Knife Party and the Loudness War

[Sharmaji]

whether or not it's "right," superclippy digital distortion-- and the high-end lift that it gives-- is part of the sound of dance music these days. if you don't deliver mixes with that kind of crunchy, impactful high end, you're gonna lose clients. Thus, you've got to find new ways to clip and incorporate that into your mix process.

[Digezt]

To add to this debate, after viewing stems of tracks by people like Excision, Datsik and Skrillex, I have seen that they are limiting and compressing each individual element before mastering ( Drum bus and Bass bus Slammed into 0dB )

[DefeaterDub]

Yeah like someone said, dance music is a different thing, its not live music with natural dynamics, it uses strict samples over and over again, with the same level values. Also with this style, it may not even be the limiting that is doing it, the composition of the tracks means that every last space in the track is full of something going on, so there are no gaps in the arrangement of the track for it to breathe anyway.

I was kinda thinking this as well. Knife Party's mix is always so full, and not just because it's loud. They have layers upon layers going on all the time. The whole song is danceable rather than just the drop.

[mthrfnk]

To add to this debate, after viewing stems of tracks by people like Excision, Datsik and Skrillex, I have seen that they are limiting and compressing each individual element before mastering ( Drum bus and Bass bus Slammed into 0dB )

Surely not before mastering but mixing since using 0dB elements would leave no room for mastering. These stems I gues are from remix comps?

Yeah like someone said, dance music is a different thing, its not live music with natural dynamics, it uses strict samples over and over again, with the same level values. Also with this style, it may not even be the limiting that is doing it, the composition of the tracks means that every last space in the track is full of something going on, so there are no gaps in the arrangement of the track for it to breathe anyway.

I was kinda thinking this as well. Knife Party's mix is always so full, and not just because it's loud. They have layers upon layers going on all the time. The whole song is danceable rather than just the drop.

Imo Swire is just a master mixer, judging from interviews and reports by other artists he's the shit plus he's a multi-intrumentalist. So adding layers upon layers of melodic shit is going to sound really good when mixed well.

[Digezt]

On the buses they put limiters to slam drums or basses, then set the level of bus, so drums might be set to -10dB yet they have already been limited. So they don't peak over -10dB. Stems are from remix comps, but why slam the hell out stems for a remix comp? wouldn't you just normalise them or leave them as they sit in the mix. Seeing as the guys in question most likely don't do their own masters.

[mthrfnk]

Seeing as the guys in question most likely don't do their own masters.

Most EDM artists do their own masters tbh.

[Ghost of Muttley]

Do you people watch movies on VHS or Blu-ray? When technology gets better, EVERYTHING gets better. Why does it matter if your music is super crisp and loud and high definition or not? How many of you use cell phones? If you have an iphone, or any cell phone for that matter, and you are totally against the loudness war...just piss off.

I do love new EVERYTHING
A gramme is always better than a damn.

[goldengrime]

But the technology really hasn't gotten any better, digital formats always have the same hard limit to how loud they can be. All this compression and limiting is doing is taking steps backwards in terms of quality and dynamics. Analogue technology in the early 90s could probably do the same thing, but they didn't cos it's pointless. Also: the Blu-Ray/iPhone comparisons make absolutely no sense.

Lol for starters its not digital that is making the tracks loud! And you obviously didn't read my post on how loudness has developed by new technology by an extra +6db since 1990. You obviously have no idea what your talking about seeing as your think loudness also has something to do with digital limits.

Ignorance.

[Ghost of Muttley]

loudness has developed by new technology by an extra +6db since 1990

Fourteenth percent of people know that.

[Maccaveli]

But the technology really hasn't gotten any better, digital formats always have the same hard limit to how loud they can be. All this compression and limiting is doing is taking steps backwards in terms of quality and dynamics. Analogue technology in the early 90s could probably do the same thing, but they didn't cos it's pointless. Also: the Blu-Ray/iPhone comparisons make absolutely no sense.

Lol for starters its not digital that is making the tracks loud! And you obviously didn't read my post on how loudness has developed by new technology by an extra +6db since 1990. You obviously have no idea what your talking about seeing as your think loudness also has something to do with digital limits.

Ignorance.

That's not what I said at all. That extra +6db is due to compression and limiting, not the actual hard ceiling of digital formats being raised, right? So what I was saying is that digital technology doesn't allow music to actually get louder in terms of peak loudness, only perceived loudness. I was responding to the guy who said that as technology improves, things get louder and therefore better, which due to that hard limit on peak loudness is simply not true. I said nothing about loudness being a result of digital formats.

[Sparxy]

What he knows is that all the other tunes that get played in sets alongside his tunes are also smashed to the max, so if he doesn't keep up his tracks will sound quieter than everything else. They all brick-wall the shit out of their tunes like dogs chasing their own tales and it's all completely pointless. This shit needs some sort of world wide conference to put a stop to it.

So this

[deadly_habit]

What he knows is that all the other tunes that get played in sets alongside his tunes are also smashed to the max, so if he doesn't keep up his tracks will sound quieter than everything else. They all brick-wall the shit out of their tunes like dogs chasing their own tales and it's all completely pointless. This shit needs some sort of world wide conference to put a stop to it.

So this

pretty much

it's not that he's a good overall engineer it's he knows how to mix and master for pop/big rigs
it's the wall of sound style

[hasezwei]

well fuck the wall of sound then

why do we even bother its not like i would ever want to make music that gets mixed with fucking knife party and neither do any of you.

[deadly_habit]

some people aim for that
madeon is a great example

maxed out mixdown then pumped more mastering
wall of sound
it can sound decent in context with other tunes like it
if you only have a few elements it works great for electronic music, because the average listener considers louder better

[hasezwei]

but it basically forces you to not have many elements cause once your master hits 0dB and you want to add a new element everything else has to be quieter
of course frequency ranges play a role but still. i guess that explains why currently everyone's doing drop-based music where after the intro you just throw everything you have at the listener and drop things out instead of adding new elements

you cant have everything as loud as possible all the time with it still sounding good imo

[deadly_habit]

heh metallica death magnetic is an example of it done horridly

[Ghost of Muttley]

Everything loud means nothing is loud..

[goldengrime]

But the technology really hasn't gotten any better, digital formats always have the same hard limit to how loud they can be. All this compression and limiting is doing is taking steps backwards in terms of quality and dynamics. Analogue technology in the early 90s could probably do the same thing, but they didn't cos it's pointless. Also: the Blu-Ray/iPhone comparisons make absolutely no sense.

Lol for starters its not digital that is making the tracks loud! And you obviously didn't read my post on how loudness has developed by new technology by an extra +6db since 1990. You obviously have no idea what your talking about seeing as your think loudness also has something to do with digital limits.

Ignorance.

That's not what I said at all. That extra +6db is due to compression and limiting, not the actual hard ceiling of digital formats being raised, right? So what I was saying is that digital technology doesn't allow music to actually get louder in terms of peak loudness, only perceived loudness. I was responding to the guy who said that as technology improves, things get louder and therefore better, which due to that hard limit on peak loudness is simply not true. I said nothing about loudness being a result of digital formats.

Your talk about peak loudness? Peak is level/signal and mastering engineers don't give a shit about peak level.

[Maccaveli]

That's what I'm saying ffs! There's no reason for them to give a shit about peak level cos it's always pretty much the same, it's how everything sorts itself out below the 0db ceiling that matters. Which is what I was explaining to the guy who said digital technology lets us have louder and therefore better music.

[mthrfnk]

it's not that he's a good overall engineer it's he knows how to mix and master for pop/big rigs
it's the wall of sound style

I beg to differ, he did a lot of mixing for the Pendulum albums (which contain a wide variety of genres and use a lot of live instruments) plus has done external work for other acts. But yeah, he obviously knows how to make commercial music.

heh metallica death magnetic is an example of it done horridly

This pisses me off, I quite like that album - I don't get why the engineers fucked it up so badly.