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Interesting site I found. Not sure if its been mentioned here.
http://www.turnmeup.org/

I guess everyone is worried that after consumers have a LOUD CD in the deck, and switching to a Dyanamic CD(not so loud),
that the consumer will wonder,
"Why the hell is this one so low."
And they will link that to quality issues, or something of the such.

Im talking about regular consumers, that have no Idea about music production and mastering. They just listen to music.

Though there are other factors.
Just rambling on here.

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ouzo77 Thu, 04/09/2009 - 01:29

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: the difference is... in film, Dolby and THX has limitations and requirements to put their logo on the film. If you want to put the logo on the film, they dictate the requirements.

the concept would be the same. you don't have to apply to the standards, but if you want the logo, you have to keep certain specifications.

don't get me wrong, i'm not a fan of standardizing everything, either. and believe me, germans are the masters of standardizing!
this is not about how it's supposed to sound, but how loud it should be. imagine that you're playing cd's or mp3's in random mode and you don't have to adjust the volume for each and every song (especially while driving a car) and still have a good sound with a big dynamic range. i would like that, as most music listeners would...

anyway, whether this system will work or not, and i'm not saying it's perfect and THE way to go, when they get the attention of the normal music listener and make him aware of the problem with overloud music and the advantages of dynamics it would be a big step. because it's not enough that we are aware of the problem, the ones buying the music have to be aware of it.
so if this project will raise the awareness of the loudness wars it's a good thing for me...

by the way, i personally think that a dynamic range of 14 (as suggested by them and measured with their meter) is not necessary. somewhere between 8 and 10 (again as would be measured with their meter) would be enough (for my personal taste).

Link555 Thu, 04/09/2009 - 04:46

Some good points all around. All I know is a lot of good music is being destroyed by this 'fad'.

This standard measures the distortion in the song not the loudness level. The two do not always have to go hand and hand.

You can over compress things and still not clip them. it is possible to make a cd loud without over limiting.

I personally don't see anything wrong saying this recording XX amount of distortion on it, as a consumer I would want to know. Too often know I buy a disc and can't listen to it. If nothing else its a good marketing tool, like THX.

ouzo77 Thu, 04/09/2009 - 05:55

Link555 wrote: This standard measures the distortion in the song not the loudness level. The two do not always have to go hand and hand.

it's also about loudness. what they want to do is measure the dynamic range of the music and compare it to their set standard of 14 (which would be 14 dB of dynamic range). when a title or album has a DR8 (8dB dynamic range) they want to lower the whole level by 6dB so it will have the same or similar loudness as DR14 music. of course loudness is perceived differently on different material, but the difference woudn't be as dramatic as let's say the last metallica and the original release of sting's "dream of the blue turtle" (which do coexist on my ipod!).

Codemonkey Thu, 04/09/2009 - 08:17

My method:

ReplayGain scan as much as possible, set all non-RG-scanned tracks to play back 7.3dB quieter, and it all balances out. Classical stops being a tiny hiss in the speakers and dance stops eating my ears.
This only works on my PC though.

Edit: ReplayGain doesn't affect dynamics - just the master gain of track, which is decided based upon the amount of frequency content (I think it's weighted according to the "flat response").

Michael Fossenkemper Fri, 04/10/2009 - 06:12

If you want to see real change, then there has to be a new format. It's really as simple as that, then it's only a matter of time before that is pushed to the limits.

technology will regulate by itself. It always has. Look at every form of art and it's dictated by the medium it's delivered on. What if someone said "Hey Jackson Pollock, you can't go flinging paint on a canvas, it was designed to be brushed on". "Hey Jimi, you're overdriving those tubes and it's causing distortion. no distortion allowed".

Every medium will be pushed, that's human nature.