Loudness War

Recently, a number of excellent articles have been published that deal with declining state of music production.

Rolling Stone's, Death of High Fidelity is a great place to start. Much of today's music is now played on tiny computer speakers, though iPods, or as MP3s. Because of this, songs are now produced and mastered specifically for this low-quality medium. Like when a good sports team plays down to it's competition, high quality music studios are playing down to 128 kbps MP3s.

The main change in music production is increasing the overall volume. Sound levels are cranked up so even the soft parts become loud. The benefit is that the Fallout Boy MP3 you just bought actually grabs your attention from your crappy Altec Lansing computer speakers. The downside? Contrast disappears and dynamic range is compressed. Since contrast and dynamics don't sell records, attention grabbing wins this war.

The trend towards cranking up the soft parts is referred to as The Loudness War. It's evident in most modern songs as well as remasters and reissues of older works.

Here's a comparison (taken from the Rolling Stone article) of U2's song With or Without You. On the left is the original audio. On the right, the remastered version shows much less contrast as the quiet parts have been turned up.

Here's an even more drastic example with an ABBA remaster.

More on the Loudness War:

...wimpy, loud, sound.