O impacto estético da loudness war na discografia do Angra

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the aesthetic impact of loudness war on Angra's discography, investigating how it affected the band's albums in their volume, equalization, compression and limitation; analyzing the consequent reflection of such factors in the aesthetic experience of hearing; and investigating the possibility that Angra has incorporated loudness war’s inherent characteristics to its aesthetic proposal in the albums released in post streaming period. In conjunction with hearing the material and analyzing the waveforms, the methodology, inspired by Deruty and Tardieu (2014), consists of measurement and analysis of true peak, RMS, peak to RMS, and loudness of Angra's nine studio albums. In addition to tracing timelines for each parameter and subsequent comparison to the evolution of loudness war. Due to the complex nature of the research object, the theoretical foundation goes through a tangle of different fields. Historical issues, such as the history of heavy metal and the biography of Angra; passing through philosophical, as in the theory of complexity (MORIN, 2015) and musical aesthetics; biological and psychoacoustic, aiming at understanding human hearing; besides technical subjects and documents, present in topics such as mixing and mastering. As conclusion, evidences of the alignment of Angra's discography with loudness war are presented, with caveats; the aesthetic consequences of such alignment are made explicit, approaching psychoacoustic, timbristic and stylistic issues; and indications that Angra incorporated to its albums post-streaming aesthetic characteristics with loudness war origins, specifying those characteristics.