Why do certain songs sound louder than others even when they’re played at the same volume?
In: Technology
It’s a complicated answer and hard to ELI5. A lot of people are correct when they bring up the loudness wars and mastering levels but there is more at play. If you put your volume knob at 50% on your stereo and play one song and then play another song without changing the volume knob, one may sound louder than the other. That is probably because one song was “mastered” louder than the other (especially if switching between genres or mediums). But even if you used an SPL meter to match the level of the two songs by adjusting the volume knob, one may sound louder than the other. That is because there is a psycho acoustic element to volume that people call perceived loudness. Volume is a subjective term that tries to describe the strength of sound perception through our sense of hearing. Things like frequency, bandwidth, spectrum composition, duration of exposure to sound source, and time behavior of a sound can cause changes in perceived loudness and those changes vary from person to person. Loudness is a complex thing and is not fully understood even by experts!
Source: 10 years as a professional audio engineer and a degree in audio engineering.
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