Dynamic range, loudness war, remasters.

[Frgirard]

you

is this a reply to me?
I was not fully precise.
What I mean is that with reasonable volume you hardly (if even) can hear isolated -60dBfs sounds (let alone masked).
test with your listening volume for example here: https://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_dynamiccheck.php

you do not listen in dBfs. dBfs is a scale for a numeric signal. for x dBfs you can have several values of dBspl.

 

[Offler]

Excuse my ignorance... What is "re-recording" and how can I know if a remaster includes this or not?

By the way, I have Mike Oldfield Five Miles Out with average DR=13 and it really lacks punch and bass. You have to really turn up the volume to enjoy it. There is no bass. I guess "Five Miles Out" song was intended to be punchy but the CD does not convey that...

Thanks

If the song is recorded and mastered with purpose on being printed as vinyl or as a CD you should take different path in the whole process.

Many remasters simply takes old studio recording at changes it with different volume levels for various instruments.

In some cases the band reunites in studio again, they play all the songs once again and the result is superior to original album. Sometimes its just because it was recorded digitally for a specific format, also that sound-mastering tools are more advanced that in time of original record.

 

[dasdoing]

You refer to simple masking, which does happen. But you're missing my point, which is about psychoacoustics, human perception of loudness/dynamics. Our full perception of dynamics is much wider than the dynamic range we can perceive in any given short window of time.

For example, read section 2.1.b here: http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/HT/Chapter 2.pdf

Tightening those muscles changes the response of the middle ear bones, reducing the amplitude of loud sounds, which extends the total range of dynamics/loudness we can perceive. However, when they're tightened we can't hear the very soft sounds that we can hear when those muscles relax.

makes total sense. like when you switch off lights you see nothing, and after a minute or two you are able to see better in the dark.
but I fail to see the relevance for dynamic range in music

 

[dasdoing]

you

you do not listen in dBfs. dBfs is a scale for a numeric signal. for x dBfs you can have several values of dBspl.

note that I defined the listening level

 

[MRC01]

makes total sense. like when you switch off lights you see nothing, and after a minute or two you are able to see better in the dark.
but I fail to see the relevance for dynamic range in music

Good analogy, because our eyes use at least 2 mechanisms to control dynamic range. The pupil can dilate & contract for immediate / short-term brightness or dynamic range perception. Yet also, in addition to this, the rods also adapt to night vision, increasing the ability to perceive very dim objects. But this takes 30-45 minutes. So the dynamic range of our eyesight (max difference between dim & bright) is much wider than we can perceive in any short term time window. We have a range of, say X, in the short term, due to pupil dilation. Yet the full range is much wider than X, if you give the eye enough time to adapt.

The same applies our hearing. The relevance for dynamic range is that if you take a test like the one posted above, it uses 1-2 second duration differences which is short-term only. So the result underestimates the full dynamic range of our hearing, as it doesn't accommodate our long-term adaption to ambient noise level.

 

[Wes]

I'm cool with an auditory threshold of about 20 uPa for humans.

Depends on how you test and of course freq.

 

[Wes]

the reason you hear very quiet sounds in very quiet ambients is that they are very quiet ambients. in a normal living room, even living in a quiet place you will always have a noisefloor

IIRC deep caves have been used. Of course, you still have various molecules bumping into your ear drum, not to mention all the damn neutrinos...

 

[dasdoing]

today I am listening to 70ies funk. I love 70ies funk. but I must say that 70ies dynamics get anoying pretty fast, especialy the mid transients.
give you a good example, cause this is an exepctional and in my opinion timeless production; but when you hear it loud the transients hurt your ears:

imo compression, when used musicly, only makes things better. we must understand that in real life we don't hear stuff as close as the mics are. compression when used wisely makes things more natural

 

[dasdoing]

another example from the 80ies:

if you hear this stuff loud for a few hours you will sleep with tinnitus:

 

[dasdoing]

if you want to analyse good and bad dynamics you need to limit the range imo. you shouldn't analyse the transients. good remasters will sound better even having less dynamic range, cause they took away only the bad transients

 

[dasdoing]

now here a 70ies song without hurting mids. I bet it has less dynamic range than the others (sure, I might tbe wrong)

 

[levimax]

now here a 70ies song without hurting mids. I bet it has less dynamic range than the others (sure, I might tbe wrong)

I am not familiar with these albums so don't have them in either LP or CD but I will grant you that these YouTube videos are fatiguing to listen to loud. Do you have the original LP's and if so do they sound like these YouTube videos?

 

[dasdoing]

I am not familiar with these albums so don't have them in either LP or CD but I will grant you that these YouTube videos are fatiguing to listen to loud. Do you have the original LP's and if so do they sound like these YouTube videos?

I doubt you can abx OPUS at 160kbps (VBR)

 

[dasdoing]

can anybody here DR check this track?

 

[j_j]

I doubt you can abx OPUS at 160kbps (VBR)

Depends entirely on the source and stereo design of the track.

 

[dasdoing]

Depends entirely on the source and stereo design of the track.

can I ask how the codec changes the stereo information?

 

[j_j]

can I ask how the codec changes the stereo information?

That is entirely signal dependent, as well as encoder dependent.

 

[ernestcarl]

can anybody here DR check this track?

I let JRiver calculate the DR for the downloaded YT video. One can arrange albums in the database library based on the average DR by using a sorting script -- but I've not found it particularly informative. Some music I like have a DR of 5 or 4, for example.

 

[dasdoing]

View attachment 171469

I let JRiver calculate the DR for the downloaded YT video. One can arrange albums in the database library based on the average DR by using a sorting script -- but I've not found it particularly informative. Some music I like have a DR of 5 or 4, for example.

I never cared. just curious if he realy won the war lol.
I have found a youtube track that got normalized down to 15% instead of his 16% though

 

[Deleted member 23982]

i just wanna say there is alot of missperception once people read "loudness war", its not about the max volume (which on GOOD mastering always should be above -10db (maybe even closer to 0db) (which always bothers me, specially on classic music or in other genres mostly because of shit mastering, on good system it just doesnt make fun to listening to those kind of mostly old masterings)

BUT its the dynamic range to the "lowest volume tone", if dynamic range is barly 10db then this is loadness war, because it doesnt get quite .... more of a "perceived loadness" issue
i love how people play with the volume knob each song, tho in the end the max volume for most (good) mastering should be nearly the same, so no volume knob playing needed.... you fool yourself guys, this becomes specially clear on high end system / studio monitors

and specially on radios, which is kinda the most important for mass appeal and therefore sales, "loadness war tracks" just sound better
i get why you guys get bothered by it on high end system, where high DR is the most fun to listen to but on cheap radios casual people actually think imho that high dr means bad mastering

(tho im a heavy metal listener, so im accostumed to low DR range, but still enjoy GOOD high DR songs IF and nearly only IF the max volume stays the same and not dropping to -15db or something like that on bad masterings...)

(i actually enjoy many remasters just because of increased clarity, (because the max volume seemed to be raised compared to the old tracks and not the DR reduced, atleast not in all songs)