Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage!

The vinyl record is an analog medium. How can it be affected by the loudness war?
This translates into a reduction in the quality of the vinyl record, which is collateral damage from the loudness war.
We’ll use Prince’s Purple Rain as an example to describe this phenomenon. However, let’s start by looking at what’s happening to digital versions.
Indeed, loudness war is a phenomenon linked to the digital medium, which consists in music becoming louder on a digital support. As with digital, it’s impossible to exceed the maximum level, so we try to increase the average level, but this results in a reduction in peaks, and therefore dynamics.

The waveforms below illustrate this phenomenon.

The maximum level is noted as 0 dB, and we count down from this level. The values indicated are therefore negative, with the exception of True Peak, which takes into account the interpolation between two points and can be greater than 0 dB when these two points are close to 0 dB. For the average level, we use the LUFS integrated level, and the True Peak level for the maximum level. So a value of -18 dB indicates a lower level than -7 dB.

For the Purple Rain album, we find a DR12 (-16.3 LUFS) for the original digital version and a DR6 (-8.3 LUFS) for the 2015 remastered version. We therefore observe an 8 dB increase in the average level, and above all a flattening of the peaks, which translates into a reduction in dynamics as indicated by the DR value.

How can vinyl be affected by loudness war?

In fact, you can’t turn up the volume like you can with digital, because there are physical constraints specific to the analog medium. The problem is that we no longer try to make a vinyl-specific master from the original mix, but use the dynamic-compressed digital master as a basis for burning the vinyl record.

The diagram below shows the ideal workflow, with different masterings for different media, based above all on the studio mix (as explained for the album L’Homme à tête de chou).

The diagram below shows that mastering for vinyl is no longer based on the original mix, but on the master for CD (or streaming). We therefore start with a master which, in our Prince example, is highly compressed in terms of dynamics.

So what’s the impact? The waveforms below show the original vinyl record and the vinyl record made from the remastered version in 2015 (The same recording level was used for both vinyl records).

We notice that the cutting level on the remastered vinyl record is 1 dB lower than that of the original version, and more importantly, we notice a flattening of the peaks with a dynamic range reduced by over 5 dB!

The value is actually higher, but when the vinyl record’s lacquer is cut, there’s a phenomenon that increases the dynamic range, as the analog medium doesn’t support signals heavily compressed with brickwall compressors (more on this phenomenon : Does analog media force a dynamic on music? [link]).

Obviously, what is visible on these curves is also audible. Here are samples from the original and remastered vinyl versions to compare the difference in sound rendering.

This is not an isolated example, but a growing phenomenon. This is also the case for the following albums: Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A., David Gilmour – Luck and Strange, Norah Jones – Visions…

It’s mainly present on recent albums, but certain musical genres are rather spared, such as Jazz, Blues, Classical…

But, as always, it’s important not to generalize, and there are still productions that give priority to quality, like the latest REQUESTS – Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio LIVE album, or Analogue production, MOFI for example…

Two additional points following the various exchanges:

• We’re not questioning the use of digital as a vinyl master, but only digital masters compressed with dynamics.
• Concerning mastering, we’re talking about the technical term, not the mastering service that does the work and obeys the requests of the clients to use this type of master.