acceptable and offensive RMS levels

the loudness war persists and of course so does its criticism by the writers of many articles covering it.

i've been thinking a lot about loudness and such while working on my album.

hearing chris clark's latest, Body Riddle, got me a bit concerned with how loud i should be before offending the listener. for the most part it sounds as good as 'loud' music often does but there are moments when it starts stressing me out. music shouldn't hurt my teeth. roulette thrift run seems to stay in the -7.5 db RMS range, for example.

cee-lo's Gnarls Barkley stuff is also another one that makes my ears say "jeeeez...." a lot of the tracks on there seem to hover around -8 db average RMS

these seem like obvious examples of too loud

so i'm now curious of what most people's "comfort zone" is

i was thinking of staying between -12 db / -16db RMS (loud parts/ quiet parts), which i may drop down to -14db.

what loudness do you stay around? what is 'too loud' to you and what is too quiet (if that exists?) also if you have any example songs in mind for too loud, just right, too quiet.

the medium i'm most concerned with is CD but also thinking about 'playlists' in their various forms (ipods, winamp, etc), as in being mixed in with other music and trying not to clash too much.

if it clips out on the listening device (ie distortion or whatever) then it's too loud for me

if i can't hear it, then it's too quiet for me

sorry, i'm not that technical in this respect

i can never get my stuff loud enough

  Fred McGriff said:

i can never get my stuff loud enough

eq, compression, limiting.

maybe multiband compression...

if i physically feel the sound pressing air into my ears...

thats too loud

someone brought this to my attention a while back

RMS Buddy

http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/extras

it is what i used to see where my ear offenders stood and also to find what felt like a suitable RMS average (12 - 16 rms for me)

was hoping to hear such numbers from others in this thread

11 - 14 seems pretty standard at the moment

it's as much in the mixing as the mastering - if you leave nice clean, uncompressed transients, you can usually get away with more limiting and compression because the transients help with clarity and definition

harmonic enhancement at all stages helps a lot as well - better for something to sound big and loud than to have to add a tonne of waves l2 to get it there... there's green day records which only peak at -3db's, RMS right down around 14-16, but they sound bigger and louder than anything you can do with ultramizer without it trashing a mix completely

thanks for reply, seems i'm not far off

about transients...

i've heard on another forum of some doing a super squashed mix and then mixing with the original dynamic version. haven't tried that yet... of course would have to watch how they align

recommend any sounds enhancers of the harmonic variety? (software)

I adjust the volume for whatever album I'm listening to. So the loudness is never much of an issue. I'm fond of the ubercompressed punch-you-in-the-face sound. I do that with most of my mixes, tends to end up about as loud as Funkstorung's Disconnected album, probably not quite as loud as the new Chris Clark. I really liked how he mixed that one. It's a total 180 from how his previous albums were in terms of loudness. He seemed to really be going for dynamic contrast before. Albums like that are more likely to hurt my ears, because I end up cranking the volume at the start, then on track 3 there ends up being a surprise volume spike and my ears get to enjoy a few DB of hearing loss (thank you Squarepusher). Whereas with a CD that's loud from the start I can listen comfortably the whole way through.

i'd rather pay someone to do all this shit for me

  Prof. Winston P.Caullier said:

it's as much in the mixing as the mastering - if you leave nice clean, uncompressed transients, you can usually get away with more limiting and compression because the transients help with clarity and definition

i find this very true, i've experimented with leaving little to no compression on most components of a track and then running some limiting on the master track, and it sounds alot clearer and better. i dont like the sound of compression in general either, unless its very very subtle.

  Quote

Whereas with a CD that's loud from the start I can listen comfortably the whole way through.

I really disagree with this, I mean, sure it's good if a CD has somewhat equal volume but if everything has the same amount of brickwall compression and barely any dynamic range at all, it just tires my ears out alot.

the concept of brickwall limiting and no dynamic range is that it quickly catches your attention, much like a punch in the face, but too much punching and a whole track of it just hurts.

  Zephyr_Nova said:

I adjust the volume for whatever album I'm listening to. So the loudness is never much of an issue.

heh, same here. however, i like how loudness can be used as an element of the music itself; fucking up the dynamic range can have interesting results (especially with compression as you can get really nice 'artifacts' - aka the sound that compressor itself adds), same goes for making a very dynamic track, like something that starts out subtle and builds up to an enormous frenzy, it just depends on the situation... i don't have a rule of thumb for loudness, its not like i pump EVERY track up to the brink ALWAYS or something.

Yeah, there are things I like about both very dynamic mix jobs, and very brick walled ones. It really depends on the style of music as to what's most effective. Like for any acoustic stuff I do I always ease up on the compression, but I like a lot of my electronic music to sound very unnatural and really massive. There's often a disturbing element in there, and that's intentional. I've never been bothered by any CD I own that abuses heaps of compression, but I have been bothered by CDs where I'm constantly having to adjust the volume on my headphones, and there are quite a few.

Classical music is very unpopular for the reason that it is hard to listen to without devoting full attention because of the amplitude range. Is what I think/

Funny you should mention that. I often find myself listening to classical music and think "this would sound even better and have a lot more impact with the right compression". I think classical would be more popular if people tried more interesting things with the production side of it. (I hope to add my contribution to it someday!)

I dont mean to dog on "real" recording. In all means preserve the original, but let some of us compress it or something. Id like to have a hardware compressor in my home stereo chain so I can "pump" the recordings and sounds a little.