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Loudness wars 'over'?

Instead of being slammed against a brick wall we will be treated to volume levelling instead. Glorious.
 
yep that was the bit i didnt fully understand. ive read elsewhere that volume levelling induces a 'pumping' characteristic to music so don't understand his enthusiasm. perhaps he see it as the lesser of 2 evils...
 
Michael J said:
Instead of being slammed against a brick wall we will be treated to volume levelling instead. Glorious.
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What's wrong with that? Sound Check and Replay Gain work on a track by track basis, not within a track. The result is that all tracks get roughly the same average perceived loudness, and with the dynamics fully intact. This is beneficial when playing a mix of tracks, as in shuffle, or a radio station.

For albums it makes, of course, no sense. But this is not about album replay.
 
rtrt said:
yep that was the bit i didnt fully understand. ive read elsewhere that volume levelling induces a 'pumping' characteristic to music so don't understand his enthusiasm. perhaps he see it as the lesser of 2 evils...
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Old-style analog real-time levelling introduces pumping. Digital, pre-calculated, ReplayGain style levelling doesn't.
 
So am I now ok, in the latest iTunes download, to use volume levelling for my mixed track playlists?

Or does this good news apply only to iradio?
 
Nope.

It looks at the average loudness of a track. If it is loud, it brings the volume down for the duration of that track; if it is soft it brings it up. This works for mixed tracks, as we can assume they are of a similar genre. This does not work for albums, as the track-to-track dynamics of the album would be destroyed. Imagine e.g. having Holst's Mars and Neptune brought to the same average loudness ;-)
 
I tried this in Jriver, turned it on for a few days and then turned it off. I much prefer it off (although at the time I thought it sounded pretty good).

I even turned the unadulterated volume levels down (volume levelling makes things quieter on average for me, in Jriver) to below the volume-levelled version and it still sounded better.

Something gets lost; I don't pretend to know what, it just sounds much more dynamic to me in vanilla.
 
Werner said:
Nope.

It looks at the average loudness of a track. If it is loud, it brings the volume down for the duration of that track; if it is soft it brings it up. This works for mixed tracks, as we can assume they are of a similar genre. This does not work for albums, as the track-to-track dynamics of the album would be destroyed. Imagine e.g. having Holst's Mars and Neptune brought to the same average loudness ;-)
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:D

That is interesting. I had assumed there was some sort of compression going on somewhere somehow that might squash any dynamics the track might have.

I'll enjoy my playlists a lot more now that I don't have to keep using the remote for volume control. cheers.
 
realysm42 said:
I tried this in Jriver, turned it on for a few days and then turned it off. I much prefer it off (although at the time I thought it sounded pretty good).

I even turned the unadulterated volume levels down (volume levelling makes things quieter on average for me, in Jriver) to below the volume-levelled version and it still sounded better.

Something gets lost; I don't pretend to know what, it just sounds much more dynamic to me in vanilla.
Click to expand...

JRiver say they have improved their audio analysis and volume levelling for JRMC19, they now use the R128 industry standard. I haven't got a clue what that is, but if you're interested you can read about it here.
 
I think the main point of the article is that mastering engineers will now not continue the loudness war and instead make better use of dynamic range, because they can now show their bosses that making tracks louder is now moot with volume leveling on by default, and in fact sound worse compared to properly mastered tracks playing with volume leveling on.

Since we can switch off volume leveling in our own playback software/hardware. We can benefit from properly mastered tracks playing without the detrimental effects of volume leveling.
 
Thanks, this is the only version i tried it out with, JRMC19. Its shocking to see the lack of dynamic range in some recordings!

AndyU said:
JRiver say they have improved their audio analysis and volume levelling for JRMC19, they now use the R128 industry standard. I haven't got a clue what that is, but if you're interested you can read about it here.
Click to expand...
 
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