What is loudness?

- Within the context of the music production environment,…loudness deals with the overall apparent loudness of a track…not to be misinterpreted as loudness in terms of volume.…A track that has more energy pumped into it…will feel louder than a track with less, even though…they can both be played at exactly the same volume.…The idea with most dance music…and most modern music made today…is to have it sound as big as possible at a set volume.…This in turn helps the track to stand out,…sound more polished,…and compete with commercially mixed tracks.…

I'm gonna show you an example with the project…we'll be using in this course.…I'm gonna play you two passes on the same section…of the track, where they will both be played…at the same volume but with a different loudness,…achieved in this case by the use…of a limiter on the master bus.…Hopefully you'll hear that the perceived loudness,…or sonic energy, is actually quite different.…So I'm gonna start playing it…without any of the limiter enabled.…(techno music)…So as you can hear, it's quite dynamic,…