<div dir="ltr">Bob, is there any published article you're aware of where you described this experience?<div><br></div><div>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 - <a href="http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm">http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm</a>. In this source, Bob Katz uses 1980s material as a reference for unsquashed masters - <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/loudness-war.htm">http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/loudness-war.htm</a>.<div><br></div><div>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 - <a href="http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/246.html">http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/246.html</a>. 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.<br><div><div><br></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Robert Ludwig <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gatewaybob@mac.com" target="_blank">gatewaybob@mac.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Hi Kevin,<div>Yes, let’s wait to hear back from Bob K et al.</div><div><br></div><div>Kevin, I’m very grateful that someone as knowledgable as you is a Wikipedia editor, thank you for that.</div><div>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.</div><div><span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">From my point of view, the only statement I would question is: </span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#252525" face="sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14px">"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.” </span></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#252525" face="sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14px"><br></span></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#252525" face="sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14px">Early on, the record companies and CD plants established a rule that they would reject CD masters that had 3 consecutive over-levels. </span></font></span><span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Even before the invention of the “look-ahead” brick-wall limiters, m</span><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">y clients almost <u>always</u> 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! </span></div><div><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">All my best,</span></div><div><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Bob L.</span></div><div><div class="h5"><div><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Dec 7, 2015, at 3:15 PM, Kevin Gross <<a href="mailto:kevin.gross@comcast.net" target="_blank">kevin.gross@comcast.net</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div dir="ltr">These are going to be significant changes.<div><br></div><div>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?</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Thomas Lund <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:thomas@lund.one" target="_blank">thomas@lund.one</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Hello Kevin,<div><br></div><div>I agree about education vs. promotion, so please go ahead and suggest improvements with the cause rather than us in focus.</div><div><br></div><div>cheers,</div><div>Thomas</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><div><div><br></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 07/12/2015, at 18.34, Kevin Gross <<a href="mailto:kevin.gross@comcast.net" target="_blank">kevin.gross@comcast.net</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>Incidentally, I am one of the editors of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war</a> article. If there is a specific objection to something in that article, I would be happy to try and revise it.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Thomas Lund <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:thomas@lund.one" target="_blank">thomas@lund.one</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Hi Bob L and all,<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>best regards,</div><div>Thomas</div><div><div><div><br></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 07/12/2015, at 16.52, Robert Ludwig <<a href="mailto:gatewaybob@mac.com" target="_blank">gatewaybob@mac.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div style="word-wrap:break-word">HI Bob K.<div><br></div><div>First, clearly I support this initiative, that is never in doubt. </div><div><br></div><div>I re-read your original email where you wrote: "<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">My proposal is that the MLA become the named organization behind the promulgation of this petition.</span>”</div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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 “<a href="http://turnmeup.org/" target="_blank">turnmeup.org</a>”, your own <a href="http://digido.com/" target="_blank">Digido.com</a> 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.</span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">What does the group think?</span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Thanks,</span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Bob L.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Dec 7, 2015, at 9:42 AM, Bob Katz <<a href="mailto:bobkatz@digido.com" target="_blank">bobkatz@digido.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div>
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Guys, Thanks for your thoughts.<br>
<br>
We'll look at some of your thoughts and see at least if we can
improve the links.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
</blockquote>
<br>
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 <a href="http://change.org/" target="_blank">Change.org</a> 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. <br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
<br>
Be an activist. Support an activist title for this petition!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Bob K.<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>-- <br>
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<pre cols="80"><font face="Courier">Bob Katz <a href="tel:407-831-0233" value="+14078310233" target="_blank">407-831-0233</a> </font><font face="Courier">DIGITAL DOMAIN | "There are two kinds of fools,
Recording, Mastering, Manufacturing | One says-this is old and therefore good.
Author: <b>Mastering Audio </b></font><font><font face="Courier">| The other says-this is new and therefore</font></font><font face="Courier">
<a href="http://www.digido.com/" target="_blank">Digital Domain Website</a> | better."
No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However a large number
of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.<font color="#ff0000">
<b>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!</b></font></font></pre>
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