Hi.I thinks it's over, given that fact that we can't get any louder,and as Vinyl is increasing in popularity again, we will maybe see more sympathetic mastering.
I guess the problem is, until its recognised that this is a real issue that will directly impact on record sales, there will always be a record company representative present when music is mixed and mastered to ensure the bands new album is as loud as everything else on the market.
Only the chosen few bands will be able to make that decision for themselves. Its a shame because it would only take one big record company to make the leap, master albums with greater dynamic range, and the rest would be safe to follow.
In my mind it lyes completely in the record companies hands.
Completely agree with that last sentence. Many years ago, when this whole loudness nonsense started, it was explained to me that Record Companies were responding to their Focus Groups' comments that CDs didn't sound like they heard then on the radio. By then FM radio was heavily compressed, so a recording played on-air sounded a lot meatier than the original CD and a lot of kids complained they weren't getting what they heard on the radio. In the mid '90s, FM radio was still the main way people heard new music.
So, increasing amounts of compression started being applied, even to the point of using an Optimod or Omnia as a mastering processor so what was on the CD was effectively processed as if it were on the radio. Of course this then meant that when that already processed CD was played over the air, it would be doubly processed, but nobody seemed to care by that point, and anyway, an Optimod or Omnia, faced with an already processed CD won't do a lot with dynamics, it will just mess with the frequency balance, usually adding (even) more bass and sharpening up treble.
If now we're regaining a little sanity, that must be a Good Thing, but I have little doubt that, as you said above, if one record company exec wants his artists to sound louder than anyone else, then there won't be an end to it.
About 10 years ago, the situation amongst Commercial FM stations in Paris got very silly with all stations being ludicrously loud, and sounding terrible with it. The regulator managed to persuade all the main stations to turn the processing down to something reasonable for 24 hours. The Stations' management universally agreed that their stations sounded a lot better for it, but within a week or so they were all back to 11 as no-one wanted to be less loud than their competitors. Ho-hum.
S.