The biggest problem that I have with Louis Fielder's landmark paper or should I say stumbling block paper about dynamic range is that it describes experiments that are very unrealistic. He's not alone in this kind of disconnection with reality.
Let me illustrate this problem with some examples.
One common disconnection of experimentsand their interpetation from reality is the common practice using the threshold of pain and the threshohld of hearing as being definitive of the dynamic range of human hearing. However, exposure of human ears to sounds sufficiently loud to cause pain is well known to cause the human hearing system to relaibly experience a phenomenon that is so common that it has had a given technical name for decades: "Temporary Threshold Shift" (TTS) Google defines it without searching as: "A
temporary threshold shift is a
temporary shift in the auditory
threshold. It may occur suddenly after exposure to a high level of noise, a situation in which most people experience reduced hearing. A
temporary threshold shift results in
temporary hearing loss." Based on my personal experiences, TTS can commences within a minute or less from the onset of the the exposure to the high level noise, worsens with the length and intensity of the exposure, and can last for 12 hours or more. The Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occup...shift_(hearing_loss)_after_noise_exposure.jpg provides the attached illustration:
I find it rather striking that threshold shifts of up to 50 dB are shown in this reference, but one rarely hears of this effect, and it is certainly not mentioned in Fielder's paper's text. If you include the effects of TTS, the dynamic range of human hearing can be justifiably adjusted by up to 50 dB! Depends how you design the experiment. I suggest that if you design the experiment to be similar to a person listening to the loud and soft passages of music, the 50 dB TTS may become operative. If we compare this to the loudest sounds portrayed in the paper, we now have only 78 dB dynamic range, a number that is well within the much criticized 16/44 CD format.
A second problem is that in general this paper vastly overstates how quiet the quiet portions of the real world quiet passages are. For example, a number of 128 dB is given for the peak level of rock music in the paper's table 1. However, should the music cease playing, the room does not go down to absolute silence. Even after the crowd has become relaxed, the room is probably still ringing with sound at something like 80-90 dB SPL or more. The actual real-world dynamic range that you'd witness if you were there might be only 38 dB. If we chase the crowd out, then we are left with the SNR of the musical instrument amps which typically have a rather poor SNR by high fidelity standard. On a good day, the dynamic range at the live performance might be still only be about 50-60 dB, not the 128 dB claimed.
Another example would be live classical performance which of course includes the sound of the audience. Even they are as still as possible they still make noise. They breathe, their digestive systems gurgle, and as they fidget, their clothing rubs and makes perceptible noise Chase out the audience and you are still left with 100 or so musicians.
The paper does not seem to mention "Room Tone" which always exists and is generally way above threshold. Common numbers for background noise in venues and listening rooms seem to be absent people. It is hard most of us to listen without being present!