The future is on the way - Cubase 7 now includes loudness metering as standard.
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The Music Loudness Alliance is a group of audio technical and production experts whose mission is to inform and educate the audio community about Loudness Normalization and suggestions on how to implement it on various platforms, such as computer music players and standalone audio players.
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Many audio professionals believe the days of hyper-compressed recordings may soon end. Ian Shepherd, a British mastering engineer, says broadcast audio standards may help expedite the process.
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Loudness Wars Coming to an End? - CE Pro Article from CE Pro
Hats off to Ray Staff @ Air Mastering - the new release of "Ziggy Stadust" will NOT be a victim of “desk-smashing diginess” !
The total number of hits to the DRD website doubled in comparison to last year, while more than 2,000 people entered the online competition.
Reflecting on DRD12, Ian Shepherd - mastering engineer and DRD founder - tells PSNEurope: “The response from the industry has been fantastic and 100% positive... The whole thing is taking on a life of its own [and] it’s genuinely hard to find people who disagree with the message we’re putting across.”
DRD web interest ‘doubles’ as war on loudness continues - Story | PSNE Magazine Online & In Print.
The title of the talk was
I'm demonstrating the new Nugen VisLM loudness meter to students at Northbrook college, here in the UK, and I switch between "My Name Is" by Eminem (DR9) and "Turn Out The Lights", by Kanye West (DR3).
Just listen to the audience reaction !
That's what people think of the "loudness war" sound when playback volumes are equal - and that's how it's going to sound in the near future. You can try the same comparison yourself in this Spotify Playlist.
(Make sure the "Set the same volume level for all tracks" preference setting is still checked - it's the default, so probably will be)
As I said in the talk - this is the future. New loudness standards being introduced in broadcast all over the world mean that soon, this is how the majority of listeners will hear the "loudness war" sound.
(I also love the fact the John Cage is on the wall behind me - coincidence ?!?)
So - that's my favourite moment - what about the bigger picture ?
...Though I do say so myself !
We more than doubled the number of hits to the website comapared to last year; we more than doubled the number supporters on both Facebook and Twitter; and over 60,000 people read my interview on the CEPro website just in the few days around DRD alone.
Over 2000 people entered the competition and over 1200 people have watched the webinar with Al Wagner and grammy-winner Charles Dye from TurnMeUp, which includes a much more complete demonstration of loudness metering. You can watch the webinar replay here.
As if all that isn't enough, we had 49 global MeetUp events taking place all over the world - in London, Cambridge, Berlin, Lima, Novi Sad, Mexico City, Bangkok, Bogota, Brooklyn, Bucharest, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Johannesburg, Miami, Sydney, Sheffield, Warsaw, Sao Paulo and more…
This picture is from just one of the MeetUps, at Azul studios in Mexico.
Once again we had fantastic industry support from the sponsors of the competition - Solid State Logic, Bowers & Wilkins, TC Electronic, Fluid Mastering, Harrison Mixbus, Home Studio Corner, Audiofile Engineering and Audio Issues, plus NAD Electronics and PSB Speakers, who organised their own DRD listening event.
The Dynamic Range Day Award was chosen by DRD supporters voting on Facebook this year, and was awarded to Bjork, for "Biophilia". Her management posted updates on her Twitter account and Facebook pages, where they were seen by literally millions of followers.
And finally there were hundreds of Twitter updates, Facebook shares talking about the event and blog posts, incuding coverage by Tape Op Magazine, Sound On Sound and Pro Sound News.
So, once again we'd like to say Thank You to all our supporters, and to everyone who took part - and we'll see you next year !
Unless the war is already over by then...
Ian Shepherd
Thanks to everyone whom attended the webcast this year - and if you weren't able to be there, enjoy the replay !
Click here: Dynamic Range Day 2012 Webcast
To help celebrate Dynamic Range Day, CE Pro asked Ian Shepherd to explain what forces are driving the loudness wars and what can be done to stop them.
Dynamic Range Day: Inside the Loudness War - CE Pro Article from CE Pro.
A passion for better sound quality is slowly creeping into the consumer audio market, propelled by the growth of headphone and computer audio, expanding computer bandwidth and memory capacities, and a siren heard around the audio world from Neil Young proclaiming his disdain for MP3s
As I'm writing this the third Dynamic Range Day is less than 16 hours away - so:
What's happening, exactly, and when ?
Well…