LOUDNESS - LEVEL WARS
One of the debates that is capturing maximum attention from people involved in audio (specially in Mastering) and more and more from “regular” media - newspapers, music magazines and others - and from music amateurs in general, is the level at which records are being produced for the last ten years, and the consequences generated by this subject. Competition among companies and artists’ fear that their records sound with less level than their competitors implied that mastering engineers have to pay attention to this issue, in parallel to those aspects that should be the main ones.
We are talking about the “quality vs. level” relationship and its main problem: the more level you want, more distortion and less dynamics (read movement) you get.
I always respect a customers’ decisions and artistic criteria - even when it comes to their masters level - , although due to wide experience, I sometimes recommend certain cares and variations (I always deal case by case), and I understand the predisposition that many artists and record labels have to try to make their products more competitive on expense of level, but ... up to which point this becomes real?
To understand this complex problem, first we should discriminate formats and above all we should know where is this going to be played back. The master we must make for a techno music vinyl record that is going to be played back with other records of similar style, is very different from the master we should make for a pop music album that is going to be played at home or in the car, and even more different from the master we should make for a single that is going to be basically played on radio.
For any album that is going to be played in a home HiFi device it is unnecessary (and even artisticaly undesirable) to use compressors and limiters for the mere fact of increasing level (there may be aesthetic reasons, of course), given that if the final listener requires more level, he/she just has to pick the remote control of the amplifier. Level control of an amplifier is basically a series of resistors. This means that if that wheel wouldn’t exist, the amplifier would sound at 100% of his capabilities. As we turn down the amplifier volume, what we actually do is insert increasing electrical resistance to the recorded level in the record, and therefore the more we turn down the amplifier volume (we are LOWERING the record volume), more resistors - low quality ones usually - we add, and consequently the final quality of what we hear is diminished.
By this simple rule we conclude that a record that we can listen closer to the amplifier’s maximum volume, without distortion (and which allows us to keep raising its level without distortion) is a record that has been respected at the mastering stage, and that is close to ND denomination. When you play back a CD to sound with high level and you hear distortion, it generally means that the record is not properly mastered. It is a tragedy that more than 90% of the records that have been mastered for the last five to ten years have a big amount of intermodulation distortion, harmonic distortion and clipping distortion produced by compression and limitation abuse during the mastering process (and sometimes even during mixing!).
Each playback format should have its own mastering, and all formats “should” (except that for aesthetic reasons dynamics elimination were desired) fit in what we call “ND Mastering”: Natural Dynamics Mastering.
We are talking about the “quality vs. level” relationship and its main problem: the more level you want, more distortion and less dynamics (read movement) you get.
I always respect a customers’ decisions and artistic criteria - even when it comes to their masters level - , although due to wide experience, I sometimes recommend certain cares and variations (I always deal case by case), and I understand the predisposition that many artists and record labels have to try to make their products more competitive on expense of level, but ... up to which point this becomes real?
To understand this complex problem, first we should discriminate formats and above all we should know where is this going to be played back. The master we must make for a techno music vinyl record that is going to be played back with other records of similar style, is very different from the master we should make for a pop music album that is going to be played at home or in the car, and even more different from the master we should make for a single that is going to be basically played on radio.
For any album that is going to be played in a home HiFi device it is unnecessary (and even artisticaly undesirable) to use compressors and limiters for the mere fact of increasing level (there may be aesthetic reasons, of course), given that if the final listener requires more level, he/she just has to pick the remote control of the amplifier. Level control of an amplifier is basically a series of resistors. This means that if that wheel wouldn’t exist, the amplifier would sound at 100% of his capabilities. As we turn down the amplifier volume, what we actually do is insert increasing electrical resistance to the recorded level in the record, and therefore the more we turn down the amplifier volume (we are LOWERING the record volume), more resistors - low quality ones usually - we add, and consequently the final quality of what we hear is diminished.
By this simple rule we conclude that a record that we can listen closer to the amplifier’s maximum volume, without distortion (and which allows us to keep raising its level without distortion) is a record that has been respected at the mastering stage, and that is close to ND denomination. When you play back a CD to sound with high level and you hear distortion, it generally means that the record is not properly mastered. It is a tragedy that more than 90% of the records that have been mastered for the last five to ten years have a big amount of intermodulation distortion, harmonic distortion and clipping distortion produced by compression and limitation abuse during the mastering process (and sometimes even during mixing!).
Each playback format should have its own mastering, and all formats “should” (except that for aesthetic reasons dynamics elimination were desired) fit in what we call “ND Mastering”: Natural Dynamics Mastering.
But at the end of the day its all personal to our own ears, maybe mine are fucked!