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Old 10-07-2008, 04:13 PM   #20
jammies
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Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos View Post
Weird. Seems to me that "loudness" is going to be defined by the listener anyway, so you'd want it to sound good at any level. Can anyone explain why they would do this?
The original reason was so that singles on the radio would stand out; compression makes the music sound louder, and louder is perceived by the unsophisticated ear as "better", so if Artist A's songs were compressed more than Artist B, then Artist A had a built-in advantage. Then some engineers and producers figured out that on lo-fi equipment (like, for an example, old-school Walkmans or the newfangled iPod) compression added to the perceived quality of the music as well, and entire albums were compressed to make them sound better, and the process repeated itself a few times until today almost every mainstream artist's music is squished down into the loudest and flattest form possible, despite this sounding like absolute crap.

On older analog equipment over-compression just added a bit of fuzz or even (desirable) warmth to the sound, whereas too much modern digital compression causes clipping, which is cutting off the waveform of the sound by pushing its peak past 0 db - very very bad. This is separate from the issue of the highly compressed and "flat" sound; not only do many modern albums keep nearly the same level of sound throughout, but they also have clipping issues which make them, in my opinion, unlistenable.

To see what the effect is like, take an old 60's album (preferably one with decent production like the Beatles, but not remastered if you want to get the full effect), play a couple songs and crank the volume to a level you think is reasonably loud but not painfully so. Then, take an album like the last Rush one, or this new Metallica, or really anything pop, rock or rap, and play at the same volume level. You should immediately notice that it seems MUCH louder and in your face.

This is supposedly "good", but since one of the tools used in making interesting music is using both soft and loud (not just loud and louder), it is, in my opinion, badly misused. I personally have experimented with using no compression when recording songs, but haven't even been able to wean myself off it despite knowing better; now that a couple decades have gone by with this sound being the norm, other approaches sound strange and weak to my ear.

PS - this is also what is done with commericials on TV; they are highly compressed in post-production so that when played, they seem to jump out at you much louder than the program you are watching.
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Last edited by jammies; 10-07-2008 at 04:18 PM.
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