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Loudness War
By admin | July 27, 2009
- Loudness War is a term which some of you may have heard of. For those who haven’t, it is worthwhile to spend a couple of minutes to understand what this refers to.
- Definition. According to Wikipedia: “Loudness War (or Loudness Race) is the music industry’s tendency to record, produce, and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness in an attempt to create a sound that stands out from others.
- This phenomenon can be observed in many areas of the music industry, particularly broadcasting and albums released on CD and DVD. In the case of CDs, the war stems from artists’ and producers’ desires to create CDs that sound as loud as possible, or louder than CDs from competing artists or recording labels.”
The trend of increasing loudness as shown by waveform images of Something by The Beatles mastered on CD four times since 1983. Forthcoming remasters are likely to continue this trend.[1]
- Effects. The practice of increasing music release’s loudness to be louder than competing releases can produce two effects: Since there is a maximum loudness level available to recording, the insidious practice of boosting the overall loudness of a track ultimately creates a recording that is maximally and uniformly loud from beginning to end. This creates music with little dynamic range (i.e. hardly any difference between loud and quiet sections), which renders it “fatiguing to listen to and robs it of emotional power” (Robert Levine, Rolling Stone).
- Secondly, if the overall recording volume is boosted beyond a point, then transient noises - like the beat of a snare drum – will go off the recording scale, resulting in the wave form being truncated at this point. This is what is meant by “clipping”. Digitally flat lining musical peaks like this creates a distorted sound, which is harsh to listen to, and in some cases can be heard as a ‘clicking’ sound in recordings.
- Demonstration. For a demonstration of what some in the recording industry are doing to your music, you can listen to this demonstration on YouTube by Matt Mayfield.
What can be done? Music lovers can fight back against this commercialization, which is killing recorded music, by registering with and supporting, the Pleasurize Music Foundation. The PMF is actively campaigning to put an end to this. Join us to stamp out this practice.
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