Why New Music Doesn’t Sound As Good As It Did
Interesting post about how the music industry records and sets volumes of records nowadays and how that affects overall music quality.
The key to the problem is that, in making the soft parts of a track louder (in the process making the entire track loud), you lose detail in the song: The difference between what’s supposed to be loud and what’s supposed to be soft becomes less and less. The result is that, sure, the soft parts of a song are nice and loud, but big noises like drum beats become muffled and fuzzy. But consumers often subconsciously equate loudness with quality, and thus, record producers pump up the volume. Anything to make a buck.
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Neko Case had some interesting comments on this from a Pitchfork article awhile back:
“There are things about the production I’m not crazy about though. People mix records to be heard in cars and to have the bass incredibly loud so the vocals have to fight with everything so there’s no dynamic left, and that’s kind of a bummer.”
on June 29th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
thanks for the comment drew. interesting indeed. and we all know what Neko says goes. Meanwhile, her voice still sounds amazing on all of her albums no matter how they record it in the mix
on June 29th, 2007 at 8:44 pm