Episode 2: Friedemann Tischmeyer

Episode 2: Friedemann Tischmeyer

For our second podcast episode we were talking at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cologne with mastering and sound engineer Friedemann Tischmeyer from California about the change in the dynamic range during the past years.

Friedemann Tischmeyer is both an authority when it comes to mastering and in the recording studio. The native of Germany lives in Santa Cruz (USA) where he runs his own studio. His instruction videos on DVD and his mastering book were sold worldwide in very high numbers. Today he is using his excellent international reputation to spotlight the loss of dynamics in music and the negative effects on our health resulting thereof. So for visualising this change, together with his partners he developed a tool called the DR meter.

"During the past 20 years the dynamic range decreased little by little from about 18 DR to virtually nothing."

— Friedemann Tischmeyer

The dynamics, i.e. the gap between soft and loud passages of a piece, is for musicians one of the crucial artistic means of expression. However, these days music has no more contrasts, everything is hyper-compressed to one level.

This is because in the music business the notion still survives that one can sell more records which are very tight and loud like e.g. in promotion. Yet according to the latest scientific research findings dynamic music is going to sell much better because it doesn’t burden the listening perception that much and offers relaxation pauses for the auricular nerves.

In the podcast we are discussing with him the development in the dynamics of modern music productions and the mastering with headphones. What does a master of his trade say about it? Figure it out!

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