Okay first off, take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=wfBU8mG4csY

To give you some incentive to spend the 9 minutes of your time required to watch it, the video is about the sound quality of modern CDs or rather the lack thereof. Simply put, nowadays the sound is just made louder at the cost of breathing room.

Personally, I dislike most modern metal for what I believe are reasons that either derive from or are caused by the bad sound quality. Everthing needs to be louder, so dynamics and taste are cast aside to be replaced by a quick fix of noise (regardless whether it's "extreme" or not). Of course, this old, bitter, backward-minded bigot who never got past the 80s may be mistaken so a bit of discussion would be great.

Written by DayFly on 02.01.2010 at 18:53

Okay first off, take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=wfBU8mG4csY

To give you some incentive to spend the 9 minutes of your time required to watch it, the video is about the sound quality of modern CDs or rather the lack thereof. Simply put, nowadays the sound is just made louder at the cost of breathing room.

Personally, I dislike most modern metal for what I believe are reasons that either derive from or are caused by the bad sound quality. Everthing needs to be louder, so dynamics and taste are cast aside to be replaced by a quick fix of noise (regardless whether it's "extreme" or not). Of course, this old, bitter, backward-minded bigot who never got past the 80s may be mistaken so a bit of discussion would be great.

Well, this even older, bitter, backward-minded, bigot fully agrees with you.

A great example of this terirble loudness war is of course last year's epitome of crap producing... Death Magnetic. Totally no dynamics whatsoever due to the volume constantly being all the way up to 11.

Yep, that's an obvious example, listening to that album with headphones is just horrible. Exodus' rerecording of Bonded By Blood also immediately came to my mind. The original had by no means a great production but Let There Be Blood is just unlistenable.

Written by DayFly on 02.01.2010 at 19:09

Yep, that's an obvious example, listening to that album with headphones is just horrible. Exodus' rerecording of Bonded By Blood also immediately came to my mind. The original had by no means a great production but Let There Be Blood is just unlistenable.

Mmm, personally I have no problem listening to Let There Be Blood. Yes, it is quite loud but not so much that it becomes unlistenable to me.
Btw almost ALL modern death metal bands suffer from the loudness disease as well and then especially the so-called brutal death metal bands.

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 02.01.2010 at 19:14

Mmm, personally I have no problem listening to Let There Be Blood. Yes, it is quite loud but not so much that it becomes unlistenable to me.
Btw almost ALL modern death metal bands suffer from the loudness disease as well and then especially the so-called brutal death metal bands.

Ew, don't get me started on those. The drumming often sounds so sterile you couldn't tell a real drummer from a machine.

Written by DayFly on 02.01.2010 at 19:23


Ew, don't get me started on those. The drumming often sounds so sterile you couldn't tell a real drummer from a machine.

Death to triggers I say. If you can't play without triggers you shouldn't play drums imo. And because of the triggering the volume of every drum hit is exactly the same, thus killing off all dynamics once again.

This young, sweet, forward-minded, err, guy agrees with both of you.
I have only recently become really interested in this subject, but over the past few months a lot of these "loudness war" victims have become unlistenable to me and the ones I can still listen to would still be a lot better with some more dynamics.

I feel like more people should become (more) aware of this, which is why I'm bumping this abandoned thread.

Once you know about it, it's unmistakable. Cannot be unheard.

Long post ahead, don't feel obliged to read it if this subject is of no interest to you.

I felt like sharing my opinion on this subject since I have become quite interested in it (I'm following a class on sound engineering in my free time,) and I'm under the impression most people don't fully understand what the "Loudness War" is. I remember just last year I didn't know all that much about it either. Words like "compression", "dynamics", etc. were familiar to me, but I never fully understood their importance. This post is merely to explain to whoever isn't in the know what compression/brick-walling is, why it's so over-used, and why I think it's bad (don't worry, I won't bore you with technical details, but will try to focus more on how it affects your listening experience.) The video above does a nice job explaining a few things, but I'd like to get this stuff off my chest, so bear with me. If I do say anything that's wrong, do feel free to correct me, I'm not a professional.

Before going a little more in-depth, I'd like to say one very important thing; just because an album is overly brick-walled does not mean it is inferior (even in terms of production) to other, more dynamic, music. I have examples of extremely compressed albums that are dear to my heart (since this is Metal Storm I'll stick to examples from the metal realms; Darkspace made a few, including everyone's favourite, III.) But there are also albums that I would say have poor production, despite their higher dynamics (...And Justice For All.) However, the amount of albums out there with low dynamics that would not sound better with less compression is extremely low to me*.

So, let's start from the beginning. The Loudness War in a nutshell: a bunch of people record an album together and want everyone to notice it, so it has to be as loud as possible so that when their single comes on the radio, it will stand out (today's equivalent would be Spotify, Youtube, Bandcamp, etc. but more on those later.) One easy way to make your music loud is by using a compressor. What this basically does is it takes the loud sounds of an audio signal and decreases them so there is less range between the quiet sounds. This in turn allows the whole thing to be amplified more so the quiet sounds are louder and the peaks are the same again, making the entire song sound louder. To a lot of people this isn't that noticeable. A song might sound louder and slightly distorted** at times, but overall, a lot of people don't mind the difference too much. When they hear a heavily compressed song right after a more dynamic one, they'll simply feel it's louder and turn the volume down. What they don't notice is that often the peaks of both songs are equally loud, it's just that because all the quiet sounds in the compressed song are much louder, they feel like turning the volume down because your ears are given no time to breath. Ironically, the songs that were engineered to sound the "loudest" are the ones we'll sooner listen to at a lower volume.

Don't believe me though, try it for yourself; listen to a brick-walled album at a high volume for a while (some recent offenders in the metal world include Fallujah's The Flesh Prevails and Death Karma's debut, since dynamics can actually be measured I looked up the specifics for both and both appear to have a DR (dynamic range) of around 3 dB, this is extremely low compared to 30 years ago) and then compare it to listening to a more dynamic album (most 80s albums?not the re-masters obviously?are a good example, but if you feel like comparing albums that were released around the same time as the ones mentioned above; last year's Morbus Chron, Nasheim, Opeth, Mournful Congregation, and Horrendous albums were all quite dynamic. DR for all of them is above 10 dB.) Try turning up the volume very high and you'll notice you'll go crazy from those compressed ones if it stays like that for a while. The volume for the other ones can go much higher without feeling like your ears are suffocating; the music is given some dynamics, some breathing room.

This last part is where the main problem lies for me. A lot of people don't pay much attention to production in music, and that's perfectly fine, but they shouldn't be getting hearing problems because they can't turn up the volume as much as they'd like (and yes, your ears can actually suffer damage from it.) When I listen to highly compressed albums I never turn the volume up too much, because it just feels painful and I can't get as much enjoyment out of it as I should. This doesn't necessarily ruin most albums for me, but for some it has (that Fallujah album for example, I REALLY wanted to like that more.)

As a side note, another interesting thing to note is that compression is becoming more and more pointless with regards to loudness. People these days listen to music on Spotify, Youtube, iTunes and the like, and most of these services have implemented a function that puts every song on the same loudness level (Youtube is still slowly working their way back through all uploads,) making all that compression null. Now all the compressing does is make the music sound worse?less dynamic and often distorted (because of clipping, watch the video from the OP to find out a little more about that)?the making-it-sound-loud factor is going away.

Let's just hope record labels, bands, and sound engineers (all three are equally to blame, by the way) will become aware of this sooner rather than later, and realize there is no more need for compressing the ever living fuck out of their music.

To anyone still reading, I thank you for your time and hope you learned a thing or two. I know I didn't touch upon every aspect, so feel free to add or correct anything. If you want to read some more, here are some pages related to the subject that I found very intriguing:

There is this review of that Fallujah album, not only is it an interesting review that critiques the brick-walled production, in the comments the person who mastered it actually responded and offered some insights (in a very respectful manner, might I add.) Very interesting discussion if you ask me.

Also, here's a review by the same guy for the same album that compares the official master to a more dynamic version the sound engineer sent him in response to his first review.

*I can't even think of one. I actually always thought that part of Darkspace's charm was the overuse of compression to give the music a more claustrophobic feel, but even they proved me wrong with their re-recording of the -I demo that was more dynamic than any of their full-length albums but still sounded amazing. In fact, the first song from that EP might be my favourite Darkspace song. HAH!

**The distorted sound comes from clipping; I didn't go in-depth about it since it isn't as huge of a problem to me (still sucks though) as your ears being a victim of this war. Some artists actually want to go for this distorted sound, but there are better ways to give your music that aggressive, distorted edge than compressing the fuck out of it.

tl;dr - your ears are the real victim of the Loudness War

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:19


As for the band wanting to do it, that's a great example of why producers are useful. Artists need some direction. It's also a damning inditement on the band (be it Metallica or Fallujah) that they willingly to compromise on sound quality like this.

Problem is that loads of producers want to do it. Just look at Rick Rubin and what he did with Death Magnetic. Really, I think if Rob Trujillo had done the production it would have been infinitely better.

But generally it does boil down to professional producers being useful. Yes, bands can record at home with their own production bt you see tyhem fuck it up most of the times. Probelm is that bands don't get the big budgets they used to to get their albums properly produced. Okay I totally hate SlipKnot but on the new one you can at least hear they got a good producer in.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:31



Some great points Marcel.

The proliferation of home recording software and things like drum triggers hasn't helped. Seems every musician has a home studio these days and everyone considers themselves a producer.

The end result is problems like the loud war or average sounding records without much in the way of dynamics.

The problem is getting worse too - look at new Blind Guardian album which is compressed and hollow sounding beyond recognition.

Not only soundwise the problem is prevalent. Just take Machine Head as an example where they produce themselves resulting in songs which are way too long. A proper producer would have told them to cut down on the duration of the individual songs. Judas Priest another example of musicians that have toured the world over yet can't properly propduce an album to save their lives.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:31


The problem is getting worse too - look at new Blind Guardian album which is compressed and hollow sounding beyond recognition.

Btw give me an album such as Def Leppard - Hysteria any time of the day to show what a proper production is. Okay, I love the cheesy album, but even people that hate such music can hear how brilliantly produced it was. You can hear there is a huge huge budget behind that album. Just everything clicks.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:40

I found this link - what if Smells Like Teen Spirit was recorded in 2008: Ouch! It sounds like a muddy distorted mess.

fuck me sideways, I had to switch it off after 15 seconds.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:44


Totally agree. One doesn't often get albums like that. Even huge mainstream pop acts produce bad sounding albums these days.

But say what you want about Jay Z, at least he has a great production, same for some other big stars such as Lady GaGa.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:40

I found this link - what if Smells Like Teen Spirit was recorded in 2008: Ouch! It sounds like a muddy distorted mess.

My ears actually didn't capture the difference =p
Perhaps that's why I don't pay much attention to production

Written by Karlabos on 28.04.2015 at 04:37

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:40

I found this link - what if Smells Like Teen Spirit was recorded in 2008: Ouch! It sounds like a muddy distorted mess.

My ears actually didn't capture the difference =p
Perhaps that's why I don't pay much attention to production

Just take the part when the drum kicks in (of both) and compare them. You'll see right away.

Written by Karlabos on 28.04.2015 at 04:37

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:40

I found this link - what if Smells Like Teen Spirit was recorded in 2008: Ouch! It sounds like a muddy distorted mess.

My ears actually didn't capture the difference =p
Perhaps that's why I don't pay much attention to production

you mean to say you don't hear the difference between this and the Original? If that is the case, I am sorry to say, you are not alloweed to listen to music at al. Really not hearing a difference there is a toal and utter unforgivable disgrace.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 05:05

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.04.2015 at 04:53


you mean to say you don't hear the difference between this and the Original? If that is the case, I am sorry to say, you are not alloweed to listen to music at al. Really not hearing a difference there is a toal and utter unforgivable disgrace.

I've met a lot of people who can't though to be fair most were only casual listeners of music. There's a lot on Metalstorm too!

Some people are just not used to hearing what it is because they are constantly bombarded with that kind of production, you gotta keep that in mind.
But yeah I totally agree, it sounds disgusting and sadly its a trend now. I do hope it'll change though, and the sooner the better. ''Too Loud'' doesn't mean better.

Written by deadone on 28.04.2015 at 03:19

Great explanation. Issues with new Fallujah were also fascinating. I found the new album to be offputting in terms of the sound.

Thank you, for me, at the time when the last Fallujah dropped, I didn't know much about all this, but even then I noticed how loud it felt to me and it bugged me even then because I couldn't find the right volume to play it on without hurting me ears. These days I find it bordering unlistenable just because of the production.

Quote:
I especially appreciated this comment on the Fallujah comments thread:

Quote:
It is LAZY to compress down to DR2/3 IMO to get that wall of sound production when it can be done while still keeping a modicum of dynamics.

That's what it comes down to.

You're right, that is what it comes down to. It is lazy. As I said in my first post, one of the easiest ways to make your music sound loud is compression. There are other, better ways to get the feeling of a huge sound without sacrificing dynamics (or your eardrums.)

Quote:

As for the band wanting to do it, that's a great example of why producers are useful. Artists need some direction. It's also a damning inditement on the band (be it Metallica or Fallujah) that they willingly to compromise on sound quality like this.

Agreed, I usually understand where a band is coming from when they want it to be loud, I really do. I've recorded some stuff and always wanted it to be louder, but I've come to realize what's really important. But, as you said, they need someone that can give them some direction.

Also, I came across this article a few days ago, and this is basically what those bands should be told when they want it to be louder: http://productionadvice.co.uk/can-you-make-it-louder/ It also explains why loudness is pointless these days more in-depth than my first post.

Quote:

Ironically this feeds into my argument that modern metal lacks a punchy in your faceness. Once you gut the dynamics and make it into a wall of sound, not much stands out and I personally don't like it.

I agree production plays a big role, but as some people mentioned in that thread, there are still bands that sound punchy and there are still albums with good production.

EDIT: One thing that I forgot to mention, deadone, is that, while it is indeed lazy to just compress down to DR 2/3, keep in mind that the budget and deadlines the record label gives the guy in charge of mixing and mastering has become much smaller than what it used to be.

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.04.2015 at 03:27

Problem is that loads of producers want to do it. Just look at Rick Rubin and what he did with Death Magnetic. Really, I think if Rob Trujillo had done the production it would have been infinitely better.

But generally it does boil down to professional producers being useful. Yes, bands can record at home with their own production bt you see tyhem fuck it up most of the times. Probelm is that bands don't get the big budgets they used to to get their albums properly produced. Okay I totally hate SlipKnot but on the new one you can at least hear they got a good producer in.

I think Rick Rubin actually showed the band different masters and the band chose that one. You know... the shitty one.

I do agree though, a (good) producer could help some bands, and mostly ones, like Metallica, with tons of money that just need someone to say "No, you don't know anything about this part of music-making, go fuck yourself."

However, it all comes down to having the right people that know what they're doing for the right job. Elysian Blaze is a one-man project, but with Blood Geometry he knew what he was doing in terms of songwriting and mixing and mastering and everything else. It's rare, but sometimes one man can be responsible for multiple aspects of an album and actually not be completely lost. Usually, they should get a producer though, because most bands can't be responsible for everything.

PS: I never said Rubin is a good producer or anything, just that Metallica was equally responsible for that mess.

Written by Karlabos on 28.04.2015 at 04:37

My ears actually didn't capture the difference =p
Perhaps that's why I don't pay much attention to production

That's fine. Plenty of people don't, but you'll never hear anyone say the "2008 version" sounds better than the original.

Written by Guib on 28.04.2015 at 05:19



Some people are just not used to hearing what it is because they are constantly bombarded with that kind of production, you gotta keep that in mind.

Unfortunately all too true.

Btw, fuck me sideways, even for me at that time of night an immense load of typos and that without any alcohol in me whatsoever.

Brickwalling destroys music.
Greed spawns ignorance... Will future generations even know there's a better way?
Defenders of the faith, UNITE!

As someone who has grown up with music produced this way, it definitely doesn't stand out as much to me as it does for some of the older music listeners. In fact when I first started listening to older 80s metal one of the first things I noticed was how quiet it sounded. Nowadays I can tell the difference between highly compressed and less compressed somewhat, but usually not so much that it could actually ruin an album for me. For example, I thought the production on LOG's 'Resolution' was terribly distorted and way too loud. However I still like the songs on there - it's just a shame they're missing those dynamics.