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Comment by rcthompson | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.

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From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis:

"Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results."

and

"We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this often sound “smaller” than those with LP scores closer to zero.

Hear it for yourself For example, compare the loud sections of these two Metallica songs on YouTube - The Day That Never Comes (LP -5.8)[1] and Hardwired (LP -2.4)[2]. Which has more impact?

Loudness normalization means you have the opportunity to make your music sound better, too. In our experience, LP between 0 and -2 on YouTube will work well for even the loudest genres. For example, Drake’s recent hit God’s Plan has a score of LP -0.8 on YouTube, and it sounds huge."

[1]: https://youtu.be/dkNfNR1WYMY [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBHL3v4d3I&feature=youtu.be [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&feature=youtu.be

Ironically, after a brief sampling, the first Metallica song seems to have more "impact" to me, and the second seems to be smaller. Admittedly, I didn't listen to the whole of either one. But I found it odd enough to mention.

Ironic you pick on Metallica as example as they basically "won" the loudness wars[0] with the release of Death Magnetic. So ridiculously overblown and compressed that it was clipping constantly and heavily featured in mainstream media. Even one of the album's mastering engineers complained.

Lars thought it was great.

[0] http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the-loud...

Just to be clear, it is the site authors who wrote that about the two Metallica songs, not me.

I believe they are concerned about the Loudness War, where songs released over the past 10+ years have been mastered to be as close to 0db as possible.

This was done for decades by radio stations applying strong compression, because they knew that someone going from frequency to frequency was more likely to stop on a station that sounded loud, implying that they were getting a stronger signal and could listen to it longer before they drove out of range. The longer the listener stayed on their station, the more ad impressions. But then the record labels started doing it and so even buying a CD meant you were getting a lower-quality album.

A few years ago Apple mandated the use of their Sound Check tool that penalizes iTunes Radio songs that are all-loud, all-the-time. And it sounds (no pun intended) that Spotify and other services followed their lead.

Google cache of article because the site is unresponsive:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P4y5VeS...

I have an album from a few years ago on streaming services that was mastered to about -9 on the LUFS scale. It sounds nice and loud on SoundCloud, which doesn’t do any normalization, but on Spotify, the normalization algorithm turns it down enough that it sounds noticeably softer than music by other electronic artists (although some of that probably comes down to my mixing skills versus those of experienced recording engineers).

Spotify used to normalize to -11 LUFS, but more recently has migrated to -14, which other streaming services already use and seems to be becoming the standard. For my new album that was just released, I mastered to about -11 to -13 LUFS, which tends to be loud enough to still stand out un-normalized, but is close enough to target that it doesn’t take a noticeable hit on normalization.

Considering the original EBU R 128 standard recommendation is -23 LUFS, these still seem to be crazy numbers to me. :)

The idea is that clueless execs force mastering engineers to heavily compress the recordings to make them "loud". This shows the execs that if they do that, the streaming services will undo any extra "loudness" leaving them with just a compressed record.

A great example of this is the album Death Magnetic by Metallica.

The album version is compressed to hell but the version that shipped with Guitar Hero has none of that extra compression, presumably because someone who wasn't deaf mixed it.

The difference is night and day.

If you can find it, listen to the original version of the Dire Straits album "Dire Straits" -- Then listen to it with volume normalization.

Dynamic range is good...

But this isn't changing the dynamic range. It's not normalizing the song on it's own. It's normalizing the with regard to the rest of the musical catalogue, which simply amounts to turning the volume down a certain amount on the whole song. So, to repeat, that changes noting about the dynamic range of the song.

In fact, if music producers stopped trying to make their music so loud, there would be more room for dynamic range in the music. The goal of this site seems to be that they wouldn't mix a whole song to be top volume, since it won't play any louder most places anyway. This in turn could lead to the return of using more dynamic range. I have my doubts that this will actually happen.

it is limiting the high end volume which.... changes the dynamic range. [0]

Listen to a good recording of something like The William Tell Overture and you should notice that the quiet parts are less than 10% or so of volume of the loud parts.

Listening to that Dire Straits album really illustrates the point.

0: https://www.emusician.com/gear/brickwall-limiting

Loudness normalisation and limiting are different things.

Limiting is about turning down the music when it peaks above a certain threshold measured in decibels, and loudness normalisation is about normalising music to its perceived loudness, measured in LUFS.

Excessive dynamic range compression wasn't done at that time and many records were well mastered. Other good examples are Pink Floyd and even Led Zeppelin records. Not generally considered audiophile quality, but they just sound great.

Back then these records were made to be played back on big hi-hi systems. Big speakers that filled the room and were placed far away from the listener. This is not a standard setup today. You're more likely to see music played from wimpy TV speakers, headphones or earbuds.

We debated between using the word "penalty" or something more neutral, like "score." In the end, we felt that since most music will be turned down, penalty seemed appropriate, though it is a bit cheeky.

At one time, television used to allow advertisers to up the volume for their commercials. I don't recall if that was broadcast or cable. I thought a regulation was put into place for that, requiring a constant set volume, but like many things, it's either ignored or gone away.

My understanding is that the rule put a maximum volume in place for shows. An average show will run the gamut, and may only hit the upper limit once or twice (for example during some action or music sequence). Commercials are engineered to be as close to the upper limit as possible for their entire duration. It doesn't matter that there's an upper limit to the volume, because it sounds relatively much louder than whatever was on just before it, and it sounds as loud as the loudest most exciting and dramatic bits of the show.

I get a sense that this site is targeting the kinds of people who take part in the "loudness war." Producers and engineers I suppose? Whoever decides that their song needs to be louder so that it yields more attention.

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