Being predominantly a musical theatre engineer, I have occasionally found myself being asked by members of the public to turn the orchestra down. This always comes as a great surprise to me (unless they are sat on the front row over the orchestra pit) as i’ve often had the sound designer telling me that I’m mixing his show too safely (probably due to receiving these requests!) and to decrease the difference between the band and vocals. Agreed with the designer, I do mix rather vocal heavy for theatre shows but I find that most of the time i’m forced to in order to keep the public and producers happy.
My gut feeling is that the general public don’t know how to ‘listen’ to things anymore. We are being desensitised by an ongoing ‘loudness war’; a phenomenon which can be tracked back to around the 80s.
With digital mastering came the challenge to ever increase the loudness of records by increasing the compression ratios and EQ to maximise the level of the entire track which removes the dynamics and therefore the emotion of the piece. This has unfortunately been transferred to television, film and now to live theatre. Add to this the volume at which many people have their television set, just to watch the news for example; everything is shouted at you. As a result, I feel many people cannot focus on picking out parts (such as vocals) within a mix unless it jumps out and bites them in the ear.
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But what can one as an aware music fan do about it? – I’m more than sick of the cursed $loudness war…I perceive it nothing more than ignorance and $greed of the screwed label execs of mythical proportions! I wrote to a number of labels & mastering houses to complain, and sadly to no avail! [ignorance!]…Boycott?…Is that all what is left?…I’m doing that now…I can’t stand the distorted ‘tin-can’…sound of new releases at all…Do so many got ‘tin-can’ ears and/or couldn’t care less? tin-ears?…Sounds very sad to me! …I wish I knew a solution?…I also wonder if artists/bands ever listen to their music before its released?…I doubt heavily there [labels execs too much control!]…One needs to raise public awareness of this (including the artists/bands), that this is all a farce! – Loudner is worse not better!…Thats my suggestion, do you know others?
Hi Robert, Yes I agree with you it is a problem. But while everyone is doing it, no one will stop it. As soon as they stop doing it, then their tracks won’t be as loud as something the next one.
I had a interesting discussion with a new artist I’m working for. With regards to live sound, we’ve always been told not make anything clip. Clipping is bad… His argument was that input clipping and output clipping are very different. With the right amount of clipping on the way into the system, you are using digital in a way never intended; as a brick wall limiter. Thus the sound lower in the mix are brought up in level. I’m not sure i agree, because you would just mix the track differently wouldn’t you? But it did make me think about it in a slightly different way.
We’ll get there.
Just a small comment about the tv volume.
One off my ” mentors ” once presented me an experiment. ” Set the volume of your tv set as you usualy do. Now, notch by notch take the volume down until you start to lose some of the words. make some efort and concentrate.I bet that after a litle time you will be able to ear everything” And i did. Some how i started to improve my mixes.
Loud percives better. To loud you realy lose lots off the dynamics.
Miguel, your experiment is one which I have undertaken myself and also found very useful! I wish we could get a large number of people to do this, record and release the results. I think it would prove how little we really ‘listen’ to things and maybe would open people’s ears to dynamics, once more.
I have also tried this experiment. Did you notice that your hearing is more acute when you are in darker surroundings. (Please note Cinemas we do not need 130db 90db is enough)
I now usually have to do a balancing act when listening to CD’s in the car, my son wants it at 11 and I want it at 6.