[MLA] Loudness War in New York Times

[Robert Ludwig]

Hi Kevin,
While there are exceptions, like the new Mark Knopfler album, some albums I work on are mixed louder than I have ever encountered, and louder than I would have ever considered to be a good final result. 

So it isn’t the mastering engineers always at fault, it is many of the very highest paid mixers like Manny Marroquin, Shawn Everett, Tom Elmhurst etc. who think their work should be amazingly loud.

They do their own pre-mastering to their flat mixes and send those highly compressed mixes to the client for their listening references.  Their clients don’t even get to HEAR the raw mixes which are typically 5-10 dB less compressed than the listening references. 

If you are used to looking at VU meters:  Our mastering rooms are calibrated so 1kHz @ -14dBFS = 0 VU on our consoles.  I remember when DATs were first being used in 1987 and mixes to DAT used to peak around +2 to +4 VU.  Today I routinely get in listening mixes from the mix engineers that peak at +10 or even +12VU! I mean +14VU is all that is possible!  Distorted? Yes indeed!!  I guess it is part of the ethos of it now.  

The A&R people, the artists and certainly the mixers expect me to at LEAST match their listening reference level, a level I would normally never dream of going that high..

I try to do what I can.  I tell clients about Spotify loudness normalization and how they can get a feel for that by comparing flat mixes vs. compressed mixes with Sound Check turned on in iTunes. When we start a project there is often a key song that they want mastered before the album comes out and I will send them both dynamic and hot versions and 90% of the time they pick the hot one. 

For me, 2 of my “Best Engineered” Grammy Awards are for records that are mixed and thus mastered way too hot: the Beck “Morning Phase” and the Alabama Shakes album that is just crazy loud.  Those nominations are chosen by craft committees the Recording Academy puts together of the best mixers and well regarded mastering engineers.  I don’t understand it!

Years ago when the mixers started doing this I would only be supplied with their low level original mixes (the ones the A&R people and the artist have never heard!).  I would master the album to sound as good as possible and everyone would report back how small and wimpy it sounded… and how could someone like me even submit something so bad?   We discovered this insane absurdity of them not supplying the mastering engineer with the very mixes everyone but us were listening to and USED TO! Once I heard what they were hearing everything was fine.   So in short order our front office now asks specifically to be supplied with the non-smashed mixes as well as the files everyone else has been hearing.  It has been one of the most unexpected and disappointing situations. 

All my best,
Bob Ludwig


> On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:25 AM, Kevin Gross <kevin.gross at avanw.com> wrote:
> 
> I was surprised to learn from Bob Ludwig's quotes that loudness normalization has not been successful at stemming the loudness war. Are others here in agreement with this assessment?
> 
> Kevin Gross - AVA Networks

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