Turning the corner on the loudness wars

December 06, 2008 Derek 1 Comment

Hens pointed us to a refreshing post about our frequent bugaboo, the loudness wars. A change seems to be afoot, instigated by Metallica’s crazy-squash-limited mix of their new album “Death Magnetic,” which Dave and I discussed on IHR #63.

“The Loudness War Is Over – If We Want It” reports that mastering legend Bob Ludwig has recently had record companies request quieter, more dynamic mixes, including for Guns ‘n’ Roses’ new “Chinese Democracy.” People are asking him and other mastering engineers not to “do a Metallica” on their music.

Some engineers are even thanking Metallica for making its mixes so obviously over-loud that musicians and fans are finally paying attention and wanting a change. There’s a nice comparison of mixes at YouTube too.

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One Response to Turning the corner on the loudness wars

Emerson Maningo says:

May 5, 2011 at 2:29 am

Actually, it’s very tiring to listen. I give up after 20 straight minutes of listening to the Death magnetic album.

I examined their audio recording material and it was pretty loud. One song particularly “Broken, Beat & Scarred” is averaging -7.5dB RMS in my Adobe Audition statistics.

Most of my masters are in the -13dB range. And in the 80′s and 90′s, most masters were released around -15dB to -13dB range.

I made a detailed study about the history of these loudness wars and published it here:

http://www.audiorecording.me/loudness-war-examples-trend-of-music-from-the-80%E2%80%99s-until-present.html

Most mastering engineers working at home and those I’ve meet are starting to emphasize more on the achieving better dynamic range and quality masters more than making it just loud.

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