STEP TO THE BEAT

Dynamic Range Compression Or Murdering Pleasure In Music

I haven’t posted for a while, and this time decided to share my thoughts on an ongoing trend in the music industry which is increasingly killing music as a pleasurable experience in favor of…well, a loud one.

I will keep this as simple and short as possible. Our key term here is dynamic range, which in music is basically the difference between the quietest and loudest volume of a song. It’s what sooths you when a composition comes to a quiet break, and excites you when it gradually or suddenly becomes louder (below you will see an example with a graphic representation or histogram, as well as sound samples).

Over the last twenty or so years, most noticeably starting in the early 90′s and at an extreme today, the concept of “louder is better” has been pushed to the point of killing dynamic range in music, and is commonly known as loudness war. How is this done? By applying dynamic range compression. You take the low peaks of the range and drive them all the way up, next to the high peaks. So instead of lows and highs in the course of a song, you get one loud chunk of volume.

Over a certain period of listening to music with a high level of dynamic range compression, you may not conciously be aware of it, but your ears start to feel the strain, because loudness is pushed to the brink of distortion or saturation, there is no “resting” for them.

You may have seen CD’s with covers that read “Remastered”. This means taking the original master recording and enhancing it by means of equalization and other techniques. But most if not every remastered album in the last ten years uses the dreaded dynamic range compression, often times resulting in killing the pureness and clarity of the original work to get a very loud new master. It is supposed to catch more attention when listened to (it does, for the wrong reasons).  So don’t do what I did with a couple of titles on CD a few years back, get rid of the original pressing of a CD in favor of a remaster done in, around the last ten years. You may regret it.

Trained ears will easily identify the progressively louder and distorted sound in the below samples. The newer remasters will sound more like FM radio, where dynamic range compression is always been applied. Why buy a CD if you pretty much get radio quality sound.

Although it is easier to note the compression applied to remasters of say, an 80′s recording like the below one, because you have a parameter to compare it with, you can also “feel it” in new recordings.

There are anti-loudness movements, and a few remastered CD’s have stickers saying that no dynamic range compression was applied, hopefully this trend will eventually revert itself at some point, though I wouldn’t get my hopes up there. You can see hundreds of Google hits on the subject, if you are interested in further reading and listening.

Here is the visual comparison of three different mastering works for Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach”. Starting from the top, the original 1986 “True Blue” CD pressing, the 2001 “True Blue” remaster, and the 2009 remaster used for the “Celebration” compilation.

Below you can either listen to a compressed mp3 file, or download two uncompressed wav files containing excerpts of each master. In comparison 1, notice how the strings are louder with each remaster, and how the drums are “forced down”, creating that flat, saturated sound, typical from FM radio sound and television as well.

Papa Don’t Preach Loudness Comparison 1

Papa Don’t Preach Loudoness Comparison 2

Papa Don’t Preach Loudness Comparison 1

Papa Don’t Preach Loudness Comparison 2

That’s all for now folks, hope you enjoyed this post.