Dynamic range - dumb question.

[maverickronin]

Well, I thought I was a critical listener too, but it turns out I'm not.

 

[stod]

Well, I thought I was a critical listener too, but it turns out I'm not.

It's whatever YOU enjoy that matters
Dynamic Range is a very complex thing that will never be sorted or understood here.

 

[Count Arthur]

Dynamic Range is a very complex thing that will never be sorted or understood here.

May I point out the name of this site/forum, if not here then where?

 

[stod]

May I point out the name of this site/forum, if not here then where?

A Pro-Audio site. (Audio Engineer, Mastering Engineer ect).

All the replies here so far only relate to how sound is perceived by them, which is fine & pretty much answers the OP's question.. The OP just enjoys listening to music, so getting unnecessarily technical wouldn't be any benefit to him, me thinks?

 

[Count Arthur]

I am the OP.

 

[stod]

I am the OP.

Whoops sorry. Do you need any more info?

 

[DonH56]

Good example of what over-compression does to the sound:

 

[Blumlein 88]

Listen to that video in Don's post above mine. That is what is wrong with too much compression.

Compression on recorded music is not all bad. Too much so that all loud all the time is the result is bad.

 

[Ivanovich]

I don’t know the psychological science of how it works but compression isn’t all bad. It’s considered necessary for modern recording of individual instruments to make sure the quieter sound like a plucked string trailing off doesn’t get lost along side louder sounds in the mix. It gives percussion more kick. The final mix has to leave head room (space between the peak of the music signal and 0dB, max digital volume) for the mastering process. A mixing engineer that uses too much compression creates problems for the mastering process. During the mastering process there is often more compression added by the mastering engineer. This is where the max digital volume is set and the overall dynamic range and where it can go really wrong. Bob Katz’s site has some articles that explain it way better!

A lot of music sound good with dynamic range (DR) compression. Listening to music in the car requires more DR compression, so FM radio stations add a lot too. Try listening to classical CD in the car!

When it’s right, instruments are clear in the mix but have life, sounds are natural, with audible decay. Dynamics can be startling at times. You can play higher volume and it isn’t fatiguing.

When it’s too compressed I just want to turn it down or off before very long.

 

[Dimitri]

During the mastering process there is often more compression added by the mastering engineer.

More like mastering mangler.

so FM radio stations add a lot too.

Yes BUT not all of them crank it up "all the way" (ok at least they didn't used to). FM can sound REALLY REALLY great. How badly FM broadcasts sound most of the time is a disgrace.

 

[Tks]

Jriver uses two methods of DR calculation. I've noticed sometimes the standard DR using crest factor sometimes fails miserably to relay information I would assume about a track. But overall it's accurate enough for me. Actually turned off DR labels (makes me want to skip over tracks I assume are garbage, where anything under a 8 I wouldn't even want to listen to, which was dumb. Though I still keep the label for display when a track is playing, and only that Now Playing track, I feel that's a good balance.

 

[stod]

DR gives you a reasonable idea of how a track will sound if the DR is low, but if it's high, it's not so accurate as it depends on how it was mastered. An example could be a track that when it was mixed/mastered from the multitracks, all the instruments + the vocals were compressed/limited down to a DR1, but the high-hat was untouched & left with 18dB of headroom... so in this case, the track would seem to be a DR18, but clearly it's not (extreme case example).

 

[tmtomh]

DR gives you a reasonable idea of how a track will sound if the DR is low, but if it's high, it's not so accurate as it depends on how it was mastered. An example could be a track that when it was mixed/mastered from the multitracks, all the instruments + the vocals were compressed/limited down to a DR1, but the high-hat was untouched & left with 18dB of headroom... so in this case, the track would seem to be a DR18, but clearly it's not (extreme case example).

I think you've hit on the key point here: While too many people rely on DR readings to simplistically declare a mastering good or bad, sometimes without even listening to it, the opposing reaction can sometimes throw the baby out with the bathwater by arguing that DR ratings are useless.

One always should listen - after all that's the point! If a mastering sounds good to you (or bad to you), who cares if the DR reading suggests the opposite result?

However, personally I have found that a certain DR threshold can be a good guide to likely listening pleasure or displeasure. It's not absolute, but I find that anything DR 7 or below is likely to sound unpleasantly compressed to me, and anything DR 9 or above I don't have to be concerned about the compression aspect of the mastering.

How does this impact my buying and listening behavior? If a new album comes out and I'm interested in the music, and the DR meter shows that the album DR and most of the individual track DRs are in the DR5-7 range, I'm going to seek out samples and listen before I buy, to make sure the sonic experience is not unpleasant for me. If, on the other hand, the DR ratings are DR9 and above, or even DR8 and above, I'm going to be much more likely to just order the album.

I can certainly name low DR music that still sounds good to me: Beck's Morning Phase always comes to mind in this regard. It's a DR6 album I believe, and the last track is an atrocious DR3, but it's still a very nice-sounding album and one of my favorite records of the last decade. And I find that my DR threshhold for live albums tends to be 1-2dB lower - a live performance of the same music by the same artist will often sound fine to me at, say, DR7 when the studio album will sound a bit squished at DR7. I speculate that the hall ambience might add a perception of "air" to the otherwise compressed signal.

On the flip side, there are some CDs, particularly from the 1980s, that have fantastic-looking DR numbers - but the sound is disappointing. One simple way to get high DR numbers is to reduce the bass and/or goose the treble (bass frequencies have so much energy that they disproportionately impact DR ratings; the converse with treble). So sometimes a very high DR reading for pop/rock music, like say DR14, will sound wonderfully dynamic - but other times it will indicate a bass-shy, thin, tinny mastering which is all-too-common on early CDs made with EQ'd LP cutting masters where the bass was reduced for vinyl-cutting reasons.

A related bit of DR weirdness is that EQ'd LP cutting masters, even when they don't reduce the bass much, will often reduce the channel separation of the lowest frequencies, or even sum the L and R channels to mono below a certain frequency threshold - again for ease of cutting the vinyl grooves. Mono bass tends to produce higher DR readings vs stereo bass.

Finally, I have looked at frequency spectrograms for a lot of classic rock albums originally produced and mastered in the vinyl/pre-CD era, and have been surprised to see major roll-off in the bass below about 50Hz. I have often wondered if this was done in anticipation of eventual vinyl mastering where such low frequencies would have to be attenuated anyway. One aspect of the reduced DR of some modern music (especially music with electronic bass) is that the modern music has a lot more energy below 50Hz, which in and of itself will tend to reduce the DR rating by a dB or sometimes 2.

At any rate, I agree that DR absolutism or DR tail wagging the dog is silly. But I still find it an immensely valuable guiding tool to help with purchasing decisions.

 

[stod]

I think you've hit on the key point here: While too many people.......

I'm very similar to you.
Except for computer based music, which by design has a low-DR before compression anyway, it's a tossup if a DR6 will sound OK. An album that was originally mastered & released with 6dB of headroom tends to sound OK, but a DR6 Remaster of what was originally a high DR release are mostly unlistenable, as too much of the musics recorded harmonics have been removed & too much distortion has been introduced. 99.9% of these type of DR6 remasters are bad, which is not just my opinion, but a result of the re-mastering process.
I myself don't listen to computer based music, so I personally try to avoid anything below a DR7 & I don't start becoming happy until a DR9.

 

[Sal1950]

"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.

Not possible to change the DR of the source, no, but very possible to increase it's playback. Same as it would be possible to reduce the DR of the source by running it thru a compresser before playback. Not snake oil.

 

[stod]

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...

Not possible to change the DR of the source, no, but very possible to increase it's playback. Same as it would be possible to reduce the DR of the source by running it thru a compresser before playback. Not snake oil.

As I pointed out, the minimum DR of a vinyl master is DR9, so there never is any over-use of compression or limiting used... so there's nothing to fix!

You can of course make MP3's or low DR tracks sound better, but you can't remove any of the distortion & you can't add back any of the removed sound. If the source is bad, no matter what you do to it, it will still sound bad... but you can make it sound a little better than what it was.

 

[tmtomh]

Vinyl DR readings are not reliable. The vinyl mastering, cutting and playback processes can all contribute to an LP made from the exact same compressed, buzzcut mastering as a CD reading 2-4dB higher on the DR meter. Now, while vinyl cutting and vinyl playback in particular add imprecision, resonances, crosstalk, and so on that do make buzzcut peaks more randomized/natural-looking, I would argue that an LP cut from a highly peak-limited or compressed digital master is not actually more dynamic than a CD or digital file from the same source. In fact, I have seen vinyl rips whose DR readings are only 1dB higher than the CD/digital-file equivalent.

 

[Robin L]

Vinyl DR readings are not reliable. The vinyl mastering, cutting and playback processes can all contribute to an LP made from the exact same compressed, buzzcut mastering as a CD reading 2-4dB higher on the DR meter. Now, while vinyl cutting and vinyl playback in particular add imprecision, resonances, crosstalk, and so on that do make buzzcut peaks more randomized/natural-looking, I would argue that an LP cut from a highly peak-limited or compressed digital master is not actually more dynamic than a CD or digital file from the same source. In fact, I have seen vinyl rips whose DR readings are only 1dB higher than the CD/digital-file equivalent.

And I have owned/heard modern LPs from digital masters sounding as brick walled as the CD version, but not as clean or as precise in low-level detail.

My two cents is this: all reproduced music is limited in dynamic range compared to "the real thing".

My first real audio system consisted of Acoustic Research 3 speakers, AR XA turntable, Shure 91ed phono cartridge and an AR integrated amp. A relative owned a system with Sansui speakers and some big Japanese [Pioneer?] receiver. The difference in the dynamics of sound was pretty drastic, the Acoustic Research system compressing everything. As regards which I thought better sounding, it all depended on the music. The AR system better for classical music, with a notch in those frequencies where surface noise appears, the Sansui system being much more aggressive and dynamic with rock and roll. AR 3's were notoriously power hungry, the big-boxed Sansui speakers being notably efficient.

Nearly 50 years later, I mostly listen to music via headphones. My current set-up works better for all types of music. Dynamics that are quashed sound artificial and sometimes good. Music of wide dynamic range is easier to listen to because domestic background noise is filtered out. My a/d/s 400 speakers for my current speaker based system are not efficient. Living in a small apartment, their compression turns out to be useful.

In any case, a typical living room doesn't have enough room for "the real thing" anyway, so compression is necessary. And if you listen to a lot of older recordings, particularly older "pop" records of various sorts, you know that the intelligent application of compression is an essential musical element of the final mix. There's a lot of early 1960's Rock & Roll that very effectively overuses compression. Then again, Rock/Dance/R&B/Techno etc. is a smorgasbord of distortion. Don't bother looking for "the absolute sound" in that direction, ear candy is packed with unhealthy sugar and nasty chemicals. For the most part, producers/engineers create the master that can best "sell" the song. Sometimes those decisions are faulty, like the nearly ubiquitous Brickwalling as of late. Otherwise, it's another musical tool for musicians/engineers/producers responsible for the final product.

 

[beefkabob]

On a crap car stereo, on cheap or even often not so cheap headphones, high loudness sounds a ton better than a "good" recording. Driving at 80mph in a car that measures 75db inside with the stereo off, I can't hear much of a dynamic recording unless I turn it way up to where everything distorts.

 

[tuga]

This is R.E.M.'s "Stand" taken from the original 1988 "Green" CD (DR12) and remastered for the 2011 compilation "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011" CD (DR6):