[MLA] Our Change.org petition

Wed Dec 16 05:29:47 CET 2015

Bob, is there any published article you're aware of where you described
this experience?

The 1980s section in the Wikipedia article definitely needs more sources to
support assertions made there. This source describes the 1980s as an audio
utopia of sorts - http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm. In
this source, Bob Katz uses 1980s material as a reference for unsquashed
masters - http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/loudness-war.htm.

I found a reference for the 3 consecutive over criteria and could
incorporate this into the Wikipedia article but this would support the
existing audio utopia in the 1980s narrative -
http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/246.html. Your
objection to this section is that this narrative does not match your
experience - the CD was not audio utopia in the early to mid 1980s. Lots of
releases were clipped in a way that circumvented QC at the plants. The
examples from the 1980s we're using to support the utopia narrative are
cherrypicked.

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Robert Ludwig <gatewaybob at mac.com> wrote:

> Hi Kevin,
> Yes, let’s wait to hear back from Bob K et al.
>
> Kevin, I’m very grateful that someone as knowledgable as you is a
> Wikipedia editor, thank you for that.
> I just re-read the Loudness War article and saw there have been 15 edits
> in the last month and the “talk” page is pretty wicked and nasty.
>
> From my point of view, the only statement I would question is:
> "Since CDs were not the primary medium for popular music until the late
> 1980s, there was little motivation for competitive loudness practices then.
> CD players were also very expensive and thus commonly exclusive to high-end
> systems that would show the shortcomings of higher recording levels.”
>
> Early on, the record companies and CD plants established a rule that they
> would reject CD masters that had 3 consecutive over-levels.  Even before
> the invention of the “look-ahead” brick-wall limiters, my clients almost
> *always* wanted me to use every last bit of dynamic range. Some, like the
> composer John Zorn, discovered that sometimes even heavy clipping was not
> so audible, so he had me master,  blasting his music into the red and then
> make a copy at -0.2dB (the resolution of the Sony digital editor) so it
> would pass the CD plant OVER test!
>
> All my best,
> Bob L.
>
>
>
> On Dec 7, 2015, at 3:15 PM, Kevin Gross <kevin.gross at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> These are going to be significant changes.
>
> Does the subcommittee of three want to consider the other options
> mentioned in this thread before I go to the trouble of proposing specific
> revisions?
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Thomas Lund <thomas at lund.one> wrote:
>
>> Hello Kevin,
>>
>> I agree about education vs. promotion, so please go ahead and suggest
>> improvements with the cause rather than us in focus.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Thomas
>>
>> PS. Even my kids know not to trust or to quote from Wikipedia, which is
>> generally a dynamic pile of last-man-on-the-keyboard-self-promotion, so I
>> wouldn't stand behind an initiative referring to that. From an academic
>> point of view, the loudness war article is useless, but it might not be
>> worse than Wikipedia pages in general.
>>
>>
>> On 07/12/2015, at 18.34, Kevin Gross <kevin.gross at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> MLA was founded as a technical expert group. Our work so far has been in
>> education and engineering on loudness topics and normalization systems. The
>> petition is a piece of non-technical advocacy and I don't know if I'm fully
>> comfortable with that. It is possible my concern could be addressed through
>> editing to remove some of the stridency. I would be happy to propose some
>> changes if you're interested. But I respect comments from Thomas and Bob
>> Ludwig and would like to see those addressed too.
>>
>> Incidentally, I am one of the editors of the
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war article. If there is a
>> specific objection to something in that article, I would be happy to try
>> and revise it.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Thomas Lund <thomas at lund.one> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Bob L and all,
>>>
>>> I second that. It was also not easy to defend the time spent and the
>>> potential customer annoyance caused by engaging in this topic for >15 years
>>> at TC, so kindly understand the tact and requirements needed for steaming
>>> ahead as a group.
>>>
>>> best regards,
>>> Thomas
>>>
>>>
>>> On 07/12/2015, at 16.52, Robert Ludwig <gatewaybob at mac.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> HI Bob K.
>>>
>>> First, clearly I support this initiative, that is never in doubt.
>>>
>>> I re-read your original email where you wrote: "My proposal is that the
>>> MLA become the named organization behind the promulgation of this petition.
>>> ”
>>>
>>> Being that some of our members are in the trenches fighting the Loudness
>>> battle in world-class situations, and being that our names are NOT being
>>> signed on the petition, perhaps the MLA should NOT be the “named
>>> organization” but “turnmeup.org”, your own Digido.com
>>> <http://digido.com/> site or other.  It won’t change the impact of the
>>> petition, in fact perhaps there is more engineer community awareness of
>>> those sites than ours.
>>>
>>> What does the group think?
>>> Thanks,
>>> Bob L.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Dec 7, 2015, at 9:42 AM, Bob Katz <bobkatz at digido.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Guys, Thanks for your thoughts.
>>>
>>> We'll look at some of your thoughts and see at least if we can improve
>>> the links.
>>>
>>>
>>> As far as the title goes. We are activists, passionate about our
>>> position. This is a petition written by activists, designed to be put on
>>> Change.org <http://change.org/> to get action. It's designed to attract
>>> people to sign it. "Say No To A Streaming Loudness War" attracts attention,
>>> gets the message across well and is in tune with the idea of what a
>>> petition is supposed to do.
>>>
>>> Do you want this to languish in "We're not activists, we're just
>>> apathetic engineers, so sign our petition if you care, but anyway, have a
>>> nice day."
>>>
>>>
>>> Be an activist. Support an activist title for this petition!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bob K.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Bob Katz 407-831-0233 DIGITAL DOMAIN | "There are two kinds of fools,
>>> Recording, Mastering, Manufacturing  | One says-this is old and therefore good.
>>> Author: *Mastering Audio              *| The other says-this is new and thereforeDigital Domain Website <http://www.digido.com/>               | better."
>>>
>>> No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However a large number
>>> of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.*No more Plaxo, Linked-In, or any of the other time-suckers. Please contact me by regular email. Yes, we have a facebook page and a You-Tube site!*
>>>
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