Most modern-day popular music is heavily compressed (i.e. quiet sounds are increased in volume) to increase a track’s overall "loudness" and apparent intensity.  Audiophile purists hate the trend, because it prevents the creation of truly expressive and "dynamic" albums.  Many consumers, however, perceive the "loudness" in a modern day track to reflect a higher level of quality.  Hence the Loudness War that ensues.

One organization, Turn Me Up!, is trying to "…create an environment where artists will feel comfortable making the creative choice to release a more dynamic record—without the fear of it being misunderstood by the consumer."  They’re doing it by creating a new certification process:

To address this we’ve created Turn Me Up! Certification, which would allow records meeting our criteria to display the Turn Me Up! Certified label to inform the consumer nothing is wrong, this record is simply more dynamic and all they need to do is Turn Me Up!

The message on the label they’re suggesting is:

Turn Me Up!™ Certified

To preserve the excitement, emotion and dynamics of the original performances this record is intentionally quieter than some. For full enjoyment simply Turn Me Up! (www.TurnMeUp.org)

It’s the old trade-off between your target consumer’s "perceived value" and your own "artistic integrity."  That is, if acoustic dynamics are extremely important to you.  Personally, I think disregarding your fans’ tastes is risky business; walk that path with extreme caution!  In Turn Me Up’s case, the basic message, "Do you think this CD sounds quiet?  Then turn up the volume." seems a little funny to me, though I appreciate the effort.  Would it be better to brand the certification as a "premium" label, rather than a "requires increased volume to fix the sound" label?  That almost makes it sound broken…

What do you think?

(Thanks for the link, Jay!)

The same gang of creative folks that created all the Rockstar sites, such as PSDTuts, a Photoshop tutorial site, and Audio Jungle, an audio loop and sound effect ecommerce site, has launched the new audio tutorial site, AudioTuts.

It only launched in June, but there are already a few cool tutorials such as "Create a Reverse Reverb Effect", which is one I’ve actually wondered about in the past.  Check it out.

Btw, you can also submit a tutorial of your own and score $150 (assuming it’s accepted).  Rockstar Sites apparently has a model that’s working for them — pay the massive public to create great content, do some PR, and sell advertising to monetize the incoming traffic.  Commercialized crowdsourcing….well, not really, since it’s selective.  Not too shabby.  I can’t complain about commercialism as long as the content is solid, and so far, it’s off to a good start. 

Isn’t it awesome to be part of digital audio world where home recordnig is a reality?  As a musician or band, it’s fantastic.  It can also be great for audio pros with good ideas that can adapt to the new recording landscape.

WellMixed is a company on the verge of launching an internet-based mastering service catering to bands with GarageSpin (or ProTools) song projects looking to achieve a professional sound for their music.  Not a bad idea considering the huge number of Mac users that have GarageBand, but not much else.  (A Cakewalk user, for example, is probably more invested in the equipment, etc., but GarageBand is included free on Macs.)  But…not that I’m one to talk..but hopefully they’ll whip together a better logo…

I’m sure this is only the beginning…keep an eye out for more.  (Thanks, Taylor) 

As much as people always tell me to back up my projects…I never have.  Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid.  I learned the lesson the hard way, but not the hardest way.  The most recent version of my lastest song project file was somehow corrupted last week, and I lost about 20-25 hours of work (my most recent separate file save was dated in February…d’oh!).  That’s pretty friggin’ annoying…but certainly isn’t as bad as losing an entire hard drive of audio data.  Obviously, I need to backup everything ASAP.

Don’t let this happen to you…please, back up your files!

Once again, I am SO glad I stuck with Windows XP with my new DAW rather than up upgrade to Windows Vista.

The NY Times has a great article that pieces together the events leading up to Vista’s many woes using email content taken from a current court case.  It’s a little sad actually…basically, a ton of people at Microsoft protested what they knew would be a problem, and were ignored by certain higher-ups.  (I love the fact that "Vista Capable" stickers slapped on new machines actually meant "Vista could possibly be used on this machine if you upgrade after buying it."  Too funny.)  An interesting and tragic read. 

Riffworld.com is Somona Wire Works’ entry into the music collaboration and social networking space.  Rather than re-phrase, I’ll quote from the press release:

Using the RiffWorks desktop recording application, up to four musicians can connect and collaborate on a song simultaneously. As a layer records, it instantly streams to other players’ running RiffWorks. As the Riff loops, other players can add more. All contributions are saved on RiffWorld.com and can be opened later for further collaboration. 

Kind of an interesting spin on the space touched on by music collaboration & social networking sites Kompoz, Light Speed Audio, eJamming Audio, SpliceMusic, and a bunch of others.  They’re all pretty different — some focusing on loop-generated music, some focusing on pure songwriting ideas, and others focusing on live interaction.  Riffworld is definitely worth checking out…I haven’t tried it myself yet.

Pretty cool stuff…and just as I was getting so comfortable writing and recording in the bubble I’m in…  Whatever happened to anti-social networking and brooding rockstars?