Posted on - March 28, 2006 [at] 4:21 pm by Brad
Tagged in - recording
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What Happened To Dynamic Range is an article that’s been making the rounds lately. Bob doesn’t give any examples of modern bands or recordings that he’s talking about so it’s hard to make much of his opinions. And it’s hard not to blow off the entire article after this statement:
The music available today isn’t musical at all. It’s best described as anti-music. It’s anti-music because the life is being squashed out of it through over compression during the tracking, mixing, and mastering stages. It’s simply, non musical. It’s no wonder that consumers don’t want to pay for the CDs being produced today.
Beep beep cranky old man alert. The music you kids listen to isn’t music. There are certainly a lot of styles these days that leave me cold (such as the alterna boy-rock super compressed pitch-corrected and computer harmonised stuff), but I’m also heading into being a cranky old man myself.
I was going to pass this article by and not mention it at all except that I’ve been listening to a lot of albums from the 70s lately and almost across the board I wish they were mixed and mastered more aggressively. Led Zeppelin sounds kind of weak when it should be knocking my head off when it rocks out. I’m listening to Dancing Days here right now and want to run the whole thing through iZotope Ozone and crank it to the max. In particular, the re-master of Fun House kicks so much more ass than the original.
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13 Comments on this post
aharden on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 28, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Perhaps if more audio electronics came with a certain amount of dynamic range control (DRC), the labels wouldn’t be so aggressive about the loudness race. The limited DRC controls available on every DVD player I’ve ever used, as well as some of the more recent receivers I’ve bought and seen are a better solution to the problem of perceived loudness. Mastering engineers can take away dynamic range, but the listener can’t put it back. That’s the root of the problem.
MikeB on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 28, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Brad,
I agree 100%…even with the Zeppelin comment, which surprised me. The grumpy-old-timer syndrome can happen anywhere — recording techniques, genres, whatever. Great points.
-Mike
Josh Woodward on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 28, 2006 at 7:17 pm
He’s suffering from cranky-old-man syndrome, but he’s mostly right. Yeah, some forms of music sound better with more compression than others, but most rock music the past few years sounds like shit. Half the time when I’m flipping through the dial in my car, I need to pause for a few seconds just to figure out what song it is. The treble wash of cymbals and distorted guitar all sounds the same. It sounds *louder*, but certainly not *better*.
My favorite example is Green Day’s “Boulevard”. Listen to the acoustic breakdown. It doesn’t really pull down in volume from the rock part. When the rock part comes back in, there’s no impact at all. Sure, you can hear the acoustic part better when strolling down aisle 7 of WalMart, but c’mon…
Brad on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 28, 2006 at 8:00 pm
American Idiot has apparently sold 5.2 million units as of February of this year. So I’m not sure the over-compression has really had an impact on sales as Bob says in the article.
Ryan on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 29, 2006 at 6:38 pm
I suspect the major reason pop music has been getting so squashed of late is simply that it wasn’t possible before, consumer media just didn’t have the fidelity.
Get out a copy of Prodigy’s Fat of the Land on CD, tape and vinyl. Put on Smack My Bitch Up and crank the sucker up so you near the nastiness. Only the digital format will sound even vaguely tolerable, the other two ain’t the headroom to handle what digital recording produces.
CDs offer a digitally clean ninety something dB of headroom. Vinyl and tapes can’t touch that, no matter how much Metal/Dolby/DBX mojo you throw at the situation. I think that’s why people are engineering for higher average volumes, just cause they can.
Future Boy on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 29, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Meanwhile, can’t you just crank up the volume on the Zep to get the impact you want?
JB on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 30, 2006 at 3:17 pm
It’s been true for a while that dynamics in pop music are represented by density in the arrangement, not variations in volume. You want something to sound “quiet”? Use fewer instruments, or turn the distortion off. Gotta be careful with that technique though, or the “loud” parts have zero impact, like Josh mentioned.
Perhaps some of the impulse to squash comes from a desire to crank the volume and not have your head blown off when an unanticipated peak comes at 2:12 in the song. It’s a problem in the car with classical music. You turn it up to hear that part where four instruments are playing and the clarinet has a solo, then the brass section comes in and you’re scrambling to adjust the volume again.
Obviously there’s a middle ground where you can preserve the dynamics but avoid this kind of situation. When I find out how to achieve it, I’m going to patent it and charge you mofos to use it.
JY on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 31, 2006 at 2:58 am
Even with a lot of compression, the quiet parts still don’t have to have the exact same average RMS as the heavier parts. The quiet parts can be 2 or 3 db lower in average RMS simply be having less instruments as JB suggested. One other idea: the louder parts could be mixed so there is a bit of extra emphasis in the upper midrange to give the louder parts more of an edge to the sound.
I think the reason music sells less than in the past is because there are more forms of entertainment like video games, the internet, DVDs, etc.
JY
Marco Raaphorst on What Happened To Dynamic Range
March 31, 2006 at 5:04 pm
I don’t get it: why compress or limit when you can have dynamics? That was the cool thing about CD’s: headroom.
I don’t liket brickwall limiting and clipped bits. When I relevel everything (ReplayGain for example) the dynamic stuff sounds way better than the latetst U2 or Stones for example. IT IS REALLY LIKE WRITING WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON. SHOUTING ALL THE TIME.
fernando on What Happened To Dynamic Range
April 3, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Not everybody has a room for listening music without fucking the neighbours.
compressions helps to listen the song from begining to end without having to crank the vol up /down at every moment.
I tell this, because thats what happens with tv.
Why comercials are so loud?
try to watch tv at 5 am without fucking the neighbours in a 35 sq apartment.
THE JBL on What Happened To Dynamic Range
April 11, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Most boy-bands and girl-bands are extremely untalented so compression and many other forms of studio enhancement are needed.
Also, on the other hand, there are bands that now sound as though everything was done in one take and the production is awful and painful sounding.
In my own opinion, I believe we moved back a step or two in the way music should be made. Leppard, Rush, Zeppelin etc may be considered old and cheesy by the kids today. But I am 16 and was brought up on great Classic rock and Hair metal where the musicians were supremely talented and the production was massive.
Hopefully classic and hair rock will come full circle and we will get the feeling of real rock n roll back into the mainstream.
The JBL
RES on What Happened To Dynamic Range
May 14, 2006 at 3:23 am
This article is right on the money. I’m a “cranky old” Deep Purple nut, and you can hear the decline in quality (hey but its louder right!)as each album comes out.
Checked out on a computer editor their 2003 EMI release “Bananas” has plenty of clipping and it seems tons of compression. Their 2005 release “Rapture of the Deep” clips just as bad, but maybe less compression. Their both great music but shit quality CD’s.
What I don’t get is when I checked out Nelly Furtado’s “Whoa Nelly” it was not clipped, but has still had all dynamic range killed. It is just crazy.
Crazier still, if you can get a vinyl LP of the latest releases, they seem (based on my sample of two!) to be mastered more or less like they always have, they objectively are better than the CD!
The only solution does seem to be automatic leveling systems in all playback devices so there is no volume advantage to this stupidity.
I use MP3Gain, so none of my mp3′s is louder anyway!
RDMS on What Happened To Dynamic Range
August 25, 2008 at 12:21 am
Good dynamic range in a recording allows you to hear the fine detail. As you start slamming levels the first thing to dissapear is a sense of space and depth. Yeah, punch it hard and have everything coming out at one level… but lose the magic of the artist’s vision…..