Volume Wars-- Are things improving, getting worse, or status quo?

Worse with digital because the music is getting more and more compressed

http://dr.loudness-war.info/

Cheers George

Most of new music is pure crap although some people love it.

Last night, my friend Robert brought over an LP of 1939 recordings of the Duke Ellington orchestra that had to be transferred from 78 rpm recordings. Not sure if the new music is pure crap, but the old music is pure joy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbjzfZSmQMM

Frank

The Loudness Wars are still raging but you can find exceptions. The Steven Wilson Remixes of some of the big prog-rockers (ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull) are considered to be tastefully done with good dynamic range. Steven Wilson is a contemporary prog-rocker and even some of his albums have been squashed:

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Steven+Wilson&album=

In an interview, Miles Showell, Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios says that limiting was done on the cd of the White Album but none was used on the Blu-Ray 24/96 version. These are small victories but they offer some hope.

https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/beatles-50th-anniversary-edition

What’s the difference in the way you approached the mastering of the vinyl and CDs?

The process is similar. However, there is an extra step for the CD, which is the digital limiting. Now that we seem to have reached something resembling a truce in the loudness wars, there is a lot less limiting going on for the CD than there was a few years ago. This can only be a good thing. Giles and Sam’s new remixes were high resolution digital and I kept it high resolution all the way through; only dropping the resolution to CD specification for the CD master. The master lacquer discs were cut from the high resolution non-limited mastered files. I am pleased to say these same non-limited high resolution files that I used to cut the vinyl masters are also on the Blu Ray discs.

I was listening to Ray Davies "Americana" last night and it sounded pretty gentle to me. It and its follow-up, "Our Country" are really good albums, more in the vein of his 70s concept albums. I think they are definitely worth a listen and better if you do sit down and really listen to them.