Esem/Eesn

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Slumdog Millionaire OST is loud

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slumdog millionaire: ringa ringa waveform and audio level meters

It takes a certain amount of dark art knowledge to make a record this hot, and 'Ringa Ringa' from Slumdog Millionaire takes the cake for being the first track I hear better when played quieter, not louder. Hear it at Last.fm.

I put it through the meters, just for fun. All scales (including the VUs) are calibrated for broadcast (just 12dB dynamics), i.e. louder than recommended. Sound needs to be pretty loud to register as yellow on the black meter, and if it registers as red, it is most likely clipping. It's not a digital peak meter, but you can see the digital peaks and overloads at the far right, even though all faders are at 0. The needles are trying to go to +5 at this moment. It is louder than loud.

I don't care how loud a record is, if it sounds good to my ears. But as I said above, it takes either special knowledge or special equipment (or both) to go this far. My problem is, as this has become the de-facto standard for mixing, I need to set an extra day aside on everything I work on, just for squeezing this last dB or two of level. It is tedious and hurts my creativity. I feel for anyone doing this for a living. It hurts my ears.

Brilliant film though.

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