"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
People might be interested in seeing

http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/temp/vickers.gif

This shows a graph of the results of some research published by Vickers
who
has reported on 'Loudness Wars' at a recent AES convention.[1]

The blobs on the graph represent the best selling CDs over a recent period
of time. The vertical scale scores them by how well they sold. The
horizontal scale assesses them by a measure of peak-to-mean ratio in dB we
can call 'DR'. [2]

In brief, if 'loudness and compression' boosted sales then you'd expect
CDs
with a low DR to score higher and high DR to score lower. i.e. You'd see a
clear sloped relationship between the blobs with the ones at the lefh-hand
end being higher than at the right-hand end.

The red line is the trend line though the data. No sign of much slope.
Vickers reports the correlation is poor. i.e. no clear sign of any
relationship between compression and sales.

Vickers also reports on the rise in hearing damage and wonders if this is
associated with relentless loudness and peak-mean compression.

Given that the people who routinely compress music on CD *don't* seem to
have made public any assessable evidence I've yet been able to find to
support their behaviour, the above seems worth considering.

Points to ponder. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

[1] Alas, the print of this seems only available from the AES at present.
Can't find a copy of the pdf of his presentation openly on the web. But
you
can find more from his page at

http://www.sfxmachine.com/docs/loudnesswar/

The slides used as part of the AES presentation are available on his
website.

Two things that emerged from it that interested me:

Firstly that the "loudness war" is the result of competition between
producers to have *the loudest* record. This kind of competition rapidly
results in extreme behaviour. A couple of other examples of that behaviour
that I can think of are the cold-war competition between the USA and the
USSR to have the most deadly nuclear arsenals, and the competition between
senior business executives and bankers to be paid more than their peers. In
all three cases the motivation is not to do something inherently correct or
justifiable, but by the need not to let the other guy get the better of you.

The other point was that the loudness war may have harmed music sales by
producing records that people tire of listening to, even if they are unable
to understand exactly what it is about the records that makes them feel that
way. I am reminded that I first heard "Switched-on Bach" (Bach played on a
Moog synthesiser) my initial reaction had been "wow!", but I very soon got
bored by it.

David.