ABSTRACT
Loudness has long been an idealized sonic quality of rock recordings. As the Rolling Stones implored on the record jacket of 1969’s Let It Bleed: “This Record Should be Played Loud.” While loudness in the rhetoric of rock is generally associated with an aesthetic of the sublime—of one that overwhelms a listener with awe-inspiring power—its prevalence has also created an environment where record labels and their artists have striven to be louder than their competitors. A recording’s dynamic range can be measured by calculating the variation between its average sound level and its maximum, and can be visually expressed through wave forms. Louder recordings, with higher average sound levels, leave less room for such variation than quieter ones. The loudness war began heating up around the time CDs gained popularity, in the early 1980s. Sound engineers say artists who insist on loudness paradoxically give people less to hear, because they end up wiping away nuances and details.
