It isn't your imagination, music is getting louder!

[gunug]

Apparently in order to "compete" with other noise and drive the music through in commercial venues record companies are digitally pumping up the volume on new CD releases!  There is a article here at the (London?) Times in Great Britain:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle1878724.ece

QUOTE

Peter Mew, senior mastering engineer at Abbey Road studios, said: “Record companies are competing in an arms race to make their album sound the ‘loudest’. The quieter parts are becoming louder and the loudest parts are just becoming a buzz.”

Mr Mew, who joined Abbey Road in 1965 and mastered David Bowie’s classic 1970s albums, warned that modern albums now induced nausea.

He said: “The brain is not geared to accept buzzing. The CDs induce a sense of fatigue in the listeners. It becomes psychologically tiring and almost impossible to listen to. This could be the reason why CD sales are in a slump.”

So your music (and my music) can make you sick!  

[Gregg]

Is this just "oldies" music, or the noise the younger set listens to?

Might not be a bad idea....

[gunug]

Well apparently they're doing it to mostly new stuff; they're less likely to mess with the old stuff because it already sells or is beyond sale!

[gunug]

There is editorial in Electronic Design ( http://www.electronicdesign.com/Articles/A...5538/15538.html ) about the detrimental sound levels at live concerts:

QUOTE

How loud was the concert? It's hard to say. But a recent story on hearing risks in Mix magazine says that sound engineers—including Prince's—typically keep shows above 100 dB, which audiologists consider dangerously high. Above 100 dB "is where the excitement is created," engineer Chris Rabold told Mix. "I like to cruise around 103, which is not terribly loud, but there are peaks in there—109 easy."

Decibel levels are a measurement of sound pressure, with pressure doubling every 6 dB. So that extra 6 dB may not sound like a lot, but in reality, it's double the trouble. Despite the danger, I agree with Rabold. High decibels are essential to the rock concert experience. The sound waves become a physical, pulsing torrent that vibrates through your entire body. It feels something like standing under a waterfall.

While you connect aurally to the music, you also connect physically to the power behind the sound. In Vegas, I was thinking about the flow of electricity from Hoover Dam, channeled via the electronics on and around the stage, ultimately converted into waves of sound power pushing through the crowd.

Mix says advances in technology give sound engineers increased consistency of volume throughout a venue, where a clean, undistorted PA can seem "deceptively quiet." The sound engineer can tailor the mix so music feels good at extreme levels, dialing out the 1.6k to 3k range that's painful to the ears. As it gets easier to crank it up and enjoy the physical sensation of the live music, it also becomes more important to find ways to lessen the impact on the ear's sensitive mechanisms.

He goes on to talk about noise cancelling headphones and systems and a handheld system, called Ear3, which can judge the actual effects on one's ears in a given venue with good accuracy due to it's artificial ear canal!  

http://www.ear3.info/

[kimmer]

A month or so ago we went to a "Beach Boys" concert up at the casino. I'll never go back. Never mind the smoke that permeated everything (including the non-smoking restaurant and concert hall), never mind that these Beach Boys weren't THE Beach Boys, never mind that these Beach Boys had changed some of the notes and tempo to the songs, never mind that the strobe lights about had me passing out, never mind that having a spot light blasted into my face burned holes in my eyeballs right through my closed eyelids. No, never mind all that.

It was the NOISE level that was the final, final straw for me. It was the second song and I was searching the table for the ear plugs I'd grabbed only to find they were gone. So I plugged my ears with my fingers. Didn't help. My head hurt. My teeth ached because I was grinding them. My neck began to ache from grinding my teeth. I was wedged into the table and couldn't move and had just decided that I was going to crawl under the table to leave when the ... mercifully, mercifully, mercifully ... the concert was over.

I had trouble hearing soft sounds, and my ears throbbed, ached and hurt for several days. My jaws, teeth and neck recovered sooner than my ears.

I will never, ever go back to a live concert.

It's not fun.

Your music experience might be vastly different.

[gunug]

In my 20's I was going with a girl that was goth before there was a goth and she got a set of tickets to a Black Sabbath concert. This took place in the arena in Prince Georges County, MD that the pro basketball team played in so it had an inside area and a big "echo chamber" outside.  I was in there 3 minutes after the music started before I reevaluated my relationship with Ms Goth and beat a hasty retreat to the parking lot (well I told her with hand movements where I'd be).  I'm sure they had hit the dreaded 109 db and then some!

[Gregg]

Reminds me of a Kansas concert I went to back in the 70's. It was in a local movie theater, an old fashioned kind of place with a rather large auditorium; a balcony even.

I was in the 3rd or 4th row, off to the side. You know what that means! My companions decided it was too loud and went out into the lobby. They said (I think) that they enjoyed the music from there.