PRESS RELEASE
March 25th, 2008

The UK Music Producers Guild Turns Up The Volume On The Loudness Debate

London, UK: Professional producers who want to deliver high quality recordings need to resist pressure from A&R departments to pump up the volume.  This was the message that emerged loud and clear from a recent technical seminar held in London by the Music Producers Guild.

Entitled "The Loudness War - Mastering Abuse or Compression Paranoia?" the oversubscribed event attracted more than 40 producers and engineers when it was held at Alchemy Studios on March 11th.

Short presentations were given by the four panel members, who consisted of top producer/engineers Mick Glossop (Van Morrison, The Waterboys, Lloyd Cole) and Tony Platt (AC/DC, Bob Marley) and veteran mastering engineers, Ray Staff (Alchemy Soho) and Tim Young (Metropolis). These were followed by a lively question and answer session, allowing members of the audience to add their views to the debate.

Tony Platt voiced his frustration at mastering tools being used at the mix stage, resulting in CDs that sacrifice dynamic range for loudness. He contested the notion that quality no longer matters because music is ‘only going to be played on an iPod" by stating that producers who insist on high quality source recording will inevitably producer a better MP3.
Platt added that he often faces pressure from record companies to make louder recordings and concluded that there is a need to educate A&R departments so that they promote overall quality rather than volume.

Mick Glossop began his presentation by referring to an article in a tabloid newspaper with the headline "All records sound the same".  He countered this by quoting George Martin, who stated that today's music recordings had to have impact, energy and excitement, as compared with the 1940's and 1950's when recording was more to do with the faithful reproduction of the instruments.  He also explained that loudness was not a new issue and that people have been over compressing tracks for years to make them sound louder. However, what many people don't realise is that measurements of dynamic range are different from musical dynamics.

From a mastering engineer's point of view, Ray Staff said over compressed files were much harder to EQ and refine because there wasn't sufficient headroom.
"MP3 can add gain and can distort the sound," he explained. "When digital CD's were first introduced, producers used to allow headroom for mastering. The RMS level was set low for a reason, yet over past 12 years the levels have crept up by 20 DB."

Staff added that there is a definite need to reach an agreed industry standard across all formats so that SPL levels never rise above -3. One solution would be to adopt the SPL standard currently applied to DVDs, which would mean a return to sensible levels. He also pointed out that sacrificing quality for loudness is leading to a situation where the public no longer considers contemporary music to be Hi Fi anymore.

Tim Young's contribution to the debate centred on the problems created by using limiter plug-ins during the mix stage and before the track gets to the mastering suite. He also added that artists can be persuaded to reduce loudness levels if they have the opportunity to compare the quality of tracks that haven't been over compressed.

Young pointed out that today's A&R staff have no technical training and recommended re-introducing the mentoring system that used to help A&R staff understand the technical issues involved. His view was that an inclusive approach would work best, so that creating high quality recordings became a team effort involving artists, A&R staff, producers and mastering engineers.

The seminar was so successful that the question and answer time had to be extended. The interest level in this subject indicated that Loudness is a hot topic at the moment - and one that is sure to inspire plenty more debate in months to come.

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