Loudness Wars: Who Else but Consumers Can End It?

[dped90]

Certainly, many if not most engineers are painfully aware of these sonic assaults inflicted on recordings for reasons that have nothing to do with artistic preference and everything to do with crass marketing trickery.

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/1401406-intersample-clipping-audible.html

Obviously, the trouble is engineers also know that they must either comply with what those who are paying them believe they need to do in order to sell the record or risk getting fired.

And this is precisely why producers and artists need to be told how they are mutilating their own products and making them sound like crap, at least on relatively decent audio systems-not to mention on high res systems. AND they need to be told by US, the consumers-who populate forums like this-as we clearly have the biggest stake in putting an end to this practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

So yes, as is done when necessary in all other affairs, naming names of offending producers and artists is justified.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LoudnessWar/TheWorstOffenders

How else to put an end to else can this problem?

 

[fpitas]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but us high fidelity nuts are like 0.001% of the buying public.

 

[-Matt-]

Your best hope is perhaps that something like Dolby Atmos really takes off, that consumers demand it, that streaming companies insist on it, and that Dolby puts rules in place to standardise production workflows. (Kind of happening now).

Even better would be if loudness controls were provided on playback devices, allowing listeners to adjust to taste and separating this from storage and transfer of audio data. (But that'll probably never happen).

 

[thexfile]

I think that is why vinyl sales are prevalent.

 

[GD Fan]

Considering the huge number of people who seem to listen to music using the ******, tinny speaker on their mobile phone I'm forced to wonder if most people are even aware of this atrocity?

 

[dped90]

Considering the huge number of people who seem to listen to music using the ******, tinny speaker on their mobile phone I'm forced to wonder if most people are even aware of this atrocity?

Probably the biggest obstacle against ending this problem. Most people have other priorities other than audio quality beyond iPhone speakers, or at best those from their Sony OLED TVs, or whatever.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Most people have other priorities

Exactly.

Jim

 

[ZolaIII]

Well EBU R128 and riplaygain 2.0 are gaining foot on both fronts first reserved for personal and present in many players as integrated or add on plugin and from broadcasters second from streaming services and pretty unified recently so things are getting better. It won't be ideal or absolutely established but we see improvements.