I’ve read a new book called Perfecting Sound Forever by Greg Milner. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in how we got to the current state of audio recording/fidelity (or lack there-of) as well as a conceptual dissection of the difference between music and a recording. The book is painstakingly researched and brilliantly retold in such a way that reads more like music appreciation than history.

Perhaps the chapter that hit closest to home for me was the one about “The Loudness Wars“- our never-ending quest for the loudest, most compressed, most in-your-face recording ever. The main reason why the war started is because if you give anyone two recordings and ask them which one they like better, they will always pick the louder one. This is part of how we’re wired – loud and bright always instinctively sounds more exciting. The problem is that a recording that is too loud and too bright is exhausting to listen to and ultimately abrasive. The main subject of debate pertaining to the the war was The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ record “Californication.” This was a record I listened to a lot in middle school. I remember a couple days straight where I had this record in my discman for the bus ride to and from school. Reading about this record as one of the first to suffer backlash from being too loud triggered a memory from these bus rides. I distinctly remember suddenly feeling like the record sounded…wrong. I remember it sounding distorted and abrasive, to the point where I had to stop listening. I don’t think I picked up the CD again for a long time if ever. I never thought much of my reaction because at the time I knew nothing about recording, mastering, compression…etc. There’s a serious problem when a recording has clear negative effects on my 13-year-old ears.

Here’s the waveform for Around the World – The opening track on “Californication.”

For comparison here is the waveform for Radiohead’s The Bends released 4 years earlier in ‘95.

A common argument for the overuse of compression is the fact that most music now will be heard via lossy mp3’s through laptop speakers. The sound has to be incredibly aggressive in order to compete with the sheer volume of modern living. Common music fans simply do not invest time/money into their living room s0und systems like they did in the days of the “Hi-Fi” (see pic).

It can not be expected that the “Hi-Fi” ideal of the 50’s could be sustained through the instant gratification of the digital age, but it is questionable whether appealing to the lowest from of listening is the best way to approach making recordings today.

Reading about the present state of music, I couldn’t help but feel like it’s all a little pointless. What I mean is: What’s the point of trying to make good sounding recordings if they’ll eventually sound like shit anyway? First, mastering will destroy any dynamic/finesse/emotion; then the CD will be ripped into lossy mp3’s to put on itunes; then the listener will listen through their laptop speakers while the TV is on, or listen in their car through their radio ipod adapter (which hardly sounds like much more than static – those things should be outlawed!!) To go along with this means to be okay with making poor sounding recordings, to rebel means to risk being dismissed by listeners used to their music being audible over the sound of them vacuuming. In the last year I got a record back from mastering and after fearing that it was too compressed, I showed it to a producer/engineer friend of mine to get a second opinion. His response was “I’m probably the wrong person to ask about this: I always think it sounds too compressed after mastering.” Why is it that as technology makes it more and more possible to achieve “perfect” (life-like) sound, the industry demands something further and further from human experience. Milner frequently refers to a quote from Neil Young, which serves as a sort of summation of the predicament we find ourselves in.

“We’ll look back [on it] and go, ‘Wow, that was the digital age. I wonder what the music really sounded like?’ We got so carried away that we never really recorded it. We just made digital records out of it.”