Aural Fatigue In Modern Pop
An exceptionally comprehensive article over at Austin360 explains why modern records (music mastered in the last ten years) can be hard to listen to even if you like the music. It has to do with physical aural fatigue. It is essentially a story of over-compression on modern music studio masters, which is being done in a more and more extreme way to give music more “perceived loudness”.
Excerpt:
…Here’s the punch line: The brain can’t process sounds that lack a dynamic range for very long. It’s an almost subconscious response. This is what Montrone was talking about when he mentioned the TV test tone.
“It’s ear fatigue,” Tubbs says, “After three songs you take it off. There’s no play to give your ears even a few milliseconds of depth and rest.”
Alan Bean is a recording/mastering engineer in Harrison, Maine. He’s a former professional musician and a doctor of occupational medicine.
“It stinks that this has happened,” he says. “Our brains just can’t handle hearing high average levels of anything very long, whereas we can stand very loud passages, as long as it is not constant. It’s the lack of soft that fatigues the human ear.”
This is part of the reason that some people are really fanatical about vinyl. “It’s not necessarily that vinyl sounds ‘better,’ ” Bean says. “It’s that it’s impossible for vinyl to be fatiguing.”
And yet, record companies wonder why consumers are buying less of them.
The way your ear interprets music is something I’ve always been fascinated with. I did some amateur mastering and recording myself in college using Pro-Tools, and it is definitely a craft to be admired. One thing mixers always fear is ear fatigue. When we were in the studio, we would always take a break and go walk around for a few minutes every hour or so to give our ears a “rest”.
This article is a great look into how the music industry is affected by everything from our own ear fatigue to the environments we listen to music in now-a-days.
Everything Louder than Everything Else - Austin360
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POSTED IN: Greatest Hits, Media, Prevention, Technology, Your Body, Your Mind
6 opinions for Aural Fatigue In Modern Pop
Flipjack
Oct 2, 2006 at 12:30 pm
As a mastering engineer myself, this makes complete sense. I’ve been aware of this since the late eighties. Over compression sounds “great” to the untrained ear. It just sounds louder and more in your face, but after a short while you either begin to tune the music out or turn it off. It’s too much. All music on commercial radio is compressed to the point of overmodulation. There is absolutely no dynamic range, but they feel they need it to make everything “heard” and to keep the listener listening. It’s efffective as a mind numbing distraction to keep you from being present and it’s like force feeding; You don’t taste the food you just get fatter, til you can eat no more.
san paolo
Oct 4, 2006 at 8:09 am
It’s to my understanding that this mastering technique made a huge contribution to the mass appeal of “Nevermind”.
I can’t wait to read the entire article.
mam885
Oct 4, 2006 at 10:24 am
is this JON?
san paolo
Oct 4, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Yes, “mam”.
nex
Jan 6, 2007 at 11:10 am
While there are sounds that can be reproduced with digital media, but not on vinyl, it is _not_ impossible to press overcompressed music on vinyl. Records can be any bit as “fatiguing” as CDs, Bean’s comment on that is unfiltered nonsense.
moxie34
May 2, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Hey nex,
Maybe you should try reading the actual source article at austin360 before spouting off about Bean’s comment being “unfiltered nonsense”. The point made in the article about vinyl was that you could NOT compress tracks on vinyl to the same level as cd’s because the needle would physically jump from the record if things got too loud. That’s why vinyl can’t be as fatiguing as cd’s as a DIRECT RESULT OF OVER COMPRESSION. Read and learn
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