Loudness War: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:iggypop rawpower 7466.jpg|frame|[[Sarcasm Mode|Louder is better!]] <ref>The green means volume, the black means lack of. The gray line in middle of the screen is the separation between both left and right channels in stereo. For an example of what it would (normally) look like, search images of "Sound Editor". And yes, the sound depicted above is about as pleasing as a brick being shoved through your ears.</ref>]]

 

{{quote|''"I like my music like I like my life -- everything louder than everything else."''|'''[[Meat Loaf]]'''}}

* Not the worst offender by any stretch, but [[Queen]]'s latest compilation, "Absolute Greatest", has the dynamics sucked right out of it. You know how the first verse of "We are the Champions" is really quiet, then the loud chorus comes blasting out? Prepare to be severely disappointed.

* [[Rush]]'s album ''Vapor Trails'' suffers from [http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v318/1001001/VT_wave.jpg constant peak distortion]. You can barely hear any of Neil Peart's amazing drumming because it's a huge mess of white noise. Improved remixes of 2 songs from the album appear on the compilation album ''Retrospective 3'', and more remixes have not been ruled out either.

* [[Garbage]]'s ''Bleed Like Me'' [http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=27691&st=50 Album gain: -11.78 dB. Track gains: from -7.1 dB to -13.2 dB.]. The self-titled debut album is an interesting reversal: individual parts are intentionally compressed to distortion but the whole somehow manages to have dynamics.

* [[Fall Out Boy]]'s ''Infinity on High''.

* We all know that the 1997 remaster of [[The Stooges]] Raw Power is atrocious, but the 2010 Legacy Edition is a hell of a lot better. It's a remaster of the original David Bowie mix. The remix Iggy Pop made for the 1997 remaster turned everything up to match the lead guitar, after which everything was turned up even louder. The original mix has the lead guitar standing out in the mix in order to be intentionally unpleasant, but with a merciful master it's audio ambrosia compared to the 1997 version. There are times when it sounds like you're listening to a skilled cover band. An ideal version would turn the lead guitar down and use the 2010 master.

* [[Paul McCartney]]'s ''Memory Almost Full'' is considered one of the worst offenders (see that section above), but was later released in an "audiophile" edition, an exceptionally rare example of an album being remastered "the other way".

* Rivers Cuomo of [[Weezer]] has often made the observation that his records are mixed low (so as to sound better when turned up through a stereo), saying that Weezer's albums "sound like crap" when listened to at a low volume.

** Rivers is full of shit then. Both the ''Blue Album'' and ''Pinkerton'' clip despite having a good dynamic range, ''The Green Album'' is infamous for having a completely flat, claustrophobic mix except for "Island in the Sun" (the only song on the album with some sense of space!), ''Maladroit'' is similarly brickwalled, ''Make Believe'', ''The Red Album'' and ''Raditude'' suffer from Rick Rubin being involved, and it seems that their move to an indie label with ''Hurley'' hasn't weaned them off loudness warring their albums.