Why is louder music better

But the slow creep toward louder mixes led producers to crush the dynamic range in recordings in an effort to push levels as high as they can go. This means that rather than allow a recording to retain its natural quiet moments and loud moments, everything is pushed as loud as possible. You might use equalization, filtering, and mixing tricks to raise certain other frequencies, but the overall idea was that you wanted things to sound natural. Some parts of recordings were quieter than others.

But the loudness war caused producers to use their arsenal of tools to push quieter parts of songs to increasingly higher levels, compressing the dynamic range, or worse, pushing audio levels past the usable headroom and causing distortion.

Music with natural dynamic range is often said to be more emotiona l. The swings in dynamics are like the pacing of a film: The scares in a horror movie are more intense because of the anticipation building up to them. There are a number of egregious examples of the creeping effect of the loudness wars. Yes, heavy metal is loud!

But in the former recording there are moments of relative quiet. Iggy Pop did the remaster himself and in an effort to satiate the demands of his aged, drug addled body, and he completely ruined it.

He not only compressed the shit out of the dynamic range, he pushed the overall level so high that it clipped his music. The record got a better remaster in Image: Chicago Mastering Service. Like sound pressure level, loudness here is measured on in decibels, except this time the decibels are a level relative to the full dynamic range potential of the standard digital audio scale. It increases the heart rate and body temperature. Loud music has even been proven to speed up a runner on a treadmill!

Walk into a gym and take a look around. So the next DJ takes over. Except for the new DJ is playing the music even louder. So loud it hurts. Just like almost everything, too much of a good thing can be dangerous. Compared to the pleasures of loud music, the danger of hearing loss may feel like a distant risk. But hearing loss can happen when the decibels are as low as 85, especially when the exposure to this amplitude is constant. Clubs tend to blast music louder than decibels a normal lawnmower is decibels.

People will experience significant damage listening to this level for eight hours. Home Shop Expand submenu Collapse submenu. Free shipping from 2 Loop sets.

Menu Cart 0. Have you ever wondered why a loud club or rock concert is so much fun? Set your monitor gain so that it sounds right, then stop the CD player - do you notice any hiss or noise from your system?

Of course not. This tells you that the signal-to-noise ratio of CD is just fine for classical music. All it does is force you to turn your monitor level down, and if you over-compressed or over-processed it, the sound quality also goes down.

So how strong a signal level do you need to make a decent digital recording or mixdown? Bob explains: "The ear judges signal-to-noise ratio based on the RMS level of the signal and the RMS level of the noise, not the peak level.

If you under-record by about 20dB, then you might hear the noise of the conversion stages. Close your eyes, stop trying to peak the meters and start making better-sounding recordings. When sending a recording for mastering, a level of about -3 to dBFS on the highest peak of the music makes a more than adequate digital recording.

Words of wisdom, indeed, and if you're really keen to reclaim some of that lost dynamic range, then you should investigate Bob's K-System metering scheme, which he describes as "a guide for mix engineers who are getting started and looking for a help in producing good-sounding recordings. Finally, although we haven't covered the damage caused to hearing by loud music in detail, the last word goes to Dr Barry Blesser: "Like every stimulant, moderation rather than excess is often the best compromise.

Jargon buster: Decibel. The free MusicRadar newsletter serves up the week's biggest artist and product news stories alongside exclusive tuition and gear reviews. Sign up here! Get instant updates and bonus content plus chat with the team.

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