analoq Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 hey guys, i caught this over at the R:K:O forums. it's a 2 minute video that makes the loudness war simple enough for anyone to understand. youtube's encoding mechanisms lose a large chunk of the audio fidelity but it's good enough to get the idea. it's rare to see such an elegant primer to an audio engineering topic, so i thought i'd share it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 What software lets you do that volume maximizer thing around 0:28? That was pretty cool, lol Good video btw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avaris Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Good stuff, another reason why so much music today feels emotionless and fake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Cool video. OverCoat; I'm not entirely sure that's real software... kind of looks like an editing effect to me. But a brickwall limiter might achieve the same result, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Vagrance Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Great find, a very simple yet informative look at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Souliarc Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Nice video. When everything is loud, there is no room for loud. A seemingly paradoxical statement, but true. Other than the loss of sound quality from over limiting, engaging volume dynamics are also lost. Sad really on both ends: How the record companies enforce it, and how listeners are fooled by it. If you want to get more in depth about the discussion of the "Loudness Wars" you can take a gander at this article. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerrax Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Awesome video. Really gets the point across about how sound quality suffers from pushing the loudness too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I'm not really interested in the effect itself, rather the method of editing the waveform. lol. I know Samplitude does something like that, unfortunately Cool Edit 2 [what I use] lacks all those neat mouse features Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicole Adams Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I read about the Loudness War about a year or so ago, but it was nice to see it in action. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazygecko Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 The example there is really nothing compared to what radio stations apply to already compressed music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion303 Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 What software lets you do that volume maximizer thing around 0:28? Melodyne 3. -steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoozer Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 You mean Photoshop. Check the pixels . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgx Posted January 18, 2007 Share Posted January 18, 2007 Yeah that was just a video capture of someone in photoshop, then audio edited in later. I actually kinda enjoy the sound of squashed audio in some cases. Though a lot of modern recordings are way too squashed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
po! Posted January 18, 2007 Share Posted January 18, 2007 nice simple video but i have yet to hear anybody do anything about the loudness war and lower the volume Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted January 18, 2007 Share Posted January 18, 2007 Well, lots of people have done something about it, but perhaps we don't see any impact in the major label release market. Hell, I'll use myself as an example. For all my tracks, even the dance ones which are generally supposed to be loud and maxed out, I try not to succumb to the loudness war. Here's an overview of a song from the album I'm working on. Yeah, it's compressed, but the dynamics are all there. There are soft and loud sections of the song (breakdowns, buildups, etc.) More importantly, so are the transients. Here's a closer look. Compare this to "Ten Miles Back", a song by the Crystal Method that is in a very similar style. Basically, one big square wave. Here's a closer look. Lopped off samples all over. Great song, but I don't like the mastering. So if nothing else, at least smaller independent musicians like me are doing their part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazygecko Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 Hard compression does serve a purpose. The boss tunes for Streets of Rage Remake are heavily compressed, and it really helps keep the adrenaline high. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
po! Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 So if nothing else, at least smaller independent musicians like me are doing their part. well i'm doing my part too. but i'm still not happy with it.. actually i wanna go even more extreme and go back to the late 70s early 80s mastering, which i consider to be ideal here's an example, Dinorah Dinorah by George Benson from 1980 thats just the perfect looking waveform... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 Yeah, that's awesome... I wonder how one gets results like that? Maybe vintage comps had something to do with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC Ricers Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 This is the problem I'm trying to solve whenever I DJ mix. Yeah, I could follow the volume LEDs of my mixer but it doesn't help me keep all the songs at a consistent level. Maybe it's because my mixer is a Gemini Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoozer Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 Yeah, that's awesome... I wonder how one gets results like that? Maybe vintage comps had something to do with it. Tape saturation. Which is technically speaking compression. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted January 19, 2007 Share Posted January 19, 2007 Perhaps not ONLY compression though, I would imagine. The tonal characteristics of the sound (not just dynamics) were probably shaped too in some way. Extra harmonics/noise getting added in a way that sounded good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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