Reply to post: Loudness wars

Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams

IJD

Loudness wars

I've digitised quite a lot of my favourite old LPs, and apart from the amount of time it takes -- because really you need to get rid of any big clicks/pops/scratches before normalising the volume -- the most obvious difference is how *quiet* they sound compared to any modern CD. Not because the peak level is lower (digital full scale in all cases) but because they haven't had loads of compression and peak clipping applied to raise the average level. End result is you have to turn the volume up significantly, then turn on back down for a modern recording.

And I'm not talking about heavy metal or rock or pop here, I'm talking about acoustic or folk or classical or jazz recordings where you'd think this wasn't so prevalent. But it is, and this applies to every single "old vinyl" album I've transferred compared to any "new CD/digital" album. The difference is obvious when you look at either the waveforms or average levels in any audio tool...

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