The Loudness War has ended in the Year 2000 !!!

 

No mention of R128 yet?
http://www.r128audio.com/

Has the Loudness War been won ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTDoJKMi72M

LUFS - the new Loudness Units. What do they mean ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31zHqzjRn4c

Loudness Wars, Part 1 - Thomas Lund
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhA7Vy3OPbc

EBU R128 Introduction - Florian Camerer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuEtQqC-Sqo

EBU R128 in Transmission and Production
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs0Vq9XrT2U

tcelectronicHDaudio Rome Calling - Audio Seminar of the Year
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1DFD82547E26C27D

tcelectronicHDaudio Loudness and the EBU R128 Broadcast Standard
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL555E65F53AB97CC9


This is vaguely related but explains that the whole loudness thing is really just a mindfuck (on the radio, that is, and given that your radio station uses optimod):

Loudness means NOTHING on the radio – The Proof
http://productionadvice.co.uk/loudness-means-nothing-on-the-radio/

Plus a recent interview with Bob Katz about loudness and iTunes radio:
http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/9647-loudness-war/page__st__20

 

I posted exactly the same topic about 2 years ago, some info can be found there as well:
http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/3999-loudness-war/page__p__26457__hl__loudness+war__fromsearch__1#entry26457

 

Thank god I produce music where loudness does not apply as a quality factor for distribution or air play.

 

For me loudness means making a song that doesn't hurt your ears. Not too quiet in a sense that it can't be heard, but not too loud that you must move your volume down to be able to listen without jumping on the walls.

I hate pretty much most of the music made after '90. It wasn't just the loudness thing, there were too many new styles of music that I don't like. House, Heavy metal and things like that.
I dislike even some of that electronic music where there was used a symphonic orchestra or acoustic instruments. Why use an orchestra if you compress the sh*t out of it and don't let me hear how the instruments really sound? This reminds me of a title of a post of Bootsy: "the magic is where the transient happens".

Besides the thing that I dislike some of the new genres and you can call me old fashioned, before trying to mix a song and learning about sound editing and processing, I didn't know why some songs were making me turn down the volume or even stop playback after few seconds. They were over compressed, over-mastered-clipped and my ears were getting fatigue.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc

 

Is there any thing louder 0db?

 

Yes, on analog you can go above 0dB, sometimes to +12dB (metal cassettes)
And technically it's possible on floating-point PCM, although it's not widely implemented in hardwave. Also, not sure, but DSD might also go above 0dB