Dance needs dynamics just as much as any genre. The heart of dance is the beat, and the beat is traditionally made by drums – one of the most dynamic instruments there is.

If you take all the dynamics out of a drum, you have no beat, therefore it won’t be danceable !

Of course the reality is that drums can sound great when you compress the hell out of them, but I still don’t think there’s any point in going louder than the DR8 sweet spot.

All my favorite-sounding dance music has plenty of dynamics – look at something like “Demon Days” by Gorillaz, or “Untrue” by Burial, or “Born Slippy” by Underworld, or “Heligoland” by Massive Attack, or “Play” by Moby, or “Discovery” by Daft Punk or “There Is Love In You” by Four Tet, or anything by Orbital… they all sound incredible, and I’ve never heard anyone complain they are two quiet.

Whereas I love the Chemical Brothers for example, but I’ve never loved their *sound* which has always been heavily over-compressed.

Of course it’s all about balance, as with anything else – too much dynamic range can be a problem, but a good DJ matches the loudness in the mix during a set – in that situation a more dynamic track will have deeper bass, more searing highs and lows and more punch overall than any hyper-compressed DR4 nonsense. Dynamic range is a secret weapon for dance music, just like everything other genre !

http://productionadvice.co.uk/loudness-war-secret/

Ian

but I have a question: what if you’re producing electronic dance music? does this still apply? the whole point of this genre (well mostly) is to slam your audience with sound…

dynamic range seems like a bad idea in electronic music. I’d like your opinion on this, is it an exception to the rule?

or should you just use a smaller dynamic range? How do you do that when you’re dealing with massive assemblages of sounds?

Ian

i recorded a radio recording into wav and compared to the CD ripped wav of a song from 1994 and view on soundforge, the song is tom petty – it’s good to be a king. of course as you all know that the verse is just as loud as the chorus on the radio compressed wav file and they also made it sound distorted from original recording. the little gently cymbol seems so loud now.

honestly i don’t like radio’s sound quality. i remember in the 80′s up till 1991. radio wasn’t so loud