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Halfblind

The Volume These Days

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First I am very sensitive to sounds especially their volumes. I have found that there is a great change to the volume of media especially in later years.

 

  1. Music Volume - Back in the 90's and 2000's the volume of music was relatively loud but clear. There was no need to turn the volume up to hear the nice sounds in your ears. In recent years computers, MP3 players, smartphones, game consoles, and headphones play the music much softer than in the past. Music volume itself has changed dramatically over the years. For instance take a song from the 90's the volume was level and clear. There was often no need for software to change how the song was played because it was good enough. Now music is overly loud, unclear, full of bass and distortions. It is very difficult to find a perfect level with current computers and software to give them the clarity that I desire.
  2. TV Volume - Again back in the 90's and 2000's program volumes and commercial volumes were relatively standardized and uniform between them. Now the program volume is very low forcing the watcher to turn up the volume to hear what is going on while the commercial volume is very loud and intrusive. When the commercial block hits you are bombarded with a wall of noise and confusion.
  3. Internet Volume - Similar to TV Volume video content on YouTube, Netflix and other sites remain at a rather low volume while the commercials again are rather loud and intrusive. Though this is not as bad as watching TV or Cable it does get rather annoying to constantly play with the volume bar on the computer.
  4. Video Game Volume - In the past video game sound and music volume were subjective to what software they used to create the game. Between each game, and game company, the volumes seemed uniform and did not vary all that much. Now video game volume is very loud and annoying. I am forced to turn the TV down to 15 or below just so that it does not hurt my ears. I am surprised by HDMI sound technology the volume seems more clear that what has been used in the past. I just wish that video game companies would dial down the volume just a bit so that I can enjoy the game a little bit better. I was surprised when I started playing the game Vanquish I no longer had to turn the volume down to enjoy the game. It is one of the only games, released in recent years, that did not force me to turn my TV volume down. I love the game because of it. I have also noticed how great FMOD sounds compared to other sound producing technologies. It sounds rather clear and the volume levels sound even. Their is a great balance between treble and bass. I don't have to toy with the sound on my computer when I am playing a game using FMOD I just have to turn the volume down on some older PCs.

 

Has anyone else noticed how sound volumes have increased while the sound quality has decreased over the years? Does anyone else find this annoying?

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TV volume changes between TV shows and commercials are especially noticeable. My memory is too shitty to remember if it wasn't as bad in the past.

 

Movie trailers are especially annoying today with their ridiculously overpowered thuds every time they flash each word of a sentence on the screen. Horror movies especially are just full of fucking jarring noises and screams and screeches and other jump scares, which has killed horror movies for me.

 

I wanna slap my wife's phone out of her hand everytime she opens up snapchat too. Well be sitting in our quiet living room and shell pull up someone's snapchat story, not knowing her volume was maxed out since the last time she was using her phone to listen to music. I dont know what the fuck it is with people but 90% of people on snapchat just use it to record video of a loud ass music concert, or a noisy bar, or a party with 50 people screaming over each other or reving the engine on their stupid ricer car. Wow I didn't realize you were so cool!

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TV commercials are loud so you can hear them while you go to the kitchen or bathroom or something like that.

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I thought it's to wake up those who fell asleep while watching TV...

My guess on the general volume stuff: It's the attention span. We basically get flooded with entertainment, so over time our attention span began to decrease. Loud stuff usually gets our attention, even when it just annoys us.

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I feel that both volume and quality have increased over the years. When comparing waveforms from (non-remastered) albums from the 60s to the late 80s to albums from say, last year, the volume has clearly increased. This is a generalization so I'm sure there are exceptions, but with that said, the amount of audible hiss also seems to have generally reduced alongside the upward trend of volume. This is likely due to fine-tuning all the various equipment that goes into recording audio. I think we've essentially hit the volume peak though, it comes to a point where volume cannot be increased further without peaking which causes horrible pops and audio tearing.

 

I remember seeing this little thing on Aussie TV (which is basically 95% ads and 5% sport anyway, pretty much no point even owning one anymore) where they were covering their ass in some strange way, saying "Ads definitely are NOT louder!" like some kind of weird attempting at hiding the truth despite the fact that we all have ears and can clearly tell ads are usually about double the volume of the normal programming. It seemed so strange an unnecessary for them to even bring it up on since it isn't fooling anyone whose hearing isn't terrible but rather bringing unnecessary attention to it.

 

This is a side note, but is there any validity to the old adage of "record quality is clearer than MP3 quality"? I know that when something is saved in a digital format there is some degree of compression going on, but I seriously have my doubts than any human can tell the different between a 256kbps audio file and a record be played back using a diamond needle. I've played back records through very high quality equipment and hear no difference whatsoever, other than the occasional click or pop from the record, which is to be expected considering its physical playback.

 

Anyway, to sum all this shit up: Ads are generally as loud as they can possibly be without actually peaking. It would be nice if broadcasters/video makers/etc leveled their volume accordingly, making it as loud as it can go without the introduction of peaking or hiss or any of that unpleasant stuff, because then the ads would seem to be normal volume by comparison.

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1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

This is a side note, but is there any validity to the old adage of "record quality is clearer than MP3 quality"? I know that when something is saved in a digital format there is some degree of compression going on, but I seriously have my doubts than any human can tell the different between a 256kbps audio file and a record be played back using a diamond needle. I've played back records through very high quality equipment and hear no difference whatsoever, other than the occasional click or pop from the record, which is to be expected considering its physical playback.

Judged as a listening format only, I don't see any advantages personally. Vinyl is inferior to CD in just about every way. The grooves slowly degrade with time. Plus the annoying maintenance of keeping the record/needle clean. Along with the size and space they occupy... also popping and clicking sounds, etc. It's so dated. But the artwork is larger. So that's a cool thing. And it's a refreshing/different way to experience music. But those aren't auditory advantages.

 

Still, there's one thing that's true. The mastering can vary wildly. This is where I think some people confuse "superior" quality with vinyl. Sometimes it's true that vinyl sounds better, but the improvement has nothing to do with the format itself. The real reason stems from the fact that certain albums released on CD were rushed and done from poor quality tapes. Or the EQ was messed up, with odd remastering choices (too much bass or treble, squashed dynamic range, etc). Some albums on vinyl have a more balanced approach to EQ and were cut from the original analog tapes. So in these cases they can have a totally different sound that some people prefer (clearer, less 'digital'). And those original mixes might not be available on CD. Therein lies the reason first pressings are so sought after. People want to hear the music in its original form, pre-loudness war and EQ adjustments introduced via the CD age.

 

A good example is the band Bathory (yes, even us metal-heads can be 'audiophiles' lol). All CD versions (old and new) of the 80's Bathory catalog sound like crap. The mastering engineer purposely added echo and distorted reverb to give the music a more black metal "atmosphere" but instead it just ends up sounding tinny, weak and lifeless. The original vinyl has a hundred times more power by comparison. Because the mastering was done without futzed up EQ or weird echo added in. So you get stronger bass lines and clearer riffs. It's closer to how the music sounded live, and how the artist intended it to sound. Sadly that mix remains exclusive to vinyl (as is the case for some artists). I wish they'd release it on CD one day. Though you can find the vinyl rips on YouTube at least. Even compressed and digitized they still sound amazing. Because it's the mix that makes the difference, not the format!

 

In general, I find most CD remasters to be pretty good. Close to (or sometimes better) than the vinyl. But not always. You have to judge everything on a case by case basis. This is where the beauty of YouTube comes into play. If you hunt through various uploads of a song/album from different uploaders you can discover all the different remasters out there. Compare the two in different tabs. Also use Discogs for reference to hunt down the version you like most. In general, I find original 80's CDs sound too quiet and thin for my tastes. But some people prefer that, so to each their own. Some remasters are downright dreadful too.

 

As for the whole lossless FLAC vs mp3 thing... I actually prefer FLAC. Maybe I'm wrong, but I swear I can hear a slight difference. Lossless has cleaner, more pronounced highs and bass. Granted I could just be a victim of the placebo effect. And the difference is indeed subtle. But I also find lossless easier on the ears for long-term listening. Sometimes I have albums playing on headphones for hours at a time and the mp3 versions can get fatiguing after a while.

 

Meh, just my two cents on it all. [/has-been psychotic ramblings of a babbling music 'tard]

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21 minutes ago, RUSH said:

I can hear a slight difference. Lossless has cleaner, more pronounced highs and bass.

 Yup. Lossless is the way to go for something you really like. I'v all the eminem albums in FLAC and mp3, and there is a clear difference, more notibly in newer releases than old ones though in this particular situation.

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9 hours ago, Halfblind said:

Music Volume

This can probably be attributed to the loudness war, where "loud" simply sells better.  Unfortunately "louder" means compressing the dynamic range and introducing a crapload of distortion, thereby killing the audio quality.  I'll outright skip listening to albums this get bad enough, which is sad because some of my favorite artists have been guilty of this (Front Line Assembly's "Artificial Soldier", KMFDM's "Blitz").

 

When I master my own music, I generally aim for between -14.0 and -13.5 RMS (using square wave method or however you call it).  This gives it a decent dynamic range while still being semi-loud.  Eventually I'll switch to using the LKFS scale introduced in EBU R128 and aim for about -16 on that, but that's something I plan to slowly transition to.

 

9 hours ago, Halfblind said:

TV Volume

If I'm not mistaken, that's partially why the EBU R128 recommendation was introduced.  Aside from defining the LKFS unit, it also recommends audio be normalized to -23 LKFS for broadcasts.  This would fix that problem right up.

 

9 hours ago, Halfblind said:

Video Game Volume

I suppose games have gotten louder, yeah, but I don't notice it as much.  Maybe it's just the games I play.

 

One thing I have noticed, however, is the inclusion of dynamic range compressors in the audio pipeline of some game engines.  I gotta say, that's actually quite nice, especially when it's adjustable... as long as they don't duplicate the loudness war with it.

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Somewhat related to both music and video games. This is from a relatively recent Killer Instinct reboot:

 

 

I gotta admit, I really like most of the soundtrack, and I haven't even played the game. This track is among my favorites. But Jesus Christ, what's with all the BANGING? It hurts most in mediocre headphones where a lot of the bassy stuff just turns into noise.

 

Vintage stuff:

 

 

Sounds much cleaner, methinks, with little to no attempts to make you permanently deaf. Production quality on that old soundtrack was surprisingly decent, especially compared to the one accompanying the N64 installment, which was pretty much a crappy rendition of the in-game tracks with no depth. Maybe with some better samples, but I wouldn't even count on that.

 

Also, a bit of a warning: the old soundtrack is like an embodiment of the 90s in all the best AND worst ways. I suppose the new one is similar in that it does the same to the 10s.

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18 hours ago, Halfblind said:

Music Volume - Back in the 90's and 2000's the volume of music was relatively loud but clear. There was no need to turn the volume up to hear the nice sounds in your ears. In recent years computers, MP3 players, smartphones, game consoles, and headphones play the music much softer than in the past. Music volume itself has changed dramatically over the years. For instance take a song from the 90's the volume was level and clear. There was often no need for software to change how the song was played because it was good enough. Now music is overly loud, unclear, full of bass and distortions. It is very difficult to find a perfect level with current computers and software to give them the clarity that I desire.

I listen to many different kinds of genres, some of which is extremely heavy handed in terms of bass and/or distortion. Neither do I have any issues hearing details, nor does the sound feel "blurry", unless it's like a 128kb/s garbage mp3, at which point it's guaranteed to find the shortest way off of my harddrive. On that note, I guess I'm pretty clean when it comes these disgracefully low definition formats. Unless this is some "back in the days things were better" inspired kind of rant, you might want to consider using programs like "mixed in key" to "normalize" the overall volume of your music collection (and not have itunes do that the shitty way), and perhaps check if the programs you use to listen to music on a regular basis are set-up properly.

 

As a matter of fact, the tools used to produce music have vastly improved over the last decade, which ultimately has led to an overall increase in quality, rather than the other way around. Proper use of these tools require the knowledge to do so, but it doesn't make the general principle any less true.

 

18 hours ago, Halfblind said:

TV Volume - Again back in the 90's and 2000's program volumes and commercial volumes were relatively standardized and uniform between them. Now the program volume is very low forcing the watcher to turn up the volume to hear what is going on while the commercial volume is very loud and intrusive. When the commercial block hits you are bombarded with a wall of noise and confusion.

This is one of the many reasons I do not watch TV anymore. Internet volume is a similar issue, however the "ad-blocks" are a lot shorter, thus more sufferable.

 

15 hours ago, Doomkid said:

This is a side note, but is there any validity to the old adage of "record quality is clearer than MP3 quality"? I know that when something is saved in a digital format there is some degree of compression going on, but I seriously have my doubts than any human can tell the different between a 256kbps audio file and a record be played back using a diamond needle.

It's somewhat difficult to hear any differences when you look at, say, a 320kb/s mp3 and the "original", but the moment you get anything lower than 320 you can actually hear some variances, especially when you turn up the volume a little more than you normally would. 128kb/s mp3s for example are a disgrace and should be shunned. If you have a metal song with lots of crashes, you just need to listen to those to tell there's crap going on the moment the "compression" does its unholy work, because the crashes and hi-hats start "whistling".

 

On behalf of vinyl, there's a good reason many people swear on that stuff. How impactful the difference is in reality is subject to the eye of the beholder, for that matter. If I could afford the luxury and had the "real estate" to store them, I'd have all my drum and bass and dubstep tunes on vinyl because I can tell there's a difference.

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Wait, what? That Wikipedia article cites Daft Punk's Random Access Memories as an example for outstanding mastering.

I have never heard that album myself, but according to the DR Database the CD has an average DR value of 8, which isn't good at all.

Music volume might have 'slightly' improved recently, but that hardly matters when it's still shit after all.

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4 hours ago, rehelekretep said:

re: music volume it has been getting better in the last 10 years or so, not worse:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#2010s

Not to accuse wikipedia of spreading misinformation, but these graphs they show there to examplify the "loudness war" tell little to nothing, since they aren't even colourcoded. If there's an actual trend going on that makes it so music, in any format, is becoming louder and louder, I sure have missed it.

 

What's even more concerning is that displaying "loudness" by way of a graph doesn't actually say much about how "loud" it is in reality. See screenie below:

loudordifferent.jpg.6a1b300e86d44272ad1175e2d494d346.jpg

The tunes I loaded into deck A and B were made roughly around the same time, and then got a re-release and a remaster on the "15 years of metalheadz" compilation as far as I'm aware. The tunes and their graphs as you see them are unaltered in the sense that I did no tweaking to their "sound scheme". If you listen to both of these on a retailer's store page, there is no doubt in my mind which tune you'll think is the "louder" one. When you then listen to the tunes in deck C and D, both of which were made a good decade ago (both names having the word "noise" in them being a coincidence), if not more, you'll have a much harder time telling which one's the louder one, eventhough their graphs seem like a good clue.

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22 minutes ago, rehelekretep said:

im not really sure what point youre trying to make there but im very pleased that you listen to D&B :D

I was trying to convey that for one "loudness" is a subjective sensation, and using "uncoded graphs" to "display" an increase in loudness is slighty inaccurate.

 

Are you saying I did it wrong? :p

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1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Are you saying I did it wrong? :p

Well, the songs on the bottom left and top right are low-quality MP3s, as you can see by the waves being cut off after a certain point. You're doing that wrong :P

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11 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

Well, the songs on the bottom left and top right are low-quality MP3s, as you can see by the waves being cut off after a certain point. You're doing that wrong :P

Nope, all of them are 320kb/s mp3s. I  checked the versions I bought and the volume adjusted ones I made with mixed in key just now to make sure. You're looking at it wrong. :p

 

Not to mention that both titles in deck A and B are from the same release, so, yeah...

Edited by Nine Inch Heels

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5 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

Well, the songs on the bottom left and top right are low-quality MP3s, as you can see by the waves being cut off after a certain point. You're doing that wrong :P

While minor changes in amplitude can occur during mp3 (or vorbis or opus or...) compression, as well as sample rate reduction, that's not what's causing the waves to be cut off in her screenshot.  The cut off of the amplitude that you're looking at is caused by brickwall limiting from when it was mastered.  If you want to see what audio compression does, you have to look in the frequency domain.

 

The top waveform is a 48KHz 32-bit floating point WAV file exported out of my DAW.  It's mastered to -13.58 dB RMS.  The bottom is a 96kbit mp3 file, made from the same WAV using LAME with this command line: "lame -b 96 -h -q0 --resample 48000"

DreR8pC.png

 

That's in the time domain, where the X axis is time and the Y axis is amplitude.

 

Here are the spectrograms for the exact same files (WAV on top, MP3 on bottom), this time with X being time, Y being frequency, and color being amplitude.  Note that I'm only showing frequencies between 20Hz and 24KHz.

BZ8qsI6.png

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31 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Not to mention that both titles in deck A and B are from the same release, so, yeah...

I've seen compilations with widely differing quality between songs, it's definitely rare but it happens.

 

As for the others, good question. I could perform an analysis if I had the files, but I'll just assume there's something else going on. Maybe they didn't go for full amplification, maybe it's a filter they applied...

 

6 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

While minor changes in amplitude can occur during mp3 (or vorbis or opus or...) compression, as well as sample rate reduction, that's not what's causing the waves to be cut off in her screenshot.  The cut off of the amplitude that you're looking at is caused by brickwall limiting from when it was mastered.  If you want to see what audio compression does, you have to look in the frequency domain.


Yeah, the spectrogram definitely makes it easier to see, but you can see from your own images that the amplitude goes from lots of peaks touching the limit to very few doing that. Usually, when working with louder music, like what NIH posted, I tend to assume that if it's not at the peaks, it's very compressed.

 

I'm not always right and I admit when I'm wrong, but my method has had a good success ratio so far. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited by Albertoni

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10 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

but you can see from your own images that the amplitude goes from lots of peaks touching the limit to very few doing that.

Part of that is that I just noticed the source is a 96KHz 32-bit wav, not a 48KHz one, so LAME resampled it anyway.  And I high doubt that LAME's resampler is as good as SoX's ^_^  But the other part is certain frequencies changing amplitude due to the compression, but this is still very small.

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8 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

I've seen compilations with widely differing quality between songs, it's definitely rare but it happens.

True, having different qualities on the same compilation is nothing unheard of. However, in regards to:

9 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

As for the others, good question. I could perform an analysis if I had the files, but I'll just assume there's something else going on. Maybe they didn't went for full amplification, maybe it's a filter they applied...

The only title that looks like it actually "clips" a lot is the one in the bottom left corner, and that is, in fact, intended, since it's kind of like as if they made drum and bass with "oldschool" methods of "sound design" used in the industrial/noise genres at times. What some musicians did was to let the volume clip on purpose, to create a kind of distortion or dissonance that couldn't be created with filters (and their inherent resonances) that were available (to the musicians) at the time to a satisfying degree. A good example of letting volumes clip on purpose would be this tune right here:

 

YukiRaven might like this thing. It's quite droning ;-)

 

Note that, when you look at the larger graphs, you're looking a the tune in a vastly magnified fashion, if you look at the smaller graphs below, which serve as the "track overview" they all look as if they clipped most of the time. That being said, if you look at, say, a snare's waveform and magnify it, the peak of the volume also looks slightly lengthy in spite of lasting only a split second.

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10 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

But the other part is certain frequencies changing amplitude due to the compression, but this is still very small.

You can safely assume that in most cases, but trust me... I used to rip lots of vinyls for what.cd, back when that torrent site still existed. Sometimes, going from FLAC to 192kbps mp3s really changed the waveform. Still, edge cases. Edge cases everywhere. Thanks for the input and the schooling.

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Dude...back when Billy Mays was alive and did the oxyclean commercials...he would freak me out pretty bad when he would suddenly just appear..."HI BILLY MAYS HERE WITH OXYCLEAN!!!!666!!!!!"  The stuff of nightmares.  His commercials always seemed to be the loudest already, and then he would scream.

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