The ‘loudness wars’ is the term for a practice dedicated to mixing your song to the loudest volume possible without clipping, it is competitive in nature due to an observation in the 1950s where people tended to play louder cut records in jukeboxes more often. [1]
This competition for the loudest song has causes the deterioration of quality within digitally distributed songs in more present day to the fact that the listener now has complete control over volume during playback, resulting in the louder songs simply being turned down to a more desirable volume – therefore having a detrimental affect on key musical aspects like clarity and punch, especially noticeable in instruments with short attack times like drums. [2]
The main downfall of the loudness wars is the oversight of real vs artificial loudness. Real loudness is what the loudness wars were originally striving for. With characteristics like heavy bass frequencies and high clarity, real loudness will sound good at any volume on your system without many drawbacks – besides the limitations of your own listening device. Artificial loudness is the result of brickwall limiter is not the same, by increasing the average loudness levels the audio does seem louder however it also completely reduces the peaks into the main body of your mix. This has obvious side effects such as reducing transients or ‘snappiness’ however it also ruins any dynamic contrast resulting a much flatter, boring mix – which can take out a lot of the original song’s character. [3]
Learning about the origins and impact of the loudness wars has made me realise that I can occasionally rely too much on limiters within my own work. I think going on from this I will be more conscious and proactive when weighing up the effects of having a slightly quieter mix that appears slightly weaker against having a mix that seems louder, but might in fact be weaker due to the destruction of transients and contrasting dynamics.
[1] Robjohns, H. (2011). The End Of The Loudness War? [online] Soundonsound.com. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war.
[2] www.youtube.com. (n.d.). The Loudness War. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ.
[3] www.youtube.com. (n.d.). The secret of maximum loudness (part 1). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-10h7Mu5VP8.
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