The loudness war (or loudness race) is the music industry's tendency to record, produce, and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness to attempt to create a sound that stands out from others.

When comparing two recordings with different levels, it is likely that the louder one will be regarded as sounding better.

The trend of increasing loudness as shown by waveform images of "Something" by The Beatles mastered on CD four times since 1983. Forthcoming remasters are likely to continue this trend.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

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A 2 minute explanation of the topic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

However, The downside of this is that it effectively limits the dynamic range of the music you're listening to.

Personally I'm not an audiophile, and I hadn't given the topic much consideration until a friend got me thinking. I mean, sure, if you're going to be listening to music on your ipod while you're commuting, driving, clubbing w/e, you might want loudly mastered music which can be heard over the background noise, but it robs the music of a certain degree of subtlety and nuance when you're listening in a quieter atmosphere.

And I personally believe music is one of those things where you're not really getting everything out of it unless you're sitting down in a quiet place and giving it all of your attention. The thing I found most curious was the way the remastered versions of The Beatles songs had been steadily increasing in loudness.

Thats pretty interesting. Never occurred to me before.

Wait, modern music has dynamics? The most I've heard were some variations between loud, too loud, and it's-making-my-ears-bleed loud.

It's not something entirely surprising, especially with the amount of music polluting our airwaves and store shelves. In this day and age, it's more of what grabs you from the initial listen. The "loudness war" is just another result of knowing whatever your target demographic will impulsively like or buy.

Sometimes it feels like the recording industry doesn't understand what it wants to do when remastering something. The problem is, you're not sure what that target demographic with remasters is. Is it something for the sake of actually increasing the listening experience for longtime fans or something to reintroduce the music to a newer generation? I do enjoy the prospects of reintroducing music to a new generation with lower fidelity, crushed dynamics, and unnatural loudness. Sounds like a great way to do it.

The inherent effects of the "loudness war" is only readily apparent in remasters. With "modern" recordings we never see the original fidelity and dynamics prior to its release. We sure as hell can tell when they've fucked with it though. An album I very recently had this experience with without even knowledge of a specific term for the occurrence was "Death Magnetic", which almost made me throw my headphones at a wall. Loud, bloated bass, and terrible recording quality. The problem is, I actually liked the album if it wasn't so hard to listen to. Maybe it'll sound good with the paired SkullCandy headphones that it was originally released with.

I caught this article earlier and I think it is a shame that they are doing this. Then again, they are responding to consumer demand/impulses.