Dynamics and Low-Frequency Ratio in Popular Music Recordings since 1965

by MICHAEL OEHLER, CHRISTOPH REUTER, AND ISABELLA CZEDIK-EYSENBERG
57th International AES Conference: The Future of Audio Entertainment Technology – Cinema, Television and the Internet (March 2015)

This study takes another look at the loudness and dynamic range trends over the last several decades, this time with a focus on the German music market:

The loudness, dynamic range and energy distribution in low-frequency bands of popular music are analyzed. One objective was to operationalize popular music and construct a robust, balanced sample that covers a specific but relevant music market regarding annual revenues. The sample consists of the “German Top 40” year-end charts from 1965 to 2013. Furthermore, different methods of measurement, such as LKFS or dBFS RMS, are used and compared. It could be shown that there was a significant increase of loudness, a decrease of the dynamic range and an increasing importance of the low-frequency bands over time. While our results correspond to most previous research, there is a major difference regarding the recent data. It is frequently mentioned in studies that the process of decreasing dynamic range peaked in 2004, and after that the opposite trend occurred, namely, an increase in dynamic range. In the German music market, however, this seems to be true only for the time span from 2004 to 2010. From 2011 to 2013 a significant decrease of the dynamic range and an increase in loudness were found.

 http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17612&rndx=928073