Criticism
This practice has been condemned by several recording industry professionals including Alan Parsons, Geoff Emerick (noted for his work with The Beatles from Revolver to Abbey Road), and mastering engineers Doug Sax, Steve Hoffman, and many others, including music audiophiles, hi-fi enthusiasts, and fans. Musician Bob Dylan has also condemned the practice, saying: "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like—static." Nonetheless, the compact disc editions of Dylan's more recent albums Modern Times and Together Through Life are examples of heavy dynamic range compression.
When music is broadcast over radio, the station applies its own signal processing, further reducing the dynamic range of the material to closely match levels of absolute amplitude, regardless of the original recording's loudness.
Opponents have also called for immediate changes in the music industry regarding the level of loudness. In August 2006, the vice-president of A&R for One Haven Music, a Sony Music company, in an open letter decrying the loudness war, claimed that mastering engineers are being forced against their will or are preemptively making releases louder in order to get the attention of industry heads. Some bands are being petitioned by the public to re-release their music with less distortion.
The nonprofit organization Turn Me Up! was created by Charles Dye, John Ralston and Allen Wagner to certify albums that contain a suitable level of dynamic range and encourage the sale of quieter records by placing a "Turn Me Up!" sticker on albums that have a larger dynamic range. The group has not yet arrived at an objective method for determining what will be certified.
Hearing experts, such as a hearing researcher at House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, are also concerned that the loudness of new albums could possibly harm listeners' hearing, particularly that of children.
A 2-minute YouTube video addressing this issue by audio engineer Matt Mayfield has been referenced by The Wall Street Journal and The Chicago Tribune. Pro Sound Web quoted Mayfield: "When there is no quiet, there can be no loud."
The book Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber, 2009), by Greg Milner presents the Loudness war in radio and music production as a central theme. The book Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science (2nd Edition, Focal Press, 2007), by Bob Katz, includes a chapter about the origins of the loudness war and another suggesting methods of combatting the war, based on Katz's presentation at the 107th Audio Engineering Convention (1999) and his Audio Engineering Society Journal publication (2000).
Read more about this topic: Loudness War
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)