I (finally) start to be tired of this music that sound loud…and louder.
I mean…enough is enough!…let’s stop the loudness war.
the heavy use of multiband compression and brickwall limiters is killing the dynamic range…and the music.
many ppl in the music industry regard the mastering as even more important than the mixing and the recording itself.
especially record labels…they know that spending a relative small amount of money in a “good” mastering studio can transform a dodgy sounding album is a blasting hit….that will sound loud even out of the computer speakers and those crap headphones…well…true..a good mastering can really do that…
but an exagerated mastering can also kill the music…and the listener…
it’s the same for the images…all is glossy nowadays…and saturated…
I am honestly very unhappy with the mastering that mr Dave Black did for my album “viceversa” for example…too compressed…too much bass…
and I had enough of all this wobbly trend…from Tipper (his Wobble Factor is TOO LOUD!!) to blasted dubstep.
INFACT…MUSIC THAT SOUNDS TOO LOUD IS LIKE WRITING ONLY IN CAPITAL LETTERS…
or like somebody screaming all the time….
I have mastered many of the tracks of the cloudcycle project…I am not a pro masterer and I don’t have pro gear and I am not sitting in an acustic treated room…but I reckon that I can do a decent job with my software (since we can’t afford to pay for a mastering session)…not as loud but loud enough…
but now I realized that I pushed the level of some tunes too much…trying to be loud as the trend…
so after a lot of reading (and listening)…I decided to remaster them…at a lower level…with little compression and very little limiting…so they don’t look like bricks anymore…infact…greg was right.
this are few links about the loudness war:
loudness wars (wikipedia)
The Loudness War Analyzed (on musicmachinery)
loudness wars (on stereosubversion)
dynamic range foundation – an organization defending the dynamic range, they release also a free plug in to check the dynamic range.
turn me up – another organization defending the dynamic range
justice for audio

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One Response to “mastering is killing music”

  • Digging this big time, when we moved from analogue to digital everything went beserk.
    Thing that bugs me most is exaggerated top end. There’s frequencies up there our ears are very sensitive to, so anyone with a morsel of politeness would go easy on these bands.
    But now just sliding a mouse can boost a band three times what turning an analogue knob all the way round would do, so unfort its much easier to indulge.
    So i really respect your call for Temperance !!

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