Humans like loud music, so louder music sounds better and sell more. So, how do you make your music MAXIMUM LOUD? Well, our digital formats have a setting for how loud any given sound is, but you can't just set it to the maximum value because then all sounds in your track will be equally loud. Or can you? Not all parts of a cymbal "phish" is equally loud, so setting it all to max will distort the sound (sacrifice dynamic range), but will consumers really care?
Youtube, by adjusting all tracks to have the same average loudness, is basically saying "to those of you who would give up essential dynamic range, to purchase a little temporary loudness, you deserve neither dynamic range nor loudness"
The hope is that eventually labels will quit sacrificing dynamic range for loudness if all our digital music sources set the average loudness to be the same for all tracks.
Applying Replaygain or EBU R128 loudness equalization will not change the perception of dynamic range and, all other things being equal will actually slightly decrease the DR rating. And TFA is not talking about Replaygain-like algorithms from the description.
Yes, that's true. But in the long run, with YouTube being such an important player, the results should be positive.
The record company's mixers have been escalating a loudness war for years, in an effort to make the most impression on listeners. And the result of that is poor sound quality.
Now YouTube comes along and says "we're resetting you all back to a standard overall volume". Suddenly all that escalating loudness hasn't accomplished anything (or very little; probably there are ways to game the system a little), at least when listened to through YouTube, which as we said is hugely important.
If they're no longer able to compete in loudness, and the vain attempt to do so damages the quality of the recording, then in the long run the mixers ought to quit doing that. It's not going to save Death Magnetic, it's too late for that, but maybe we can reclaim fidelity in future recordings.
Although the tracks have been normalised to have the same average loudness, the more aggressively compressed tracks that have less dynamic range will still sound louder at this lower level. I don't see how what YouTube is doing is going to help.
If the lower dynamic range tracks sound louder even after normalization then the normalization algorithm is flawed. ReplayGain weights the energy by frequency to better match perceived loudness, and it does a reasonably good job. Other algorithms might do an even better job at matching human perception.
Those two things have a pretty similar loudness(A-weighted RMS) and yet the compressed one sounds louder than the measured difference - ~3dB A-weighted which is not obvious to perceive untrained.
As a test - download them both, amplify the Uncompressed one at -2.7dB and listen to them again. They have the same A-weighted RMS yet the Uncompressed one sounds louder.
As I understand it, tracks with more dynamic range will have louder loud's and quieter quiet's, while those with low dynamic range will have less of either.
That's true but most people are used to a smaller DR(up to a point of course but that point is way out) and still prefer the lower DR even after normalization.
So, actually, there's not much evidence that points to this. We see albums with good dynamic range selling just as well as ones with shitty dynamic range that is louder.
The FM radio has long normalized volume for songs - so the only places this mattered was on purchased CDs.
It's some weird feedback loop. The initial input was true - to a point, humans think louder things sound better - but that idea has now been as distorted as the audio tracks they're putting out.
Youtube, by adjusting all tracks to have the same average loudness, is basically saying "to those of you who would give up essential dynamic range, to purchase a little temporary loudness, you deserve neither dynamic range nor loudness"
The hope is that eventually labels will quit sacrificing dynamic range for loudness if all our digital music sources set the average loudness to be the same for all tracks.