Comments on: The Loudness War Analyzed

By: Tracey Larvenz

Tracey Larvenz — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:02:52 +0000

I’m a post production audio engineer. I’ll never forget the first time I pulled up Oasis back at the start of the loudness war. I double checked to make sure that I didn’t accidentally import a 1k tone because the waveform looked eerily similar – completely filled out and without any peaks. I’d love to see a return to mixing and mastering with dynamic range.

By: Cliff M.

Cliff M. — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:32:41 +0000

I think a large part of the loudness wars are the fact that many musicians, newer engineers and the like have not studied or considered “Dynamics” in music. A simple understanding of crescendos and decrescendos is what I think is missing in their music education. Those two basic things in music are the heart and soul or should I say the emotion within. I would say a record could be compressed a little at it’s highest full scale section (Chorus or loudest crescendo) that way all the soft parts would never be in danger of being clipped and the emotion of the song would still exist in the song or piece. Imagine if an orchestra was brick wall limited and you might get an understanding of the importance of De and crescendos. Club music ruined music with that ol’ Bass and Snare peak level stuff. See what Disco did? :)

By: scrag

scrag — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:06:38 +0000

Hi,
Very good article. I am working on a project related with the loudness war but I’m not so familiar with Echo Nest Remix API. The graphs on this article seems to be useful in my project also. Can you share the code that you used in python with me? I will appreciate so much if you share.
Thank you.

By: mavallarino

mavallarino — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:33:12 +0000

same here, 28 “quiets”, of which coincidentally I have the first 15 – sorry Alphex Twin ;-). Loud is only good when you are doing something… this should explain why the “louds” are good to listening while doing activities (sport, gym etc.). Not many have the patience to listen to music.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:08:17 +0000

wesman – the first column is deci-seconds from the beginning of the song. Some segments are very short, even shorter than a 10th second – which is why, you may see dups in the first column.

HTH, Paul

By: wesman

wesman — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:34:49 +0000

hi – I loved your post – I’m very interested in production, python and charts so this is perfect for me :)

I ran your volume.py over a few tracks and I’m not clear on what you’re outputting. The second column is the dynamic range, but what is the first column? I assumed it was some indication of time, but I’m not clear on the unit. Is it seconds? samples?

More importantly, when I ran this, I found multiple lines in the output that had the same value in the first column. Can you explain why that would happen?

By: in every dream home a friends band» Blog Archive » the loudness war

in every dream home a friends band» Blog Archive » the loudness war — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:15:14 +0000

[...] here to talk about the SWLSFB albums in the context of loudness. this article presents technical analysis of loudness in music via real-world examples. it also ranks artists [...]

By: Flattydog

Flattydog — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:58:37 +0000

sorry i forgot to add paul i suggest you analyze some modern Drum and Bass tracks [for example - sub focus/chase and status/noisia etc] i think you will have to rethink your idea of how loud music is these days .. great article tho v interesting ..

By: Flattydog

Flattydog — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:45:12 +0000

There is no way hip hip is the loudest genre you have not looked all of the genres.

i would say that drum and bass, hard techno and gabba would now be the loudest as the tracks are rammed right up to 0bd a solid brick wall of loudness.
And whats more – they still sound puncy and dynamic – becuase if they didnt, no DJ would touch them !!

By: witheld

witheld — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:06:12 +0000

Word. It’s time the public became aware of the truth. It’s time the a new generation experiences the true sound and dynamics that have been stolen from their music. It’s time to let every sellout A$R and audio enginot producing this overhyped crap know….