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Loudness compression, loudness wars.. What exactly it is and why is it happening?

Timbo2

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Sadly still alive and well in J-Pop. Although to be fair this one is amazingly awful. Music video here.

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svart-hvitt

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@mitchco and @TBone , may I point out that you’re not debating the research when confronted with it. Your contribution is anecdotes; which may be interesting as well, but research and anecdotes are two different matters.

Even if DR recently may be «awful», the research I quoted looks at the trend, direction, and not only level. Levels are still higher than they used to be, but the trend is there for anyone to see.

I find your argumentation highly amusing because it reflects what normally happens when highly intelligent people are confronted with data that doesn’t support their view. The behavioural aspect in science is often underestimated. That’s why I use the Keynes quote above so often.
 

TBone

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Even if DR recently may be «awful», the research I quoted looks at the trend, direction, and not only level. Levels are still higher than they used to be, but the trend is there for anyone to see.

Trends are not facts.
 

svart-hvitt

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Trends are not facts.

I am sorry you didn’t like the research I quoted.

That happens all the time, however, that people cherry pick research that fits their established opinion.
 

TBone

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I am sorry you didn’t like the research I quoted.

That happens all the time, however, that people cherry pick research that fits their established opinion.

Not a matter of liking it or not, read it well prior to you posting it here.

When your research replaces trend with actual "facts", well, perhaps then ...
 

svart-hvitt

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Not a matter of liking it or not, read it well prior to you posting it here.

When your research replaces trend with actual "facts", well, perhaps then ...

Where are the errors, faults and confusions in the Deruty-Pachet research?
 
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svart-hvitt

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I can’t see you are making an argument here.

OK, to start all over again, forget what I wrote; that’s not important. Please keep your arguments related to the Deruty-Pachet research I referred to. Imagine you got this paper for peer reviewing, what would you write to the two authors?
 
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Wombat

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Blumlein 88

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I can’t see you are making an argument here.

OK, to start all over again, forget what I wrote; that’s not important. Please keep your arguments related to the Deruty-Pachet research I referred to. Imagine you got this paper for peer reviewing, what would you write to the two authors?

Just initially looking I notice the loudness rise or decline by year is a reasonably close fit to how many albums were released each year. Probably just a happenstance correlation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_year

Now looking at methodology using album review and list at www.besteveralbums.com maybe the above correlation isn't happenstance. They looked at the top ranked 150 albums of each year. In the 60's that would be 150 of some few hundred albums. In the 2010's it would be top 150 of more than 3000 albums. It might appear that in years with more albums loudness is more important to stand out from the large number released, while in years with less albums released it is a lesser factor. Perhaps they should have looked at the top 10% of each year to account for this possible effect.

It is possible louder is always at the top of such a list. By not adjusting for top 10% or 5% or something they are allowing in some years the top 5% to be counted and in others the top 30%. Which would tend to hide the fact louder is a plus. This would appear to support the idea louder is better.

I've only read the first little bit though perhaps they somehow account for this later on in the article.

EDIT: finished the article and they never deal with the above issue of variable album numbers per year when they sample the same number from each year. An obvious fault in the methodology of their analysis. If their conclusions hold up with a modified number analysed per year it seems very likely it will water down the robustness of that conclusion. The conclusions may not hold up once the sampling methodology is improved.
 
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Krunok

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Thank you all for taking time to explain this. Hopefully things will come back to normal in the time to come..
 

svart-hvitt

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Just initially looking I notice the loudness rise or decline by year is a reasonably close fit to how many albums were released each year. Probably just a happenstance correlation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_year

Now looking at methodology using album review and list at www.besteveralbums.com maybe the above correlation isn't happenstance. They looked at the top ranked 150 albums of each year. In the 60's that would be 150 of some few hundred albums. In the 2010's it would be top 150 of more than 3000 albums. It might appear that in years with more albums loudness is more important to stand out from the large number released, while in years with less albums released it is a lesser factor. Perhaps they should have looked at the top 10% of each year to account for this possible effect.

It is possible louder is always at the top of such a list. By not adjusting for top 10% or 5% or something they are allowing in some years the top 5% to be counted and in others the top 30%. Which would tend to hide the fact louder is a plus. This would appear to support the idea louder is better.

I've only read the first little bit though perhaps they somehow account for this later on in the article.

EDIT: finished the article and they never deal with the above issue of variable album numbers per year when they sample the same number from each year. An obvious fault in the methodology of their analysis. If their conclusions hold up with a modified number analysed per year it seems very likely it will water down the robustness of that conclusion. The conclusions may not hold up once the sampling methodology is improved.

@Blumlein 88 , thanks for your comment on the Deruty-Pachet (2015)!

Yes, you are right that there may be hidden biases in the selection of empirical data. This is a researcher's worst nightmare; that his data is faulty and full of biases.

Let me now try and comment your remarks as well as having other ASR readers in mind when I comment.

The authors have a discussion (chapter 4.3) of their findings (on year being more important than genre), and here they write that "This may bring the suspicion that dynamics are only dependent on the trends followed by the most represented genres, such as the subgenres of rock represented in Figure 3, but independent from the trends followed by most other genres, in which case our conclusion would not stand" (my underlining).

They try and show that their results are year related controlling for genres. And that analysis may implicitly give us an insight into what would have happened with their results if they controlled for total album releases per year. The bars with 5-95 percentiles in figure 1 may also be an indication of how a control for total album releases per year would have fared.

See also this ISMIR poster that accompanies their 2015 article: http://www.emmanuelderuty.com/pages/publications/2015_ISMIR_poster.pdf

FWIW, the entire dataset of Deruty-Pachet (2015) can be found here:

http://emmanuelderuty.com/pages/dynamics/Corpus7200/Values.xlsx

But you are right: It would have been great if we would have a complete dataset of all recordings ever made since the 1950s, 1960s.

One interesting finding in their paper, is their note on micro vs macro dynamic:

"A notable exception lies in macrodynamics as measured by the EBU3342 Loudness Range, which are more independent from both genre and year of release. In other words, dynamic range in the musical sense (pianissimo tofortissimo) is only marginally dependent on either mainstream genre or trend (...) As an exception, macrodynamics, which have not been significantly influenced by the loudness war, appear to increase since the loudness war’s peak, and are currently reaching very high values".

In other words, the debate on loudness has been little nuanced if it doesn't make a distinction between micro and macro dynamics.

Please note that the paper was presented at International Society for Music Information Retrieval, ISMIR:

http://www.ismir.net/society.php

This perspective, big data in audio, is highly interesting because it replaces opinion and anecdotes with fact. And this perspective may also draw more computer people into audio science. Needless to say, habit and convention will predict that old school audio people are a bit skeptical towards this new breed of audio scientists that are more pattern oriented than case and anecdote oriented.

Many people, including people at ASR, think loudness is a battle lost. So they keep on fighting as guerilla fighters. However, other people, that are in high regard, are of a totally different opinion. Bob Katz, thinks (2013) the war is over, due to normalization features in distributors like iTunes (Katz' original blog post is no longer available):

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war

Lastly, just a couple of words on the authors, Deruty and Pachet. Deruty is a frequent publisher of scientific audio articles:

http://emmanuelderuty.com

Pachet is the better-known name of the two:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Pachet

He is, among other things, a fellow of The European Association for Artificial Intelligence. Which may be an indication of his ability to deal with datasets.
 
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Krunok

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svart-hvitt

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From what i have learned from the posts so far normalization seems to me as the only way to end this. Have the streaming services and radio stations started to apply normalization too?

As a coincidence, @Thomas Lund will talk about this shortly:

https://mediasoundhamburg.de/en/forum-loudness-wars-tipping-point/

From the poster:

"“The Tipping Point” refers to the fact that content starts to play softer on loudness-normalized platforms (Broadcast, Podcast, Apple, Spotify, games etc.) if too much dynamics processing is applied during production, mix or mastering".
 

Wombat

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svart-hvitt

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This video is from 2011, i.e. a couple of years before Bob Katz changed his opinion on loudness; if it’s a war that’s lost or being won.

So Bob Katz is an example of a professional who is able to change his opinion.
 

Wombat

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This video is from 2011, i.e. a couple of years before Bob Katz changed his opinion on loudness; if it’s a war that’s lost or being won.

So Bob Katz is an example of a professional who is able to change his opinion.


That is a weakness with opinions. A good reason to treat them with scepticism.
 
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