Vi skal nok selv skrue op, tak
A New Year’s Resolution
Last year, Thomas Lund and I had several discussions on how to generally improve source audio quality. There is no technological barrier to vastly better digital delivery of music. The main problem is the loudness war, which has almost destroyed all peaks in modern pop recordings. That is a MUCH bigger problem than the limitations of the CD format.
Now again MP3 is blamed for the lousy quality of many pop recordings: “Hi-res audio redresses digital music's traditionally compressed and largely inferior sound.” This statement is absolutely false. Labeling higher bit-rates “Hi-Res audio” will NOT help or correct the “traditionally compressed” sound. Only a concerted effort to stop the mindless dynamics processing applied to 99% of modern recordings will redress the compressed sound.
“Hi-Res” audio is about to fail miserably if the music labels don't understand that using a higher bitrate for delivery is a waste of time and money unless the systematic squashing is tackled. Compressors and limiters are indispensable creative tools, but it's a fundamental misunderstanding to use them just to try and make a program or a track louder.
In an eco-system where production, distribution and consumption influence each other, there's now hope of reversing the spiral, and expect improvements, rather than a continued limbo. Therefore, please consider this simple suggestion, designed to help nudge our industry in the right direction from performance to delivery.
If all of us can convince the music labels that Loudness Normalization is likely to gain foothold on a majority of delivery platforms because it's the transparent way to avoid level-jumps between tracks of different genres or age, they just might accept the following premise:
“Unless you create and store an unsquashed version of new recordings, then, as streaming and other delivery gets loudness normalized, you will be stuck with a sound that is forever dull, lifeless and fatiguing compared to songs that haven't been molested. Furthermore, in loudness normalized delivery, heavily compressed tracks play softer than had they been less squashed.”
After convincing enough folks in the industry to do a "future proof" version, the next step would be to make that available for download to the few million people who care about sound quality, thereby also proving that it actually sells.
Finally, please help promoting healthy microdynamics (peak-to-loudness ratio or PLR) also for playback on the move. It's a damned misunderstanding to aim for a low PLR for reproduction in a car or on a smartphone when macrodynamics (Loudness Range), not PLR, determines whether or not all parts of a song or program can be heard. In fact, reducing microdynamics just takes away clarity and speech intelligibility.
In the coming year, we will help consumers better distinguish good tracks from hopeless ones.
Please share these thoughts with your colleagues, and... A very Happy and better sounding New Year!
Peter Lyngdorf
Aarhus, January 1st, 2017