The singer and musician Thomas Dutronc demonstrated on Tuesday February 1 at the Théâtre du Châtelet the misdeeds of compressed sound, the one that currently reigns everywhere, from streaming platforms to radio, during an evening organized by the association La Semaine du sound (attached to societal issues of sound), under the aegis of Unesco.
Thomas Dutronc intends to warn about a widespread but still little known sound process which proves harmful in the long term for hearing. Accompanied by seven musicians, he therefore alternated uncompressed and compressed pieces. “Do you hear the difference?“, launches the guitarist. A big “Yes” rises from the public, who discovers the underside of sound compression. And becomes aware of the risks in the event of repeated abuse during a debate where the results of a scientific study are presented.
At the beginning, in the 60s, this mixing technique started from a good idea: “rebalance the instruments“, like harmoniously mixing a guitar and a battery, explains Christian Hugonnet, acoustic engineer and founder of the association La Semaine du son. But the compression has been misguided over time.
It’s a shoehorn, we crush a sound soufflé into a pancake, and we bring all the pancakes back to the high level”. The result is “above everything, from the noise of the city, the metro, it’s flattering the ear which is lazy, which has no more effort to make, it goes in, without nuance.
Christian Hugonnet, acoustician
Thomas Dutronc demonstrates this at the Châtelet: he plays four extracts of titles in three versions, uncompressed, compressed and again uncompressed. Behind him, the sound curve of the performance is broadcast on the big screen. In uncompressed, we see sound peaks and troughs. In compressed, the reliefs fade and the curve settles in the upper part of the sound volume.
What the music has lost in contrast with the compressed – we hear less of the singer’s breath or the breaths between the chords – it gains in density. We can clearly see the temptation for contemporary music to thus obtain a steamroller effect, with a sound that is never empty.
In the total absence of micro-silence, the ear no longer rests, its protection systems fail from being over-stressed
Christian Hugonnet, acoustician
From then on, hearing problems lurk. This is established by a study on guinea pigs, presented by the Faculty of Medicine of the University Clermont Auvergne (UCA). The exhibition “repeated – typical of music listeners – to compressed music is potentially harmful to hearing sensitivity“, we can read in the synthesis of this experiment. In this context, “tinnitus is possible, it is one of the signs of fatigue”underlines Professor Paul Avan, one of the co-authors of the study.
“This sound fatigue should be avoided, there is an education to be done, a message to be conveyed“, comments Thomas Dutronc. For the artist, the time lends itself to a change in practices, on the model “of what has been done with organic“.”We have to scratch behind what we are given, now that we know, the people who do this business will be forced to move on to something more human, more warm“.
Natacha Krantz, communication director of the Universal France record company, goes in this direction during the debate. “We are going to work for a year around a sound quality label with artists like Thomas, Ircam (Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination), sound week (in the bosom of Unesco) to find a fair measure, a red line not to be exceeded“.