Turning Up the Sound and Down the Quality

This song sounds like garbage. I find myself uttering this far more frequently than I did a few years ago. The garbage seems to be appearing on everything from the bands I abhor to some of my favorites. It starts with a muted sound from the drums or a fizzing sound like a cheap sparkler off the guitar and becomes something that is almost unbearable to the ear. It sounds as if you are trying to listen to your favorite song through a stereo where one of the speakers is blown out. My garbage issue is sound quality.

There was a little stir about this issue with Metallica's last album but ardent audiophiles were made out to be whining babies. If you cannot take the heat then get out of the kitchen. My reply is why do you need to turn up the noise, let the listen do that. Truth be told the issue of sound homogenization is quite common. Take a CD that you have recently purchased or a song that you downloaded and play it. Now take an older CD and listen to it. Notice how with the older CD you have to change the volume setting from time to time. Some parts are softer so you turn it up while some parts are louder so you turn it back down. With the newer recording notice that there are no adjustments to be made. On newer music the production company has turned up the lower tones so that they blend well with the highs. In doing this, the instruments' audio levels are all the same. The drums do not sound like they once did. Rather than hitting the listener between the temples it is as if the drummer is playing an empty milk jug. If the listener turns up the audio levels to compensate for a weak sound, the guitars go fuzzy and distorted because they are over the proper levels. In essence, modern production has created a cheap uniform mess of sound.

I write this not to create change, the music industry was bought and sold long before my time, but to inform. Not all music production has a cheap feel. There are still a lot of independent labels that are producing quality albums. It is too bad that audiophiles are tagged by the media as dorks when all we really want is superior sound quality.