Ever noticed that a new CD sounds way louder than an old one from the 80s? It's because record companies master them louder. It's 'what the customers want', as they claim it.
However, making the music louder takes away from the quality! It takes away the dynamics of the music. And we shouldn't accept that as music lovers!

I completely understand if you don't get what this is about. So here I will try to make you aware of it by posting this short video. This explains what this Loudness War is all about and how it works.

The Loudness War


Also here is a great website with examples and explanations. I highly recommend to read this!
The Death of Dynamic Range

Really interesting.

Along those lines, I was having a conversation with my husband yesterday. He asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him an iPod dock. He asked me if I wanted it to have a CD player, and I told him no, because the iPod has replaced the CD. And then I thought about it for a while and said, it's really sad that we settle for lower quality MP3s on the iPod for the sake of convenience, and CDs are now downgraded as a means to a way to get MP3's onto the computer to transfer to an iPod. CDs are much better quality, and yet we choose to put them away for the sake of portability. Interesting.

This is really interesting.

Personally I settle for CD's and vinyls. Of course I listen to music by using portable devices or via WMP, but the sound is just way better if you listen to CD's (and through a stereo) or even vinyls.

And if it's too quiet for you, you just have to turn up the volume and that's it.


I wonder if it's the same with all the 'new' CD's on the market. Do you know anything about it, Max? For example, remastered CD's by older bands like Depeche Mode or Metallica.

YES! Remasters are fucked too!! Ever notice how with remasters, that they are always louder than the old one? That means there is a high chance that they've been compressed too much too (which means loss of signal). The signal peaks are 'chopped off' (clipped).
This clipped sound (also on that site it is explained) sounds like distortion.

It doesn't matter how expensive your cd player is. A badly mastered cd, with clipped wave signals, will always be bad. There is no changing.

Did you know LP's are mastered differently from cd's? If there would be clipped signals on the LP (when the LP is too loud basically), the needle of your record player would skip. So with LP's, they are FORCED to make them less loud then they'd make a cd, thus keeping the signals intact.
No wonder why some people say Vinyl sounds better than cd.

ou know Metfuk I totally don't get you. Loudness war...ok. But what can you do about it? As a music lover.the answer is simple: NOTHING ;P
So why don't you just buy Vinyls on eBay?
I'm a proud owner of Metallica discography on MCs.Some of them are second hand.Like Garage days EP. ;)

Wow. I never really thought about that. I just figured the quality of the music itself was poor today, and just didn't care for the "sound". I never thought that CD loudness was the issue.

Definitely agree with you there, CD's of the 80's sounded way better.

So I guess we can conclude that the problem mainly began to pick up in the 90's? I thought CD's sounded better back then, honestly.

Me and my dad, who's a old school rocker, have our own personal theories. We both are vynil freaks, and we agree on the fact that this kind of support is the best for music. But it's good only for good music, played well and performed with accuracy: and this kind of qualities in nowadays music are pretty rare in my opinion. All the new supports in some way can help covering this missing qualities.

Yes it began in the 90s. On wikipedia there is an article about this too. And there you can read that it began in the 90s. They say that Metallica's Black Album was mastered in a way, that the loudest parts would end just under the limits..and that was already a huge thing back then.
Later on they started going 'over the edge' and then you got the clipped signals.
I've loaded a Reload song into a program and I've spotted clipped signals. So Reload is also too loud and there is loss of signal.

But that's just some examples. There are artists that are aware of this problem and make sure their album is mastered properly. Too bad most aren't aware of it and think everything is fine when their studio tapes got sent to the record company folks.

A nice example of an album that is WAY too loud is RHCP's Californication. The more mellow parts of the songs sound just as loud as the more heavy parts. And when I listen to it on headphones, it's just insane. I can hear the distortion from clipped signals.

I absolutely persuaded that to some bands this thing is a way to cover their thecnical unabilities. As those guitarist who use exagerate distortion just to hide the fact they actually can't play decently!

It may be possible, but I think they reach out more for studio techniques to cover up that shit. Like vocal pitch correctors and Pro Tools for instruments.

Good point . . . everybody said the production for "Justice" was poor, which it was, but at least the loudness wasn't a problem. I can see how it is on the Black Album forward.

Ride the Lightning sounds perfect to me . . .

Only remastered albums I own are Youthanasia, Countdown To Extinction and Rust In Peace by Megadeth, and they sound pretty good to me. I can't really compare them to the original versions as the remastered ones are barely the only one's you find here in Norway.

Damn you, Max! :lol: I've never cared/knew about this but now you brought it up, it bugs me how the sound is so screwed sometimes.

It's actually interesting that you brought this up.

Most of my music collection is made up of older music and of course, older cds. One of the very few new cd's I own is probably a Theory of a Deadman CD and whenever it comes on my ipod/cd changer, I have to throw DOWN the volume, just because the mastering volume is so off compared to the rest of my music. It's a pretty nasty surprise if you're walking down the street with something at full blast, then BAM!

Even when you mention remastered cd's, the only one I have is Whitesnake's greatest hits and I can't actually say, the difference in volume is minimal but the songs as a whole sound kick ass.

It'll probably depend on who mastered it and how well.

Yeah I get ya. It was the same for me when I found out about it, like more than a year ago now.
We will never listen with the same ears as before now.

But, on the positive side: It's another reason to love old music over new music. :lol:

Soundwaves of Metallica records through the years. A depressing view:



Tons of people are complaining about the audio quality of Death Magnetic! It is truely horrible and I'd never expected that Metallica would allow something like this to happen to their music. People are returning their cd's! Death Magnetic is gonna top the lists of horribly produced/mastered albums.
If you don't hear it/know what this is about: I envy you!! I wish I didn't hear it.

I know man, DM has one of the worst sounds I've ever heard. I'm glad I didn't buy it.

If you want better qualtity with less clipping, download this torrent, sourced from Guitar Hero. Much better!

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4398460/Me...II_by_D34DL1N3R


I'm loving it at the moment! Certainly gonna burn this to cd and will never play the real album again. I hope it's possible to return it to the store...

A couple of articles that regard the loudness of Death Magnetic...

http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/0...p-loudness.html

http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/0...nds-better.html

It's widely known and confirmed issue now.

This is a depressing topic. I wish the bands nowadays would all jump on the vynil press bandwagon just for the fact that it would give them some 'vintage' merchandise, because you can't half ass it with vynil. I go to good will now and then and every time I go I raid the record section, I've had some wonderful finds there; amongst them the original Mary Poppins soundtrack, George Bietz's opera Carmen, and Rolling Stones' Tattoo You album.

According to Dagbladet (newspaper in Norway) theres a petition you can sign if you wish for the cd to be re-mixed / re-mastered. Link to petition:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/re-mix...h-magnetic.html

Picture which compairs the cd version and guitar hero version:




I feel like burning the cd version, fucking waste of money.


Link til avisen for alle norsktalende her: http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/09/18/547283.html

This is kinda sad , I mean I can't heard anything wrong in my album but if there are so many complains , that most be something wrong then :/


and the wost part is that DM is actually a good album (imo) .it could even better with sound problem fix it .

Now that I chose this as my subject for my English talk (Thanks, Max, I couldn't come up with something, so I found this, and... the teacher was okay with it) I totally understand what you are talking about.
And since I want to be a sound engineer or producer in the future, it's good that I learn how you shouldn't do things. you can learn a lot if you know which things you shouldn't do.

But it's sad that this happens... :(

That's good to hear! :tu:

maaah I hate that fucking annoying clipping! Also I feel like it's so loud you can not "hear" it properly.
The first time I listened to DM with my iPod I thought that my headphones were kind of fucked up. Then I noticed that it was only with DM...I tried to listen to it with the boxes in my room and I could still hear the clipping. It's so sad :s

I don't have any problem with the album, I'm used to blocking out annoying noises, I live with 3 girls at home, and lived with 4 girls at uni :P

Thanks!

mean :lol:

Nightwish's Dark Passion Play has more clarity, and it's about a year old, not too much distortion, still can't blast the music, headphones start to distort at a volume less than that of Death Magnetic

EDIT: what i mean by that is the record sounds quieter than DM, not that its too loud

Rick Rubin is known for his loud records. It's Rubin's fault that the new Metallica is so messed up. Another big mess up from him is Californication by RHCP. He also did some Slayer albums (not into them so don't know which) that are fucked up.

Luckily there ARE bands out there that are aware of this problem AND are in control just enough to protect their music up to the point where it's pressed to cd. Tool is one of those bands. Their latest record (2006) has been mastered with care.

There is really no use to master an album so loud (and by that destroying the dynamics). The buyers decide how much they turn up their volume. So even when it's mixed really quiet (a rare thing) the listener can turn up his volume on his own just fine! So that's why all this loudness crap is such a shame. It has nothing to do with music anymore, it's just some competition among record companies.

I don't know. I read in the Aardschok, in the interview with Lars, that Rick Rubin's 'slave' was going to master the album. Can't remember his name though, I have to look it up. But I think it's mostly the fault of that guy.

Yes of course it's not just Rubins fault. The others that were working in the studio could have prevented this too. It's a shame.
But it's still remarkable that Rubin seems to be the 'man of loud'.

this is coming from a neighbor in his 50's:if it's too loud, your too old. I can hear it just fine, no issues for me.

I jsut thought i'd post his comments after hearing DM for the first time (had him and his 16-year-old son headbanging)

Until you'd hear a version of the album that was done properly. You'd be out of your mind about the difference. :wink

Am I getting this wrong, or could you also just put your volume a bit down..? :P

Nah, it's got nothing to do with the volume it's playing at on the CD player, it's the volume that each part has been mixed at. Everything has been put up to a high volume, instead of mixing everything in at separate levels which would cut down on any distortion or a muddy sound. In a recent interview Lars said it was mixed that way to give more of a "live" feel.


I can see both sides of the argument, but like I've said, it doesn't really bother me too much

soo right

so WRONG!

Volume doesn't help!

Over the last couple of weeks I've had the pleasure to listen to a couple of new albums that were NOT so loud! It's still possible!
The new Guns n' Roses, Chinese Democracy is mastered pretty well! I had expected it to be bad, but damn, It really surprised me.
Also the album of Gabriella Cilmi surprised me.

I wonder if the artists themselves are behind this or if they just have a good management/record company. I'm sure Axl Rose is the kind of control freak that would see to it that they wouldn't ruin his music.