The Loudness Wars
Austin Convention Center, Wednesday, March 18
This one-man panel addressed the escalating attempts by rock bands to have the “loudest” album on radio through the ever-greater application of dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and quietest sounds in a piece of music, enabling a higher average volume. Veteran mastering engineer Bob Ludwig, who’s worked on albums by artists ranging from Led Zeppelin to Mariah Carey, gave an engineer’s explanation of how loudness is achieved, followed by A/B listening examples that demonstrated both why compression is attractive – used in moderation, it sounds good – and why the loudness wars are a problem: The escalation of loudness leads to sonically fatiguing, unmusical records.
The most valuable information Ludwig offered came by way of his most dramatic demonstration, involving compressed and uncompressed versions of Metallica’s Death Magnetic. The drop in quality is so great as to elicit spontaneous expressions of disgust. Ludwig related that when the album was released, fans, having heard unfinished mixes in Guitar Hero, rebelled when they heard the final, “squashed” version, and 10,000 of them signed a petition demanding that the album be remixed. Ludwig reports that since this happened, he’s seen a significant increase in acts requesting albums be mastered with greater dynamic range, indicating that perhaps the tide is turning in the loudness wars.
This article appears in March 20 • 2009.