Not to mention population increase, percentage of income needed to achieve musical reproduction, and reproduction equipment (early tube radio cost, AM transmission considerations in particular. Compressed sound could be transmitted at a higher average level, which equals better area coverage).
I don’t know how anyone would begin to try and normalize this. Sounds like a problem for IBM Watson.
All very good points. I was also sceptical of making a correlation between dynamic range compression and the success of an artist because of all the factors involved in how an artist becomes successful. For example, the books Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business and Payola in the Music Industry: A History, 1880-1991 chronicle some of those factors.
That said, while I haven’t seen the actual “study” itself, in the NYT piece there is no mention of Grammy awards but rather " a list of all-time best-selling recordings" arranged according to “commercial importance.”
As regards changes in different eras in music, a score was derived, again, according to the article, “by multiplying an album’s number of platinum certifications (how many millions sold) by the number of years it had been on the market. These were records that were not merely popular — they also displayed longevity.”
In terms of dynamic range compression as a mastering technique used to produce a desired sound, according to the NYT article, " While some extra-loud recordings seemed to benefit from this compression gamble (Dr. Dre’s 1992 “The Chronic” and Oasis’ 1995 “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” are oft-cited examples of loudness abetting a commercial powerhouse), there were other releases that were so obviously overloaded — like Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” (1999), Rush’s “Vapor Trails” (2002) and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” (2008) — that the bands’ fans complained in droves."
Personally, I can not listen to an Oasis album for more than 2 minutes. According to an an interview I read with Owen Morris, who recorded and mastered the albums, Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory, he says of those albums that he got “the EQ’s right on the edge of distortion for each track.”
Even on a cheap audio system, whether it be a portable AM radio or an MP3 file played from Youtube over one’s computer speakers I can easily tell the difference between a track that has been heavily compressed and brickwalled over one that hasn’t. Have a listen to the Rush song “One Little Victory” from the original 2002 Vapour Trails release and compare it to the remixed 2013 release on Retrospective III. Do it using your computer speakers. I have posted the links to both below.
I take the Chris Johnson study with a grain of salt and view it more as a poke at the music industry, the Gen Y and millennium generations and as meant to entertain old farts like myself who like to think, perhaps wrongly, that “They Really Don’t Make Music Like They Used To”. But the NYT article does raise good questions about the art of mastering and how the application of dynamic range compression went from restraint and finesse to brute force for commercial reasons (in order to make the music as loud as possible, sometime to the point of clipping). You should read the NYT piece in its entirety.
2002 One Little Victory
2013 remix
The loudness wars link refers to various pieces of music with ratings, but gives little insight into how dynamic range is either captured or lost forever at the recording of the performance.
To understand how dynamic range can be recorded, it is important to read up about companding, a combination of words meaning compression and expansion. The ideas behind using compression and expansion originate from a failed - yet published patent attributed to Murray Crosby . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosby_system where he introduces the concepts of emphasis and de-emphasis.
The two main firms who struggled with companding but eventually succeeded were DBX who always were ahead of the other firm, Dolby. Where Dolby was happy with the technology efforts they made, DBX always came along and made vast improvements. The history of recording shows the mediums of tape and prior to that direct to acetate disc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetate_disc were both limited in capturing the actual dynamic range available . Companding provided a revolutionary answer to do things better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companding
When digital recording became available few enthusiasts realised the limitations digital imposed, namely that dynamic range had to be curtailed at the device typically -7db was lost, by choosing recording using digital equipment. Analogue recording with its companding advantage was by all accounts still the better way of recording.
To fit more into a digital recording compression seemed a answer, but was the wrong approach. The article here https://warehousesound.com/r/dbxTYPEIV.pdf details the history and how digital can really use advantages of companding.
My own experience of this is to use Type 1 DBX companding to seemingly impossible
but at the same time possible the improvement of CD playback. Detailed in the DBX 150x manual on Page 11 is the ability to dither and improve the playback dynamic range of CD
https://dbxpro.com/en/products/150x
I just want to say that this is a fantastic thread that squarely aims at something that’s barely even considered in commercial music: how recorded music actually sounds, subjectively as well as quantitatively.
I don’t understand 1/2 of what I read here, but that’s on me to redress!
The hyperlink to the article includes: ‘what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars’.
Agreed - very obvious on PC speakers.
I think an important lesson or take away from this discussion is that if you are going spend money, time and effort into improving your audio system, even if modest, it is more than worth your while to also consider the quality of the recording of the music you will be playing through that system. Regardless of how good your gear is, the original releases of “Morning Glory” by Oasis, “Vapour Trials” by Rush and “Death Magnetic” by Metallica, etc. are not going to sound very good.
Agree, the quality of recordings is just about as important as the quality of the gear. I think its why many have a set play list when doing comparisons of gear since the set play list gives a starting reference point
Ouch! Just listened on my EQ’d LCD2C and the 2013 version sounds like the recording OD’d on prozac.
So do you prefer the original 2002 version? If so that would be interesting because Rush released a remixed version of the album Vapour Trails after extensive positive feedback from their fans to the remixed version of the song “One Little Victory” first released on the album Retrospective III. However, you would not be the first person to say that the remixed version lacked energy compared to the original.
That’s actually hard for me to say as I didn’t particularly like either recording. When I have the opportunity I might listen to them on my monitors.
One great thing iTunes did was 90-second samples. Another was having multiple copies of the same recording, but mixed or mastered differently so they don’t sound the same. If only there were a download site that offers at least 44 khz tracks, with 90 second samples and multiple masterings when available - that would be amazing.