The Loudness War: Dynamic Range over the years, An analysis of the DR database Options

[bug80]

I thought it would be interesting to see how the Dynamic Range (Album DR) has developed over the years, and if this shows a clear picture about the development of the Loudness War. In order to check this, I made a dump of the DR database. I choose to focus on the period 1985-2012. The figure above shows the mean DR-value per year (the error bars represent the standard error). It is clear that, overall, the Dynamic Range of albums has decreased in this period from approximately 13 dB to the 8-9 dB range. It is also interesting to see that the minimum mean value is reached in 2008, the year that Death Magnetic was released. In 2009, we see an increase of +/- 0.5 dB (a double-sided t-test shows that this difference is statistically significant at the 0.01 level). Maybe this has to do with the awareness created by this album with respect to the Loudness War?

Furthermore, it seems that the Dynamic Range does not further decrease over the last four years. Has the Loudness War come to an end?

Finally, the figure below shows the number of albums per year that were analyzed. In total, 14,680 albums were included in the analysis.



This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 19 2013, 10:12

Reason for edit: as per request in post #11

[shadowking]

I have to sadly agree: We lost - at least with 'energetic' music. Ten yrs ago I wished to go back to 80s-90s mix but now thing have deteriorated even more that i wish we could go back to 2002 or so. Sure we are stuck at -10 db forever but the mix has become more obnoxious to my ears - many releases sound now have the 'death magnetic' harshness.

Also no one is doing nothing about volume normalization. I realize its a tough one commercially but many albums are released in P2p. They are never replaygained and I believe Apple has soundcheck 'off' . Seems no one knows what to do or lack initiative / standards. There is still an element of fear to tamper with the original sound level.

[2Bdecided]

Also no one is doing nothing about volume normalization.

The field has never been more active! EBU PLOUD, R128, CALM act, etc.

I realize its a tough one commercially but many albums are released in P2p. They are never replaygained and I believe Apple has soundcheck 'off' . Seems no one knows what to do or lack initiative / standards. There is still an element of fear to tamper with the original sound level.

Ignorance too. However, the PLOUD group are gently pushing Apple to enable Soundcheck by default, and to move to album-based rather than track-based calculation. It'll be interesting to see if they succeed on either account this year.

Cheers,
David.