<story><title>Loudness (2007)</title><url>http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chrismealy</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not just about volume. Tracks mastered with a ton of compression trick your brain into sounding louder than they really are, which is great for a song or two (or if you want pay people to pay attention to your tv commercial), but for listening to a whole album it wears you out. If you have an album you love but somehow never make it all the way through this is probably why. The perception of full volume gets your lizard brain aroused, which is great if you&amp;#x27;re in the club, but not if you&amp;#x27;re in the mood to listen to the first three Led Zeppelin records in a row.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, older recordings with more dynamic range might sound thin at low volume, but are much richer at higher volumes (you can hear the individual instruments better and feel the space in the sound). If you try comparing older and newer masterings at a good volume the newer mastering usually sounds kinda mushy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Loudness (2007)</title><url>http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>thatswrong0</author><text>This is pretty funny to me because I mostly listen to (and produce) electronic music.. and there are pretty much no rules when it comes to electronic music and loudness. Stupidly loud music can actually sound pretty dang good [0][1]. The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS.&lt;p&gt;If you have the right source material, you can brickwall the hell out of tracks and not notice the distortion.. or perhaps the distortion will even add pleasant artifacts. One of the more prominent issues with making things stupid loud is intermodulation distortion, but that really only becomes noticeable when you have pure tones or vocals being mashed into the limiter. If the source material is already distorted (think screechy dubstep synths), then it probably don&amp;#x27;t matter.&lt;p&gt;But yeah, when you&amp;#x27;re dealing with more traditional kinds of music, which often times involves vocals or a lot more subtlety to the timbre of the instruments, brickwalling is probably not the best call. It seems that the Search and Destroy &amp;quot;remaster&amp;quot; sounding terribly distorted was intentional.. but IMO it&amp;#x27;s not very listenable nor does the distortion really bring the grungy character than I think they were going for. It just sounds bad.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;soundcloud.com&amp;#x2F;moodygood&amp;#x2F;mtgfyt-vol1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;soundcloud.com&amp;#x2F;moodygood&amp;#x2F;mtgfyt-vol1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>