The Loudness War

Yesterday I went to visit a close friend, his a mixing and mastering engineer, and he was finalizing his new project. So I asked him, "why are the tracks so low on volume"? And he said, I'm trying hmmm actually I am not trying I'm fighting the loudness war". Then we started arguing about it and he played a few old tracks.

I told him to play any latest track, and guess what, he had to turn down the volume of his speakers. Damn I said, and he said listen to the dynamic range. When comparing old tracks with new tracks I could hear that the music these days sounds squashed and unnatural.

This is the main reason a lot of tracks don't sound good on radio. Then my friend showed me the wave forms and the old tracks he was using as reference had dynamics and the new tracks were like one whole block/brick, that means the first verse is in the same level as the chorus.

I have just started fighting the loudness war. This is why a Hi-Fi/radio comes with a LOUD button, what I have realised is that your track does not need to be loud. No wonder why you can't listen to a whole album these days, your ears get tired because of the distortion.

So I started doing some research and I came across this really great video, to help my blog readers understand why we have the loudness war and what is the solution. So watch this really great video and let's come together and fight against the loudness war.

The Loudness War