The Loudness Race

Last night I used my car for the first time in about a week. My car has 5 bands on the radio for storing presets, one for AM, two for FM and two for XM. When I don’t drive it for a while, for some reason, the radio defaults to the first FM band. I listen exclusively to XM because New York broadcasting is so abysmal. So when I started the car and an FM station began blaring, I was shocked. I wasn’t shocked as much by the music as by the sound. I hadn’t listened to terrestrial radio for a long time and it sounds even worse than I remember. It’s amazing what you can get used to. I actually liked the song that was playing (On The Jack, I think the station is called, you might get a song you dig once in a while.), but I couldn’t listen to it because it was so terribly mangled by dynamic processing.

How do I simplify this?

Terrestrial radio is regulated by the FCC. Stations have strict requirements to broadcast only at the frequency and at the power at which they are licensed. Therefore, through a process called compression, they electronically “crush” the audio they’re broadcasting as much as possible. The result is that all of the highest levels of the music are reduced to the same level as the quietest parts, and the whole lot is then re-maximized to the legal limit. I know it sounds technical, and I guess it is. The end result is a mess that sounds nothing like the recording was supposed to sound at the recording studio. The goal is to make your radio station loader than everyone else’s. I guess the reasoning is that if it seems to jump out of your radio, more people will listen. If you’re actually listening, like I am, the opposite effect is probably achieved.

Commercials on television are done the same way. Have you ever been watching a television show when the station goes to a commercial and had your head nearly blown off by the increase in volume? The level isn’t any higher than the one for the show, but all of the audio has been maximized to the legal limit, presumably to get your attention.

Did you ever notice how a song you hear on the radio sounds nothing like the one you play from the CD at home? I noticed the phenomenon at a very early age (with records), but it took about 15 years before I became a recording engineer and understood why.

If it still isn’t clear, here’s a perfect analogy. THIS ANALOGY IS USED ALL THE TIME TO DESCRIBE A TREND IN AUDIO RECORDING REFERRED TO BY SOME AS “THE LOUDNESS RACE.” HOW ANNOYING IS IT THAT I’VE TYPED THIS SECTION IN FULL CAPS? DOESN’T IT FEEL LIKE I’M SCREAMING AT YOU?

That’s what the music sounds like on the radio. To make matters worse, modern recordings of pop music are mastered to be “capitalized” at the studio! Then, when the record company pays all that money to get the recordings on the radio...




You can barely make out what that says, right? (It says “They’re Capitalized Again!”) You can’t make out anything in the recordings either. What happens when someone screams all the time? Don’t you stop listening? If you listen to one-dimensional, “full caps” recordings of music for long enough, your ears get tired. It’s true. They stop perceiving detail. Soon, music doesn’t matter at all. Sort of like what’s happened on New York radio. What’s the answer? To turn it up even louder? I'm tired of being hit over the head.

At a time when the technology exists to reproduce music with astounding clarity, the trend is to make it sound worse than AM radio. Why? Because somebody interested in selling recordings got the idea that louder is better, to the exclusion of all aesthetic standard. Louder is good sometimes, but life doesn’t exist at one dynamic. It’s made up of a wonderful collage of timbres, with innumerable louds and softs. Don’t miss them, even though the radio and record companies would like you believe that they don’t exist. Choose your music with your own ears. There’s plenty of it out there. Most of the best stuff doesn’t get to the radio, so don’t stop there. Check out as much independent music as you can. It’s the only hope for the art form.