The Loudness Wars of Modern Music

October 22, 2007 by Lukas Gilkey

These are a couple of very interesting videos regarding the modern day mastering technique of digital compression and the effect it has on the music we listen to.




If you would like to show your support for bringing the dynamics back to music, please visit TurnMeUp.org. They are a non-profit organization that encourages artists to release more dynamic records. They have a mailing list you can join to get updates and also offer certification for recordings that meet their criteria.

Comments (4)
neptyr 2 years and 5 months ago

Woah, that really was a mindwobbler :X
Dave Kay 2 years and 5 months ago

Unfortunately there was badly produced pop music in 1989. This sort of death by compression is nothing new. Of course lossy iTunes compression makes things that much worse, but the general public could care less.
Doodaddy 2 years and 5 months ago

Losing some quality in late 80's pop could be productive. j/k:P

What's sad is that the general public doesn't care because they can't tell that it's occurring. There are so many people with iPods as the focal point of their audio source and they don't even know that it sounds like crap. Why should the ignorant care?

We are a niche minority. =(
Dave Kay 2 years and 5 months ago

All hope is certainly not lost. One thing I'm really looking foward to is concert BR/HD-DVDs with lossless Dolby/DTS-HD audio. They'll mop the floor with any concert VHS tape from 1989, no matter how well produced it may have been.
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