Dynamic Range

[Sjkrabbe]

Interesting. It has indeed gotten cheap enough to be used in inexpensive mixers/recorders such as the Zoom Livetrak L6 that records in 32bit float, and is indeed very convenient for the purpose - you can largely ignore input gain settings, within reason ofc. Or rather: not care about input levels. There is no gain setting in the traditional sense. Weird but practical!

Im having so much fun with the ZOOM L6Max - great little mixer - I use it for podcast, both my private ones and on my job as a Broadcast engineer, when we are out and about and recording interview shows for Danish Radio (DR)

 

[Chris A]

But to most commercial music business people, other things matter more.

I'm actually not into what record companies want: the industry is currently broken for hi-fi enthusiasts--and has been for ~35 years since the introduction of multiband compressors in 1991. It's clear, at least to me, that the record companies themselves will not change.

Chris

 

[Multicore]

I'm actually not into what record companies want:

I'm not sure I believe that as you appear indignant that record companies don't do what you would prefer they did, viz.

the industry is currently broken for hi-fi enthusiasts--and has been for ~35 years since the introduction of multiband compressors in 1991. It's clear, at least to me, that the record companies themselves will not change.

 

[Sokel]

Big, noisy cities/small,incapable gear (from smartphones and up to a point) / most popular music.
That's 99% of the people.

I'm not very optimistic.

To the spoiled,us, classical listeners:
Let the rest laugh or wonder about our usual taste about bigger stuff. DR has iron rules and once you know the real thing, or the next best (unclipped under any condition, low noise as much as possible, both room and gear) there's no way going back.

 

[mhardy6647]

I just listened to my copy and it makes me sad for my favorite hobby that something from 1972 can sound this good and how little progress and even some regression that has occured over the last 54 years on recording quality. I would be curious to hear the impression of someone that has never heard this album and listens to primarily modern compressed music on how this album recording quality sounds to them. The version up on Qobuz at least is still quite dynamic. Hopefully Atmos will be the way forward.

War's music does pop up on audiophile playlists -- including (in the more arcane circles) the original LPs.

 

[olds1959special]

Times have changed. Producers now insist on low dynamic range not for the sake of loudness anymore. They claim it has evolved into a timbral aesthetic. This kind of sound is denser and more aggressive. It also offers other advantages, such as quiet passages remaining clear and audible in noisy environments. A path dependence has thus formed, since everyone does it and no one is willing to break the mold, even though platforms like Spotify and YouTube have imposed loudness limits.

I think this works well with certain types of music, particularly electronic bass-heavy styles.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Photography and music listening has changed a lot since the early days.
Here in England photography was expensive and required considerable technique and skill to get good results. Most people didn't have a camera, and if they did they just took one roll of film during their summer holidays (and maybe Christmas if they had a flashgun).

Now everybody has a free photographing gadget, one of my grandchildren probably takes as many photographs a week as I, as an impecunious keen teenage photographer took in a year, and requires zero skill or knowledge.

Same with music. The equipment to dick around with the sound and multi track was rare and expensive. Skills in microphone position with only one or two channels meant great skill and knowledge.
Now multiple channels are cheap - perhaps not microphones - and dicking about with the sound comes with free or inexpensive apps.
BUT as more people can listen, rather than dedicated home record players it is earbuds and tiny little smart speakers for the vast majority of listeners and they can't take dynamic range even if one could hear it all in a car or jogging.

Stereo music sold to the majority is, and has to be, targeted at sounding OK on ultra lo-fi equipment.

We who want to listen to high quality music reproduction in our homes are a tiny, tiny minority of buyers.

Maybe atmos releases targeted at home listening will get more dynamic range - though I am sceptical about listening room speaker positioning for multi channel - I physically can not have speakers at optimum locations in my room.

 

[DVDdoug]

I didn't read all of the posts so this may be redundant.

Things may get better with AI. If they can make Elvis sing a Lady Gaga song it should be able to create whatever dynamics you want. They should be able to re-create the whole recording. (Overall, I'm not optimistic about the effects of AI on music.)

There are things in the real world that make "undoing" compression impossible (with today's technology). There is often compression on the individual tracks before mixing and there's simply no way to know the original peaks once the audio is limited. Other things make it practically impossible, even if theoretically possible.

If the compression parameters are known and controlled, it CAN be reversed. DBX noise reduction used linear 2:1 compression during recording and complementary expansion (including the timing) during playback for an incredible signal-to-noise ratio on cassettes. But they were unplayable without expansion. Dolby uses a bit of compression/expansion too, but not so much that it's unplayable if not decoded. The phone company also used analog "compansion" to improve the signal-to-noise ratio over the transmission lines. But these are different applications, and not necessary with digital.

The record companies (and most musicians) give the customers what they want. If more-dynamic music starts winning Grammy's, everybody will copy that style. But we've got more than one generation of listeners, musicians, and producers that have grown-up thinking that dynamics are bad and constant intensity/loudness is how music should sound.

I was around when CDs came out and I was expecting musicians & producers to start taking advantage of the improved dynamic range capability. I couldn't have been more wrong.