LoudnessPetitionGrp

Loudness is no problem! Crank it.

The issue is about leveling the playing field so that musicians and engineers are no longer pressured to slam every moment (quiet or loud) of their songs to maximum volume using limiting and compression.

Also, by implementing this standard, nobody is being forced to do anything. Everyone will have the freedom to use as much or as little compression/limiting as they want.

The full AES recommendation document is here - it explains the idea in detail: http://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1004_1_15_10.pdf

If you're referring to Bob Katz's book, yes, it's great isn't it? He's /u/bobkatz48bit in this thread.

Great point. Yes, absolutely - and we're not suggesting that anyone have that choice taken away.

By leveling the playing field, there's a benefit to listeners, in that they can set the volume and not worry about genres being radically different levels. Plus, artists are free to use exactly as much, or as little, compression/limiting as they want - for the sound not for the loudness.

Thanks for the question. There have been several examples of this over the years - one famous one a while ago was Metallica's Death Magnetic.

The CD was released with so much limiting and compression that it was very hard to hear any nuances. Some clever people discovered that the tracks included in the Guitar Hero video game (or maybe Rock Band; I forget) were much less aggressively limited, and there was quite a bit of controversy because people preferred to torrent the Guitar Hero mix rather than listen to the CD.

There's also the very quick and simple example in the middle of the petition video, which is taken from the 2006 Loudness war video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Lossless streaming is great - it prevents data compression artifacts like swirling, pre-echo, high frequency loss, "glass noise," etc.

However that's a different meaning of the word "compression" compared to the dynamic range compression which is the issue in the Loudness War, so it's a separate issue.

Even though it's a little cheesy and dated (I should know since I created it), this video explains the difference pretty clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E5kCRsr4gQ