<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div apple-content-edited="true" class=""><br class="">
</div><div class="">Great story, thanks for sharing, Eelco !</div><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="">Kevin, I’m somewhere in the middle of the two extremes described by Bob K & Bob L. In the last few years I’ve had no requests to master anything any louder than I was comfortable with, and a couple of times I’ve even been asked to make things more dynamic !</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">But, like Bob K I do next to no major label work, any more - and my “brand” is very strongly associated with dynamics, so I think my client base is skewed heavily away from people who want things super-loud. I’ve had several people come to me specifically because they had their music mastered by a “big name” studios, unnecessarily loud, and they’ve been delighted by my more dynamic versions. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Overall I’d say things seem more polarised to me - some people are moving to more sane levels, others are pushing even harder towards the loud extremes.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I’ve also had some criticism from established engineers for whom “loud” is an important part of that they offer, saying that I don’t understand the commercial pressures etc, and that certain genres “need” a certain sound. Of course I <b class="">do </b>understand this, I’ve heard it from many engineers, not just Bob - also people tell me the artists sometimes choose the crushed, distorted sound even when they hear it level-matched - because it fits with what they’ve been listening to :-/</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">On the plus side, I think it’s still very early days in all this, even though it seems like forever to all of us. Only in the last year or two have I seen people discussing normalisation in mainstream audio forums - and these are still the “bleeding edge” of people who are interested in the technical details and what sounds best. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It <b class="">is</b> being discussed all the time now though, and since I launched the <a href="http://www.loudnesspenalty.com" class="">Loudness Penalty</a> site with MeterPlugs I’ve seen it mentioned and recommended more and more - we’ve had push-back over the deliberately provocative name, but also many messages from people saying Thank You, and that it’s opened their eyes or enabled them to persuade clients, just like the email paragraph in Eelco’s message. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My conclusion: the current situation is often depressing, especially listening to mainstream major label releases, but I’m still optimistic - largely because of the impact normalization is starting to have.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Cheers !</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Ian</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">PS. This discussion prompted me to check - the <a href="https://www.change.org/p/music-streaming-services-bring-peace-to-the-loudness-war" class="">petition</a> that Bob, Eelco, Matt Mayfield and I set up is <i class="">almost </i>at 10,000 signatures, now - that seems like something worth shouting (quietly) about on Dynamic Range Day this year !</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div>
<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 11 Feb 2019, at 20:54, Kevin Gross <<a href="mailto:kevin.gross@avanw.com" class="">kevin.gross@avanw.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">That's an encouraging story, Eelco.<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Sounds like we're getting significantly different outcomes in different areas of audio.<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I guess it was naive to hope that normalization would fix everything because radio has been normalized all along and yet, here we are.<br class=""><div class=""><br clear="all" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr" class="">Kevin Gross - AVA Networks</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>