Just crank up the volume on an old album and viola! loudness.

Just crank up the volume on an old album and viola! loudness.

Although, strangely enough, newer albums sound better than old ones production-wise. Old production has a charm, but I love how much louder new albums are. I'm thinking maybe The Loudness War is a problem for pop music, but in metal it makes things better because we like it loud and proud.

I hate how that's not even possible in the new shits. I can't stand the production in Funebrarum's 2009 and Cemetery Urn's 2007 albums, they're both unbearably fucking loud. It's a shame, because I absolutely love the death metal they play.

BTW NEW CEMETERY URN IS HERE

As always, there's a right way and a wrong way. I used this example earlier and I'll use it again: alot of, say, more recent Manowar albums are incredibly loud, but still enjoyable because the production was well done. On the other hand, we've got Death Magnetic, which also is an incredibly loud album, but the sheer volume is paid for via a compromise in real quality (guitars lack low end, clipping, etc).

So sure, the loudness war can very well be a good thing - with a good producer. It can also be a less-than-good thing, with a worse producer.

You've exactly summed up a well-known psychoacoustic phenomenon (say that 10 times fast!). Louder typically sounds better to untrained ears.

Well many new albums (especially death metal albums) have shitty production, tried changing the EQ settings?

Funebrarum's newest album has great engineering. I love it.

The Loudness War is ruining Metal, that's for sure. It's really tough for an audiophile to get good quality sound. You shouldn't blame iPods and .mp3's for the Loudness War, the blame is on crappy stereo systems. Most people have such crappy stereo systems that dynamic records don't sound good on it. Making it louder fixes that problem, and it makes the listener happier. Of course, if you have good equipment like me, then you really hear the flaws in your music, especially clipping.

Ha, yeah that must be it; I listen to my music through a bunch of cheap garbage. That must be why I'm after volume so much.

Since when did "raw" come to mean "let's make it sound as unbearable as possible" rather than "unpolished and not produced with much care towards sounding pretty"? If you're intentionally uglifying the sound (as boosting the volume and compressing it to hell would be), you're doing raw wrong.

Ha, yeah that must be it; I listen to my music through a bunch of cheap garbage. That must be why I'm after volume so much.

That actually is it. Ask anyone who works in the audio engineer industry. The Loudness War began because of this.

85-90 dB should be enough for anyone.

I'm sure there are instruments available to test, but I just approximate it using benchmarks. A loud garbage disposal is around 80 dB. A fairly loud alarm clock, a motorcycle at 10 yards, or someone yelling is around 90 dB. Anything above 90 dB will eventually damage your hearing, especially through headphones.

Best way to check the dB amount is using MP3Gain software.

Best way to check the dB amount is using MP3Gain software. Not only does it tell you the loudness, but it will equalize ALL your songs to 89.0 dB (standard), and remove clipping from ALL your tracks. It removed all distortion and clipping from Death Magnetic for me.

on the other hand, loudness junkies who try to up the volume using mp3gain will add all the distortion and clipping to the song cos it adds gain, not volume. kinda tried that before and had to re-rip all my cds lol.

I just did that to a few songs. Oh my God, I love this. I can target all my songs to 105.9 dB. I'll just ditch the earphones and listen to it through over-the-ear ones so I don't have to worry about hearing damage.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I learned a lot.

Woah 105.9 dB is fairly loud, you should stick with the standard 89.0 dB volume. The best thing about this is that it removes clipping.

So, would it be fair to say that this 'loudness' people refer to is the lessening of dynamics in music? As in, it's attempting to be ALL LOUD all the time? Or fortissimo, if you prefer.

And yes, buy yourself a good pair of headphones, along with DAC, and a good amplifier to drive and synergize the headphones. Don't forget to have a good source (sound card, iPod, etc.), and high quality music files (get FLAC if you can, non compressed music). I myself own a pair of Denon D7000, and they sound very good with Metal, but they do reveal ALL the recording and mastering flaws of a bad album (Death Magnetic for example). Metallica's self-titled is a very well recorded and mastered album, try opening that in Audacity and look at the waves.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to buy a porsche while you're at it. Let's be fair, people don't have the money for this stuff. Cheap equipment gives you convenience to listen to music anywhere but sounds like crap. Loudness helps with that, but makes music worse for those with good equipment. What's the answer? I don't know. Maybe treating music as more 'special' and saving up for good equipment, or just listening less on a really good system, would give companies like Sony and Teac less chance to thrive, leading to better quality goods being manufactured. But we should remember that audio reproduction has never been able to achieve the standard of live sound - at what point does it go too far, and music cease to become music because of how shitty it sounds?