So here\u2019s what you need to know. First of all, there\u2019s a difference between \u201cvolume\u201d and \u201cloudness.\u201d The former you can control with the knob or button on your stereo\/radio\/computer\/iPod\/Victrola\/whatever. The latter is decided upon before you ever buy the music. \u201cLoudness\u201d is the built-in volume of each element of each track, levels that are usually determined in the mixing or mastering stage of music production. The more \u201cloudness\u201d is applied to a track, the less it has in the way of dynamics\u2014the quiet parts of a song become just as loud as the noisy parts. When \u201cMaintain the Pain\u201d slams into its chorus, for instance, the dramatic impact is lessened because the \u201cquiet\u201d intro isn\u2019t really quiet at all.<\/p>\n
Since the late 1990s, many of the people who make the music we listen to\u2014from artists to producers to label execs to whatever other chefs are in the kitchen\u2014have carried on a war of attrition in which one after another nudges the loudness higher and higher and higher in an attempt to grab the consumer\u2019s increasingly difficult-to-hold attention. No one wants his or her song to be quieter than the song that precedes it on the radio, for fear of losing a possible consumer\u2019s attention. (Much more information can be found at the website of Turn Me Up!, an organization formed to fight the practice.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So here\u2019s what you need to know. First of all, there\u2019s a difference between \u201cvolume\u201d and \u201cloudness.\u201d The former you can control with the knob or button on your stereo\/radio\/computer\/iPod\/Victrola\/whatever. The latter is decided upon before you ever buy the music. \u201cLoudness\u201d is the built-in volume of each element of each track, levels that are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2014\/12\/featured-07.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.audiotheme.com\/promenade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}