Quiet Victories Won In the Loudness Wars 251
Stowie101 writes with a few pieces from an article on what's been happening in the fight against over-compressed radio music and deafening tv commercials: "The first major step towards the elimination of heavily-compressed music could be the International Telecommunications Union's ... measurement of loudness that was ... revised in 2011. ... Acting to rectify the problem on the broadcast side of the issue, many European and Asian broadcasters are adopting loudness standards that are based on the criteria first introduced by the ITU. Here in the U.S., the federal government has also been proactive to improve the quality of broadcast television. By the end of 2012, the broadcast community will have to follow the CALM Act that requires commercials to be played at the same volume as broadcast television. In terms of music and recording, these broadcast standards do not apply. But Shepherd theorizes the measurement standards will be applied to the production of music. 'Measuring loudness, in general, isn't easy. Now the ITU has agreed on a new "loudness unit:" the LU. You can measure short- and longer-term loudness over a whole song. They've also agreed on guidelines for broadcast; what the average loudness should be and how much you can vary it. The recommendation has been made law in the U.S. for advertisements and is also being adopted in the U.K. and all over the world. All the major broadcasters here — Sky, the BBC, ITV — have agreed to follow the standard.'"
Re:too much regulation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry I ran out of breath to laugh any longer.
I have a decibel meter app on my phone and I've seen levels go from the middle 50s during the program to the upper 60s during the ads.
The app isn't probably that accurate but that is a really big jump, enough to cause me pain sometimes. There is one ad from a local lawyer that jumps up to 70 at one point.
Guess who I won't be calling for legal services.
The industry has listened to and ignored citizen complaints for 50 years. What makes you think they will change now?
Re:too much regulation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Awesome post... but I have a nitpick, sorry::
For one, human hearing is more sensitive at specific frequencies
yes, this is absolutely true
(e.g. speech and crying babies, and probably any resonant frequencies of our skull).
no, I don't think any of these are examples.
Human speech ranges from 300 Hz to as high as 3.4 kHz, but most commonly and generally hover between 800 Hz and 1200 Hz. Humans don't perceive 1kHz as being louder, but 4kHz always sounds louder and sounds at this frequency tend to cause the listener ear fatigue.
A baby's cry is closer to that 4kHz loudly percieved and tiring frequency, but at around 3.4 kHz at its highest, it's below it enough that I'm nearly certain that's not the reason a baby's cry sounds louder. I believe the reason we hear a baby's cry as louder has more to do with the evolution of the hypothalamus and less to do with the actual frequency of a normal baby's cry. If we pitch shift the frequency of a baby's cry, or even reduce the sound pressure, it still stands out against a background of random noise, such as sounds of lots of people talking or a cacophony of wild animal sounds, because we have evolved to recognize the timbre of this sound, which is more distinct than its natural frequency range. The hypothalmus allows us to filter perceptions... but filtering out a baby's cry is universally accepted as being nearly impossible (I'm sure it can be done, but the mere fact that most find it unsettling or irritating and before long will seak to quell it speaks volumes).
The human skull has been shown to resonate at frequencies between 500Hz and 7.5kHz... so that's pretty much where we hear everything... we certainly hear below 500Hz and above 7.5kHz, but that's such a huge chunk of our normal hearing spectrum that it's unlikely there is any particular frequency we hear louder because of skull resonance.
Regardless of this, again, nice post.
Re:too much regulation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Untrue. Vinyl imposes lots of additional limitations, and is much more complicated than a binary "too loud" "not too loud". The louder you cut a record, the wider the groove is. The wider the groove is, the fewer grooves you can physically fit on the record, and thus the less music you can fit per side. If you cut an LP as hot as a typical modern CD (And I'm not even talking a LOUD modern CD, just an average one), you could only fit 12-14 minutes per side. A hot track, and that number will be more like 10 minutes. Whereas with the (sane) mastering common 40 years ago, 20-21 minutes per side was typical, although there were some compromises there too...optimal quality peaks at about 17 minutes per side or so. A recording without a lot of dynamic range, with the loudness turned down a bit (like a live album), and 25 minutes per side isn't at all unreasonable.
Compression is good in some cases (Score:3, Interesting)
Music is compressed because it's played in crappy environments: low end players, cars, etc. These days, cars come with compression features in their sound systems so that you can listen to something more high-end such as classical without breaking your ear drums in the loud sections in order to hear the quiet sections at all. Back in the day there was an astute observation that rock should sound great on a crappy radio.
The other side of the coin (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to remember that one of the reasons the "loudness wars" started in the first place was producer/label/artist A wanted his song/album to sound "louder" than producer/label/artist B. The question is, why?
A very simple answer: "louder" is almost always perceived as better. It's about standing out above the rest.
Take for example - given a set of 20 songs played in a club, all at roughly the same "loudness". Along comes one track which is "louder" than the rest. Chances are very high that more people in the club will take notice of this track. We're predispositioned to perceiving anomalies in our everyday lives, so something that is out of the ordinary (e.g. the louder track in this example) grabs our attention more than the other tracks. And at that point, the crowd would go "man, that track is really pumping".
The other issue is that the mastering engineer (who makes these kinds of calls about how "loud" or "hot" a track is before getting burnt to the master) is being paid to do something according to his client's needs. So if the producer wants the track louder, and is the one footing the bill, then there's not much the mastering engineer can do. So if the paymaster wants a loud track, that's what he will get. If mastering engineer A sticks to his guns, the producer's just going to go to another mastering house, which will mean revenue lost.
Another way to put it - if the customer wants to buy Windows NT and is dead set on this, no amount of enlightening by the consultant about the benefits of a Unix-based platform is going to change what the customer wants.
So yeah, these two factors combine and the result: the loudness wars.
Re:too much regulation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:too much regulation! (Score:4, Interesting)
"If you cut an LP as hot as a typical modern CD (And I'm not even talking a LOUD modern CD, just an average one), you could only fit 12-14 minutes per side."
Nope. Got Alice in Chains 'Sap' and 'Jar of Flies' dual vinyl demo. LOUD AS FUCK. 26 minutes per side.