I have two copies of a track from Elton John's - Elton John 1970 album.
Elton John (1970) [1985 - DJM / 827 689-2 / West Germany / CD]
and
Elton John [TIDAL / MQA]
Starting with the 1985 CD pressing - track 10 - The King Must Die you can see it's not been brickwalled:
R128 dynamic range is 15.3 LU.
Now looking at the TIDAL version - same track you can see it's pretty compressed:
R128 dynamic range is 16.0 LU.
I'm confused. I thought a 'brickwalled' track had a limiter applied during mastering to remove transient peaks so that the overall volume can be increased hence reducing dynamic range. How can a heavily brickwalled track in this case have a larger dynamic range than one which has clearly not been volume limited?
Elton John (1970) [1985 - DJM / 827 689-2 / West Germany / CD]
and
Elton John [TIDAL / MQA]
Starting with the 1985 CD pressing - track 10 - The King Must Die you can see it's not been brickwalled:
R128 dynamic range is 15.3 LU.
Now looking at the TIDAL version - same track you can see it's pretty compressed:
R128 dynamic range is 16.0 LU.
I'm confused. I thought a 'brickwalled' track had a limiter applied during mastering to remove transient peaks so that the overall volume can be increased hence reducing dynamic range. How can a heavily brickwalled track in this case have a larger dynamic range than one which has clearly not been volume limited?