A couple of thoughts. First, the article points out that one's perspective on the loudness wars issue is somewhat dependent on the type of music involved. Those who are fans of an urban rap genre may well have an opinion on this subject that is considerably at variance from the fellow who finds his favorite folk music album from the 60s has just been remastered in the loudness wars style.
Second, there are some aspects of modern sound engineering styles that don't necessarily show up in the numbers but still affect perception. A couple of years back I was doing some editing work on a compilation CD I was making for myself. A Lucinda Williams song (sorry, don't remember which one) for the mix had a strong and prominent drum beat. In looking at the waveform in Adobe Audition, the bass drum peaks were all precisely the same. By contrast, when looking at other, typically older material, the same type of repeated drum kicks had quite a bit of variability in loudness. In short, the Williams drum had been heavily limited and processed to produce uniformity while, with similar tracks from other material, you could tell they had been recorded with all of the variability one would hear from a real drummer. A lot of the Lucinda Williams albums are regarded as good recordings, but this type of uniformity robs them of some of their humanness. However, the current fad in the industry is for the loudness wars "in your face" style. Unfortunately, since it is the fashion, it is used even when it isn't a good choice. It reminds me of the time back around 1980 when I had to make a business trip to a school board office located in the high school of a small town. The TV show Charlie's Angels was all the rage and, in walking down the hall to the office, I noticed that about half or more of the girls had "Farrah Fawcett" hairdos. For the small percentage of the girls who had the right natural hair quality and facial features, it was a great look. For all of the rest, however, they were doing themselves no favor. Despite the fact that another hairstyle would have served most of them far better, Farrah was the hot look and, by God, they were going to have it no matter what. Unfortunately, we're pretty much at the same spot with recording fashions these days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mlsstl's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9598 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98729 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
