That whole thing about the plague of modern recording and compression - OK, but what about '80s new pop new wave productions?

And people have been compressing mix elements since forever. It's the lookahead brickwall limiting at the mastering stage that has only come around in the digital age.

What about a band like the Killers, though? Maybe they should be twice as loud as Nirvana! Maybe that's part of the appeal of those records!

As an analogy: there are plenty of bands that sound great with loads and loads of reverb. But if all music were involved in an arms race of piling on more and more reverb, to the point where everyone felt like they had to put on loads of reverb just to be heard, even if it didn't suit the music at all ... that would be a bad trend, surely?

Okay, but I think you may have taken the analogy a little too far. I agree with what nabisco and Steve have said here, and I think the analogy works in that it's just an expression of the extreme and stifling effect it has on the sound.

One thing I noticed as a teenager collecting records in the 80's was that it seemed that as the 80's wore on, records began to get louder because as I taped them I noticed the difference in how I had to adjust the recording levels. I particularly remember noticing this in Cocteau Twins records, actually, though I mean that as no criticism of them. I believe most (if not all) the records you mention above were from 1983 and I think that's pretty much when the trend really started and major labels started getting in on the act of what was happening underground, etc.

Maybe they should be twice as loud as Nirvana! Maybe that's part of the appeal of those records!

Maybe, but I really don't think it is. I think people just accept it as sort of a signifier of modern recording. And the use of the term "loud" here is deceptive. CDs can only be so loud - 0 dBFS. That's never changed. But with the sort of records we're talking about, almost everything gets shoved up against that limit. Is that really "louder?" If everything is the same volume, there is no loud or quiet.

With sound, they call it "brick wall" limiting because it does exactly the same thing -- instead of being slightly louder one second and slightly quieter the next, the levels are all pressed up against the glass / "brick wall," so that the whole thing is, umm, flattened out.

So the face on glass isn't a random analogy -- it's the whole point of the thing.

It's bad news. However, I hasten to add, this doesn't mean that compression is bad. I loves me some compression. But it's seasoning - it has to be used judiciously. You can't just pour it on, whether in the mix or the master.

I say this as someone who thinks that the Killers' records sound good and can't imagine them sounding better if they had more space.

Tim mentioned the Killers though and I don't know why they seem to get away with it. I think their production could be better, but it also could be worse. They've got catchy songs, maybe that's it. They don't sound overbearing to me like a lot of bands, just theatric or dramatic.

xxpost, believe it or not

Holy shit are you serious? I'd like to see that! This big hole through it. You'd damage the needle but man, that'd be cool.

As for The Killers, they wouldn't necessarily have more "space." They might have more definition and clarity, though. And whether you noticed it consciously or not, you might not get ear fatigue as quickly from listening to them.

How common is the use of waveform clipping, Steve?

I couldn't say, on the whole. A mastering engineer could probably say better than I can. But it's just a consequence of using one of those brickwall limiters (i.e. the Waves L3 ultramaximizer - great name) in a really extreme way.

You can look for it in your music, though. It's interesting, sometimes. Rip the file as uncompressed audio and import it into audacity or something. Zoom in on the biggest peaks until you can see individual samples, and see what you find. Sometimes it doesn't sound as bad as it looks, but some times I can really tell.

This is the part that seems most likely to warp the way we deal with music, and in ways I'm not sure many people would want. The reason people make things so mega-loud is so that when you first hear them, they absolutely leap screaming from the speakers going OMG GRRRR OUR GRAND MAGNIFICENT ENERGY IS TOO HUGE TO EVEN FIT IN CONVENTIONAL SOUND STANDARDS, which is a reasonably effective way to get people to notice your music. But it also means that, for most normal people, more than a couple minutes of this becomes really draining -- it's genuinely taxing your ears when it blares at you like that -- and so a couple songs into an album, you're probably going to be enjoying the music less than you otherwise would, whether you realize it or not.

And yeah, that's another thing where you can say "well it's an aesthetic, it's just a more intense listening experience, that can be good" -- which is true, except that like 99% of the acts doing this aren't actually aiming for that outcome.

the shoegaze genre also seems prone to this loudness/compression thing (e.g., just listening to slowdive's souvlaki recently and i noticed that to my ears it has some of the production features of uber-compressed contemporary stuff) -- then again, that was kinda the POINT of shoegaze wasn't it?!? and that what worked for slowdive -- or a flock of seagulls -- doesn't work for, i dunno, keane or rascal flatts.

on some tunes i'm watching the meters to get as much range in the signal rather than slamming it up across the mix buss. it's got a lot to do with backing off the attack and using fast release times - dabbing across individual tracks. get it right and you can create the impression of INCREASED dynamics, not flattened ones

that's my theory and i'm sticking to it

nabisco is, as ever, etc..

Compression is a great tool. The singer doesn't stay on mic well and you want a consistant signal so that you can ride the gain in the mix without crazy volume spikes, great, use a compressor. Want a more consistant signal on that acoustic guitar so that it will sit better in the mix, tastefully use a compressor.

Remember, using compression during traking or mixing is different from using limiting during the final master.

You can't do volume swells when everything is 0bd.

http://www.slipknotbr.com/slipknot/ross.h7.gif

The definition I'm familiar with is that any compressor with a ratio over 10:1 (higher ratios meaning more compression) gets referred to as a limiter.

No, you'd get a record that was perhaps likely to skip. Having bird-dogged the vinyl masterings of two of my records back in the mid-80's, it was a subject that came up whenever the guy who was running the mastering lathe heard loud bass. On the first record, his drug use was under control and it wasn't an issue. A year later and for the second record, he was a raving paranoid and sliced a significant amount of bass off the originals. He's dead now, obviously.

I'll take today's digital mastering tools over having to put up with the nightmare of vinyl mastering, anyday. Vinyl mastering was great if you were on a major label and the A&R people would send your tape off to Bob Ludwig or some other ace with an interest in maintaining good relations with the label, not taking the money and putting in a shuck job. It was really trying if you had to locate someone to do your own record, hoping it wouldn't be butchered in the process.

Hard limiting, which is what you seem to be aggrieved with, is only one application and if you don't want to wreck things with it, it's easy to avoid. Or it's easy to make things superloud. Having looked at many waveforms, I've seen a lot of variation, no hard and fast rule. Light use, no use, and -- of course -- wave forms that look like two-lane highways, they've been so heavily treated for explosion out of the box.

Brian Wilson was the king of [using] these kind of volume swells to make records sound exciting.

Yeah, that can gin up a recording in a nice way.

Yeah, I was misremembering there - apparently you risked cutting through the record if one of the stereo channels had a lot more bass than the other.