Music really IS louder today

CDs and downloadable music files are being produced at higher overall sound levels than ever before.

And if you think you can escape by reaching for the volume control, think again. It is not quite so simple.

Studio engineers are using digital technology to compress sound waves so that the quieter sections of a piece can be increased in volume at the final stage of recording, known as mastering.

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The louder sections, which are already at the peak of the dynamic range, are digitally "squeezed".

The effect is to create a constant volume with fewer crescendos and quiet parts. Oasis, Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen are among the leading exponents.

Critics believe the technique is destroying music, wiping out all the dynamic subtleties and detail and transforming everything into a barrage of sound.

In the first signs of a backlash, leading studio engineers are calling on consumers to make their voice heard above the din and to marginalise "one-level music".

The trend for "loudness" has been driven by a belief among industry executives that it heightens the impact of a song and is a necessity in the MP3 age where the product is often competing with noise from traffic, trains or general city hubbub.

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Leading the loudness brigade: Lily Allen

But Angelo Montrone, a New York-based record company executive, has written an open letter to the industry describing the technique as "sinister".

He says it is "causing listeners fatigue and even pain".

"The mistaken belief that a super-loud record will sound better and magically turn a song into a hit has caused most major-label releases in the past few years to be an aural assault on the listener," he wrote.

"This phenomenon is tantamount to a dessert chef deciding that since the frosting is the most exciting part, the cake should be all frosting. Prior to the mid-90s there was always some level of compression, done tastefully and left to the mastering engineer's discretion.

"This allowed some dynamic range. Things got loud then soft again, the music could build, retreat and build bigger the next time.

"Just go back and listen for 15 minutes to any rock record mastered in the early 90s and then put on any modern super- loud abomination

for the same amount of time. Which do you prefer?"

Peter Mew, a senior engineer at Abbey Road studios, who worked on David Bowie's classic albums, said modern music caused nausea.

"The CDs induce a sense of fatigue in the listeners," he said.

"It becomes psychologically tiring and almost impossible to listen to."

Graham Frost, from the British Society of Audiology agreed. "It's not necessarily more harmful, but it can be more fatiguing," he said.

"Low frequency becomes more dominant and this has been known to induce fatigue."

Alan Fisher, head of music at the University of Westminster and a former sound engineer who worked with Take That and Boy George, said the whole pop music industry was tied to the system of compressing the dynamic range.

"People are listening to music that is physically fatiguing,' he said. "It has no respite. Listening from the beginning to the end of an album is no longer a journey, it's a barrage."

For an escape, he suggested orchestral music, which was still "wedded to the principle" of a full dynamic range so the listener can appreciate the quiet as well as the louder moments.