Interesting article from Mix, proclaiming the end of the loudness war,
Mastering engineers often aim to make songs sound louder because louder equals ‘better’ when you’re fighting for listeners. Radio stations use the technique it at the broadcast stage, Classic FM included, to beef up the sound that comes out when you’re competing with motorway traffic. What this article is about though, is the kind that goes on at the mastering stage of a CD. The Mix author Greg Reierson argues that this is no longer necessary in a world where we have playback software which can dynamically adjust the sound of songs as you play them back, and that audio engineers can go back to making stuff sound better, rather than louder.
Interesting, but I’m not yet entirely convinced – what’s the point of making stuff sound better, if the listener then applies an algorithm to it before they hear it?
