Paul Philippart you express this so perfectly!

We all need a savior ;-)

dude, you got that totally right! People will notice, and your music will get a much more ever-lasting caracter that can be cranked up and enjoyed!

Ruud de Boer Thank ou so much for your comment. I am glad the video could be useful to you. Now, on the subject of loudness / dynamic range on tv, that is a different thing apart from R128 loudness and lufs meassurement. Content CAN be more og less dynamic, without the subjective listening level is affected, that is the whole promise of LUFS. Problem is, when its not used correctly. Since 1992, dolby has had dolby digital, that has all the tools built in for local DRC (dynamic range control) meaning that you as a user can apply a engineer controller DRC curve to content if you want less dynamics. What you are suggesting, is that content should be delivered as lowest denominator. Is that what you want? The dolby technology allow for delivering highest denominator (for those that can reproduce great sound) AND tailor the sound at the same time by folding multichannel down to stereo, remixing and applying DRC if user has enabled it. Basicly, that is what happens when you use the “reduce loud sounds” option on a apple tv for instance. I totally acknowledge the problem of big jumps in loudness on tv, but the problem is not R128, the problem is that its not used in the entire chain, and reference mixing levels are not being used by all mixing engineers. Also, I know only extremely broadcasters that is using dolby digital transmission correctly, utilise the features build in to solve all these problems, when used correctly. That is the problem in a bombshell.... education and will to fix a problem that is easily fixed by using LUFS and reference mixing levels in tv production. Another part is on the consumer side... 1 in a hundred consumers might understand the audio settings in their tvs or soundbars , hell as a professional, even I don’t understand the terminology some manufactures “invent” 😁.

Basroos you made the perfect case! The idea is not to compress anything, but to loudness normalize by turning down the volume on loud tracks. This is the procedure you should (ideally) use for a tape: 1) Meassure all tracks and find out what is the lowest value one (usually the track with the most dynamic range) 2) Loudness normalize all other tracks to that value Thats it! You have now consistent subjective volume, AND you have preserved all the dynamics available. Alternatively, use a very reasonable target level (like the EBU standard for R128 that is -23dB) for everything,. Not -14dB that will lead to the problems you describe. Maybe you will enjoy my HIFI review channel "Stjernholm Reviews". Thank you for watching.

@@stjernholmreviews Okay, thanks for your reply. Indeed, I should lower my target LUFS in order to get just what I need. The -14 is not in the standard, but I should have mentioned I use the metering aspects of R128 (like the dynamic range as well) to read the values I need to adjust the levels of the individual tracks, the procedure in your first point. My target was -14 LUFS, because it works well with recording on tape in order to stay away from the noise floor, plus: most of the music I listen to doesn't need that much dynamic range. You did make clear where my problem lies, so thanks very much! I will have a look at the video you suggested.

Fabrizio Di Vicino Actually, the sound check feature of itunes, is now using a loudness oriented correction algorithm. If you check the info window of songs in itunes with the feature enabled, you should see how much the individual songs are corrected on playback, to try to ensure a decent subjective volume between different tracks.

Except, boxes of chocolates tell you exactly what's inside them on the side of the box 😉

Compression can be a good thing for those purposes. Problem is, that it creates a" lowest denominator" , that destroys music. This compression (if needed) should happen in the player unit, OR the music business should see the possibility and offer two different mixes of the music. That would put a lot of focus on the issue, and maybe people would start listening again?

tarstarkusz Shouldn't it be named "Loudness flattening" or even "Flattening of dynamics"? Today most people call it "Loudness Correction" which supposed to be the correction of harmonics controlled by loudness in a way to achieve better impression..

Mikexception From what I understand and knowing little about audio, the loudness function is supposed to bump up the levels before the main amp which in effect would be like having a recording that was mastered at a higher level. This supposedly increases sound quality at low volumes.

***** I am afraid You both mix volume with loudness. Loudness in audio stuff depend on volume control. If we imagine constant loudness it means we need to flatten dynamics, also cannot operate volume potentiometer and cannot move from speaker. . Loudness is pure acoustic and is volume function. What is described here is dealing with volume. My complain here is because I am dealing now with well known from 80 years loudness curves by Fletcher- Munson and it's nothing to do with changing the volume but with adopting spectrum of frequencies to existing low loudness. Because it's complicated and difficult now they exclude low loudness.. But it's just another distortion Many amplifiers have button or circuitry adaptive to loudness and calling it "loudness" may be confusing..

tarstarkusz Just wanting to clarify... You are correct. Lowering the volume of Green Day's song made it worse, because that was how loudly they intentionally mixed their song. Every instrument in there had its proper place and volume. It was at a good dB RMS already.

Tim Lewis so very true!!!! spot on.

Rex Holes rex, much love for that comment!

***** , the video has overall loudness of approx. -23 LUFS, but has been gained around 4 DB for youtube listening.

trackdayklub Thanks 4 the answer - I will keep definitely EBU R 128 at my newest uploads of soundtracks/remixes - this guideline makes totally sense. As long as R 128 isn't international standard (I hope it will happen soon) , yet KZfaqrs only have to turn up the volume a little bit. Should be only a problem for fat, lazy Americans or other artificial people of the modern civilization who use their cars to get to their letterbox.

Yeah, I will do this with all my other updates in the future, too (just have uploaded my first remix at EBU R 128 standards). The problems are only the volume jumps between my uploads and the the other youtube uploads. If they switch from my rather silent uploads to the louder uploads of others, they probably fall of their chairs if they forget to adjust the volume.

I really prefer the straight EBU-R128 way with a programm loudness of - 23 dB where I don't need any compressors/limiters to manipulate the signal peaks. - 19 LUFS (or - 19 dB) can be a bit tight cause I've measured some tracks where the peaks have already been at a value of 18 dB over the program loudness. And I think it's much easier and better to convert a great idea into one real norm without unnecessary exceptions that will just bring confusion and a pile of another rules as well as lots of red tape.

+timaeus22222 I think your missing the entire point of the video AND the new meters.

+timaeus22222 What he was showing here is that over compression doesn't sound louder when you play things back using a measurement of how we perceive sound. He matched the songs based on the new meters not RMS.. and both were played back at same volume in relation to human hearing not digital voltage. Also with the new standard.. this is how you would hear both songs in relation to each other in a tv show or on the radio for example.

DontYaTalkSIlly You missed my point. That drastically alters the TRUE volume of the original song. I defined my comment in RMS quite intentionally, and I mean every single thing in my comment precisely the way I wrote it. My point is, I would never mix according to this "standard" because it's too quiet. Listen to the examples I posted.

+timaeus22222 Wow your still missing the point... ... the only thing making an over compressed mix louder is the lack of dynamics because the RMS is closer to the peak value.... the new standard just means dynamic music is played at the same volume as over compressed music. It uses human hearing as the metering basis so saying it is "too quiet" makes no sense at all. The new standard won't mean that compressed music is quieter in any way at all.... Just that if your going for compression... you do it to improve the sound not to make things louder. The mixes you post seem to me like you have a bad sense of how a good mix sounds... since the 1 that you call "too loud" is the better mix of the 2 regardless of dynamics.. The "proper loudness" mix has frequency masking, sounds dull and is kinda unbalanced and would sound quieter no matter what meter you use.

+timaeus22222 "TRUE" volume has nothing to do with peak db values and rms measures voltage not volume. A 3000 hz tone at -12 db rms is much louder than a 50 hz tone at -12 db rms.

+Trevor Hackathorn His stuff has always sounded fantastic. I do think people are forgetting that Green Day is a form of Punk... and the compression is a stylistic choice. That said I don't enjoy the squashed sound for very long.

***** Holy crap! I have screaming tinnitus in both ears, and can't hear much real sound above 14 khz, but there is definitely something awful about that remaster... It is smashed and way too much upper mids. I always liked that song though... It's gonna be in my head :D Or maybe I'm an old man. Dunno. Do they get carried away with Izotope Ozone's harmonic enhancer or something? I'm speaking from ignorance here, because I've read they use a lot of outboard gear (exciters, some tube stuff, etc.) but never done any real mastering myself.

+CodeStation it is so squashed by compression and limiting that it is totally ubearable to listen to. Even you, with limited hearing can hear that :-), why did the mastering engineer do this? To make it sound as loud as other tracks on the soundtrack album probaly.. If he had adjusted all tracks for overall loudness like we show in the video, the result woukd have been much better, and the dynamics of each song would have been the original one. Not even the gods can reach people this stupid...

agree. Also so much more musical from the beginning.

You even asking, wants me to kill myself ;-) RMS level does dont tell us anything about the perceived loudness of the music. The loudness meassurement does, though!

Morten Stjernholm That's a little silly of you. I just watched another video (because your's wasn't very informative concerning the details of how R128 is calculated) whereby the loudness level was about the same as the RMS level. Now if you are saying that there is some frequency weighting based on the Fletcher-Munson curves or something similar (maybe they are normalized to some loudness level) that would be interesting but you don't say in this video.

Pinkybum P The goal of the video was to be as non-technical as possible, and simply try to show why loudness meassurements are the holy grail for ensuring consistensy, improve sound by not being a slave of loudness, and so on. Everyone who want to dig down, should go to the ebu loudness site: tech.ebu.ch/loudness or look at great resources like the TC electronic loudness site: www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/loudness-explained/.

kristaps 5645 That does not make a difference. If you listen to the overall volume/loudness of the songs when corrected, you should experience that they now feels equal, with no need to adjust your listening levels to compensate.

trackdayklub distortion creates artificial upper harmonics, thats why it is different.

Funny you say that, I had the same expirience on my buddys super hi-fi system. All was shit but a couple of tracks, even thing that i prevoiusly thought sounded great..

trackdayklub Exactly, I was exited to use my FLACS, until I realized higher bit-rates don't mean much when the song is what actually sounds like shit. :(