Foo Fighters just released a surprise new single, "Run" - and the biggest surprise to me is that it has great dynamics.
All their recent releases have been pushed really hard, in the loudness department - not disastrously, but I've always thought they would have sounded better with more room to breathe.
This single proves me right.
But then, I would say that ! I'm always saying that balanced dynamics beat loudness.
So in this post, I'm not going to offer any personal opinions at all, I'm just going to let the facts speak for themselves - and the reviews.
The post title says it all - in the last few days it's become clear that Spotify have chosen to reduce their default Distribution Loudness level from approximately -11 LUFS down to -14 LUF, in line with YouTube and TIDAL.
This is a big deal, and in a minute I'll discuss why, but before that - what does it mean, in simple terms ?
People ask me this kind of thing all the time.
What's your favourite mastering limiter ?
Or compressor ?
Or EQ ?
And I'm always reminded of a saying I've heard, which goes something like:
"Ask an audio engineer what the best ______ is, and he'll just tell you whatever he's using right now"
There's a lot of truth in that, and it's one of the reasons I try to avoid getting into detailed recommendations myself, although I'm happy enough to tell people particular processors I've used and liked.
But now, there's another option - you can listen and decide for yourself, thanks to a cool new website called Gearshoot.
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It's probably THE single most common source of confusion I see in discussions of audio.
People say things like:
"The compression on YouTube really kills the dynamics"
or
"To get a good encode the music needs to be compressed really hard"
or
"I hate the sound of compression. mp3s sound really squashed"
Now, all of those statements are based on real opinions about music and sound quality, but they're all also horribly confused.
Which is understandable, because they're all talking about compression - but in audio, we commonly talk about two completely different types of compression !
They do different things, they have different purposes, and they have different effects on the sound. But people still refer to them both as "compression", without saying which one they're talking about. Sometimes it's obvious from the context - but often, it's not.
So, this my infographic is my latest attempt to help people sort out the difference - if you know someone who might find it helpful, please share !
(Click on the image above to see a higher-resolution version, or to download a PDF copy, click here)
And if you want to dig this topic in more depth, here's something I wrote a few years ago which explains the difference using sponges. (more…)
