alt Hacker NewsIs the loudness war still going on? I kind of assumed it died out with streaming. Music apps are smart enough nowadays to normalize loudness anyway, and there are better ways of getting attention, right?
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Indeed streaming killed the loudness war - all major streaming apps either require masters to meet a specific loudness target or perform normalization on their end to move their encodes to their loudness target.
I’m not quite sure, tbh.
I mostly listen to pop music or pop-adjacent, which is like the ultra-processed food of music. Highly compressed and generally lacking much dynamism.
I assume there is plenty of interesting dynamism outside of the pop charts and Spotify mixes, but unless I’m listening to live versions or really raw artists, I generally don’t experience them.
Crowd-sourced metrics at:
https://dr.loudness-war.info/
2026 releases have varied dynamic range but the majority is still low. Loudness war mastering sounds better on phone speakers and in cars. Even though streaming services normalize loudness, you need quiet listening environments and good headphones/speakers to properly appreciate a high dynamic range recording.