Stuff that's mastered too loud crackles and sounds thin and flat. Pay attention.

Loudness needs to fucking die in a fire like reverb did after the 80s. The funny thing is that any time one of these trends/gimmicks comes along, it exposes then non-musicians because they all flock to follow the same trends. Sadly, it always reminds us that there's are barely any real musicians in the world.

Why is it all these audio expert videos have shit audio?

I say the video did not capture the original sounds that were on his laptop.

Hence my nickname "Brickwall Bob" Ludwig

thanks 4 great video !

I've got this amazing revolutionary idea that record producers need to know about. It's this knob that every music consumer could have. When turned to the right it increases the loudness of a song, when turned to the left it decreases the loudness of a song. It would retain all elements of dynamic range as long as long as idiot producers wouldn't compress the hell out of every single track. If only there was something to call this "knob"...

The mastering process is one of the most misunderstood for those outside of the professional recording industry. In the old days, it was about getting your product into record (vinyl) format. It then became about converting your product into a CD and the limitations of 16bit/44.1Khz output compared to 24bit/96 or 192Khz input that the original mixdown was in. Dithering algorithms, Nyquist theorems and all that. Above and beyond that, and stemming from trying to mitigate the losses of any analog conversion, dynamics and EQ (multiband and overall) play a big part of taking a great or even okay mixdown and turning it into an incredible master. Any idiot can apply dynamics and EQ to a mixdown, but it takes a master's touch and masterful equipment to help achieve an amazing recorded musical experience that's going to not only sound great but feel great, on just about any kind of playback system out there. And it can be just as much about what NOT to do as it is what TO do. It takes the ability to listen to music in a completely different way than most people do. You have to be able to listen to how it's constructed sonically and how it's mixed and analyze the content for not only how it sounds, but how it feels and how it sits during playback. A big part of that is having a playback system that allows a mastering engineer to trust what he or she is hearing and knowing that what they're doing to the mix is going to translate appropriately outside of the critical listening environment they're working in. It's an art form and it's absolutely critical and essential to the overall recording process. It's NOT optional, unless you don't care about how your hard work is going to sound to the end listener. It's analogous to someone representing themselves in a court of law. Sure, there's exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, it's sheer idiocy.

Well the problem is with high dynamic range, the bottom falls out on bad speakers, earbuds, highly compressed mp3 etc. What you need is runtime compression which allows a high dynamic record to sound good on a low dynamic system. It would be the easiest thing in the world to put in itunes, foobar, wmp etc. and on mp3 players, but it doesn't exist for some reason.

I listened to this demonstation on Sennheiser HD280s on a PC behind closed doors and frankly, I heard NO difference between any of the versions of that clip Bob played! #1 - It was played over a PA speaker in an echoey meeting room. #2 - The audio was picked up by a POS built-in camcorder mic! Next time, feed the audio into a board and mix it in with the person's mic! This demo failed to drive home the point.

Who would have guessed Axl Rose was in fact one of the wisest guys in the current music industry ?

The problem is that many record labels hire engineers to make the records louder in the remastering editions. So either the engineer accepts and gets paid or refuses and gets nojob and money. So many need the moeney and dot it although their don't agree and don't like doing it. Life is a bitch.

That is very common in the world of remastering! I attempt to contact many who remaster, but seldom ever receive a reply, after asking questions!

If there's all this debate against loudness,why do they still do it?They know it's wrong and they keep doing it.That's just stupid."We could make it sound good,but we'd rather it don't" ??!?!?!?!?WHY??

You obviously don't understand the point of a mastering engineer. A valid comparison would be to a colorist on a film who keeps the scenes looking consistent even with rain and sun, or for mood. And there are people in photo studios who do nothing but retouching with Photoshop etc. Does anyone laugh at them? Ah, no.

@aarvin1 You can't hear it properly anyways because of the way this video was recorded. You're not listening to the track directly.

Johnny, good points! Why I found many CDs remastered, time and time, again, just to stay competitive, louder. HOWEVER, it didn't start with CDs - it was the same with vinyl singles; as they faded the distortion would lessen - they just had less to work with in an analog world. Why I question if Bob Ludwig even knows this.

DoltBmb: It is a foregone conclusion that the vast majority of music listeners assume that the type of compression done by mp3 is the same as dynamic compression or limiting. Sorry to surprise you; they are not the same. Look up "data compression" in the context of mp3s - you'll get it. Mp3s sound only as good as what they're encoded from. Encode from a remastered Police CD, you'll have a loud, dynamically squashed mp3. Encode from an original Police CD, and you'll have a slightly softer

The problem is that most people listen on iPods/iPhones. And no one wants to grab their crotch everytime they want to change the volume

Which song does he play over and over again? The beginning alone sounds amazing.

To understand why this came about at all, you must factor in what equipment people are listening on. If we all listened on audiophile-grade equipment, engineers wouldn't be compressing the hell out of the recordings. But the youth (who spend disproportionally large $ on music) they are listening on iPods through earbuds, The equivalent of listening to your neighbors music through the apartment wall. At that point, 10% distortion doesn't even register.

Treble is definitely over-powering and ear-scraping...

@glasspig because it doesn't compress the audio....

continued: but punchier and tonally balanced mp3. It's that simple: GIGO!

I listened to John Cougar's "Remastered" Uh-Huh album, on CD. Bob Ludwig really has a lot of nerve complaining about others mastering loud, when he literally destroyed "The Authority Song", my favorite, it was annoyingly loud. Need more professionals to do actual remastering, Bob isn't one, AES or not. t one!

@Thycid Right on man!!!

I wish he had talked about Led Zeppelin II since his mastering is considered the best by most people.

The mastered is less groovy, less danceable and sounds more squashed and smaller !!! come on Bob !! :S

that sounds like Beck

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard disappeared from country radio in the `90's because Garth Brooks' "DDD" records sounded too pristine next to theirs. Radio stations decided classic tracks just didn't sound good compared to new records. So unfortunately it's a fact: you either have to follow the latest trends in audio, like them or not, or be perceived as "obsolete."

Louder does not equal better, and the second example doesn't sound better, but worse. In a certain context, though, it'd be true... perhaps a bar, a venue, or any partying context. That's what he's talking about. Recognize you're listening to these examples recorded with a mic in an echo-prone room thru a downloaded AV file that is highly compressed with a lossy algorithm. Many other detractors of loudness escalation in recording acknowledge that a psychoacoustics game is being played.

... and such is the same with streaming Internet video and MP3s. They throw out a lot that we'd otherwise be enjoying with a decent pair of speakers or headphones. What Bob is showing is the same paradigm, so I see a bit of irony in those asserting that he's wrong because the first one sounds better. Of *course* it does. The point is that some listeners won't think so. You're the other kind of listener, one who'd do the same thing Axl Rose did in his example here.

this video needs a direct line in to hear the differences in his examples. shame, this is the audio industry rite ?

@mr4y whoa i like that. good idea!

Ah, I see! Bob is okay, but I prefer a honest engineer, not one who digitally enhances, then calls it remastering.

Bob Ludwig has a cheek to go on about how much he hates the loudness wars (which he has stated in other interviews as well). He is one of the most notorious mastering engineers in the business when it comes to making CD mastering or remastering too loud. Most releases mastered by Bob since around 2000 have nearly all been over compressed and have had the dynamic range of the music squashed to death. Certain releases have been clipped as well. Just listen to the 2005 release of the 2CD Bryan Adams Anthology. The audio is just awful and a lot worse than the same duplicated tracks that have featured on other earlier Bryan Adams' releases.

@OmuNegru06 Apparently, on that particular matter, he is, more so than the guys from Metallica for example (Death Magnetic being often cited as one of the worst cases of dynamic compression gone wrong).

Yeah, but you might induce pre amp, power amp or other kinds of distortions in the process of "turning up your stereo". Hiss and sibilance isn't music, that's distortion.

Nothing like trying to critically listen to a master when it's been captured via a simple transducer from another transducer (or more). Get it run into the system via line-in! Being there might have been better. Regardless, it seems that modern mastering is going downhill. Everything is becoming too loud and squashed and not clear and crisp. Seeing as he mentioned Coldplay, listening to his work on Mylo Xyloto can be tiresome compared to, say, Parachutes (I don't think he was involved there).

I'm not sure he disagrees with you.

Early on, there didn't seem to be any standard how loud to (re)master Audio CDs; they were all over the place; one song loud, the next song soft. Analog recordings would be boring, in the digital world, without some digital sound enhancing; even The Beatles "Remasters" needed it. Bob Ludwig is an okay person, in my mind.

What BS! Bob's mastering of J.J. Cale's "The Road to Escondido" has about 18 dB of dynamic range maximum! J.J. Cale's stuff has always been recorded well and doesn't need this 40 dB of compression! That record is almost as badly compressed as Santana's "Supernatural!" Bob's work is as bad as everyone else now! It's sad...

@methodinsane :-D

Hm, it's quite useless listening to the sound samples from here. Being there would've been better, however it seems to be a beginner level mastering seminar.

Bob Ludwig is going deaf

This is why we are in such financial troubles. Too much BS and not enough good music to enjoy :)

I don't need transients when I'm jumping dirt mounds and crushing cars in Grave Digger. I DO, however, need maxed-out sonic carnage. Not everyone doesn't drive monster trucks, Bob. Not everyone doesn't listen to things besides lossless Beck verses in Grave Digger, Bob.

There should be a mandatory hearing test for all involved in music production over 40 yrs old. Coldplay sound crap (well done bob)

A lot of hateful comments here about one of the more brilliant people in our industry. You can borrow a soap box to stand on and scream about how loudness doesn't really matter but we all have clients to serve, their clients, and the consumers if you want to get paid. Everybody has to serve somebody.....Keep the soap box when you're done complaining about how stupid the consumers are, the new young artists, and especially the successful ones who finally get their chance to produce their own projects, you know the 3rd and 4th ones that don't really sell. You'll need the soap box to store your dreamy version of the world and the way it should be when you decide that you want to pay the rent. I am very much of a purist but can tell you that music doesn't get noticed if it doesn't at least compare favorably to the stuff out there, with respect to perceived loudness. Too much of a good thing ruins the soup, for sure, but in the right quantities, limiting, normalization, and EQ can be thrilling. Most of those artists from the 60's 70's and 80's would have dreamed of what we could do today with the monitoring systems we have, not to mention a DAW, and the rest.

Loud grabs people's attention. If you made a quiet record while everyone else made loud ones, no one would notice it and that equates to no sales. its not stupid - it makes business sense. Bottom line: Most people don't care about good sound anyway. Music is little more than a minor distraction for them. Besides,how many people have decent hifi systems in 2012 which would allow them to appreciate this stuff? Not fucking many

I don't think so. He's just not very good at presenting his point. At the end he shows Chinese Democracy and how he recommends albums should sound.

Yeah he had me going until he said he thought "Chinese Democracy" was a great album.

name-dropping. weak. read my post!!

Yea Bob, you're full of crap. There's a reason that your stereo has a volume adjustment, so you can friggin turn it up. Same with your radio. What is the point of digital sound's increased dynamic range if you're going to mash it down past what even vinyl has? Yea Bob, it's great, if you like a distorted mess. I just love hiss and sibilants! This is just an attempt to justify the sound engineers increasing tone deafness!

DoltBmb: It is a foregone conclusion that the vast majority of music listeners assume that the type of compression done by mp3 is the same as dynamic compression or limiting. Sorry, to surprise you; they are not the same. Look up "data compression" in the context of mp3s - you'll get it. Mp3s sound only as good as what they're encoded from. Encode from a remastered Police CD, you'll have a loud, dynamically squashed mp3. Encode from an original Police CD, and you'll have a slightly softer