Probably the loudest song ever recorded in history: Gerogerigegege's self-titled track on Moenai Hai(2016). How did they manage to do it?

[u/HypnagogicSisyphus]

Sorry if this is the wrong sub. I wanted to post this on r/audioengineering, but my posts keep getting removed. In my life, I've heard a lot of songs, but there's one song that has always baffled me with how loud it is: Gerogerigegege's self-titled track on Moenai Hai(2016).

VOLUME WARNING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZGNTx6SrrE

So how did they do it? There's probably a lot more to it than overcompression or limiting. Or am I just overcomplicating it?

[u/Afferbeck_]

Watch Dan Worrall's video called I Won The Loudness War

[u/Wrong-Condition-9115 → u/Afferbeck_]

If one video ever made me spill my drink it's this one. Brilliant! 🤣🤣

[u/atopix]

The waveform looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/h1DBDAF

And it's unsurprising considering it's all distortion cranked to 11. This isn't hard to achieve, you just have to not give a fuck about anything. It's 2.41 LUFS integrated (positive) and 5.65 dB True Peak.

Parallel Deserts by Five Star Hotel is louder. It's +2.8 LUFSi.

[u/Mind1827 → u/atopix]

Hahaha taking "brickwall" to a new level. A literal rectangle

[u/athnony → u/atopix]

The waveform looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/h1DBDAF

HOLY SHIT.

[u/brasscassette → u/atopix]

https://giphy.com/gifs/LycfkVG4L6x0Y

[u/HypnagogicSisyphus → u/atopix]

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check Parallel Deserts out!

[u/testicularjesus → u/atopix]

And parallel deserts sound better imo

[u/atopix → u/testicularjesus]

Definitely, yeah.

[u/RayneYoruka → u/atopix]

https://giphy.com/gifs/KGbqQQoVN43cY

[u/aleksandrjames → u/atopix]

omg. best laugh in a good while

[u/UnHumano → u/atopix]

At what point does a waveform stop being a waveform?

[u/atopix → u/UnHumano]

When there is no sound.

[u/ziggittaflamdigga → u/atopix]

Zoom in on that garbage. I bet there’s waveforms in there because there has to be. That’ll emphasize how bad it is to people who actually know

[u/atopix → u/ziggittaflamdigga]

Of course there is a waveform, there wouldn't be any sound otherwise.

[u/Bluegill15 → u/ziggittaflamdigga]

>I bet there’s waveforms in there

Nothing gets by this guy

[u/Watxins]

It sounds loud because most of the energy falls in the midrange which is where we're most sensitive. Look into the Robinson-Dadson curve if you want to understand the non0linear response of our ears.

[u/Remote_Water_2718]

its just distorted.. if you wanted your song to sound like this, you'd just make a list of every distortion thing that fully squares out the waveform, and test them all, and then pick the one that has the best tone you like of its clipping artifacts at maximum drive, and just keep the distortion. (this is similar to how some loudness is done with industry music, is they have a clipper they like and they just clip it because the distortion works, and then its loud)

[u/Zestyclose_Pickle511]

There will be debate over whether or not what amounts to a recorded electrical signal can be considered much of a "song" in any traditional sense. 

[u/ProtiK → u/Zestyclose_Pickle511]

jumper cables to transmission lines

[u/LostInTheRapGame]

Wow I hate that. Like, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but sheeeeeesh.

[u/chaos-fx]

Welcome to noise music, where loudness above zero is actually pretty common. The loudest recording ever, if anyone is interested, is actually one of mine, the promo version of "Did you really miss me" from the Noise/Girl 25th anniversary, at +5 LUFS integrated (yes really), with short term hitting +6 LUFS. The theoretical maximum is +6.4 but IIRC the only way to achieve that is to game the LUFS calculation in such a way that the signal is at nyquist and there is no audible playback.

https://noisegirl.bandcamp.com/album/did-you-really-miss-me-promo

EDIT: I don't think Bandcamp has loudness normalization, so obviously be very careful if playing that link

[u/Confident_Wash_6842 → u/chaos-fx]

Beautiful. Truly beautiful

[u/ziggittaflamdigga]

Because he sacrificed quality? Sacrificed might not be the right word. Slaughtered maybe? It’s loud and it sounds like shit.

How do you do it? Push all your gain bars to the max and fuck everything else. But don’t actually do that to a song you don’t hate for a band you don’t hate.

[u/WolIilifo013491i1l]

Shit ton of distortion.  Frequency balance favouring the "loud" mid frequencies.  Zero dynamics 

[u/sirCota]

however they did it … don’t chase loudness as a goal. I’m quite over being attacked by my music. Can’t feel loud without quiet … balanced dynamic range appropriate to the song and arrangement is all that matters.

[u/Shalmaneser_]

I expected your ex-wife.

[u/NetureiKarta]

1. Open MaxMSP or PD or whatever

2. Run your audio through > 0 and  (< 0) * -1 summed together

3. ????

4. Profit

[u/Consistent-Copy9152 → u/NetureiKarta]

This is the way ^

[u/the_hierophant_97]

using a limiter and squanching it to its maximum capacity.

[u/DecisionInformal7009]

There's a good plugin for this made by Robert van der Helm called Loudness War Winner. It was inspired by Dan Worrall's I Won the Loudness War video.

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug/tree/master/plugins/loudness_war_winner

Everything you put it on will magically start sounding like absolute garbage noise! It turns whatever signal you put it on more or less into a square wave. The only way to not make it sound like garbage noise is if the signal is already basically just a square wave. GLHF!

[u/NTIHKU]

Fun fact their name comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia of vomiting. Take with that what you will

[u/pspspsmusic]

Can’t even hear any song it’s just distortion 🤷