Jean.Francois
Active Member
- Joined
- May 31, 2022
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Hello,
For David Gilmour's latest album - Luck and Strange, the analyses of the various media are very interesting, so paradoxical are the results.
Let's start with the vinyl record and its response curve, perfectly superimposed on the digital version. The lacquer is perfectly cut to respect the tonal balance of the digital master. This is important to note, because it's far from always being the case, and some lacquer cuts are sometimes catastrophic beyond 15kHz.
Spectrum vinyl (white) vs bluray stereo (blue)
But, unfortunately, the vinyl record suffers the collateral damage of the loudness war. Indeed, the graph below compares the waveforms of the digital stereo version, the vinyl record and the Dolby Atmos version.
We can see that the vinyl record is slightly more dynamic than the digital version, which has more than 5 tracks with a DR6. The recording level and low dynamics of the vinyl record indicate that the master used for the vinyl record was compressed for dynamics. More details on the dynamics behavior of vinyl records can be found in this article “Does Analog Media increase the dynamics?”.
It's a pity that Luck and Strange is mastered to sound loud with DR7 for the album, David Gilmour doesn't need to follow this fashion.
Even the stereo track on the blu-ray is dynamically compressed, a far cry from the example set by The Pineapple Thief for his album “It Leads To This”.
So it's the Dolby Atmos version of the lossless blu-ray that brings the most dynamics, with plenty of finesse and beautiful spatialization favoring a soundstage enlarged to 180 degrees. The Tidal Atmos streaming version is also compared to the rear channels, allowing us to hear the impact of the lossy compression of the Dolby Digital Plus encoding used in streaming.
![9.1.6 - synthese.txt [9.1.6] -- 7.4 ( 6.6 -- 8.4 )-9.1.6 --- small.jpg](https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/9-1-6-synthese-txt-9-1-6-7-4-6-6-8-4-9-1-6-small-jpg.393423/ "9.1.6 - synthese.txt [9.1.6] -- 7.4 ( 6.6 -- 8.4 )-9.1.6 --- small.jpg")
High-resolution samples and all measurements are available here for you to listen to the different versions.
Enjoy your listening,
Jean-François
For David Gilmour's latest album - Luck and Strange, the analyses of the various media are very interesting, so paradoxical are the results.
Let's start with the vinyl record and its response curve, perfectly superimposed on the digital version. The lacquer is perfectly cut to respect the tonal balance of the digital master. This is important to note, because it's far from always being the case, and some lacquer cuts are sometimes catastrophic beyond 15kHz.
Spectrum vinyl (white) vs bluray stereo (blue)
But, unfortunately, the vinyl record suffers the collateral damage of the loudness war. Indeed, the graph below compares the waveforms of the digital stereo version, the vinyl record and the Dolby Atmos version.
We can see that the vinyl record is slightly more dynamic than the digital version, which has more than 5 tracks with a DR6. The recording level and low dynamics of the vinyl record indicate that the master used for the vinyl record was compressed for dynamics. More details on the dynamics behavior of vinyl records can be found in this article “Does Analog Media increase the dynamics?”.
It's a pity that Luck and Strange is mastered to sound loud with DR7 for the album, David Gilmour doesn't need to follow this fashion.
Even the stereo track on the blu-ray is dynamically compressed, a far cry from the example set by The Pineapple Thief for his album “It Leads To This”.
So it's the Dolby Atmos version of the lossless blu-ray that brings the most dynamics, with plenty of finesse and beautiful spatialization favoring a soundstage enlarged to 180 degrees. The Tidal Atmos streaming version is also compared to the rear channels, allowing us to hear the impact of the lossy compression of the Dolby Digital Plus encoding used in streaming.
High-resolution samples and all measurements are available here for you to listen to the different versions.
Enjoy your listening,
Jean-François
