No no no, the loudness war is when producers squash the signal so that it sounds loud (and therefor sells better) on radio, but it ends up sounding a mess on record as all the nuance and dynamics of the songs are crushed out of the data. The worse offender for this where it's really noticeable is Californiacation by RHCP, but most acts end up with producers who squash the signal. Below is an example of a song that's been put through the loudness song grinder and what the waveform ends up looking like. All the songs of WTSMG have this shit done to them. I really wish producers didn't do this.
No, the complete opposite. Currently my 10th-2nd is 3 British rappers, 3 American rappers, a spoken word poem, a singer songwriter & a rock band. Few of them haven’t even cracked a million views on YouTube... 1st place is a chart topping pop song with half a billion views
Ah sorry I see what you mean now. To be honest the whole producing thing is way out of my depth so I could never be a critic. I assume most mainstream songs these days are victim to it? Oh that’s surprising given the posts I’ve seen of yours on music. I’m going to guess it’s Ed Sheeran or Justin Bieber.
Yeah very few acts get away with not having it done to their music, but there are some that are much more egregious than others. If you're interested in seeing how some of your favourite albums hold up here's a database that has thousands of albums uploaded to it that show how badly they've been ****ed by the producer. Album list - Dynamic Range Database
I like Oasis's first two albums but neither of them would get into my personal top 50 albums of the 90s. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Yeah green is good, red is bad, they're measuring the ratio of the largest to the smallest intensity sound in the songs, so obviously if there's a low ratio (i.e. the signal has been squashed) you're missing out on lots of detail from the recording.
I like Radiohead but this song is a weird one for me. Went from liking the song, to skipping it at the 4-minute mark, and then to just hating it
I checked about 20 of my fave albums and surprisingly only one or two were red. I noticed that where albums were older like Bowie or The Smiths for example the originals were green but any remakes or re-releases were red so it’s obviously a more modern thing?
Yep very much a modern thing that started picking up traction in the late 80's so anything from the 60's 70's and most of the 80's is usually spot on and finding an album that has good DR in the modern era is like finding gold dust. Also vinyl is almost always better than CDs. The Loudness wars are the biggest thing that producers are getting wrong at the minute and it ruins so many albums compared to what they should be.
Surprised how diverse my top 10 is but I just wrote the first songs that came into my head. No ragrets
You probably did the same as me listening to WTSMG for the first time thinking...this is a bit boring, then Morning Glory came on - ahh this is better!! Interesting about 'Wonderwall' - So many groups 'most popular' songs are the ones I don't like or actually dislike. There's quite a few and they are bands I like. Oasis - Wonderwall Blur - Parklife Pulp - Common People Supergrass - Alright Dodgy - Good Enough Radiohead - Creep
To be honest I don’t listen to that much modern music and I don’t buy cd/vinyl anymore either so probably why I’ve not noticed. If they know it ruins it then why do it? I assume money? I did, it’s the best song on the album. If I had to rate my top 3 of their albums it would come 3rd with a 7/10. Id have DM and the Masterplan before it. You know I’m the same .. a lot of people with Oasis always seem to pick Wonderwall or champagne supernova. I wouldn’t. So many great bands/singers better than your Pulps or Radiohead etc from that era. Charlatans, Shed Seven (such a great band) and James to name a few. It’s like now The Courteeners are a great band but they’ll never be mainstream, their St Jude album is amazing.
Some of them don't know it ruins the music (these guys are dumb and shouldn't be mixing and mastering music anyway), some of them don't care as it's just what the label wants them to do (ugh) and some (probably most) are still convinced that it helps sales even though there's no data that suggest that it actually does. The Courtneers are huge They've released nothing but rubbish tho.
It just depends when you are into music 'the most' so you discover more great stuff. My probably most underrated bands would be Supergrass and the Bluetones. Imagine if Supergrass started up now, they'd be big..there's no competition! Its all subjective, and I do quite like Shed Seven - but no way on God's earth are they better than Pulp . I'm a long term Pulp fan from the early 90's...JC is the man. Should be Prime Minister.
