{"id":115,"date":"2007-02-01T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2007-02-01T11:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2007-02-01T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2007-02-01T11:40:11","slug":"cd-loudness-the-pro-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/115-cd-loudness-the-pro-perspective.html","title":{"rendered":"CD loudness: the pro perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I noticed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aprs.co.uk\/forum\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=13&amp;posts=1&amp;start=1\" target=\"_blank\">this comment<\/a> on my <a href=\"http:\/\/technology.guardian.co.uk\/weekly\/story\/0,,1992325,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">piece on CD mastering<\/a>, from the webmaster at APRS (Association of Professional Recording Services):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>By making CDs Extremely Limited we are not only destroying natural dynamics, we are also reducing the clarity and making CDs which are far more difficult and tiring to listen to&#8230;I&#8217;ve lost arguments and jobs over this a number of times. You master something and make it sound as good as possible, just the way the client and musicians agree they want it to sound; you transfer it at the maximum level possible without destroying it, then they take it home and complain that it&#8217;s &#8220;just not loud enough&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I have sympathy for professionals who are in an impossible position. They have to make CDs that sound worse than they should, sometimes much worse, or risk losing their jobs. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bad situation, but there is hope. Publicising the issue must help the pros win more arguments. Technology may solve this too. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ReplayGain\" target=\"_blank\">ReplayGain<\/a> and Apple&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/docs.info.apple.com\/article.html?artnum=61655\" target=\"_blank\">Sound Check<\/a> are both techniques for matching the replay volume of music automatically, removing any supposed advantage from &#8220;loud&#8221; mastering. Broadcasters already use compression and limiting&nbsp;on their output. There is no need to compromise the source.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p><div class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" id=\"0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:7119be64-cff0-4327-99b8-7d04989ccfb9\" contenteditable=\"false\" style=\"padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px\">Technorati tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/cd%20mastering\" rel=\"tag\">cd mastering<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/loudness%20wars\" rel=\"tag\">loudness wars<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I noticed this comment on my piece on CD mastering, from the webmaster at APRS (Association of Professional Recording Services): By making CDs Extremely Limited we are not only destroying natural dynamics, we are also reducing the clarity and making CDs which are far more difficult and tiring to listen to&#8230;I&#8217;ve lost arguments and jobs &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/115-cd-loudness-the-pro-perspective.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CD loudness: the pro perspective<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}