Fluffy
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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- Sep 14, 2019
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It sometimes seems like DR meters are the holy grail of some people in the audiophile community, including this very forum. I get the notion that many believe that a recording of DR6 in automatically considered inferior to a recording of DR12, regardless of the recording/mixing techniques used. and I just don't really get what is so darn important about the dynamic range measurement.
I've heard fantastic-sounding albums that are very compressed and don't try to go far in terms of dynamic range. In fact, a lot of metal and rock recordings that I consider to be the gold standard of how it should be done, would have a very low DR measurement according to this scale. Most of the times I actually prefer digital remasters of old albums, that were originally recorded on primitive analog equipment, without the ability to properly mix them in the nuanced way made possible by today's DAWs.
And on the other hand, I think that too much dynamic range is actually a bad thing. Very sharp and high peaks in music are very jarring to me and irritating. One can effectively accentuate a moment in the music without needing to jump immediately by 18 db of volume.
Compression is a very effective technique in mixing that allow the music to sound fuller and bring up details that would have been lost if they have been left untouched at the original raw dynamics they were recorded in. This is not to say that you can't over compress things, this is certainly possible and can lead to degradation in fidelity. But the general fear of compression is really baseless, and sometimes ignorant.
This topic also connects to the general delusion of audiophiles to try and "recreate" some kind of image or soundstage of sound that existed during the recording. And the striving for large dynamic range comes from the flawed logic that if the instrument is very dynamic in person, it should sound as dynamic in the recording. News flash – almost no modern recording is in any way trying to capture an actual sound image. The studios almost always use a large array of microphones placed very close to the instrument, to capture as much of a clean signal as possible. Often, reverbs and echoes are added in software to simulate a space that doesn't actually exist. And that's only if there are actual instruments in the studio, which now days becomes rarer and rarer. Electronic music is born in the computer, mostly not passing through any acoustical space until it is played in your living room. And the types of modern music that do use instruments, usually use them as a basis for a long chain of processing and mixing that results in music that is sculptured to sound good and exciting, rather than realistic. And often, good sound depends on some sort of compression. Any starting music producer can tell you that.
I've heard fantastic-sounding albums that are very compressed and don't try to go far in terms of dynamic range. In fact, a lot of metal and rock recordings that I consider to be the gold standard of how it should be done, would have a very low DR measurement according to this scale. Most of the times I actually prefer digital remasters of old albums, that were originally recorded on primitive analog equipment, without the ability to properly mix them in the nuanced way made possible by today's DAWs.
And on the other hand, I think that too much dynamic range is actually a bad thing. Very sharp and high peaks in music are very jarring to me and irritating. One can effectively accentuate a moment in the music without needing to jump immediately by 18 db of volume.
Compression is a very effective technique in mixing that allow the music to sound fuller and bring up details that would have been lost if they have been left untouched at the original raw dynamics they were recorded in. This is not to say that you can't over compress things, this is certainly possible and can lead to degradation in fidelity. But the general fear of compression is really baseless, and sometimes ignorant.
This topic also connects to the general delusion of audiophiles to try and "recreate" some kind of image or soundstage of sound that existed during the recording. And the striving for large dynamic range comes from the flawed logic that if the instrument is very dynamic in person, it should sound as dynamic in the recording. News flash – almost no modern recording is in any way trying to capture an actual sound image. The studios almost always use a large array of microphones placed very close to the instrument, to capture as much of a clean signal as possible. Often, reverbs and echoes are added in software to simulate a space that doesn't actually exist. And that's only if there are actual instruments in the studio, which now days becomes rarer and rarer. Electronic music is born in the computer, mostly not passing through any acoustical space until it is played in your living room. And the types of modern music that do use instruments, usually use them as a basis for a long chain of processing and mixing that results in music that is sculptured to sound good and exciting, rather than realistic. And often, good sound depends on some sort of compression. Any starting music producer can tell you that.