From Joe S.'s Blog

This is a rather long blog post for me, but I thought this would be of interest. I was listening to Peter Frampton this weekend, a father's day gift CD, and was thinking about the dynamics and expressiveness of the music, something that is fading in both modern songwriting and music production.

In an article called "The Death Of High Fidelity", Rolling Stone magazine writer Robert Levine reports on the industry fight over (or against) dynamic range:

  Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," producer David Bendeth (Hawthorne Heights and Paramore) says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest."

Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

Is it really that important? Bob Dylan thinks so...

The idea that engineers make albums louder might seem strange: Isn't volume controlled by that knob on the stereo? Yes, but every setting on that dial delivers a range of loudness, from a hushed vocal to a kick drum — and pushing sounds toward the top of that range makes music seem louder. It's the same technique used to make television commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners' attention — but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone that modern albums "have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static."

 

Static... Ok I personally think technology has been good for music but I also agree with the articles premise. To much compression kills dynamic range which is one of the hallmarks of the classic rock LP's of the vinyl years.

Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic Monkeys' debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional peaks that usually stand out in a song. "You lose the power of the chorus, because it's not louder than the verses," Bendeth says. "You lose emotion."

A visual example:

Since the mid-1990s, engineers have used dynamic compression to make CDs louder and louder. These waveforms show how loud contemporary recordings have become:

Nirvana
"Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Back in 1991, even the loudest rock wasn't always loud: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has plenty of fluctuations in its volume — so when Kurt Cobain screams, you feel it.

 

Arctic Monkeys
"I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"
This 2006 track is a prime offender: The sound wave is cranked to the limit, and it stays there for nearly every second of the song. Have a headache yet?

U2
"With or Without You" (Original)

U2
"With or Without You" (Remastered)

Many of us didn't even notice the change in the music. The casual listener may not know or care because the brain is constantly compensating for the sounds it perceives ( or doesn't perceive in this case), and it is probably making you believe you actually enjoy what you hear!

Test it for yourself:

Here are three recent albums noted for their depth and dynamic range — and three that are way too loud

GOOD
Modern Times, Bob Dylan [Listen]
Not Too Late, Norah Jones [Listen]
Raising Sand, Robert Plant/Alison Krauss [Listen]

On these albums, the music breathes: Check out the true-to-life sound of Dylan's "Thunder on the Mountain."

BAD
Alright, Still, Lily Allen [Listen]
Californication, Red Hot Chili Peppers [Listen]
Infinity on High, Fall Out Boy [Listen]

These are so unrelentingly loud that the sound is nearly distorted. The choruses on the Peppers' "Scar Tissue" are no louder than the verses.

In the digital age, where everything is tweaked to perfection, everything about music is changing...except perhaps dynamic quality, which to me makes music, like Peter Frampton, "come alive".