I'm going to break it all down as best as I can below. So why are tunes that lately tearing up Drum & Bass charts lately so much louder, less brutal, and less warm than the classic tunes that made us love the music originally? It's a different thing when you talk about UNDERGROUND BASS MUSIC, which kinda is all about BASS. It's all well and good for POP music I guess, because most people don't immediately associate HEAVY BASS with pop music.
Put simply, it's the practice of cutting low frequencies out of a recording so that the overall volume of the recording can be raised, and the result is a super clean and loud mix-down. This latest popularity trick of making SUPER LOUD music is not new. Yes, producers making SUPER LOUD MUSIC is bad, and getting worse, and making things worse for us all. I have also unfortunately observed some things in the music industry that I don't agree with, like some artists using gimmicks and tricks to get ahead like buying followers and listeners, and as cited in this write-up, making SUPER LOUD MUSIC. Over that time I've observed a lot of really great methods for making music, and my music has vastly improved through working in that community, and through establishing friendships and collaboration with hard working peers. Drum&Bass Producer/DJ residencies are rare right now in the area for some strange reason, so it's a great move to have somewhere simple to hear music we work on as music producers. I went through millions of YouTube tutorials and talked to many people, and for the past 3 years have participated in a monthly producer event in Washington, DC called Headroom where pretty much everyone who is anyone in DC area music gets one track played for an audience of their peers (music producers and music fans) on a club sound system. Many producers asked me how I got to the loudness point where I was, but I felt like things were constantly getting louder and louder as time passed because musicians are always hacking techniques to stay ahead of each other. When I pushed music to Spotify, I got frustrated that I had to turn volume up on my tunes and turn it down for tunes by artists that were on tour making a lot more money and follows than me. I have been producing all kinds of music for over 20 years now, I also run a label (RuffAndTuffRecordings.Com PLUG) and for many years I've tried to squeeze every bit of sound I can into all of the tracks I make, but somehow could never until recently match the loudness or clarity that BIG STUDIO producers regularly and consistently put out. Years of working with audio engineers, obsessing with mix-downs, testing my music on every sound system I could, and releasing music have lead me to a point where I understand a bit about audio engineering and have the confidence to say that there's something wrong with modern bass music.