mastering engineer Greg Calbi comments on the loudness wars
As a music enthusiast, it has been frustrating dealing with these loudness war issues that has been plaguing CDs over the last decade. If you haven’t heard about the issue, it all originates from record companies wanting their CDs as “loud” as possible so that their songs, when placed in “shuffle mode”, would be able to compete with all the other pop records that have been mastered in this manner. And in order to make the songs as loud as possible, mastering engineers have to digitally limit those transient audio peaks (like cymbal crashes and snare drum hits) to avoid sonic distortion. But when they do that, the dynamic range in the music is lost and what you end up with is what is known as the brickwalled effect. And without natural dynamics in music, the human ear gets fatigued much more easily. So essentially the enjoyment of the musical experience is lost because of this. and ironically the record companies are inadvertently hurting their industry by producing music that are excruciating to listen to!! go figure!
This problem has become so pervasive that I tend to avoid “remastered” CDs of classic albums altogether. More often than not the original release of a classic album will sound better than the newer remastered version.
For those that aren’t that familiar with the loudness debacle, watch world-renowned mastering engineer Greg Calbi speak on this subject in this youtube clip:
So, keep all your pre-1995 CDs if you can. and avoid remastered versions of your old favorites unless for some reason you like experiencing ear fatigue.
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