AES San Francisco 2012
Workshop W5
Saturday, October 27, 11:00 am — 1:00 pm (Room 133)
W5 - Loudness Wars: The Wrong Drug?
Chair:Thomas Lund, TC Electronic A/S - Risskov, Denmark
Panelists:
John C. Atkinson, Stereophile Magazine - New York, NY, USA
Florian Camerer, ORF - Austrian TV - Vienna, Austria; EBU - European Broadcasting Union
Robert Katz, Digital Domain Mastering - Orlando, FL, USA
George Massenburg, Schulich School of Music, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Abstract:
Newly produced pop/rock music rarely sounds good on fine loudspeakers. Could it be that the wrong mastering drug has been used for decades, affecting Peak to Average Ratio instead of Loudness Range? With grim side effects all around—and years of our music heritage irreversibly harmed—the panel provides a new status on the loudness wars and sets out to investigate the difference between the two from a technical, a perceptual, and a practical point of view. In a normalized world, bad drugs will no longer be compensated by a benefit of being loud. Learn to distinguish between a cure and quack practice, and save your next album.
