Friedemann Tischmeyer: A Portrait
Friedemann Tischmeyer is an instance in the field of mastering and in the recording studio alike. Born in Germany, he lives in Hamburg and runs his own studio there. His educational videos on DVD and his mastering book have sold in very high numbers worldwide. He is now using his outstanding international reputation to draw attention to the loss of dynamics in music to the point of its health consequences. To visualize this change, he and partners developed a tool called DR-Meter.
“During the last 20 years, the dynamic range gradually reduced from about 18 DR to almost nothing.“
— Friedemann Tischmeyer
Dynamics, the difference between quiet and loud passages of a song, is one of the most important means of artistic expression for musicians. Nowadays, however, music no longer has contrasts, everything is hyper-compressed to one level.
The reason is that in the music industry there is still the opinion that you can sell more records that are very dense and loud as in the advertising. But according to current scientific research, dynamic music sells much better because it does not stress the hearing sensation so much and offers relaxation breaks for the auditory nerves.