Do your parents think your music is just a big loud mess of noise? For once there may be some truth in their words.
Record companies have been turning up the volume on music for decades while sacrificing dynamic range and quality in a competition known as the "loudness war."
Making their songs the loudest gives them a leg up on other companies according to the principle that the loudest sound catches listeners' attention first.
Researchers who study psychoacoustics, or how we perceive sound, have found that human ears respond to the average loudness over time instead of the peaks when judging how loud something is. So if the record companies want their songs to sound the loudest, they compress the range of soft to loud and make the average volume louder. This type of compression causes what were originally louder and quieter notes to actually be about the same volume.
There's nothing wrong with liking to listen to loud music; I definitely turn up the volume when my favorite song comes on, but quality should not be sacrificed. Knowing that I'd be paying twenty bucks for crappy sound makes me want to buy CDs even less.
Another industry that has waged its own loudness war is that of advertising. I'm sure many have noticed that commercials seem to always be louder than the television show before the commercial break. Usually I have the remote in hand, ready to turn the volume down for the first commercial so I'm not deafened by those ring tone scam commercials.
It's illegal for the station to turn up the volume of commercials, but they're still definitely louder, right? Advertisers use the same techniques as record companies: the sound in commercials is compressed so the average sound is louder. It gets our attention like advertisers intended and annoys us at the same time, but at least we're noticing the products!
This isn't against the rules because the volume of the sound on television is measured and regulated according to the peak volumes. When the sound is compressed, the peaks will stay the same, but the overall loudness we perceive is higher. Unfortunately this is still within the law, as annoying as it is.
TiVo users can at least fast forward through the commercials. For those of us who are less fortunate, we just have to work on quick draw and volume control skills on our TV remotes.
I do wish that there would be more compression to DVDs. I know this is blasphemy to some; it won't be as the director originally intended and the quality will be harmed, but I'm willing to take that sacrifice.
When seeing a movie in theatres, it's perfectly fine to have explosions at eardrum-shattering volumes, but I really don't want it to sound like a bomb went off in the middle of my apartment. I don't want my neighbors to call the cops on me for disturbing the peace. To avoid having angry neighbors, I have to turn on the subtitles when I watch movies. I find it very frustrating when movies are constantly going from whispers to explosions and back to whispers again and the immense range in sound causes me to miss any quieter lines. It's a lost battle, so the subtitles button and I have become great friends.
If my dream were to ever happen, DVDs would still have the original movie sound on them for any movie purists out there. Just like some DVDs have both widescreen and full screen formats and different language tracks, there could be one more audio track for people like me who do not want the movie theatre sound experience in their homes.
The loudness war has affected all areas of sound media, and also might be affecting the future of sound technology. If the technology for music is driven by the record companies' desire to compete to be heard over each other, the only advancements we'll get is how to make the average level of loudness as high as possible.
I don't know about you, but I want quality and not just loud noise.
Monique is glad there's no sound when you email her at: monique.devoe@asu.edu.
