:: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ::

What can I do to make sure my album is LOUD?

The basic volume ceiling or capacity of a CD is a preset value, a level that was decided many decades ago when the CD standard was invented. The trend in popular music over the past two decades has been to milk this capacity for all it is worth, and it has caused people to produce louder and louder CD's -- this means that your stereo (or ipod or computer or whatever is playing back) has to do less work for a record to sound loud, i.e. you don't have to turn up the volume control as much. On cheap stereos there is some benefit to this, as bad components are very inefficient and don't perform well when made to work hard. A really quiet CD sounds thin and empty on fresh-out-of-the-box bargain white ipod headphones. However, people have lost sight of the middle ground, and there has been a recent movement to sacrifice depth, dynamics, and clarity in the name of being LOUD. This is sometimes referred to as the loudness wars -- many discs released in the last few years have distortion, tiny stereo images, reduced depth, and an overall two-dimensional sound, all done on purpose in the name of making a CD a little louder. The general consensus is that this is a gimmick, a trend that will pass, and we all hope that years from now people look back on this schtick as a dark (and fleeting) moment in music production history. The point being, you don't want your CD loud just for the sake of being loud -- we will help you achieve the optimal combination of volume, dynamics, breadth, and depth that will make your music sound wonderful for both Joe Ipod and audiophiles alike. Don't be afraid of the volume knob, it is your friend.

> A brief and helpful primer article by the IEEE on the loudness wars.

> This Youtube clip is not entirely accurate nor definitive, but it offers a good audio/visual primer to loudness issues.

> There is also a lengthy Wikipedia discussion on the loudness wars.


Return to the FAQ index