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Dynamic range - dumb question.

Count Arthur

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I've seen several articles about "the loudness war" and over use of compression and how low dynamic range ruins music, but looking at the dynamic range measurements of some of the music in my collection, I have some tracks/albums with nice high dymamic range measurements that sound very nice, however, there are also some that have very low measurements, that also sound good. How does that work?


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suttondesign

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A track can sound clean even if compressed, but it will not sound as natural as a recording with a more realistic difference between soft and loud. In practice, some heavily compressed recordings do contain harsh distortion because the recording level or mastering level was too high. Other modern recordings are made to sound grungy and distorted on purpose, meaning the instruments or synthesized material is crunchy in nature. Setting those aside, the main problem with the loudness wars is just heavy compression. With harder rock and pure studio creations, that is usually what we think sounds correct, but with chamber pop, soft rock, or quality vocal music of any kind, compression tends to rob the sound of life.

On the other hand, a live performance can have too much dynamic range, and we wouldn't normally want a completely uncompressed performance in our sound system, even of a quartet. We wouldn't have enough amplifier power to hear both the soft passages and the loud ones. Thus, some compression is probably necessary for most recordings.
 

Bob-23

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When listening to a single track (or two) only, of a highly compressed recording which is otherwise well-made, I do not rarely get fooled, and may even think: Great 'resolution', I can hear every detail. But having listened, say, half an hour, or the next day, half an hour again, I usually get it, and the fatigue catches me physically - it' s so tiring, the permanent shouting of every instrument, there's no relief after a dramatic passage, no pause to recover and regain strenght, a flat and claustrophobic world. - Many might feel that dissatisfaction with their music without being able to adress it rightly - and go out and buy another cd or whatever, à la recherche du son perdu.

But having said that, I agree, a certain (low) amount of dynamic compression can be necessary and useful, in music that has genuinely an exteme dynamic range, like classical music.
 

pacdpm

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compression removes all "the life" from a recording imo..That's one of the reasons live music (esp classical/opera) is so thrilling...I have opera reels from the fifties pre-compression FM broadcasts...The wave forms are huge with peaks & valleys...look at a waveform from Sirius...looks like someone gave them a crewcut!! all the vitality has been squished out of them (same hold true for Grateful Dead files!)..and don't get me started on MP3s....
 

Sal1950

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Final SQ of any master belongs in the hands of the engineer.
If done well, heavy compression doesn't have to hurt the SQ to any major amount.
But it does remove the impact and jump factor of music that originally contained a wide DR.
The loudness war biggest sin is that lowers the DR to account for playback on the lowest quality of systems.
I always wondered why it wasn't possible to encode the master in a reversible lossless system so we could all be happy with the same master?
 

detlev24

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I think a lot of people worry about this too much.

IMO it's usually only a minor detriment to sound quality and more often just a fashionable thing to complain about.
There's lots of information about this matter on Archimago's Musings. Just search for "dynamic range" and/or "loudness war" etc.

Proper mastering (of a good recording) matters more than anything else; being closely followed by (your) room acoustics. :) Even lossy audio, like MP3, can be of no noticeable impact if at 320kbps constant bitrate or - even better - at V0 variable bitrate. The latter statement is true regarding most music productions but certainly does exclude some very complex recordings, like those that can be found in the 'classical music' genres. Everyone can simply very this, e.g., using foobar2000 with the ABX Comparator component installed [take a few of your preferred lossless files, convert them to MP3 at 320kbps or preferably V0, with nothing else changed, and enjoy the challenge].

Back to the loudness war... Some, i.m.o., interesting findings are:

MEASUREMENTS: Stealth Releases of Good Remastering in Hi-Res Audio... (Alanis Morissette!)
MUSINGS: Increasing the Dynamic Range of compressed audio with DSP... (And is this why vinyl DR is higher!?)

Enjoy the music - if you can! ^^
 
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levimax

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I always wondered why it wasn't possible to encode the master in a reversible lossless system so we could all be happy with the same master?
Maybe someone currently recording pop music can confirm or deny but my understanding is a lot of current music uses strong limiting while being recorded in the first place (makes it easier) so dynamics can never be recovered.... if true this is a shame as a lot of great recorded music will forever be limited.

I have listened to original recordings with DR 15 and then the compressed down remastered version with DR 6 and I am often times surprised how little difference there it. It seems I notice compression the most on vocals which to my ears kills the life of the recording.
 

Dimitri

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I have listened to original recordings with DR 15 and then the compressed down remastered version with DR 6 and am often times am surprised how little difference there it. It seems I notice compression the most on vocals which to my ears kills the life of the recording.

IT CAN BE VERY ANNOYING WHEN YOU NOTICE IT. IT'S THE SAME SONG, ONLY DIFFERENT (if you see what I mean :) )
 

tmtomh

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I always wondered why it wasn't possible to encode the master in a reversible lossless system so we could all be happy with the same master?

That's what the Peak Extend feature of HDCD allowed.
 

Sal1950

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I had a Phase Linear 1000 back in the day. It contained Bob Carvers "Peak Unlimiter and Downward Expander" circuit to add DR back into the music on the compressed LP's of the day, That combined with the AutoCorrelator worked pretty well to both expand DR and reduce LP surface noise..
 
OP
Count Arthur

Count Arthur

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So, would I be right in concluding that the type and genre of music will have a significant effect on how little dynamic range it can "tolerate" before it effects the sound?

With human voices and acoustic instruments, we have a good sense of how they sound in the real world, so we notice when they are "off", whereas with the already "unnatural" sounds typically found in electronic music, we don't have a frame of reference, so any studio shenanigans are far less obvious.
 

RayDunzl

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So, would I be right in concluding that the type and genre of music will have a significant effect on how little dynamic range it can "tolerate" before it effects the sound?

Well, yeah...

These are, maybe, extreme examples I have on hand:

Consider the first track of an album that won a grammy in recent years for the quality of the recording shown in both linear and logarithmic views:

It does sound good, I like it, and bought it, one of my few very modern purchases.


Top of each example is representative of the voltage sent to the speaker, the lower of each example the logarithmic (decibel) view.

(I recently learned the lighter-blue area represents the RMS value)


1586982571948.png


Contrast with a rather exuberant performance of another "modern" piece:

1586982590438.png
 

stod

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I had a Phase Linear 1000 back in the day. It contained Bob Carvers "Peak Unlimiter and Downward Expander" circuit to add DR back into the music on the compressed LP's of the day, That combined with the AutoCorrelator worked pretty well to both expand DR and reduce LP surface noise..
Hi

"Soundwise", it's not possible to add DR or sound back into a track, but you can make the waves appear more dynamic.

You cannot master for Vinyl below DR9, otherwise the needle will jump out of the groove. Records have a dynamic range of anything from 9dB to 20dB, so the Phase Linear 1000 was just old-school snake oil.
 

MRC01

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So, would I be right in concluding that the type and genre of music will have a significant effect on how little dynamic range it can "tolerate" before it effects the sound?

With human voices and acoustic instruments, we have a good sense of how they sound in the real world, so we notice when they are "off", whereas with the already "unnatural" sounds typically found in electronic music, we don't have a frame of reference, so any studio shenanigans are far less obvious.
Essentially, yes. With "unnatural" sounds there is no absolute reference for what it "should" sound like. All bets are off. But when the solo guitar or synth is as loud as the entire band playing together, well, that just ain't right. Or when it's so dynamically compressed you can't tell bop-de-BAP from BOP-de-bap, of course that's just the most obvious example, in which case it's already masking more subtle music expression, they've squashed the life out of the music.
 

MRC01

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...I have listened to original recordings with DR 15 and then the compressed down remastered version with DR 6 and I am often times surprised how little difference there it. It seems I notice compression the most on vocals which to my ears kills the life of the recording.
The more you listen to it, the more you train your perception to detect the clues, then it becomes more obvious, and you begin to detect it at more subtle levels. Then it becomes the musical analogy to "uncanny valley" - it sounds like music, but not quite, just "off" or "wrong".

After a while it becomes so frustrating one might just give up on modern pop/rock music entirely because 95% of it is so severely compressed it just sounds awful. Some of it is good music that deserved a better fate, to be preserved instead of squashed to death.
 

Ivanovich

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I think a lot of people worry about this too much.

IMO it's usually only a minor detriment to sound quality and more often just a fashionable thing to complain about.
If you’re a critical listener, it’s often not a minor detriment. I find good music can be ruined with over compression, and some otherwise less interesting music is more pleasing by providing more dynamics. It’s a package deal for me.
 

MRC01

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If you’re a critical listener, it’s often not a minor detriment. I find good music can be ruined with over compression, and some otherwise less interesting music is more pleasing by providing more dynamics. It’s a package deal for me.
Exactly. Dynamics is an entire dimension of musical expression. Dynamic compression at a minimum alters or limits the artistic and musical expression, and when taken too far can squash it entirely.
Philosophically, it is the opposite of "high fidelity" - the recording is no longer faithful to the performance. It has been intentionally distorted.
 

Ivanovich

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Exactly. Dynamics is an entire dimension of musical expression. Dynamic compression at a minimum alters or limits the artistic and musical expression, and when taken too far can squash it entirely.
Philosophically, it is the opposite of "high fidelity" - the recording is no longer faithful to the performance. It has been intentionally distorted.
To be fair though, for a lot of music the recording is the performance. Even the artists want it that way. :facepalm:
 
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