Why are goa/psy labels participating in the loudness war?

[Malevol3nt]

[ophitoxaemia]

I don\'t know if it\'s this or just how artists are making the music (packed full of layers of effects), but most newschool goa trance sounds loud and crappy.

 

I don\'t listen to good music in noisy environments.

[Ov3rdos3]

I hate loudness character very much too and must laugh my ass off til it tears down when someone comes and says Ipot has good music quality or the people who thing they are something better and are cool if they have an Ipod, I´ve listened to Ipods many times and they really sound shit. I don´t want to say Sony are the best but they sound way more dcent than Ipod shit.

 

Loudness character is very bad, it jsut sounds very crappy, if you put on the headphones you just realize how bad loudness character sounds, all hiphop shit stuff and pop shit stuff has the typical loudness character, when i play an oldschool psytrack over headphones over my creatuve soundcard it sounds way better than a pop song from nelly fortado for example who uses extremly much loudness character. it is also very shitty when oldschool is playing you set a volume, and if we ofcourse don´t have pop in our playlists but if we would the pop would blast very much louder on the same volume as the oldschool goa track and that´s not quality for me. If music is optimated to sound loud and clear on the cheapest speakers because they lack detail it sounds exremly awful and oversaturated on good speakers or good headphones. But I think oldschool and neschool generally don´t use the loudness character, some fullon however uses the bad loudness charcter but not to an extent as the mainstream pop scene, the worst loudness character is still used by mainstream rap.

 

I have an Ipod, but my earphones probably cost more than your whole sound system. Ipod standard earphones are probably the shittest earphones I have ever heard. Which is why I bought these:

 

Sennheiser IE 8:

 

Frequency Response10-20000Hz

Impedance16

Total Harmonic Distortion 1%

Efficiency 125db

Weight 5g

With decent earphones, the quality is obviously MUCH better.

[mars]

That's true that many artists only recognize "production" nowadays. Not the musical content.

That's maybe because many off them just can't make music. Maybe I'm being very critic but......maybe not.

[radi6404]

I have an Ipod, but my earphones probably cost more than your whole sound system. Ipod standard earphones are probably the shittest earphones I have ever heard. Which is why I bought these:

 

Sennheiser IE 8:

 

Frequency Response10-20000Hz

Impedance16

Total Harmonic Distortion 1%

Efficiency 125db

Weight 5g

With decent earphones, the quality is obviously MUCH better.

Probably because I only have crap soundsystems; I plan to spend money for a real soundsystem with two big speakers and a great apm which plays very detailed, but maybe I wil also buy a Subwoofer to this set because I want to hear all Bass, not only 50+ hz. Even my curent system goes 35 hz. But I don´t think the Ipod can generate good sound as the source.

[Melancholyman]

I didn't know about any "loudness war". I checked out the video on youtube. I don 't think it's bullshit and it clearly removes alot of dynamics in the tracks. Wich is very bad and boring, makes it more dull to listen to. But I also think that it might be a little bit overexaggerated in that video.

[qa2pir]

I didn't know about any "loudness war". I checked out the video on youtube. I don 't think it's bullshit and it clearly removes alot of dynamics in the tracks. Wich is very bad and boring, makes it more dull to listen to. But I also think that it might be a little bit overexaggerated in that video.

That video makes it seem a lot less severe than it is. If I remember correctly, the video shows a song with very a couple of very loud transients being compressed to allow a volume gain.

 

Most modern records are compressed far beyond that; every slight peak is squashed down to the level of the lowest sounds in the mix. This results in what is called a "brickwall waveform" which (on a macro scale, i.e. looking at a whole song for example) looks like a brick, essentially. Of course this is not about how things look; it's about how they sound. And dynamics is one aspect of sound that the world is slowly beginning to forget - all because labels assume that people are incapable of using their volume knobs.

[radi6404]

That video makes it seem a lot less severe than it is. If I remember correctly, the video shows a song with very a couple of very loud transients being compressed to allow a volume gain.

 

Most modern records are compressed far beyond that; every slight peak is squashed down to the level of the lowest sounds in the mix. This results in what is called a "brickwall waveform" which (on a macro scale, i.e. looking at a whole song for example) looks like a brick, essentially. Of course this is not about how things look; it's about how they sound. And dynamics is one aspect of sound that the world is slowly beginning to forget - all because labels assume that people are incapable of using their volume knobs.

Yes, and that´s very very bad, but since I am mostly listening to oldschool I still listen to rather good quality music and the newschool labels have an ok soundquality, too.

[qa2pir]

Yes, and that´s very very bad, but since I am mostly listening to oldschool I still listen to rather good quality music and the newschool labels have an ok soundquality, too.

The new school labels (coughsuntripcough) brickwall their stuff too. Whether it sounds ok or not depends not only on how lacking it is in dynamics, but also how many dynamics you'd expect to hear from the composition. For example, a song consisting of a kick and a bass only will sound more natural and good when brickwalled than a full orchestra with crescendo and dimenuendo, etc.

[Guest antic]

I don't think this is a big problem in our scene any more.

 

It was different few years ago, when there was a lot of releases compressed without any imagination (e.g. Overlap's "6th Sense", Tranan's "Restarter", Crunchy Punch' "Maximum Velocity", Misted Muppet's "From the legend" to name a few), but nowadays I can't really recall any badly mastered CDs (well, there was Eat Static's "De-classified" which is annoyingly loud and I can't stand it over the headphones). True they're louder than in the golden old-school days, but then again the mastering tools have become so much more powerful and widely available and the musicians share their knowledge and experience on the forums so it's a lot easier to make a decent sounding mix these days. I even noticed, that some artists / labels are mastering their CDs at the volumes lower than few years ago, because they've realised they loose a lot of detail and warmth with heavy compression, for example most darkpsy (surprisingly!) is very well produced and balanced.

 

I think the loudness war, at least on a goa/psytrance field, is over.

[radi6404]

Yes, eat static was very loud but also transwave. Most transwave tracks were very loud which was even a reason why I don´t want to listen them, for example a quiet goa track from hallucinogen or man with no name is playing and then the very loud transwave stuff begins, that was also pretty annoying.

[Spiritual Carnage]

Being one of the people this is addressed to, I will try to give you an answer, also from the point of view of an artist (which I'm one).

 

First of all, let me start by saying that I think the the thing you call "loudness war", and I just call "maximizing volume" is a good thing. I don't see why the fuck is everyone saying that this is a bad thing. Why? because of that vid on Youtube where they show how it hurts the dynamics?

 

Maximizing has very little to do with the actual sound quality. That sound quality is mostly determined by the mixing the artist did on the track. And this is before the maximizing part.

The maximizing (part of the mastering process) is mostly done to eliminate loudness level differences between tracks on an album, and compared to the rest of the tracks released at the time in the scene. Why is this good? Why does it all have to be equal? Because most of this music will be heard on portable mp3 players, and on home systems, and cars and usually they are not top notch. Dynamics is bad in those cases, because you will not hear the silent parts in tracks. I'm telling you this because I've been listening to music in a lot of different enviroments in my life and I know what I'm talking about.

If you wanna hear unmastered stuff where it actually matters - go to a live set of your favorite artists. That's raw music, without any maximizing (mostly).

 

Bottom line - loud is good, not bad.

Exactly why it is bad imo. The music is compressed to even out all the dynamics, making it louder, to fit to crappy music systems like iPods etc. This means the music becomes flat, dull, sterile and where there is a musical idea of changing volume, that idea will be lost, thereby killing the character and liveliness of the music as the artist intended it. Still this even loudness is better than not for crappy systems, radios, ipods etc., because these can't handle higher dynamic ranges w/o sounding bad. But for anyone who cares the slightest about sound quality and have a decent or audiophile system that can handle dynamics, it's disastrous because it takes the life out the music.

 

Bottom line:

Loud, even volume = Lifelessness, dullness (but suitable for low quality systems like ipod)

 

High (but still controlled) dynamic range = Liveliness and vibrancy (but requires a decent system)

 

The thing which is lost is volume. The idea behind compression is reducing the loud parts in a track, so you can increase the loudness in the entire track. So all that you're losing is the differences in loudness, and nothing else.

Ain't that what a limiter does? A compressor does that AND increases weak signals i.e. decrease the whole dynamic range

[qa2pir]

Ain't that what a limiter does? A compressor does that AND increases weak signals i.e. decrease the whole dynamic range

A limiter is in essence a compressor, though with a very high compression ratio (meaning that it lowers the volume very much).

[Melancholyman]

This totally makes sense, if Suntrip is doing this under mastering. When listening to Khetzal I have noticed "poor sound quality" but in fact, it might just be the lack of dynamics. It's very easy to hear on my system.

[Guest antic]

This totally makes sense, if Suntrip is doing this under mastering. When listening to Khetzal I have noticed "poor sound quality" but in fact, it might just be the lack of dynamics. It's very easy to hear on my system.

You're talking about Khetzal's album or the compilation track from Twist Dreams?

If about the latter, then I completely agree.

[Anoebis]

This totally makes sense, if Suntrip is doing this under mastering. When listening to Khetzal I have noticed "poor sound quality" but in fact, it might just be the lack of dynamics. It's very easy to hear on my system.

Actually you should hear the original Khetzal file, it is SO terribly soundquality wise that we were ultra happy that it was almost unnoticable... He made that music long before he was aware of all details of mastering and finishing the sounds... So this is at least an album where you can say that music won far above the soundquality...

[Melancholyman]

You're talking about Khetzal's album or the compilation track from Twist Dreams?

If about the latter, then I completely agree.

Actually I was talking about the album.

 

Actually you should hear the original Khetzal file, it is SO terribly soundquality wise that we were ultra happy that it was almost unnoticable... He made that music long before he was aware of all details of mastering and finishing the sounds... So this is at least an album where you can say that music won far above the soundquality...

 

Ah ok, yeah, I mean Ra 9th is noticably better in sound quality IMO. And ofc, sound quality is not everyhitng, music wighs in much heavier, but it's still nice to have crisp and clear sound with great dynamics.

[pedro]

I would agree with comments that there is more to bad sound than just over-compression. Good mastering is more than just getting the right level of compression.

 

Which brings up the topic of what is the "right level". As has been pointed out, most music is made to sound better not with the audiophile in mind, but rather in the more popular forms of consumption. It is also why much music have their mids completely exaggerated. Cos it sounds good on a boom-box, or on a cheap radio in a car, etc.

 

But over-compression is indeed a problem. Sure it is necessary to have some compression, otherwise you would easily blow out your system listening to music. But too much compression does means too little dynamics (as it has been pointed out). And that is awful as well. I have a very high-end hifi sound system at home and you would not believe just how badly compressed is a lot of music. You notice over-compression the most when it is a band or an orchestra playing. Fortunately, there are lots of audiophile classical music music labels. When it comes to psy-trance, I think there are examples of good mastering and poor mastering. But given the low budgets, I often think the jobs could be worse. It is when the majors put out ublistenable stuff, that it drives me mad.

 

But here is an audiophile tip for headphone users - get a headphone amp. Best upgrade you can do. I use a Ray Samuels Audio Tomahawk for my Nano Ipod. The Tomahawk is very small and light - and it will drive all but the more demanding headphones (such as Sennheiser 600 - my preferred home headphones). At home, I use a Graham Slee Solo (with the upgraded power supply). It will drive anything. Both make listening more worthwhile.

 

 

Pedro

 

 

PS Radi - is it not time you hanged up your boots and changed tact? Your joke is getting rather stale...

[Ormion]

I don't think this is a big problem in our scene any more.

 

It was different few years ago, when there was a lot of releases compressed without any imagination (e.g. Overlap's "6th Sense", Tranan's "Restarter", Crunchy Punch' "Maximum Velocity", Misted Muppet's "From the legend" to name a few), but nowadays I can't really recall any badly mastered CDs (well, there was Eat Static's "De-classified" which is annoyingly loud and I can't stand it over the headphones). True they're louder than in the golden old-school days, but then again the mastering tools have become so much more powerful and widely available and the musicians share their knowledge and experience on the forums so it's a lot easier to make a decent sounding mix these days. I even noticed, that some artists / labels are mastering their CDs at the volumes lower than few years ago, because they've realised they loose a lot of detail and warmth with heavy compression, for example most darkpsy (surprisingly!) is very well produced and balanced.

 

I think the loudness war, at least on a goa/psytrance field, is over.

Well said

[simorq]

I would agree with comments that there is more to bad sound than just over-compression. Good mastering is more than just getting the right level of compression.

 

Which brings up the topic of what is the "right level". As has been pointed out, most music is made to sound better not with the audiophile in mind, but rather in the more popular forms of consumption. It is also why much music have their mids completely exaggerated. Cos it sounds good on a boom-box, or on a cheap radio in a car, etc.

 

But over-compression is indeed a problem. Sure it is necessary to have some compression, otherwise you would easily blow out your system listening to music. But too much compression does means too little dynamics (as it has been pointed out). And that is awful as well. I have a very high-end hifi sound system at home and you would not believe just how badly compressed is a lot of music. You notice over-compression the most when it is a band or an orchestra playing. Fortunately, there are lots of audiophile classical music music labels. When it comes to psy-trance, I think there are examples of good mastering and poor mastering. But given the low budgets, I often think the jobs could be worse. It is when the majors put out ublistenable stuff, that it drives me mad.

 

But here is an audiophile tip for headphone users - get a headphone amp. Best upgrade you can do. I use a Ray Samuels Audio Tomahawk for my Nano Ipod. The Tomahawk is very small and light - and it will drive all but the more demanding headphones (such as Sennheiser 600 - my preferred home headphones). At home, I use a Graham Slee Solo (with the upgraded power supply). It will drive anything. Both make listening more worthwhile.

 

 

Pedro

 

 

PS Radi - is it not time you hanged up your boots and changed tact? Your joke is getting rather stale...

Nice..I got to spend some time with Ray Samuels at a headphone meet I organized about a year ago through head-fi. He had all his amps and headphones, like balanced HD600 and balanced Grado PS1s, pretty cool. I think he was using a Meridian CDP. I unfortunately just saw some talk that some of his products may contain some design flaws, but I think it had more to do with his desktop amps, not portable. I wish I could point you towards the thread, but you can probably find it on head-fi pretty easiliy. Oh, come to think of it, here's some pics of him and his stuff before people showed up:

 

..which also makes me want to renounce all this iPod-bashing going on within this thread. iPods are actually regarded by people who know what they're talking about as producing very good sound quality. They sound pretty good unamped with a good pair of low-impedance headphones. If you chose to bypass their internal DACs and other innards, with a nice line-out adapter and a portable amp--like the one Pedro mentioned--you'd be hardpressed to find better sound for under a few thousand dollars.

 

And, it's good to hear that the compression issue isn't as endemic here as it is with pop music.