IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 14

a reduction of musical dynamics.
The softer sounds become louder
and, in the extreme, there is little
distinction between soft and loud.
Everything sounds loud. Extreme
compression is certainly attentiongetting (witness contemporary TV/
radio commercials, which, compared to earlier ones, are not only
loud but also continuously and
uniformly loud because they are
so compressed) but it also can
be annoying and fatiguing. Society is becoming more accustomed
to audio compression because it
is now endemic. Consider today's
cell phones, television, film, compact discs, and radio broadcasts.
In comparing different loudspeakers, compact discs, or radio stations, for example, the louder of
the two is normally preferred. Film
sound is often very loud and compressed because it has to compete
head on with our visual system
which normally uses about 80%
of our combined perceptual abilities. Loudness always wins and
loudness sells.
Radio has both a glorious and
inglorious history. Recall the days
of "payola" where record companies bribed radio stations to give
airplay to certain of their records
to create "hits" and improve their
sales. Milner indicts contemporary
radio broadcasting mercilessly.
Radio is a commercial medium.
Even National Public Radio has its
too frequent "fund-raising" commercials. But it is what commercial radio has done to recorded
music that is his cause for concern.
In order to increase the size of
its listening audience and thereby increase advertising revenue,
a radio station will use virtually

every technological ploy available
to increase its broadcast range and
modify its broadcasted sound to
distinguish itself as being superior sounding in comparison to
competing stations. The music is
severely compressed and heavily
equalized to emphasize bass and
treble, musical peaks are clipped
off, stereo separation is exaggerated, artificial echoes and synthetic
reverberation are imposed, all with
a view to increasing modulation
levels and enhancing the sound.
Radio is now the epitome of the
loudness war and it exerts final
control over the music we hear. The
resulting over-processed sound has
a tremendous "in-your-ear" impact
and gives an almost otherworldly
impression. But what we hear is
actually a grossly distorted version of the music both in terms
of the emphasis of high and low
frequency tones, which is a n
alteration of the spectral balance,
and diminished musical dynamics due to extreme compression
and clipping or limiting of musical
peaks. Furthermore, these distortions are superimposed on those
already existing in the original
recording. To experienced listeners the music just sounds terrible.
Today's CDs of popular music and
radio broadcasts of them have
been criticized as sounding like
"noise with a beat."
There is still a market for what
might generously be called overprocessed recorded sound because
in certain ways it is excitingly different. Some people continue to buy
such CDs and music downloads,
but not as many as before. When I
recently asked a student who was
seriously interested in pursuing a

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

career in sound recording, "What is
a good recording?" He responded,
"Whatever people want to buy."
Others simply have given up listening to contemporary recorded
music as well as certain radio stations and even stopped attending
sound-reinforced live musical performances. Sadly, they now follow
the advice given in the second part
of the dictum, "Music should be
seen and not heard," posted at Harvard, namely, that music should
be "not heard." In a different interpretation of the dictum, rock concerts have actually turned out to
be much more profitable than
sales of a groups' recorded music;
concert goers really want to "see
the music" performed and hearing its processed sound, blasted
from multiple loudspeakers at near
painful acoustic levels, is almost
secondary. They see but do they
really hear the music? The group's
recorded sound on CDs is often
sold as a souvenir of the concert
along with printed tee shirts and
coffee mugs. Do the visual and
social concert experiences outrank
the auditory one?
Greg Milner has given us much
to contemplate regarding the
interplay between technology and
society in both its service and disservice to music. It's a good book
and there is much more information about music and musicians
contained in it than can be mentioned in a short review.

Reviewer Information
Doug Preis is Professor in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tufts University,
Medford, MA 02155. Email: dpreis@
ece.tufts.edu.

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june 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016