Bob Ludwig
The Loudness Wars
Wednesday, March 18, 3-4:15pm, Room 15
Turn on the radio. There’s a good chance that’s Bob Ludwig you’re hearing.
Ludwig, who has a Master of Music in trumpet, has put his skills to work on albums by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, the Velvet Underground, and Nirvana, to name five. Lest you think he can only rock, John Zorn, Steve Reich, and Boozoo Chavis also find themselves sprinkled among Ludwig’s thousands of credits.
There’s no trumpet on Rush’s Moving Pictures or U2’s The Joshua Tree, right? Master of Music that he is, Ludwig’s better known as the masterer of music, the final sonic tweak on half of everything you listen to.
“When I did the Rolling Stones reissues for ABKCO, Mick [Jagger] called up and accused them of overdubbing something on the new mastering,” he writes via e-mail. “Obviously that would never happen, but the extra clarity of the new electronics brought out aspects of the recording he didn’t remember.”
Ludwig’s on the front lines of what’s become known in the industry as the compression wars, the never-ending battle to turn up the internal volume of music so that it stands out to listeners. While a relatively recent phenomenon, its roots extend further than many combatants realize.
“Back in the vinyl disk-cutting days, people like me made our reputations on being able to cut the loudest and most musical LP and single discs possible,” he explains. “With tight playlists on Top 40 rock formats, record producers always wanted their disc to stand out among the stack of discs radio station program directors played each week to pick two or three songs to add to their playlists. Naturally, when a producer heard another producer’s song that was louder, they’d respond, ‘Hey, how come my song isn’t as loud as his?’ thus leading to ever louder singles.”
According to Ludwig, an average listener usually thinks louder often does sound better. “Unfortunately, it turns out that as the volume is increased, the dynamics and life of the recording are diminished by the same amount. The crushing of the recording’s dynamics assaults on the auditory system. The body’s instinct says, ‘I’m tired of that one,’ because it’s in-your-face from start to finish.”
Unfortunately, even an industry legend gets collaterally damaged, and we’re all the poorer for it. “I lose the war every day,” Ludwig acknowledges. “It’s gotten so bad that mixers are afraid to give their clients a real piece of music, and they precrush it before giving it to me. Some of them crush it so loud that it’s way beyond what I would have done in mastering. It leaves my hands tied, and there isn’t much I can do with such garbage.”� Michael Bertin
This article appears in March 6 • 2009.