The loudness war is a sonic arms race in which record labels and artists feel compelled to over-process their music to the point of ruin in order to remain competitive in a way. This results in a complete loss of contrast, light, shade, and depth in the mix. It is said that the loudness war was a myth, somehow hypnotizing the entire music industry for the past 10 years. The music must be compressed up against the ceiling of the maximum level in order to reach these extremely high levels, which narrows the gap between the average and peak levels in the track. This results in a sharp reduction of the dynamic range, which is the difference between loud and soft volumes.
Bob Katz, a mastering engineer, brought up the question; “Does louder sound better?”. In his professional opinion, it does because musicians love to make “crescendos”, it brings life and energy to a track. He noticed that sound from his converters had more width, depth and space, however it was just 2/10ths of a decibel louder.
A prominent example of the loudness wars is the release of Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” album, with sound quality so drastically distorted and over-compressed that anyone listening could at last hear and comprehend the drawbacks of producing extremely powerful tracks. The catalyst of the overwhelming criticism was the video game, “Guitar Hero 3”. Multitrack stems from the recording sessions of “Death Magnetic” were used to create the various audio layers in the game. Fans of Metallica heard what the released record might have sounded like by assembling those stems themselves, which uses a lot more of the dynamic range rather than maximizing all the sounds. This version was preferred a lot more and despite the fact it didn’t end the loudness war, it gathered enough attention to the downsides of loud CDs. In fact, the loudness war ended following the release of digital audio players and media playback software, which introduced peak normalization, automatically limiting any audio signals which surpassed the target level, typically -14 LUFS for streaming services.
Wykes, A. (2022) What’s The Loudness War?, SoundGuys. Available at: https://www.soundguys.com/the-loudness-war-51513/ (Accessed: 17 April 2025).
Metallica Death magnetic – how to lose the Loudness War (2008) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I (Accessed: 17 April 2025).
Katz, B. (2010) Bob Katz about the ‘Loudness War’ Part 1, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCd6MHlo_iA (Accessed: 17 April 2025).