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How much dynamic range is too much

Rayadc

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It seems that most of our listening environments have a base level of noise of about 40dB. Assume that listening becomes painful at 110dB. That is 70dB, 26 dB less than the dynamic range of a CD. If am listening at 110dB peaks, doesn’t the softest 26dB simply disappear into the noise. LPs sound better because the softest sounds are above the average noise floor, while the peaks remain below the pain level.
 
Amirm has a great video about the loudness of sound : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/music-how-loud-is-loud-video.22434/

It is not as straightforward to state that one listen to a specific SPL level, such as 110 dB.

That kind of statement are meaningless without specifying the duration of the peak SPL and the distance between the sound source and the microphone and the type of acoustic where the measurement is taken. 110 dB measured over a 1 ms time span at 3 meters in an closed space is not the same thing as 110 dB over a 100 ms time span at 10 meters in the open air.

As far as the dynamic range of a particular record, it all boils down the the quality of the sound recording. A dynamic recording is not necessarily loud to listen to. That recording of some percussions out of a test CD would not fit on a vinyl, by any conceivable means, also some very brief peaks are clipped despite the low recording level :

plage_46_xavier_martin-5a35ae4.jpg
means :
 
CDs have enough dynamic range for me...

The storage/transmission medium can't have "too much dynamic range". But the program can... For example, if you listen to classical music in the car you may find yourself adjusting the volume up-and-down. The loud parts can be too loud or you can't hear the quiet parts over the road noise. Or, maybe you simply want to hear the quiet parts without full-orchestra loudness during the loud parts. Or sometimes people complain that they can't hear the dialog in movies without the effects being too loud.

That is 70dB, 26 dB less than the dynamic range of a CD. If am listening at 110dB peaks, doesn’t the softest 26dB simply disappear into the noise.
Mostly true, but you can usually hear the signal mixed with noise, even though the signal is quieter than the noise. It depends on the nature of the signal and the nature of the noise.

The noise floor is mostly a problem with quiet sounds or with silence (between tracks, etc.). It's usually not so much the dynamic range or signal-to-noise ratio. It's (mostly) whether the noise is audible or not during silence or during very-quiet parts.

LPs sound better...
I disagree with that 1000% !!! :D I grew-up with vinyl and the clicks & pops always annoyed me. I could live with more-constant background noise but we don't have to, and I prefer the dead-silent background.

Records also occasionally have audible distortion and frequency response variations. Overall it's a technically-inferior format. (Some people prefer the sound of vinyl and that's perfectly OK with me.)

Of course it's possible to add pink noise or white noise to a digital file. You can do that with Audacity.

while the peaks remain below the pain level.
What?... You have a volume control so you can always keep it below the pain level.
 
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Amirm has a great video about the loudness of sound : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/music-how-loud-is-loud-video.22434/

It is not as straightforward to state that one listen to a specific SPL level, such as 110 dB.

That kind of statement are meaningless without specifying the duration of the peak SPL and the distance between the sound source and the microphone and the type of acoustic where the measurement is taken. 110 dB measured over a 1 ms time span at 3 meters in an closed space is not the same thing as 110 dB over a 100 ms time span at 10 meters in the open air.

As far as the dynamic range of a particular record, it all boils down the the quality of the sound recording. A dynamic recording is not necessarily loud to listen to. That recording of some percussions out of a test CD would not fit on a vinyl, by any conceivable means, also some very brief peaks are clipped despite the low recording level :

View attachment 425897 means :
Of course not, 110 dB at 10 meters is less than 91.
 
May I invite you to re-read my previous message, because you seem to have missed the points.
 
If am listening at 110dB peaks, doesn’t the softest 26dB simply disappear into the noise.
The noise floor is inherent in the media and (as @DVDoug noted) is typically only evident when the signal fades to silence.

However, no one is making recordings with continual program content just a few dB above the media's noise floor – at least I hope they aren’t. If you have a recording like that, it’d probably be best to listen to it with isolated headphones.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
 
LPs sound better because the softest sounds are above the average noise floor, while the peaks remain below the pain level.
Whenever LPs sound better than digital mediums, this is not the reason. Whenever LPs sound better than a CD release, it's because the master is different. As an example, see The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet. The (at least initial) CD releases were mixed wildly different from the LP release, often digitally clipping. It did not sound good.

A good digital capture of the LP sounded a lot better than the actual digital releases, but only due to the fact that the digital releases were a disaster. And with a digital recording of the LP release you could digitally de-click the release, making the digital LP release sound better than the actual LP release.

That said, I am often amazed at how well LP sounds to this day. A pristine LP still sounds good to my ears, it's just that compared to digital it's more than a little bit behind the times. But my ears can't pick up the elevated noise floor and limited dynamic range when listening to random records via speakers.
 
Listening to some modern recordings apparently 6 db is too much. They don't let it get beyond that.

Seriously, one issue with the noise floor is we don't hear the noise floor across its whole bandwidth. Our ear breaks it into ranges. Read up on ERB, effective rectangular bandwidth. In simplified form out hearing does something like a 30 band FFT. So we can hear slightly below noise floors. The important part is you need to look at the noise spectrum. In that 3-5 khz range where our hearing is most sensitive a room with a 20 khz wide noise level of 40 db SPL very likely has a noise level in that 3-5 khz range of maybe 10 db SPL or a touch less. So we can hear noise down near that or close to 0 db SPL even.

The flip side is there is masking and where a recording is close to silent or fading out to silence we might hear these low levels, but while the music is playing very much it will mask noise anyway. If you've heard LPs, notice how the lead in groove has noise you can easily hear, but once the music starts you cannot hear it.

There is then the issue of noise in the recordings. Other than electronically created music, even in studios the noise level is enough it may be the limiting factor. As dithered CD can reach more than -100 db levels accurately and the facts of all this mean 16 bit if done well is enough not to be an issue. Beyond that is just icing on the cake.
 
It seems that most of our listening environments have a base level of noise of about 40dB.

Maybe.

Here, if the mesurement is reasonable, I see 40dB SPL at 35hz, but much lower in the range where most folks ears are more sensitive.

Even so, the unweighted measure is 53.29db right now.

My room is not super quiet, with a computer (fan) and a floor fan gently blowing air (powered with a variac), and whatever else the evening suburban ambience provides.

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"Threshold of hearing" says you are unlikely to hear that low rumble, and only might hear the higher frequency stuff.

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Of course you do hear something in a quiet space. Even I do, deaf as I am.

--

Make your loudness peaks (at digital 0dBfs) 112db and you've "stretched" each of 16 bits to 7dB (instead of 6)
 
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doesn’t the softest 26dB simply disappear into the noise.
No,
1) because the noise floor in a room is usually dominated by very low frequency sounds which most of us don't notice or even hear (Fletcher–Munson curves), the noise floor is better where the majority of the musical detail is.
2) because we can comprehend intelligible sounds lower than the noise floor. It's not like a concrete floor!
 
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