Metallica's "Death Magnetic" officially 'loudest' album ever.

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From: Production Advice website
Written by: Ben Shepherd
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So Taylor Swift is louder than Motorhead, AC/DC and The Sex Pistols… – wait, WHAT?

 
This is a 2015 re-boot of one of the first, and most popular memes I created for Dynamic Range Day – not a “Top 10″ as some sites have reported, it’s actually the “selected high (and low) -lights” of recorded music levels over the last few decades.
And the information it gives is just as crazy as it ever was.
 
As a result of the so-called loudness wars, mainstream pop releases are being pushed onto CD and into mp3 files at such high levels they’re technically much ‘hotter’ than some of the loudest acts in history, in an attempt to make them stand out from the competition.
 
Why is it crazy ? Because it doesn’t work.
 
None of these “loudness” differences will be audible in any of most popular places we listen to music. Not on Spotify. Not on iTunes Radio. Not even on Youtube, any more! And certainly not on radio or TV.
 
Replay volume is ‘normalised’ in all of these places, to improve the listener experience, because the number one source of complaints about audio is always big variations in loudness – we hate to have to keep adjusting the volume control.
 
So if you’re wondering – “why do people still bother?” – you’ve got a point!

It’s not all bad news

Take another look at that infographic, though.
 
There are some interesting features.
 
Look at the 2015 releases.
 
As well as ridiculous results like Taylor Swift being as loud as Oasis, and Nicki Minaj being almost as loud as Metallica – there are two massively successful pop albums by Daft Punk & Mark Ronson that have great dynamics.
 
And D’Angelo’s critically acclaimed album “Black Messiah” measures DR8. In a genre like R&B where almost everything is clipped and crushed by default, that’s a serious result ! And it’s not alone – in an interview on NPR’s Hip Hop show, J. Cole described how he and producer Juro “Mez” Davis deliberately chose not to compete in the loudness war – and his fans loved the decision.
 
And there have been a host of other great-sounding, dynamic releases in the last year, too – some of them are nominated for the Dynamic Range Day Award 2015. Check them out, your ears will thank you.

It ain’t over yet…

Of course these are the exceptions, rather than the rule.
 
For every great-sounding success, there are ten more that have been smashed. As I said in my interview for CE Pro, the situation is getting more polarised, and will probably keep getting worse, before it gets better.
 
But loudness normalisation is a fact, now – and gradually, the music world will wake up to the new reality. Just as U2 and Pharrell and D’Angelo and Daft Punk and J.Cole and Opeth and Aphex Twin and Mark Ronson and Jack White and Paulo Nutini and The War On Drugs and many other already have.
 
And when they do, our ears will thank them.
 
 
 
 
 

It's nice to look through Bob Katz's honor roll of dynamic recordings as the antidote to this:
 
http://www.digido.com/media/honor-roll.html

jamesg1213

SteveStrummerUK
 
 
Replay volume is ‘normalised’ in all of these places, to improve the listener experience, because the number one source of complaints about audio is always big variations in loudness – we hate to have to keep adjusting the volume control.
 

Is he being sarcastic here? I can't tell.

I am pretty sure he is not being sarcastic. In really poor listening situations (i. e. most of the known world) the casual listener is SOL if the music is not normalized. I have had to pretty much stop listening to classical music via my standard equipment car stereo because I simply can not hear the full range at all, soft disappears into road noise. That is in a Prius, good luck in my diesel pickup. Even MP3 players typically have that feature so that the listener does not have to stop jogging to adjust from song to song. Music is everywhere, but not all of it is going to be audible there. I would actually prefer that recordings be done with a good dynamic range, and that the option of "normalization" was widely available, than that the engineer tried to "fix" the problem in the master, and leave me with crap when I am trying to listen seriously.

I've had this discussion with a few people, about the differences in digital, and pure analog recording also.
Many of the old school guys try to record as they did back in the day, and push the meters as close to peak as possible instead of giving more headroom and dynamics in the digital systems mix.
But even when they figure that out, they still push the masters.
 
To me, we spend so much time, and money for that matter, to separate and spread and add life, that trying to compensate for $2 earbuds and junk bluetooth speakers makes those dynamics almost pointless to many.
 
The i-stump generation will always add a bass boost or drive a 16 zillion watt amp with a trunk of batteries so that their car vibrates across 2 lanes of traffic ... but I will always work to preserve those tones and quality because it don't matter to most of them, but does to me! lol
 
The only sausage I want is on my plate!