The Loudness Wars Suck

Discussion in 'Other Music' started by lordblood, May 11, 2014.

  1. #1
    lordblood

    lordblood Radiance of a Thousand Suns

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    The reason I bring this up is because I was just listening to Bulls on Parade on on laptop (as an mp3, with digital compression). Despite the digital conversion, this song sounds so awesome because of the way it was mixed. In any given moment, you can hear every component of the song individually instead of being a muddy mess. Hell, they even kept some static in there after the solo (around 3:00 if you're interested) just to keep things organic. It makes the song so much better! Compare that to modern rock songs which have terrible mixing, you can't hear any bass guitar or drums anymore. The vocals and guitar are ratcheted up to full volume and is "in your face" but makes the song less enjoyable as a whole.

    Linkin Park in particular has fallen into this horrible mixing trap. I'm sure everyone has already noticed the mixing issue on Until It's Gone, but even going back to something like The Catalyst or Waiting For the End the mixing wasn't that great.

    I wonder what it would take to go back to the mixing of the 90's :(

    Edit: If you haven't heard of the loudness wars, here is a video that describes it pretty well:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
     
  2. #2
    Xero-G

    Xero-G Reborn LP Fan, and plan to stay that way.

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    This is one on-going debate/issue that I do not understand that well. The video you linked helped explain the concept a little bit more, though. In that video, I could hear the drums just fine in that "expanded 2006" version of the snippet. What are the key points that I need to know in order to fully understand this issue in the music industry?
     
  3. #3
    lordblood

    lordblood Radiance of a Thousand Suns

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    I'm not sure exactly how it began, but my assumption is that once people starting listening to large playlists on random (such as on shuffle on an iPod), someone in the industry figured out that if their song was just a little louder than everyone else's that it may catch the listeners ear and intrigue them to check out other songs from that album. Once the secret got out, everyone starting making their songs louder until they couldn't anymore, and had to start clipping the loudest parts in order to make the entire song loud.

    The problem is that now if you specifically try to mix pre-loudness wars, your songs will come out sounding really quiet in comparison to 99% of the music out there. I don't think mixers are brave enough to attempt doing that, despite studies showing that loud mixes don't necessarily add up to more sales.
     
  4. #4
    Xero-G

    Xero-G Reborn LP Fan, and plan to stay that way.

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    It's a shame that musical integrity and depth were sacrificed all for the sake of making more money. I really appreciate when musicians/artists add a lot of smaller elements to a given song that make the listening experience so much better. This is what really caught my ears with Linkin Park, as I continuously discovered new sounds in the background layers of their songs over the years. Whatever happened to the principle of quality over quantity? I guess the music industry doesn't see it the way we do. Hopefully this "war" will eventually come to an end and mixing will once again be properly handled.
     
  5. #5
    TheRadiance

    TheRadiance Guardian

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    I'm relatively sure there are producers/mixers out there that mix the correct way as I can hear distinct differences in certain albums I listen to. Wasting Light by Foo Fighters is really well mixed in my opinion. But it does suck that the majority don't do it the correct way and sacrifice clarity for loudness.
     

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