Mixing down quite a lot of music and sound design these days so I ended up looking at levels often and it’s not that I want to freak out but I think we’re peaking now.
This is Pearl Jam’s Jeremy song.
You can see, the “body” of the sound is around -6dB, -4dB with peaks up to almost 0dB. We’re talking about rock music, three guitars, bass drums etc. It’s not like it’s acoustic.
Now, some Skrillex I don’t even remember the song but I think it’s Devil.
It doesn’t look so different for untrained eyes but trust me, it’s laughable. I didn’t even know it was physically possible to saturate a signal without saturating it at that output level. Look at this motherfucking blue square!!!! Even when it’s calm like at the start it peaks at 0dBppm/+11dBVU every time drums kick in. Unbelievable.
It’s compression. We reached the maximum compression we can do on records, that’s it. After that our bodies don’t even process anymore and we become cavemen all over again. Did you try to listen to some Toro y Moi for more than a song? This shit is so compressed and pumps so hard that even half a song exhausts me. It’s supposed to be chill…
Ultra Compression like above is like fast food. It feels extremely exciting and powerful but you hate yourself after inflicting your ears with fat, very fat burgers and oily fries. But yeah, I’m learning how to make that shit too. It’s quite fun.