From the invention of speakers and amplifiers, to Spinal Tap’s hilarious claim to fame as “one of England’s loudest bands.” While it is possible to go too far, the general idea that louder is better needs no explanation. While the digital revolution has made it a lot easier to make loud music, you still have to do it right or you risk clipping and distortion – dead giveaways of an amateur producer. So why can’t you just increase loudness infinitely? Why is there a point where quality starts to suffer? It has to do with the way that volume is measured in music production. In the real world, volume measurement is quite simple. A whisper is about 30 decibels (dB), normal conversation is 60 dB, a rock concert can be 110 dB, etc. However, when producing music, the scale is backwards, from negative infinity decibels to a maximum of zero. This zero represents the maximum volume that speakers or headphones can play music before they start to distort or overdrive. And further, to increase overall loudness while still maintaining dynamics, the shifts in volume and energy that make music interesting in the first place! Seven Tips to Being Louder So here lies the challenge: To increase loudness without hitting that maximum. The good news is that there are some easy methods you can implement to get louder sound without causing clipping or distortion. Here are 7 tactics that I suggest using: 1. The simplest answer is sometimes the right one, so don’t over-complicate it if you don’t have to.
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