I did a quick test. I chose two tracks from STITI: "Confusion the Waitress" and "Rowla". I boosted their volume by 6 dB to match their volume to that of "modern" CDs with a modern limiting plugin. Then I lowered the volume by 6 dB again, similar to that youtube video.
STITI is an album that has, by modern standards, a fairly low volume. The ReplayGain value for that album is +0.68 dB, which means that while I listen to that album, the volume will get boosted by 0.68 dB by ReplayGain to match the RG reference level. For comparison, OWB has a RG value of -4.86 dB and AHDO -5.95 dB. So these albums get lowered in volume when I play them back.
So to match STITI's volume to that of OWB or AHDO, I applied a 6 dB boost with a limiter. For fair comparison, I applied ReplayGain correction to all files after that.
Some pictures:
Confusion the Waitress (original)
The left channel appears to be clipped a bit. To explain, this is just a result from a 0.82 dB boost applied by ReplayGain to allow fair comparison. There has been a limiter applied so the sound difference to the STITI version is neglegible.
Rowla (original)
Here you can clearly see the kickdrums (
zoom). Most of the dynamic range available is just used for the kickdrum.
If STITI had been mastered today it would probably look like this. Again the shots have been taken after PG correction:
Confusion the Waitress (compressed)
Rowla (compressed)
You can see how the kickdrums are "cut off" at around -6dB.
Now, I could view waveforms the whole day, but they tell me nothing about the sound. So I did a quick ABX comparison:
Code:
foo_abx 1.3.1 report
foobar2000 v0.9.4.5
2008/05/01 13:01:58
File A: J:\___losslessmusic\neu\Confusion_original.wav
File B: J:\___losslessmusic\neu\Confusion_compressed.wav
13:01:58 : Test started.
13:02:37 : 01/01 50.0%
13:02:43 : 02/02 25.0%
13:02:51 : 03/03 12.5%
13:02:54 : 04/04 6.3%
13:02:58 : 05/05 3.1%
13:03:03 : 06/06 1.6%
13:03:08 : 07/07 0.8%
13:03:12 : 08/08 0.4%
13:03:15 : Test finished.
----------
Total: 8/8 (0.4%)
At the beginning I could not hear a difference, but when the track got louder, the kickdrum literally got buried in the mix as there simply wasn't enough dynamic range left. It really sounded horrible.
I've put the samples up so you can judge for yourself:
http://www.mediafire.com/?m9nmtyyvgk9
Code:
foo_abx 1.3.1 report
foobar2000 v0.9.4.5
2008/05/01 13:05:43
File A: J:\___losslessmusic\neu\Rowla_original.wav
File B: J:\___losslessmusic\neu\Rowla_compressed.wav
13:05:43 : Test started.
13:06:42 : 01/01 50.0%
13:06:44 : 02/02 25.0%
13:06:47 : 03/03 12.5%
13:06:49 : 04/04 6.3%
13:06:51 : 05/05 3.1%
13:06:53 : 06/06 1.6%
13:06:55 : 07/07 0.8%
13:06:57 : 08/08 0.4%
13:06:58 : Test finished.
----------
Total: 8/8 (0.4%)
The same goes for Rowla. Except here the drums are slaughtered as soon as they set in at 56s. There is no "kick" anymore, all what is left is an undefined bassy mess. Samples:
http://www.mediafire.com/?l2im4xf9y7m
Bottom line: a remaster would kill that album. They could denoise it, repair some clicking etc., but they would also have to boost the volume to a "hot" level because the market requires it. They can't just leave the volume at the original level because it just would not sound good in comparison to a bad mastered indie rock CD for example. That is what's so depressing about the loudness war. All we can do is using tools to normalize the volume to a reference level like ReplayGain or the equivalent tool from iTunes (forgot the name).