Loudness Wars

As I just pointed out in a comment on the Atlantic article The Loudness Wars, this isn't about loudness at all. It's about clipping. The absolute loudness of a track is under your control, not the engineers. All the engineer can do is compress the dynamic. Here is an excellent short explanation:

The advantage to compression is that it makes a track using it stand out against tracks that don't. It also makes tracks more audible in an environment where there is a lot of background noise. So, big pluses in a lot of situations in the modern world. But, honestly? It makes music sound like shit. Sorry to be blunt. I read about this a while back, but the Atlantic article lays out the context. I've been wondering why so much pop music sounds so crappy and this is part of the reason. Another part is pointless hyperactivity, but I've already posted, briefly, on that. Meaningless arm-waving is a vice all music is prone to, but this punching up of everything, or chopping of the peaks, is a vice unique to pop music.

Here is some truthiness for you:

1. You can't actually listen to music when there is a lot of background noise--all you can listen to is punched up sludge
2. Music uses a number of different techniques to express things: a range of pitches, a range of harmonies, a range of rhythmic values and a range of dynamic values--it makes no more sense to flatten out the louds and softs than it would to use just one note in the melody
3. Musical expression is not a function of digital or other compression, or of costuming, or of dance routines, or of whatever else you can find to stuff into the video
4. I'm all in favor of sexiness, but sexiness and musicality are not actually the same thing.

Speaking of dynamic range, the right use of it can be one of the most powerful resources in music. The most amazing example I can think of is the first movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. I cannot embed a clip that will demonstrate this. You will actually have to physically go to an orchestral performance of it. The reason is that, after a six minute introduction, a long passage starts--usually known as the "Invasion Theme"--that lasts for about eleven minutes. The entire passage, a long passacaglia on a single theme, is a crescendo. It starts with a simple rhythm on a single snare drum and by the end there is the whole orchestra including three snare drums, five tympani, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, eight French horns, six trumpets, six trombones, tuba, full woodwind section including contrabassoon, and at least sixty strings. These instruments are slowly added, bit by bit, until all of them are playing at full volume. This incredibly wide dynamic range, from a single snare drum playing quietly to the huge orchestra playing loudly is UNRECORDABLE! No recording technology we possess can capture that enormous a range. So go find a performance, buy a ticket and get back to me.... OK? I have had the experience of hearing this in a live performance and it is not one you soon forget.

As I said, it cannot be experienced in a recording, but just to give you a slight taste of it, here is a YouTube clip of the first part. The first movement of the symphony is 25 to 30 minutes long, depending on the performance, so it has to be chopped up. The crescendo I am talking about starts around 6:52 in this clip:

and continues...