Since the adoption of the CD as a music format in the 1980s the volume of music has been increasing steadily over time. To the point that in some master’s dynamics have been sacrificed to the gods of loud. This has been named, ‘The Loudness Wars’ (Robjohns, 2014).
So, I decided to look for the loudest record that has been released. Or at least, the record that has been most affected by the Loudness Wars.
The prize goes to “Death Magnetic” by Metallica (Hetfield et al. 2008). What made this album interesting was that the album was so over compressed that Metallica almost 13,000 fans went to the trouble to sign a petition to try and get the band to remaster the album (Michaels, 2008).
One of the main reasons that fans were up in arms was the release of some of the songs in Guitar Hero 3. As the game developers are likely sent specifications for loudness there is a distinct difference in levels between the retail CD album release and the GH3 release. These can be seen in the YouTube video linked here (Metalfan7577, 2008). The difference in level is stark. The signal is so compressed that there is a complete loss of dynamics.
However, streaming could signify the end of the Loudness Wars. How? Well most, if not all, streaming platforms normalise volume. For quieter tracks, it brings the volume up. For louder masters, it brings the levels down. To check out how this works if you right click on a YouTube video and go to the menu that says “Stats for nerds” you will be presented with a small window that shows how much normalisation has taken place to keep the relative volumes consistent across videos.
Example:
From the “Death Magnetic” example above:
This video wasn’t normalised by YouTube. This is most likely to be due to the relative input volumes that the user decided to record both sources at. Also note that YouTube does not normalise upwards. It only normalises volume over the threshold.
And, an example from “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish (2016):
This shows that the original sound of Ocean Eyes was normalised quite a lot, in this case 6.1dB. Normalising down by 6dB would have the apparent effect to a listener of halving the volume.
Doing a little research, I found that Tidal, Amazon Music and YouTube are now using the same method and reference level of -14 LUFS (Shepherd, 2019).
References:
Eilish, B. (2016) Billie Eilish – Ocean Eyes (official music video), YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viimfQi_pUw (Accessed: March 13, 2023).
Metalfan7577 (2008) Death magnetic retail vs guitar hero 3 part 2, YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zajyekxC9AM (Accessed: March 13, 2023).
Metallica (2008) Death magnetic [CD]. Universal international music BV.
Michaels, S. (2008) Metallica’s death magnetic ‘loudness war’ continues, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/oct/01/metallica.popandrock (Accessed: March 13, 2023).
Robjohns, H. (2014) The End Of The Loudness War?, The end of the Loudness War? Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war (Accessed: March 13, 2023).
Senior, M. (2019) “Chapter 19: Master-Buss Processing, Automation, and Endgame,” in Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. Oxon, UK: Routledge, pp. 337–339.
Shepherd, I. (2019) YouTube changes loudness reference to -14 LUFS, MeterPlugs. Available at: https://www.meterplugs.com/blog/2019/09/18/youtube-changes-loudness-reference-to-14-lufs.html (Accessed: March 13, 2023).