»

[Stripey]

How much does loudness matter to you? Does it annoy you when you have to turn up the volume or turn down the volume for individual tracks as you are listening to them? Do you notice a lot of variation in loudness when you are listening to lots of different tracks from different sources?

[R.Borlax]

it pisses me off when im in bed and my playlost plays cohens early stuff and goes to something damn loud like ff7 soundtrack

Originally Posted by Stripey

How much does loudness matter to you? Does it annoy you when you have to turn up the volume or turn down the volume for individual tracks as you are listening to them? Do you notice a lot of variation in loudness when you are listening to lots of different tracks from different sources?

A track should and have the production which suits the sound that it has, a song which is meant to be quite abrasive should be loud as hell... but a track that is meant to be chill out, should have a level of quietness/chillout to it.

[Floor Tom]

If i'm listening to an album as long as its all about the same I dont mind. I dont want to be adjusting the volume all the time.

Mix tapes can be a problem though, some songs really quiet and some really loud

they should all be the same level in my opinion.

tracks that are meant to be loud WILL be loud, due to the way they were recorded - loud distorted guitars etc
tracks that are meant to be chilled out, will be due to how they were recorded - subtle use of piano, cellos etc or whatever

Dynamics are more important to me than loudness. Constant loudness = boring. I turn things up or down to suit my preferred listening volume for a given situation and type of music. Music that has been compressed and limited to the max just ends up having no variation in volume.

I don't understand why records are becoming more compressed to stand out on the radio. They just compress everything for broadcast anyway. The pumping makes me sea sick. Seriously, I can't even listen to Radio 1 these days.

[Edgar Graham]

The only loudness that bothers me is when you're on the bus and some twat is pointlessly listening to their personal stereo at an ear drum-bursting volume.

[Keilan 303]

Albums should certainly be normalised so the loudest part is 0db or whatever....there shouldn't be any unexpected peaks....dips in volume are fine when listening at home....but really don't work well when listening at a bar/club or radio....this is where mastering engineers squeeze every last sample to death with compression/limiting....I don't think it needs to be this extreme either....dynamic range is good

The only loudness that really pissed me off however...is the fucking adverts on TV. So many channels adverts burst out the speakers so loud when the show before maybe only peaked once at that volume so you rammed the telly up loud to hear it all...

oh and listen to MTV2 for a bad example of loudness in music....every song sounds like shit on that channel as it is so compressed to shit it sounds unnatural. While its easy to make things sound like this, its usually 10 times out of 10 a mistake....I can't believe this channel get away with broadcasting the appaling sound they do

[iain44s]

Originally Posted by Keilan 303

The only loudness that really pissed me off however...is the fucking adverts on TV. So many channels adverts burst out the speakers so loud when the show before maybe only peaked once at that volume so you rammed the telly up loud to hear it all...

ha this also really annoys me. its a cunning ploy though...means you can still hear the ads even though you have gone to the next room to make a cuppa or whatever.