What voulme level is best for selling on Itunes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter contactdannyd
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Yeah I don't think squashed louder equals better. Not even close.

My point, which is the same point I've had all along, is that commercial masters are made loud for a reason. That reason is to be sonically competitive with other commercial masters, which equals sales. If Joe Blow home recorder aims to compete with those pro products, then he's gonna need to do some "mastering". The whole "just turn it louder" argument is quaint and idealistic. Sure, the listener can do that, then when the next song pops up, it's blowing the listener's ears out. Then they have to turn it back down. Then they're gonna wonder why Joe Blow home recorders song is so weak and wimpy. Then they're gonna be like, "fuck that shit".

I don't condone squashing mixes into a flat block of waveform at all. I don't do it to my own stuff. I don't shit all over it though because IT IS a pretty important part of the process if you do want to get noticed as a DIY'er. Blame the record companies and mastering engineers.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
That only holds true for actual sound reaching our ears, not data on a disc. No matter how "loud" the disc is, the listener wants to hear it at level "X". So he turns the knob until his ears tell him it is at level "X". The resulting sound in the room (or headphones) is the same whether or not the song wav was brick-flat or had all the headroom in the world. So you didn't make it louder, you just made it smaller. So you don't get the "louder is better" benefit.
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Right, but people don't play one song in isolation, they use playlists. So when they set the volume for the first song and the second comes on with a higher RMS it sounds louder and therefore "better".
 
Fuck it, another thing that perhaps some of the older audio snob guys might be forgetting is that damn near no one sits and listens to albums anymore. In a perfect world the listener will buy an album, plop down on the couch in front of a high end hi-fi setup, and listen to an album from beginning to end in perfect sequence. They'll stare longingly at the cover art and read the liner notes from top to bottom. They'll be interested to read that the drummer use Pro-Mark sticks and the lead guitarist uses Dean Markley strings and Aqua-Net for men. They might even break out a magnifying glass so they can read the lyric sheet more easily as they follow along to the music. In this utopia, loudness doesn't matter. Sweet dynamics is encouraged. They can set the volume and walk away. Who cares that the entire album may be quieter than some other album? In this case, it doesn't matter. No one listens like that though. We're back to the age of the single. The whole concept of creating an actual album has died with acid wash jeans and casette tapes. On top of that, these singles are listened to through tiny crappy earbuds on-the-go at the gym, catching the train, driving the kids to soccer practice, in line at the bank, riding a bike to your next class, whatever wherever. If you want to compete in this environment as a home-recorder, it would behoove you to be sonically similar to your competition. Write a decent song and produce it to today's standards...if you can.
 
Replay gain is easy to use. Ipods have something similar built right in. Nobody has to loudenate for playlists.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
Replay gain is easy to use. Ipods have something similar built right in. Nobody has to loudenate for playlists.
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In my experience many listeners aren't aware of this utility, even the young ones. But it's a start. If done well it would be music's answer to film's Dialnorm and kill any advantage to finalizing to ridiculous RMS levels, but it would have to be almost universally implemented. If done badly it would just reduce everything to the lowest common denominator.
 
Greg_L said:
Damn near no one sits and listens to albums anymore. In a perfect world the listener will buy an album, plop down on the couch in front of a high end hi-fi setup, and listen to an album from beginning to end in perfect sequence. They'll stare longingly at the cover art and read the liner notes from top to bottom. They'll be interested to read that the drummer use Pro-Mark sticks and the lead guitarist uses Dean Markley strings and Aqua-Net for men. They might even break out a magnifying glass so they can read the lyric sheet more easily as they follow along to the music. In this utopia, loudness doesn't matter. Sweet dynamics is encouraged. They can set the volume and walk away. Who cares that the entire album may be quieter than some other album? In this case, it doesn't matter. No one listens like that though. We're back to the age of the single. The whole concept of creating an actual album has died with acid wash jeans and casette tapes. On top of that, these singles are listened to through tiny crappy earbuds on-the-go at the gym, catching the train, driving the kids to soccer practice, in line at the bank, riding a bike to your next class, whatever wherever. If you want to compete in this environment as a home-recorder, it would behoove you to be sonically similar to your competition.
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Perhaps it's just the people that I've known over the last 35 years, but that description of the total album lover has been a rarity in my existence. I often stood out as weird because I was an albums man. I always described myself as such because so many people that I knew simply weren't into them. Sure I knew folk that were into LPs but quite often even they tended to like specific songs rather than the entire thing. I was often looked upon as a wee bit zingy because I absorbed the info on album sleeves.....
And though it wasn't until 1968 that total album sales overtook those of singles, the single has never really gone away. In a way, it's kind of inevitable that the single {or at least, the single track} is king again. Ipod playlists and the internet outlets selling songs from albums singularly make it so much easier to have and arrange your music as you want it.
I think the loudness factor is somewhat exaggerated at times, but I also think it's more of a generational thing. Younger people are drawn to high volume pretty much the way many are drawn to beat.
I'm not convinced that 'damn near no one sits and listens to albums' though. It's hard to comment with any accuracy on the habits of everyone in the whole world. :D
 
grimtraveller said:
I think the loudness factor is somewhat exaggerated at times, but I also think it's more of a generational thing. Younger people are drawn to high volume pretty much the way many are drawn to beat.
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This is the heart of the misunderstanding. Almost everybody loves high volume. Many of the warriors on the front line of the "stop loudness" campaign love high volume. I love high volume. But loudness on the disc is not anything like loudness in real life. That it has the same name is very confusing.

In fact, loudness on the disc can run against loudness in real life. If there is no peak for the drum to hit with, it just won't hit as hard as it should coming out of my speakers resulting in a weakened sound at any volume. Extreme dynamic compression on the recording begins to fight with natural dynamic compression in your ear as volume goes up, turning the whole thing into a mess before it gets as loud as you want it.
 
grimtraveller said:
I'm not convinced that 'damn near no one sits and listens to albums' though. It's hard to comment with any accuracy on the habits of everyone in the whole world. :D
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No it isn't. Look around. Sales and stats back it up. The album is a dead concept.
 
I wouldn't say it's a dead concept, but it is obvious that it is no longer #1 by a large margin. But when you're sitting down with 40-60 minutes devoted to nothing but listening, you just can't beat an album. I know the concept of sitting and listening is itself laughably rare, but as long as some people still do it, albums will still serve a purpose.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
. Extreme dynamic compression on the recording begins to fight with natural dynamic compression in your ear as volume goes up, turning the whole thing into a mess before it gets as loud as you want it.
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I agree, it gives the listener less control, but in this day of automation it fits. People expect everything to be done with the click of a button.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
I wouldn't say it's a dead concept, but it is obvious that it is no longer #1 by a large margin. But when you're sitting down with 40-60 minutes devoted to nothing but listening, you just can't beat an album. I know the concept of sitting and listening is itself laughably rare, but as long as some people still do it, albums will still serve a purpose.
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I love albums. I'm fortunate to have the time to just plop and listen, and I do it all the time. I try to write my own songs in clumps with the idea of putting them together in a cohesive album format. I have no deadlines or expectations though. I don't have labels and producers and marketing execs breathing down my neck. I think the general theme for the past decade or so has been to write a few singles, and a bunch of filler.
 
Just a comment - in the "olden" days of vinyl, you had to master so that the bass (or volume of anything) didn't knock the needle out of the grooves. Now that that restriction is gone and someone figured out how to up the volume it will continue....
I miss the days of reading album covers...
 
One thing I was considering about the volume of your track in playlists like Greg was talking about, where people have them on in the background without soundcheck on ( like they did at my old workplace) was even in tracks that have a good dynamic range preserved, the choruses of those tracks would still be as loud (or close as long as your still limiting as much as you can without killing all punch) as the songs that were crushed, so even if people switch off at the start of the track because it's quieter than the last track, when the chorus kicks in they should still notice it (maybe more so than if the hum in the background hadn't deviated in the last half hour.)
 
Greg_L said:
No it isn't.
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Well, OK, if you're God it isn't ! ;)
If a recording's legal sales amount to 2 million, that doesn't even begin to tell the story of how many people have actually heard it or more significantly have it.
Perhaps the concept of the album is dead. But in whose mind ? I think musicians/singers still think in terms of albums. But even at the height of the album {if there was one}, there was still often an emphasis for many bands/singers on getting singles pushed (sometimes, admittedly to push the album). One of the differences now is that any track from an album can be bought effectively 'as a single'. So in the minds of much of the buying public, the album may well be at least passe.
I'd be interested to know if this is a genre thing or a general thing.
 
I remember when I was a kid mom bought 45's - rarely an album except Christmas and Sound of Music where every song was a must have. Albums really didn't "come along" til I was 10 or so. Maybe we are reverting back to a former life!
 
ido1957 said:
I remember when I was a kid mom bought 45's - rarely an album except Christmas and Sound of Music where every song was a must have. Albums really didn't "come along" til I was 10 or so. Maybe we are reverting back to a former life!
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There has definitely been a shift back to the single in popular music. And not just the "official" single release, but the single song. iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc are mostly about selling a single song. People pick the song they want and buy it with no concern about the rest of the album - if there is an album. Back in the day, you could buy the 45 hit single release, or if you were curious or a fan, you had to buy the whole album to hear the rest of the songs. You don't have to do that anymore. Just buy the song(s) you want and let the rest rot.
 
Albums rule. Always have for dinosaurs like me. Good points about the modern music-consuming (read paying) public though. I-pods and ear buds. Nuthin's gonna sound good like that. May as well be loud.


lou
 
Anyone else find it ironic that the guy touting albums as being dead is pushing one in his footer?
 
Jeremy2112 said:
Anyone else find it ironic that the guy touting albums as being dead is pushing one in his footer?
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No, coz he says he loves albums. To be fair to him, he covers it both ways. The album is there for those that want an album. For those that just want single tracks, that option is there too. I think you'll find that many people that have albums in HR do that. It's what I'd do. It's actually quite sensible because you're then taking all sides into account.
And even if you believe that generally the album as a concept is dead, if you love albums, it's not conflicting with what you believe to be the current way of thinking/modern practice to still make albums.
It's a bit like guitar solos or hard panned drums. The fact that people may consider them as 'so yesterday....' and you observe that and repeat it doesn't conflict with the fact that you might love them and include them in your music.
If you think about it, the album is still, for the artist/band the most complete way to present yourself to the world. But the world may not be interested and may only want snippets at their leisure and on their terms so having single tracks available is running against the proverbs "you can't please all of the people all of the time" and "He who tries to please everybody pleases nobody". It is possible to take apparently opposing sides into account.
 
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