the volume war has been won!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lt. Bob
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Katz must be on the payroll or something.
Why would one urge the industry to stop doing it themselves and let iTroll do it for them?
There was no assessment of the effect that the processing has on the audio. No discussion of the artifacts it may of may not generate. Not even a recognition that sometimes a quiet song is on an album to be quiet between the louder ones. The several hours of assessment has created a benchmark on making benchmarks from minimal science.
The excitement that Nirvana style brought to songs by reviving the quiet loud/quiet/dynamic is also present on an album. Oh, but wait - iTroll doesn't do albums it does singles/individual tracks. Does this mean that iTroll will have katz release the new rule by unchangable default setting as well as the demise of the sequenced album?
Microsoft did it with correspondence formatting (the death of the indented paragraph, the date on the top righ, everything left justifies, big margins to sell more paper etc etc) & crapple continue to do it with every available electronic device.
The walled garden is a good analogy: we are kept form the slings and arrows of outrageous volume variation, (something which obviously concerned crapple and caused them to step in with an audio vaccination program in the public interest), whilst being trained to embrace the new level levels as the only way (a bit like how we now accept analogue noise as warmth etc).
Yes folks, let's not consciously and deliberately squash the merry hell out of our own stuff; let's let crapple do it for us and, with regard to the genreal population, let them do it without letting us know or have an opt out clause.
It seems that the "market" likes to be allowed to remain dynamic so long as revenue, audio and that oft cited raison d'etre of business, CHOICE, aren't.
 
Can somebody post the original article link again? It's not working. Thanks in advance.
 
rayc said:
Katz must be on the payroll or something.
Why would one urge the industry to stop doing it themselves and let iTroll do it for them?
Click to expand...

You might not be reading it right.
The industry has been forced into making mixes digitally loud, louder, LOUDEST...since that's what artists felt was needed to compete with the others making things loud.
The iTunes algorithm will negate that excessive *digital* loudness....of course, you can still turn up your own volume as much as you like, and the algorithm will provide a more even playing field so when you do turn up or down, all the playbacks will be compatible level-wise. Something radio has been doing for a very long time, and it never bothered anyone, and the songs didn't all sound homogenized level-wise...because they had dynamics.

The iTunes algorithm will initially make some mixes sound like shit....but mostly the ones that have been digitally manipulated within an inch of their life for loudness.
If the algorithm is implemented as a standard....at some point down the road, people who use to digitally nuke their mixes purfely for playback loundess, will be forced to pull back on that processing. That won't make their mixes sound less loud than the others, it will actually put the dynamics back....the loud/quiet dynamic you are talking about.
It will take some time, but it would work if it became a digital level playback standard.

And for the guys who like a very compressed sound, you can still do that to your mixes....just don't push the overall digital level up to 0 dBFS. In other words....seperate the digital playback level of the mix from the sound playback quality of the mix. You can have a nuked sound, just up to the standard *digital* playback level....unless you want to ignore the algorithm and let it do what it wants to your mixes that exceed the standard.
Nothing is being taken away AFA artistic expression....and what's going to be gained, are the dynamics for those whowant that, by them not having to nuke mixes just to be playbcak level-competitive.
 
killthepixelnow said:
Can somebody post the original article link again? It's not working. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Looks like the link website is down....and of course, this was AES week in NYC, so all the pro audio guys are there, and I'm sure Bob Katz is too....so I would wait a couple of days, it will probably be back up soon.
 
miroslav said:
The iTunes algorithm will initially make some mixes sound like shit....but mostly the ones that have been digitally manipulated within an inch of their life for loudness.
Click to expand...

I think Katz's statements are wrong about that. It's only the quieter, more dynamic, songs that will suffer any limiting to get them to the -16dBFS RMS level. But there shouldn't be a lot of those. Songs louder (lower RMS level) than that level will simply be attenuated. This quote from Apple's page on Sound Check supports that conclusion:

apple.com said:
2. Any boosts in playback volume are designed to be protected against clipping by iTunes' build-in limiter.
Click to expand...
 
bouldersoundguy said:
It's only the quieter, more dynamic, songs that will suffer any limiting to get them to the -16dBFS RMS level. But there shouldn't be a lot of those.
Click to expand...

Why would a quiter song need to be limited...unless you think the level will be rasied so that the upper peaks will need limiting, but if so, with a quiet song, there won't be that much.

I would think in those cases, it's simply attenuated up to the tops...and it retains ALL it's dynamics.
I'm not sure if even that is done.
It may just be left as-is...but it's all in the algorithm and how it works on different material.

And yeah, I would think at -16 dBFS RMS, there's not going to be a lot of those.....and again, radio has been doing this for a very long time, and I don't recall quiet, dynamic music suffering for it.
 
miroslav said:
Why would a quiter song need to be limited...unless you think the level will be rasied so that the upper peaks will need limiting, but if so, with a quiet song, there won't be that much.
Click to expand...

Well, that's what Apple's explanation of Sound Check says, that a limiter will be applied to prevent overs in cases where a song's level has to be raised. Katz measured a consistent -16.5dBFS RMS coming from iTunes Radio. So it can be inferred that any song with 0dBFS peaks and lower than -16.5dBFS RMS level will be boosted and limited.
 
miroslav said:
You might not be reading it right.
The industry has been forced into making mixes digitally loud, louder, LOUDEST...since that's what artists felt was needed to compete with the others making things loud.
Click to expand...
Lol. Really? The artists felt that? Not the record companies or the "pros" you so fervently admire?

Something radio has been doing for a very long time, and it never bothered anyone, and the songs didn't all sound homogenized level-wise...because they had dynamics.
Click to expand...
Really? What radio do you listen to? To me, radio sounds incredibly squashed and very very non-dynamic. But you're okay with that, so it's okay.

The iTunes algorithm will initially make some mixes sound like shit....but mostly the ones that have been digitally manipulated within an inch of their life for loudness.
If the algorithm is implemented as a standard....at some point down the road, people who use to digitally nuke their mixes purfely for playback loundess, will be forced to pull back on that processing. That won't make their mixes sound less loud than the others, it will actually put the dynamics back....the loud/quiet dynamic you are talking about.
It will take some time, but it would work if it became a digital level playback standard.

And for the guys who like a very compressed sound, you can still do that to your mixes....just don't push the overall digital level up to 0 dBFS. In other words....seperate the digital playback level of the mix from the sound playback quality of the mix. You can have a nuked sound, just up to the standard *digital* playback level....unless you want to ignore the algorithm and let it do what it wants to your mixes that exceed the standard.
Nothing is being taken away AFA artistic expression....and what's going to be gained, are the dynamics for those whowant that, by them not having to nuke mixes just to be playbcak level-competitive.
Click to expand...

I get the feeling you're arguing a point that you don't really believe in.
 
Yes...really...it was the artists....check with the mastering guys how often *artists* would ask for louder masters.
How often do you hear people on this site ask "How do I make it louder?"...and you don't think artists at the pro/commercial level are not conscious of the loudness of other commercial releases, and that they don't care if theirs is much lower than the competition....?

Radio has been playing Rock music for 60 years now....and while it's not the same as a live performance (what is)...I don't recall people bugging out about radio transmission protocols like they are doing here now about the iTunes process.

I think I'm arguing a point that you either don't understand, don't want to understand....or you simply want to argue in opposition, because that's what you like to do.
Any time anyone mentions excessive loudness in mixes/master, you immediately go against anything they say.

For someone who says he has no interest in pursuing commercial releases of his music....why do you care what iTunes does or if other people want to have a more conservative standard for commercial music levels....?
Just mix/master your stuff as loud as you like.
 
You know....the last coupe of days there have been posts and good discussion by several people in this thread, all without any attitude or "LOLs"....

...of course, you weren't here.
 
You obviously missed me all weekend...as soon as you came back, you showed up here just to try and stir things back up with me....again.
Talk about living a real life. :facepalm:

Yup...carry on, I know what a fix that is for you.
Oh...and don't miss the other 2-3 threads I was posting in.
I'm sure you could come up with a few digs and LOL's there too....so go catch up and enjoy your night.
 
I didn't miss read the article. I read into it.
The abdication of some degree of contraol and professional process to a shonky business like Ap[ple. Not shonky in the avaricious, mega money sense but in their world domination proprietry overlordship sense.
iTroll did it so everyone else will?
iTroll did so that's the new industry standard?
Wow, iTroll made my soft, genmtle song sound like doo doo because of the normalization/limiting interaction of my song!! I should do this more....type of thing?
There are enough discussions in the MP3 clinic about using that sort of software more judiciously to serve the song for anyone with ears & beers to suspect that the one size fits all algorithm won't serve everyone equally.
In the end it's Apple so it's dubious at best.
 
rayc said:
I didn't miss read the article. I read into it.
Click to expand...

Yeah....I see that.

"world domination" :D

Not sure if that's their real goal, and MP3 Clinic discussions aside, I do believe that there are several pro mastering/audio engineers working with Apple to properly implement the algorithm, Katz being one of them.

I know here in home-rec world and on similar audio boards, there's this knee-jerk push-back, as though all of a sudden, every home-recordist will have his artistic freedoms taken away... :) ....but there are many engineers that have been asking for and will welcome a digital level playback standard because they actually understand and know how it will benefit mixes in the long run, and not ruin them.

Most of those guys are about maintaining and improving audio quality...and Katz has done some of the finest mastering, just go check out his work for Chesky records, not to mention, the guy is fairly well respected in the pro audio community, and I doubt he would be involved with something that will make music sound worse.
 
Regardless of who it applies to or what the end goal is, it's really pretty sad to me that anyone would blindly accept and welcome a "standard" put forth by a bunch of audio dinosaurs in cahoots with a massive global technology corporation. Disgusting.
 
Well then....you better get out of audio altogether, because you work with audio "standards" every time you plug in a microphone or guitar, or push a fader or even launch a plug-in in your DAW.

Calling the audio guys who are at the forefront of audio technology "dinosaurs" is pretty amusing....but yeah, we really have our fingers on the cutting edge here in home-rec world...and we know better about all things audio.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top