Post by KeithL on Jul 26, 2016 11:13:09 GMT -5
The gist of the article was that it is often a stylistic choice of the artist, or of the mixing engineer, or even the producers.
And, even when it's done during the remastering of a previous release, it's often done deliberately "to make it sound more like modern music".
(And, no, if the majority of your audience has low-powered equipment, then the Volume knob won't do the job without distorting the peaks - so the "solution" is to apply more limiting and raise the average level instead. )
Incidentally, MODERN compressors and limiters (the kind applied digitally in the mixing process) actually can be applied very aggressively WITHOUT causing distortion.
(Old style "electronic" compressors had to make compromises, and would often fail to "catch" a sudden change in level, or change gain too suddenly and cause distortion.
With modern digital editing, because the entire audio track is in memory, the compressor can "look into the future" to properly anticipate changes and act accordingly.
This allows for much smoother operation, and avoids the nasty rough sound that can occur when the compressor operates too quickly - or too slowly - for a given situation.)
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you - that music usually sounds better when less limiting and compression is applied.
However, and especially with the younger "iPod and earbud" audience, I fear we're in the minority.
That sort of depends on how you look at it - which I think was the whole point of the article.
The point is that the reason they use more compression is that they want it to sound louder.
And peak limiting allows them to raise the average level, while not raising the peak levels, or reducing the dynamic range (by the way most people define it).
Therefore, yes, if you want the average loudness to be the same, then you will have to turn it down.
However, that isn't necessarily everyone's goal...
The whole gist of the article was that compression allows them to raise the average loudness while NOT in fact reducing the dynamic range.
I think the best analogy was their comparison to photography.....
Newspaper photos have a dynamic range limited by the medium.... the ink is only so black, the paper is only so white, and those spell out the limits of the dynamic range.
However, by using more or larger white areas, and fewer or smaller black areas, a given newspaper could "make all their pictures brighter" WITHOUT altering the dynamic range.
(The whites would still be equally bright, and the blacks would be equally dark, there would just be more whites.)
It's sort of obvious that, if you want your pictures to look brighter, but you are limited on how bright "white" is by the color of your paper, you increase the white area.
However, as long as a reasonable amount of area remains black, and the black remains the same color black as before, then you haven't technically reduced the dynamic range of the content.
The interesting larger point they made is that dynamic range isn't very well defined.... and many people seem to have different ideas about what the term actually means.
(So it's a fair claim that what most people are calling "less dynamic range" in modern music is really "higher average level" or "higher average level relative to peak level".)
I think their main point was that, while we may consider "reduction in dynamic range" to be a symptom of "poor production values", "higher average level" and "a louder, denser overall sound" can more reasonably be thought of as a shift in style; and, while you or I may prefer the previously favored style, the difference isn't one of simply "lower production quality".
Of course they want it to sound louder. But the correct way to make it louder is to use the volume control knob instead, as doing that will avoid the big amounts of distortion typical of heavy dynamic range compression and limiting.
The *correct* use of dynamic range compression and peak limiting is to get above the noise floor, and using it mildly so that it can be transparent instead of it introducing a lot of bad sounding artifacts. That is, apart from the possibility of it being used as a stylistic choice made by the artist.
And, even when it's done during the remastering of a previous release, it's often done deliberately "to make it sound more like modern music".
(And, no, if the majority of your audience has low-powered equipment, then the Volume knob won't do the job without distorting the peaks - so the "solution" is to apply more limiting and raise the average level instead. )
Incidentally, MODERN compressors and limiters (the kind applied digitally in the mixing process) actually can be applied very aggressively WITHOUT causing distortion.
(Old style "electronic" compressors had to make compromises, and would often fail to "catch" a sudden change in level, or change gain too suddenly and cause distortion.
With modern digital editing, because the entire audio track is in memory, the compressor can "look into the future" to properly anticipate changes and act accordingly.
This allows for much smoother operation, and avoids the nasty rough sound that can occur when the compressor operates too quickly - or too slowly - for a given situation.)
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you - that music usually sounds better when less limiting and compression is applied.
However, and especially with the younger "iPod and earbud" audience, I fear we're in the minority.
The point is that the reason they use more compression is that they want it to sound louder.
And peak limiting allows them to raise the average level, while not raising the peak levels, or reducing the dynamic range (by the way most people define it).
Therefore, yes, if you want the average loudness to be the same, then you will have to turn it down.
However, that isn't necessarily everyone's goal...
The whole gist of the article was that compression allows them to raise the average loudness while NOT in fact reducing the dynamic range.
I think the best analogy was their comparison to photography.....
Newspaper photos have a dynamic range limited by the medium.... the ink is only so black, the paper is only so white, and those spell out the limits of the dynamic range.
However, by using more or larger white areas, and fewer or smaller black areas, a given newspaper could "make all their pictures brighter" WITHOUT altering the dynamic range.
(The whites would still be equally bright, and the blacks would be equally dark, there would just be more whites.)
It's sort of obvious that, if you want your pictures to look brighter, but you are limited on how bright "white" is by the color of your paper, you increase the white area.
However, as long as a reasonable amount of area remains black, and the black remains the same color black as before, then you haven't technically reduced the dynamic range of the content.
The interesting larger point they made is that dynamic range isn't very well defined.... and many people seem to have different ideas about what the term actually means.
(So it's a fair claim that what most people are calling "less dynamic range" in modern music is really "higher average level" or "higher average level relative to peak level".)
I think their main point was that, while we may consider "reduction in dynamic range" to be a symptom of "poor production values", "higher average level" and "a louder, denser overall sound" can more reasonably be thought of as a shift in style; and, while you or I may prefer the previously favored style, the difference isn't one of simply "lower production quality".
The *correct* use of dynamic range compression and peak limiting is to get above the noise floor, and using it mildly so that it can be transparent instead of it introducing a lot of bad sounding artifacts. That is, apart from the possibility of it being used as a stylistic choice made by the artist.
