Yeah, loudness pandemic, not war. There’s been really no effort to deter or persuade the propagators of loudness in the industry to keep a mindful eye for the music and not for decibels. This hardly illustrates a war in my opinion. A pandemic; a plague is one-sided. That one side is doing all the winning right now. Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” isn’t the start of it either but nevertheless anything they do stands out obviously.
You know technically speaking, “loudness” isn’t the issue. It’s what the process of achieving loudness within audio production and what that does to the fidelity of the program material that problems arise. Loudness is relative anyway. We can pretty much control the loudness of a musical track on the playback medium of preference. If you want to listen to something loud, turn the volume knob up! And if you want to listen to it not as loud, turn it down, naturally. The idea of songs of different mixes/masters in contention for that aspect of loudness is just silly. I’m afraid the “personal player” culture has some hand in it. If we all know, for the most part, our music is on the front lines competing with some other track from some other album before and after it, the strive, in being mindful of that contention, to make it louder be it through the mixing or mastering or both, transgresses its initial purpose: namely, being music; being musical.
I mean really, the term should be “trashing” perhaps and not “loudness maximizing”. I’ve heard plenty of lively, bold, warm, full, colorful, dynamic, snappy, dimensional tracks that were also made plenty loud. That is, it was taken to a point of stress (perhaps one could call it bestowing character or color) upon the audio and perhaps backed away just enough to retain all of the good aforementioned things; to retain the MUSIC. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t process to be loud. There is good that comes out of that stage of making a master louder. There is a certain tension, energy, and vibe when the audio is being pushed. But there is also that line drawn in the sand where one should back off. We’re talking having the best of both worlds here. A sense of being driven, having the loudness but also protecting the music. We’re talking a fundamental backing down of at least 3 – 6 dB off of that mixed stereo track – at the very least! Making that the new “0″, the new ceiling, will be the start of giving us our music back but still keeping to a modern effort (striving for some appropriate degree of inducting loudness) that should have stopped itself at a certain point of loudness perhaps about a decade ago. This signifies some kind of standard to be implemented.
While there are short quips and sometimes diatribes and opinions by professionals and audio enthusiasts as to a scientific “what” when it comes to understanding what is and has happened to music, crest factor, dynamic range and the like for the sake of loudness, I’d like to state here perhaps a pyschological “why”. As in, why loudness became so important and ultimately such a pertinent goal at the end of the whole process of creating an album. In short one could say competition. That is the more ostensible idea. But if I could use the philosopher Nietzsche here and the notion of “Will to Power”, (look it up if you aren’t familiar with the notion) maybe it could suite the topic better on why “loudness” is of prime concern. In any endeavor, one could look at its inception, its development, and its apexes and find a similar cycle that expatiates as to what occurs as it unfolds from start to pseudo-finish. Initially, there is a genuine interest for the endeavor in and of itself. There is a child like curiosity, passion, and thirst in attaining knowledge about it and further developing it into fruition. As time passes and so does the element of having been around the endeavor, awareness of its role in the world and the fact that others embrace the very same thing ensues the sense of connection; maybe camaraderie. Then as times passes and the aspect of its techniques and methods are more brought into light, the next level naturally is putting ideas into action. Now one guy does something good, another does it better. A sense of competition ensues. And at the very visceral thread of our existence, our “Will to Power” takes over. This sense of competition always lurks however. Either for extreme differences because “it can be done” or to stand out. It’s what has happened to the audio world. The innocence in making nice sounding music has been supplanted by the competition for loudness. Who can deny that “our period of time” (the mid to late 90′s into 2000′s) was and is not an apex for the audio world as well? Again not to say it’s the only one, but certainly a significant time indeed. More significant in the sense of heightened awareness of audio, the increased accessibility to the craft’s techniques and methods and also a whole new perspective that can emulate the perspective of yesteryear! And not to mention more ways to mess music up! By namely, the digital domain. At the apex of an endeavor there is a need for “more” but unfortunately what we turn to is not more of a good thing but moreof pushing boundaries at the expense of aesthetics. Just some extreme to constitute “more”, suffices. It is what has happened to audio after all. Where is the respect for it? If one wants to destroy its crest factor, distort it (without regard to aesthetic intent), squash it, level it, 2-d it, suffocate it, weaken it, smash it, destroy dynamics within it (all of these characteristics of course contingent upon how it sounds ultimately), then what kind of respect is left for it really? At our particular apex we have the loudness pandemic. “Joe schmoe made it THIS loud, I have to make it louder” says the brazen will imposing itself. In the interim, enter music executives and/or producers, A & R people: those who are not necessarily the artists in other words. They just add more fuel to the fire. You see, the brute has taken over at this point. Compete for the “more” i.e loudness. The pure interest and passion has been replaced with a hungry and base aspect from the “Will to Power”. Initially of course, collectively through time it can be argued that there is the “Will to Power” that competed in the realm of aesthetics of audio and music. In other words, the competition and imposing of will between persons or perhaps a person (challenging himself) to make it sound best (not necessarily loudest). Okay, fine. BUT, in that case, the extension of will for that notion supported and sublimated audio and music. For audio and music delivered as an artist’s message is an aesthetic one. So it’s not to say our “Will to Power” is bad. Like anything else, it’s the application of it that makes it bad or good. Loudness is a part of music, not an absolute and static element of it. Therefore, once again, any attempts at focusing on loudness for the sake of loudness; the sake of competition, verily, are idiocies. After the sense of aesthetics satiates, our drive to compete steers us into the realm of extremity at any cost. Loudness was what was left after aesthetics and unfortunately that’s what drives the competition now. I believe evolving has to do with a higher sense of thought; a degree of awareness as to what motivates our actions. When this function is not developed factors involved in an endeavor but not necessarily for the good of that endeavor take over.
Why does loudness attract people in, say, an A/B listen? Well usually, in an A/B listen the minion of loudness is trying to win the crowd over with the louder track. So it’s a matter of maybe 5 – 6 seconds of listening and switching to the competiting track. Back and forth, back and forth and the louder one comes out on top. Okay, why? Well, this kind of comparing is first of all, not musical. Secondly, who truly listens to music in second spurts? What takes over then if not the musical ear? The combative ear! And what is the combative ear looking for? The biggest BOOM! he or she can get in that short duration. Just like in war, the bomb with the biggest boom, explosion, and destruction is the most brutal and combative weapon. It is awe-inspiring; mind blowing; unbelievable BUT has nothing to do with music. They are explosion lovers, nothing more.
My opinion is this race for loudness could end once people understand why they want to make things loud; this more psychological “why”. Once you understand that, you could feel quite foolish. Humilation for the greater good. See you can play on man’s ‘Will to Power” but to do good. Once the awareness of the dumb brute force and base competition aspect of it is elevated, one can instigate the competition in not being so dumb and then who knows, maybe “The Good Sounding Masters with Dynamics and Fullness Wars” could start. A guy can dream right?
