10/30/13 7:58 PM The Loudness War is Over | Greg Reierson of Rare Form Mastering Writes About the Loudness

War and Future of Music Delivery

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The Loudness War is Over
Feb 8, 2011 2:22 PM, By Greg Reierson
Making loud CDs will become just a bad memory.
Editor's note: Mastering engineer Greg Reierson, who owns and operates
Rare Form Mastering in Minneapolis, submitted the following essay
reflecting on the loudness wars of recent years and the future of music
delivery to Mix magazine.
A Fletcher-Munson
Loudness Curve
I was at the AES show in San Francisco last November and I came back with
renewed hope for the future of the music industrynot just from a business
perspective, but from a recording-quality perspective as well. Besides the
usual discussions about gear and recording techniques, there was a lot of talk
about high resolution digital downloads surpassing CDs as the dominant
delivery format within the next few years. Optimism is growing as more and
more engineers are seeing a way to finally get past the loudness war.
Wait, the loudness war is over? Well, there are still plenty of soldiers who still
havent gotten the message but the wheels are in motion. Its just a matter of
time now.
10/30/13 7:58 PM The Loudness War is Over | Greg Reierson of Rare Form Mastering Writes About the Loudness War and Future of Music Delivery
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Consider this: The current loudness war is a product of the CD format and
the ability to play a song from CD A next to a song from CD B. Since the
music industry has never adopted loudness standards (like the long
established standards in film and broadcast) weve been left to fight it out for
ourselves. No artist wants his or her music to sound quiet next to other
music. Its human nature. So just to make sure, weve made em loudlouder
every year.
But heres the thing: The future of music delivery is not the CD. Sure, the CD
will be around for selling offstage and at gift shops, but the CD is on its way
out as the dominant delivery format. How many young music buyers actually
buy CDs? How many artists primary delivery format will be CDs when the
recording school graduates of 2011 are in the prime of their careers 10 years
from now?
File based delivery is the future. Whether its iTunes, Pandora, iPods or
whatever, file based playback is how most people listen today and it will
completely replace the CD in the very near future.
Okay, but how will this end the loudness war? Isnt shuffle mode on my iPod
about the same thing?
The solution is to find a way to automatically adjust the playback volume on
a song-by-song (or album-by-album) basis. This can be accomplished by
running an algorithm that determines the perceptual level of a given song or
album and then digitally scaling the volume up or down to a standardized
center. Many media players have crude implementations of this idea already
in place. iTunes has Sound Check. Other players use Replay Gain, etc. While
current implementation of these processes has room for improvement, more
sophisticated software has been developed and the next generation of media
players will be much better at it than they are today. These are not dumb
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processes that just apply a compressor or leveler. These are sophisticated
algorithms that take a songs (or a whole albums) long-term dynamic
attributes into account. With this sort of system in place, an early 80s metal
song, for example, will play back at the same perceived loudness as a metal
song from this year. And more to the point: a crushed-for-the-sake-of-
loudness mix will play back no louder than any other mix from a comparable
genre in ones library.
Think about that for a second. In fact, try it. Find a great sounding, un-
crushed song of your choice. Something with punch and dynamics. You
might have to go back a decade or two. Now find a modern, loud song of a
similar genre. Put them both in your workstation and adjust the gain until
each plays back at the same apparent loudness. What will you hear? You will
hear that the dynamic song moves some air and has punch and excitement,
while the loud mix has been robbed of its punch by the process that made it
loud in the first place.
As more people start to use media players that are equipped with these new
tools, and when they understand that a well-implemented solution has no
compromises, over-compression and over-limiting purely for the sake of
making loud CDs will become just a bad memory. Production techniques will
serve the artistic needs of the music rather than sacrificing quality for the
sake of loudness. This is how we will put an end to the loudness war and
bring great sounding mixes back to every genre.
Besides lots of great albums from the last decade (and many re-masters in
every genre) that have been run through the loudness mill, there will be two
final casualties of this war. First are the software companies who are making
a killing selling loudness in the form of a plug-in. Those products will soon be
obsolete. Put your maximizer, limiter and clipper team to work on
better things, such as algorithms that can better measure loudness for the
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next generation of media players.
The second casualty is the mixing or mastering engineer whose only real
selling point (and sometimes only actual skill) is making songs louder. The
jig is up! Theres just no value in that line of work any more. Youll have to
learn how to make songs sound better, which is not quite as easy as just
making things louder.
The rest of the audio engineering and music listening world welcomes the
end of the war. Now we can all get back to our regularly scheduled sessions,
making great sounding music without that slap in the face at the end. Now
recording and mixing engineers can focus on sound quality without having to
push mixes past the point of reason. And now mastering engineers can focus
on making those mixes sound their best out in the real world without having
to unnecessarily limit and clip and crush, and [perform] all of the other
compromises that have become part of the game. Hows that for retro,
vintage, and old school?
Best of all, now the end listener can really hear music the way the artist hears
it, with all of the punch and impact and much, much less of the distortion
and processing artifacts that weve been living with for the past decade. This
is awesome news if you love music!
Theres one more group that stands to gain big time: all of the young
engineers who have not yet learned the bad habits of the past decade. They
will begin their careers ahead of this new learning curve. Recording-school
teachers are on the front lines. Let this be a tool to help their students
understand that loudness is not really the reason we are all here. Its the
music. And the job just got a lot more fun!
There will still be people who want loud CDs, and thats okay. Some styles of
music really do sound best pushed to the limit. A good mastering engineer
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can make a loud CD from a great sounding dynamic mix. The good news is he
will also be able to make a great sounding, dynamic master for any future
format that comes along. There is no longer any valid reason to ruin a great
sounding song for the sake of a dying format.
Now go out and spread the word. Tell your friends to experiment with Sound
Check and Replay Gain and to watch for the new standards to take shape.
Use these tools to help even the playing field for great sounding, dynamic
mixes and our sonic universe will be a better place.
R.I.P. Loudness War. Pass it on.
Greg Reierson is the owner/chief engineer at Rare Form Mastering in
Minneapolis. Visit him at www.rareformmastering.com.
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