What the situation needs is, someone to slip through the loudness net that becomes the album that everyone wants to emulate and that isn't squashed to hell...

Iv'e always mixed pretty loud, but only on the loud bits....However, the levels used today, as an average, are just becoming ridiculous. To my ears there is an average rms level, which, if you push past it means you end up having to trade off part of the overall sound to allow the rest its head. In the pop field as already noted, it's the vocals that tend to sound way bigger than the backing. I listened to a, albeit nicely produced C & W album, the other day. The vocals and soundstaging just sounded ridiculous though. To achieve the requisite levels, it now sounds like the vocalist is singing out of the soundhole of the acoustic guitar. Overall, the EQ of the album hangs together well, but they have gone with so much upper mid, to up the volume level, that the imagery is completely screwed. The effect is, to my ears to totally destroy even the illusion of any sort of actual *performance*. The irony being , most of the backing was cut live...

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nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

sigh......It's called Evolution. Just like everything else music Evolves. Once the people, there for the industry, gets tired of over compressed Music it will evolve into something else.

Not that there is anything "wrong" with Compressed Music. It's just that this seems to be the "trend" right now, and it tends to be how most mainline producers are producing there work.

It would be nice too see a nice happy medium. No over compression and not to have compression phased out to the point where the sounds are jumping out so much that it makes it almost impossible to find a comfortable volume setting.......The next evolution....

But what do I know I'm a newbie