I really got a good idea of what the loudness race has done to music today. My media player in shuffle mode went straight from one of the songs in my playlist from the late 80s (B-52's, Cosmic Thing, replaygain around -3) to one of the loudest albums on my playlist (Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf, replaygain about -11). With replaygain making them the same volume, the difference in the punchiness and clarity just hit really hard. This would be a good way to show people why loud CDs are bad.

Do it. The thing is you must convince them that they are listening in lower volumes due to the loudness war or they are listening in high volume and it sound like crap. Their music turns into background musak instead of proper enjoyable listening.

So maybe disable replaygain, play the 80's track mid-high volume then play the -11db track - don't reduce the volume by much. This will show them that the loud track is flat and has no impact. The 80's track will shine through. Also fatigue may need a bit of time to set in from a few minutes to 20 minutes in my experience. Don't expect and immediate "wow you are right". I think around 10 minutes or so they should hear the difference if not before.

You must also be prepared for these remarks by the ones who don't know about the loudness war:

"if its loud it was meant to be loud cause thats how the artist / producer wanted it"

or the confusing of digital artifacts with artistic output: " the band is going for a raw / live sound and that is why there is distortion etc etc"

after seeing RATM's self titled debut on one of the lists of good (unruined) CDs, i recalled listening to it at a car stereo store and how the pair of 10s were just pummelling me in the chest from the bass drum... it was pretty breathtaking and now i know why...

very dynamic - sounds amazing played loud. I'm not surprised it trounced a squashed track!

I'm glad ReplayGain helps people to hear modern CDs for the squashed rubbish they are - that was actually the main reason I pushed ReplayGain in the first place!

Cheers,
David.

A friend of mine is very sensitive to dynamics, though she don't have any idea of the technical details behind all this.
The way she puts it into words seems more or less ackowledged by non-techie people interested in sound quality, and is an interesting way of defining the loudness war effects :

"You know a track is well recorded (or a speaker is good), when you can crank the volume up, and it doesn't hurt your ears".

I wonder, if every player on planet implemented Replaygain equalisation, loudness war would die out in an instant.
How well are player vendors accepting idea of replaygain?

The industry is scared to death of replaygain or isn't aware of it. Just ask the chap from chatterbox records: he is not interested in this nonsense - louder is better.

All radio stations, TV station, night clubs etc, have systems similar to ReplayGain, and it has no effect at all on the loudness race.

I think that if replaygain came into players, it could be very bad, because manufacturers would try to set the K reference as high as possible ! The loundess race would not only turn all music unlistenable, but also all players

If the record co could put replaygain tags into the music they release, they would probably just say replaygain = +whateverthemaxvalueis dB. And compress the hell out of it, too. =D

Cosmic Thing is definitely one of the best sounding albums on my playlist, everything has this great punch to it. Then the playlist shifts to Songs for the Deaf, which is one of the worst-sounding albums I have ever heard. Everthing sounds sterile and lifeless, and when I first heard it I thought the snare drum was electronic!

Another interesting thing is Weezer's Green Album. They released a lot of the in-progress stuff while they were recording the album, and when they released the actual album, well, I liked the desk mixes better. I didn't know about the loudness race back then, but the final mastered album sounded "too slick and poppy" to me. I liked the sound of the Blue Album (their first) a lot better.

As you can probably tell by now, I play drums. Letting you know, when my band hits the studio I will definitely be pushing for as little compression as possible as a result of the insights I've gained here. =D That'll probably be a few months from now, I'll try and post some clips when I get them.