Loudness wars and guitar recording

General Music Discussion
#1

Ratt’s “You’re in Love” from 1984. The way we would listen to this back in the day, is you would set your stereo so that Warren’s guitar intro was medium-loud. Then when the band comes in, they’re very loud and they blow you away. Try it out. Set the YouTube player so that Warren’s intro is loud. And then get ready for the drums:

Here’s Ratt’s “Eat Me Up Alive” from 2010. It’s basically the same riff. So, do the same thing. Set the volume on your YouTube player so that the intro guitar is the exact same loudness level as the intro guitar from “You’re In Love”:

When the drums come in, does it blow you away? It it even any louder at all than the guitar intro? It’s not. The entire band is not appreciably louder than only one of its members playing by himself.

Ergo cramming everything up against 0 dbfs has killed recorded guitar music excitement. Even the best engineered record from today will have essentially zero dynamic range. The entire way we listened to music back in the day is simply no longer even possible.

I’m using the Ratt example because (1) the song is nearly identical, and (2) the mix engineer on the newer song is Elvis Baskette, one of the best working today. He’s the producer/mixer who recorded the Alter Bridge tracks mentioned in the Tremonti thread.

To be clear, the loudness wars are not his fault. I’m sure if he had to mix for dynamic range he’d do it very well. But this is what we’ve come to.

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#2

Certainly not a new phenomenon. I would say it has been the precedent for over 20 years if not longer at this point, so there are many years of conditioning involved. Saying that though, I’m not sure I would go as far as to say it would be impossible, but it’s certainly not the expectation for most things certainly nothing mainstream. Some of this is a natural progression that followed musical trends or other aspects of the industry. Honestly I read this same very criticism of over compression from engineers a lot. So it’s pretty common complaint.

#3

I have what I know is a very unpopular opinion with dynamics, especially given my classical background. So full disclosure, this is my problem, I’m sure I’m wrong and everyone is right.

I don’t really like dynamics that much, and I dislike extreme dynamics. I’m also the only person I know who likes heavy music but does not like to listen to any music, at high volumes. I was the only guy in my band who wore ear plugs at our shows. If I go to a concert, I wear ear plugs, or shove tissues in my ears. For as long as I can remember, I’ve just never liked “loud”. When I was a little kid I’d run out of the bathroom after flushing a toilet because I didn’t like the loud sound lol! My dad’s a “mr fix-it” and he had this super loud air compressor in our garage. If I was watching him work on a car and he needed to fill up the tires, as soon as that air compressor got turned on, I was gone lol! It’s actually pretty weird I even played in a metal band for 7 years. :thinking:

I don’t like loud movies either lol! I turn them down to a volume where the loudest parts don’t get on my nerves. If I can’t hear the quiet parts, that’s what closed captions are for :slight_smile:

Anyway, dynamics are great, but if the loudest part of a tune blows my ear drums out, I get super annoyed. One of my favorite symphonies (Tchaikovsky’s 6th) has this super fortisisisisimo part that I really have to be ready for. The intro is so quiet that I can’t even hear that unless I turn it way up. It’s like I have to “ride the fader” just to listen to that piece. Sigh.

And no, I’m not 95 years old, I’m 41. And yes, I’m no fun at all, I’m aware of this. My ideal is stuff like…classical guitar recordings. That instrument just doesn’t have a huge dynamic range. You can hear all the nuances at a reasonable volume.

All that’s to say, I totally get why people enjoy loud things (or, a very wide range of volumes). It’s probably exciting if it doesn’t bother your ears the way it does for me. I’m glad this is such a positivity based forum too and doesn’t allow “negative” reactions lol! I’m sure I’d get dozens of down votes or thumbs downs or whatever haha! And I’d deserve them, because I know this is very, very unpopular opinion with music in general.

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#4

lol First of all, I had no idea that Ratt was still doing stuff, I sort of lost track of them right after Invasion of Privacy (Layyyyy it dowwwwwn!) Cool stuff! I loved Out of the Cellar also, really awesome!

Joe I don’t love extreme dynamics either, but mileage can vary hahaha depends what it is, I guess, eh? You know you’re old when you can’t have the music up too loud, or it makes it hard to see! lol

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#5

Oh for sure! I’m just old now so I can grouse about the same things over and over.

The real turning point, or at least the one I remember, was Californication. When that came out, I remember people being amazed at how brick walled it was. People on audio forums were complaining it actually clips on sensitive meters.

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#6

No 1812 Overture for you I guess!

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#7

Yep, that’s when the era of Darth Rubin began.

Its a big reason I’ve always preferred SOADs debut (1998) to Toxicity (2001). Toxicity gives me a headache. Same with the Audioslave albums Rubin produced. Something happened after Californication and it wasn’t good.

But IDK how much can truly be blamed on Rick since according to some of his clients he doesn’t really do much in the way of actual production or engineering.

Oasis Morning Glory is like a precursor to all of this.

I think this phenomenon is a big reason why “comeback” albums from 80s bands in the 00s didn’t get a chance.

This reminds me Black Sabbath’s 13 need a remaster/remix.

The whole Death Magnetic Guitar Hero debacle is the funniest part of this whole thing.

Worst part is due to this a lot of albums that fell victim to dynamic range compression will never get a second chance.

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#8

Yes I remember. The video game stems didn’t have the distortion. As far as I know they never admitted what actually happened. Or did they?

The irony with the loudness war is that the 2010 Ratt record is actually quieter. At least if you set your listening level by the guitar part. Set to the same level as the 1984 recording, there are no more dBs left to push when the band enters. It is the exact opposite of what they intended, probably.

In order to have a truly exciting listening experience, someone needs to record a rock record where the quiet parts are actually quiet. Movies understand this, big time. The Dark Knight practically rips your head off in the chase scenes. But only if you set your listening level for the dialogue.

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#9

I don’t think they ever admitted it with GHM but everyone knew cause the mixes/mastering were different.

I like a bit of folk meets metal (mostly of the blackened variety) most of which doesn’t have massive budgets but these artists can manage a better listening experience than big budget bands it’s truly sad. And there’s nothing better to test dynamic range than going from acoustic bits to walls of dirt guitars.

A little lo fi because production value was illegal in 90s Norway.

This one is a masterpiece imo on of the best metal albums of the 00s

Shout out to YouTube’s own Glenn Fricker on this one. RIP David Gold, absolutely gone too soon.

The way this goes from quiet to loud seamlessly it’s like a dream.

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#10

I tend to have a preference for mixes where the quiet parts sound… quiet, in comparison to what should be the loudest sounds.

Getting in to music in the early 90s, there was still dynamics in guitar music. I think it was closer to the end of that decade where things got brick walled. Possibly earlier but certainly not the standard it would become.

The unfortunate side effect for me is, I find it hard to sit and listen to a full album that is maxed out at almost 0dbfs the whole time. I find it fatiguing on the ears. Maybe this is part of the reason I find it hard to get into more modern rock/metal…? I’m not sure, but perhaps it partly to blame!

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#11

Personally, I like dynamic range. I think the basic problem is that there is no correct answer to this question; some people like dynamic range, and other people don’t. However, the future is obviously going to be AI systems mixing albums, and then there should be multiple mixes for each song so the consumer can pick the type of mix that they prefer. Indeed, their AI will be picking the appropriate mix.

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#12

Ha, I was just talking about that one in the Tremonti thread, didn’t even see this one, and came back here to see this. :laughing:

I mean, naturally you’re speaking my language here, Troy. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like that album for YEARS, despite it having a couple pretty good tracks on it. I always had a hard time listening to it for more than a song or two at a time.

There’s some hope that as increasingly we move to streaming the “loudness wars” may be ending since streaming services do their own volume smoothing so there’s no longer any payoff for releasing a “louder” album than someone else. But if it is ending, it was a dark period in music production, for sure.

I’m not sure how easy it is to get your hands on the “Guitar Hero Master” version of Death Magnetic, but that was always a great eye-opener on how badly this can mangle a recording - Death Magnetic was panned upon its release for its production, and for good reason - there’s audible clipping and distortion all over the place on it. Some enterprising soul, however, managed to take the Guitar Hero stems from the Death Magnetic expansion, and bootlegged that, and the difference in how you as a listener respond to that album is NIGHT AND DAY different.

For my own music Ive always tried to A/B against a mid-90s recording to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it, as well as to try to listen critically for at what point the mix itself was being pushed past the point where what I was doing was no longer musically appealing (the only release I’ve mastered myself was an Americana project I did with my dad and uncle, but honestly I was satisfied enough with how it came out I might master my next solo project). Satch’s “The Extremist” has always been my go to - it’s reasonably contemporary sounding, has a mix I like anyway, but is definitely not limited within an inch of its life. I wouldn’t want to go any hotter than that.

Really glad to see this conversation happening here, this is something I feel very strongly about.

…if we wanna go a step further, let’s talk about tracking level, and why recording as hot as you can to “use up all the bits” in digital audio is a bad idea… :rofl:

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#13

I started out around that time period too, but I would say from my recollection, the practice started to creep in a bit in pieces before then - late-late 80’s maybe, and probably more genre specific. The grunge era of the early 90’s was when it started being more apparent globally, and by the late 90’s it was nearly common practice that just got worse and worse in the new millennium.

It didn’t help much either that the songs got worse and worse with it too.

You probably don’t like modern rock/metal because you just don’t like it. Cookie cutter engineering and mastering doesn’t do it many favors, but likely won’t change your overall musical sensibilities. I can’t say I have been particularly moved or excited about it either.

Historically Metallica seems to be okay with mangling their own recordings.

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#14

Just to contribute and one-up you (for fun), I would say the Oasis album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” was the first album I bought (for Champagne Supernova’s guitar solo, not Wonderwall lol) that noticeably sounded bad to me, like crunchy. I remember playing it on my Sega Saturn (I’m dating myself all over the place) and the little audio visualization looked like it stopped working since there weren’t enough dynamics.

Later on, I would learn that the album was probably one of the ones, if not the one, that cranked the brickwall loudness to absurd levels.

I definitely think there are modern recordings that do dynamics well, I’ll link some in a bit, maybe.

Also, I used a ton of parentheses.

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#15

Didn’t know that about Oasis, my sister loved them but I never got into them so I didn’t have much exposure beyond Champagne Supernova, which I did like. I remembered it having at least SOME dynamic build to it, though… but, honestly, late 90s were one thing, that’s when it began to become audible… but it got a LOT worse in the 2000s before it started to improve.

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#16

The oasis album surprised me too. I just looked this up last night

I owned that album, dug a few tracks. Mostly “Don’t Look back in anger” and “champagne supernova”. I just like the Beatles so much that even if I encounter blatant rippoffs…I’m in!

Similar to what I said in the other thread (Tremonti), it never occurred to me that this album sounded bad BUT, again, I listen to everything at probably more quiet volumes than most rock fans lol

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#17

In a truly bizarre turn of events, streaming platforms have a chance to subvert some of this stuff. Music uploaded to the likes of Spotify (may Allah forgive me for uttering its name) is scanned for loudness and tracks that are over -14 LUFS (LUFS - Wikipedia) get turned down and tracks lower than that get turned up. Some streaming sites also enforce a “maximum true peak” limit and turn a song down if its true peak meter shows parts of that song above their threshold.

This is a big improvement over how things worked in the vinyl, CD, or radio days - where every necktie-wearing loser at record companies wanted their single to be louder then next guy’s and so pushed their teams to make things louder and louder until serious sacrifices were made in terms of dynamic range. With streaming services, there is a real penalty to squishing the dynamic range to make a track loud: they will literally turn your track down from their side.

There’s a debate to be had about what the “loudness target” should be and if such an idea is really applicable to all music, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

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#18

Yeah… and this has had a significant impact in how music is being mastered, since it means there’s no longer any benefit to being a little louder than the last song on your playlist. Average volume has actually started to fall again in commercial music in response.

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#19

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Thank you sweet prince you have begun to drive back the evil from the land.

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#20

Glad @ryandhuart mentioned the streaming loudness target, and how that’s pushing things back to a more reasonable level. Normalized playback helps in situations where changing volume from song to song would be annoying (you’re trying to concentrate, or party background music, etc), but I like to turn that off for the most part so I can gauge what music is pretty cooked, vs more dynamic.

@Dissonant_Timbres mentioned the fire that destroyed lots of albums, but hopefully with the advancement of AI in music production, there will be a way for harsh masters to get some kind of cleanup.