No life=DEAD MUSIC.

So while we can say that ...unfortunately, it doesn't make it purely 'true' does it.

I hope Glen's right about it coming around.
Keep up the good fight.

 

[jaz49]

I hope you're right southside. The loudness war is producing some very boring music, IMO. These kinds of producers remind me of a bunch of hyperactive school kids...whoever shouts the loudest gets the most attention. The Beatles didn't have to shout....they could sing! And they got more than a little attention don't ya think!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Just think of all the fads and fashon cycles that have happened in music production over the last 50 years. Every one of them lived it's cycle (some of them overlapping) the way it did because of both business and artistic decision, but while it's the business end that holds the rudder, ultimately it's the artistic side that blows the prevailing winds. While this may be a business, and it's mostly the business end of the equation that's been erroneously driving the volume wars, it remains a business of artists and artistry at the core.

Listen to all of us on here; "Yeah the volume wars suck, it all sounds so boring and fatiguing, but what'ya gonna do?" What is it that makes you think that the big name artists feel any different? They know it sucks, bores and fatigues too. But, because they ARE big name artists and because it's their artistry that got them big names to begin with, they ARE gonna figure out what they're gonna do, and are starting to do that.

Just how many years of everybody sounding like exactly the same brick do you think these artists will put up with before they get bored out of their skin with it? How long do you think Prince will sit around Paisley Park before that guy comes up with a whole new way to use his compressors and limiters altogether? Or the Next Big Thing in music trends replaces the current post-alt wave (which is getting gray hair already) and calls for a new production paradigm?

Nah, the more I think about it, the less I worry. Yeah, I despise the whole idea of the volume wars, as I despise any other ill-conceived, boneheaded, agaist-the-facts idea. But things will change, and then the next generation will have a whole new set of toys to play with on one hand, and gripe about on the other.

G.

 

[mixsit]

Let's do 'perception' again, 'point of reference'. About forty years ago (yikes..!) I had a conversation with my dad (who was also a musician FWIW ) about the 'excitement of rock n' roll. He countered in so many words 'music should be soothing'.
Hell I bet you could still find a few people on this planet that would question 'why hell would you want a guitar that's loud and distorted?'

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Let's do 'perception' again, 'point of reference'. About forty years ago (yikes..!) I had a conversation with my dad (who was also a musician FWIW ) about the 'excitement of rock n' roll. He countered in so many words 'music should be soothing'.

No offense to your father, mixsit, ol boy, but did he just plain sleep through ragtime and swing when he was a young'un? There's more going on there than just a generational thing, because there was plenty of hell-raising - or at least "non-soothing" - popular music in the prime of his lifetime too.

Hell I bet you could still find a few people on this planet that would question 'why hell would you want a guitar that's loud and distorted?'

I ask that question probably an average of three times a week.

I learned there was more than walls of distortion and more than just cheesburgers about the same time I got my driver's license. I mean, come on; I like Wendy's burgers as much as the next guy; but don't ask me to serve and eat them 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. Not only does it get boring as crap, but it's not healthy either. I also like Polish, Mexican, Chinese, Cantonese, Italian, Thai, Indian, Mediterranean, etc., I love fruits and vegetables and nuts just as much as potato chips and onion rings. And there nothing like mixing it up.

I see the volume wars the same way, it's turned into "we have both kinds of music, loud and louder!" Ugh. That stuff, like junk food, will kill you when main-lined, whether you're 9 or 90.

G.

 

[Dani Pace]

Not only have the volume wars taken their toll on music but in some cases have ruined the aspects of vocals too. What happened to "singing a clear line?" I'd much rather hear vocals that I can understand. I'm sure screamers have their place but all the over compressed, distorted, processed voices I hear on some metal and grunge makes me wonder if these people have any idea of what singing really is. To me a lot of it sounds like garbled bullshit, but that's just my opinion. I don't want to offend any headbangers but I'll be glad when growling and screaming run their course and singers get back to singing.

 

[Elton Bear]

Here's an idea...

Automate compression?

Am I being a thick NewB again, or could you not produce an album where the quiet bits are whispers and the loud bits are SLAMMING? Mixing the two techniques where you'd wait for the epic end of your song to really go to work with the limiter and make people ears bleed?

Perhaps myself and a few of my buddies would be the ones interested in listening to it, but I love the way over-produced slick nu-metal (using Limp Bizkit as an example, however much you hate them) sounds just as much as organic '60s live recordings that are full of space and character.
Obviously, a) just my opinion, and b) they're opposite ends of the spectrum (almost), and I appreciate that.



So, any thoughts?