If what I'm about to say is obvious, bear with me, but I also think that a certain amount of dynamic loss is very much to be expected as an attribute of "professional" music. And I don't mean only the feel of compression or the texture of saturation; even careful fader riding can make a part sound "more like a record" simply by removing excessive dynamics. I suppose we've been accustomed to reduced dynamic range in recorded music for as long as records have existed. Perhaps the 'next big thing' in music could be extreme dynamic range.

 

Checked:

Giorgia - Senza Paura - 2013



On the CD, you'll find those things :



Q.E.D.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2026 at 2:17 AM

(link dead, sorry)

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2026 at 2:18 AM

I can't post anything as the recordings don't belong to me.

 

I noticed this last week whilst at a mates house. Very annoying it is; cue up a track with a light intro and as soon as the loud stuff drops, down goes the volume. I'd actually assumed it was raising quite sections as well as stamping on loud ones. Either way, it destroyed loads of stuff we were playing and annoyed the fuck out of us.

 

Why would you just out of a hat assume that the dynamics of a bass track in a mix would be "gain ridden" or electrically controlled?? Bass parts were actually played by musicians who knew how to react and control their own dynamics in a song. Depends greatly on the style of music - some styles don't really lend themselves much to dynamic bass lines, unless the content requires it. I'm not saying that dynamics controlling electronics were/are never used on bass tracks because they were/are, but better musicians were/are more in touch with this and many other aspects of their craft which made players like Jamerson, Alphonso Johnson, Tony Levin, and others be the more sought after players for recording sessions. Therefore you're not going to be doing much "gain riding" on a track that was played by a musician that knows what they are doing.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2026 at 8:11 PM

Because people are paid to play like vst's, real orchestras to play like Albion patches, and because many producers play fixed velocities on their macbook keyboard.

 

Thank god music streaming platforms have loudness normalization for playlist playback.
Artists and audio engineers can push the loudness as much as they want, but at the end of the day those flat songs actually sound weaker when their volume are pushed down to the same level as the volume of the more dynamic music, and since the more dynamic music keeps their peaks and transients, makes them sound louder ironically.

Now, if you really want to know the actual winner of the war:

 

The Loudness War