How loud is too loud?
Technology has always shaped the sound of music. The Loudness War has been fought between record labels since the invention of the jukebox. The competition would be to get your song heard louder than others on a jukebox set at a pre-determined level in a noisy bar. Motown records pushed the limitations of the vinyl format. The digital media of the CD has allowed increasing volume levels never reached with vinyl.
It’s true that in this day and age we listen to music in increasingly noisy environments and perhaps pay less attention to what we hear – it must be tempting for producers and artists to engineer their tracks to “shout” the loudest. Today, many people have music on in the background as they walk, drive, or sit in front of the computer. Making music louder simply ensures that they can hear the entire song, and maybe even pay attention to it. But it also means that music no longer provides the same experience for people who want to listen actively, rather than passively. The only way to blast louder than others is to make sacrifices in the original mix. You will notice that modern music can jump out from the tiniest laptop speakers, but often does not stand up to scrutiny on a good, loud, full-range playback system. The compression needed to keep songs competitive creates distortion and other artifacts in the sound. The techniques used to maximise the volume are damaging the music itself.
Volume is different from loudness, every setting on a volume knob has a range of loudness. Compression in sound engineering is the act of raising the quieter parts of a mix without necessarily lowering the louder parts. The only type of compression you hear in nature is that which your ear does to attenuate loud sounds, and so your brain associates this with volume. Volume is a psychological cause of excitement, a trigger to the fight or flight mechanism of the brain.
Highly compressed music with little or no dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and the softest sounds) is physically difficult to listen to for any length of time. The tiredness does not present itself obviously like aching muscles or weary eyes. This “hearing fatigue” is why you may notice you do not like to listen to modern music for long periods of time or prefer older recordings. The physical and psychological aspects of “hearing fatigue” cause stress and disinterest over time. The original excitement caused by loudness wears off over time.
The Beatles, Sometimes - various remasters over the years showing extent of compression.
The reason CDs were quieter in the past was that it took a while for it to occur to producers to try to hijack the volume control from listeners. People spent a long time mixing their music to sound just the way they wanted it. Typically, they didn’t want someone to take that music and make radical or drastic changes to it after hearing it only a handful of times in a mastering session. The job of the mastering engineer was just to balance out any inconsistencies and transfer it to the delivery medium.
The competitive arms race can be compared to rivalry in advertising where swathes of countryside adjoining highways and autobahns is covered in billboards. If one company is putting up billboards then yours must do so too, or else be over-shadowed! The question is: How long before record companies are making re-re-releases of records at a proper dynamic range?
Turn Me Up! is a non-profit organisation, which proposes to put stickers on CDs that meet high sonic standards.
A radio article on the Loudness War
