What is Hot?

In the summer of 2001 Mr. Toad's mastering engineer Tardon Feathered coordinated an informal, global research project on the subject of how loud should a CD be. Under the collective banner of the Mastering WebBoard (the internet site devoted to audio mastering - www.webbd.nls.net/~mastering) the 19 mastering engineers who participated ranged in experience from apprentice to expert.

Tardon persuaded a local band Applesaucer to allow him to take the master 24-bit mix for their not-so-hit single Angeline and distribute it to the mastering engineers, who would then do their best mastering job and set it at the volume level they desire. Mr. Toad's staff assembled the original 2 CD set with 19 mastered versions of the song, plus the original mix, arranged in order from quietest to loudest.

General discussion on the webboard led to the selection of 3 representative pieces as "ideal" level for mastering. This was based on analysis of at what point the dynamics of the song were negatively impacted by the processing required to get the volume any louder. It was apparent in those masters considered too loud that they exhibited artifacts that did not benefit the music.

This alone would have been everything that Tardon had been looking for when he set out on the experiment. However, the project took a turn for the enlightened when Robert Orban, the CEO and chief engineer of Orban Electronics took an interest. Orban makes most of the radio processing equipment used in the United States. This equipment does further compression, limiting and equalization to the music before it goes out over the airwaves. This allows the most average radio signal to carry as much music as possible. It is not designed to make music sound any better than it did before it was processed.

Mr. Orban ran the selected mixes, as well as one considered too loud and the original unmastered mix, through current analog and digital radio processing gear and gave it back to Mr. Toad's. We then laid out the results into a single CD and voila - the experiment was complete.

EQ magazine writer Alan Whitman found out about the project and decided to write about it. The results were published in the November, 2000 issue of EQ Magazine and featured that brilliant quote from the Orban processor manual.