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The Loudness of Music & The Oversaturation Gag Reflex

Posted on July 3rd, 2006

Nick Southall has an excellent (though quite long) article called Imperfect Sound Forever in Stylus Magazine which covers the trend of the music industry to over-compress music that is being released these days. What this technically means is that the tunes we listen to these days have much less dynamic range between the quiet bits and louds bits. One of the main factors for this is that these overly compressed, or 'hot' tracks stand out compared to other tracks that are less compressed. This sells records. This consistently loud (or 'hot') barrage of sound throughout the music we are exposed to makes us less likely to really listen carefully - almost as if the music were produced to overcome the background sounds that are almost assumed in our day and age - the drone of the car engine, the noises on the sidewalk, the hum of the office copier. The article covers the topic from a variety of angles - technological, societal, personal. A fascinating read - I even read the followup as well as a piece on the music oversaturation we encounter these days as downloading music gets so easy and our hard disks are filled with thousands of hours worth of music. What does that mean for that one excellent song? For the music I produce?

Entry Filed under: Articles, Music