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Comment by hobo123 | Hacker News Reader

Just now I'm wondering why or how we ended up in the loudness war to begin with.

Why wouldn't radio stations just normalize all digital files they're playing to one default volume / loudness? Then "louder" digital songs would only be worse quality / fewer dynamics, but not louder at all.

Sounds like the radio stations are very much complicit. (Also: why are tv or radio ads always so much louder than the rest of their program?)

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Normalization means adjusting the waveform’s amplitude to some level. That’s a precisely defined operation, an objective measure. But “loudness” is a different and perceptual thing. It’s a measure of “how loud” something feels to us, and I understand it depends on the overall dynamics and frequencies, and you can attempt to measure it through different algorithms / heuristics.

The loudness war wasn’t about normalizing to 0db vs -3db, but rather about dynamic compression which is a process that raises the volume of softer sounds without affecting the loudest ones as much (or at all). It’s what you use to make the breathiness of a singer’s voice, or a drum kit’s hi hat, more present in a recording.

Perceived loudness can be quantified with a psychoacoustic model, and louder songs can be played at reduced volume. That's how ReplayGain works.

Oh, that perfectly explains why I don't like modern drums (or rather why I prefer 70s drum sounds) or Indie rock, it all sounds so loud and metallic.

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