Friday, August 24, 2007

The Loudness War, Continued

Yet another article about the loudness war.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429

For those who don't know, the Loudness War is the music industry's attempt to make their recordings louder than everyone else's, because research has shown that louder songs get noticed more.

No shit. Sadly the research told them nothing about the quality of the recordings.

There is a hint in the article that current overcompressed music fatigues listeners, and that it might account for the decrease in music sales, but of course there is no proof of this.

The article also talks about future technologies like “Replay Gain” which try to nullify the Loudness War by playing back all songs at the same relative volume.

I agree with Bob Katz, recordings that are overcompressed and radio stations like 93X that blatantly abuse volume compression, forsaking all else for loudness are ruining music, and make it tiring to listen to. Hey, compress the shit out of MP3s because they’re meant to be listened to on laptop speakers and I-pod earbuds. But CDs should take advantage of their dynamic range and richness of sound. Let the consumers wreck the music if they want, but if I'm buying the CD, I can turn the volume knob up myself. I'd much rather have a rich recording that breathes.

I MEAN, WHY DON'T WE JUST TYPE ALL OUR BLOG POSTS LIKE THIS? IT MUST BE BETTER BECAUSE IT GOT YOUR ATTENTION, RIGHT?

KTHXBYE,
-CZ

Labels: Business Phenomena, consumerism, Cultural Observation, music, Music Industry, Technology