Contributed by Nasa.

This is when I put the Engineer hat on for a minute so I may lose some people, but here goes...

There is an epidemic that is effecting all forms of music right now.  It's the continuing "Loudness War" that is going on in Mastering Studios across the country.  Louder is NOT always better!  I have to admit, I listen to my music loud, I also mix fairly loud, but this shit is getting ridiculous.  I want to familiarize you with two terms that you should remember for the next time your in a Mastering Session- "Digital Black" and "Digital Zero".  A lot of new records are going "Into Digital Black" or going past "Digital Zero".  Plain and simple, they are "peaking" and "distrorting".  It's ugly.  Especially considering most music is listened to in MP3 format anyway, which is already a flawed format. 

I've heard some of my favorite albums, from well known artists that are paying big $$$ for mastering fall victim of this.  This is NOT something that happens soley because your doing your mastering on the cheap or on your own.  In some ways, NOT all, you might be better off on your own because you don't likely have the ability to go into the Digital Black on your own.

Listen to your albums more closely.  Do you hear a tinny value to it?  For the engineers out there- do you hear a high amount of what sounds like 2KHZ-3KHZ?  Bingo- that's what I'm talking about.

It makes it really hard to listen to music of any kind.  Distortion is not always obvious, distortion can actually hide.  If you play something loud enough, especially hip-hop, the bass can be so loud, that it actually helps cover up some of the distorted qualities that are in the music in a higher frequency.  It's only when you actually TURN IT DOWN that you will start to hear peaks.

Sometimes when things peak digitally, the sound of the distortion actually sounds different then what you would typically expect as well and it can sneak by that way as well.  The problem is mastering engineers that are trying to change all mixes to sound like the same damn song.  Some mastering people don't respect mix engineers enough and have a template set up to make everything loud as hell.  The other side of it is the customer that walks into a session saying "I want this to bang loud on every system and that's it".  The customer is always right.

I'm not making this up- a track just came up on my Itunes that has this issue! I think that people are deaf in the business these days.

Back in the days, you'd get run out of the business if you oversaw music that sounded this bad.  So, the next time your in a Mastering Session- remember these few things:

If the Mastering Engineer is ONLY talking about making things louder- LEAVE (seriously)

If the Mastering Engineer doesn't have racks of sophisticated looking EQs & Compressors and is ONLY using a computer program- you should become VERY suspicious of what your actually paying for.  If you don't see a rack of GML EQs, some Avalons and maybe a Manley in the rack, your in the wrong place.

If you mention the terms "Digital Black" or "Digital Zero" and they don't know what your talking about- RUN (seriously).

Let's end the "Loudness War" and replace it with a "Quality War".  It starts with what the artists and the listeners are asking for.