A couple of thoughts.
First, the article points out that one's perspective on the loudness
wars issue is somewhat dependent on the type of music involved. Those
who are fans of an urban rap genre may well have an opinion on this
subject that is considerably at variance from the fellow who finds his
favorite folk music album from the 60s has just been remastered in the
loudness wars style.
Second, there are some aspects of modern sound engineering styles that
don't necessarily show up in the numbers but still affect perception. A
couple of years back I was doing some editing work on a compilation CD I
was making for myself. A Lucinda Williams song (sorry, don't remember
which one) for the mix had a strong and prominent drum beat. In looking
at the waveform in Adobe Audition, the bass drum peaks were all
precisely the same. By contrast, when looking at other, typically older
material, the same type of repeated drum kicks had quite a bit of
variability in loudness.
In short, the Williams drum had been heavily limited and processed to
produce uniformity while, with similar tracks from other material, you
could tell they had been recorded with all of the variability one would
hear from a real drummer. A lot of the Lucinda Williams albums are
regarded as good recordings, but this type of uniformity robs them of
some of their humanness.
However, the current fad in the industry is for the loudness wars "in
your face" style. Unfortunately, since it is the fashion, it is used
even when it isn't a good choice. It reminds me of the time back around
1980 when I had to make a business trip to a school board office located
in the high school of a small town. The TV show Charlie's Angels was all
the rage and, in walking down the hall to the office, I noticed that
about half or more of the girls had "Farrah Fawcett" hairdos. For the
small percentage of the girls who had the right natural hair quality and
facial features, it was a great look. For all of the rest, however, they
were doing themselves no favor. Despite the fact that another hairstyle
would have served most of them far better, Farrah was the hot look and,
by God, they were going to have it no matter what.
Unfortunately, we're pretty much at the same spot with recording
fashions these days.
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