I can't remember the thread or poster (apologies again for senior moments), but one gent here, took a digital sourced track and 'vinylised' it, removing bass below 40Hz or so, monoing the rest under 120hz approx, de-essing the sibilance region and I can't remember if any other limiting was done in the mids. The DR figure increased quite a bit, simply by removing the excesses of the digital original music file.
That only spoofed the DR # not the waveform. When you re-added the bass to the digital track, the DR dropped again. When you re-added the bass to the vinyl rip, the DR remained higher because the vinyl lacked the limitation that the digital files had applied to it.
I think
@DSJR is referring to the things I tested a few years ago in that very long vinyl thread.
Indeed, the common Dynamic Range Metering used at sites like DR Loudness-War can't be trusted for vinyl rips, because even if the vinyl record was made from the same
already dynamically limited original master used also for the digital/CD release, things made in the preparation and maybe also things happening in the physical cutting process will bump up DR reading for the vinyl rip by 3-4 dB. That "bumped up" DR reading of the vinyl will only look better in comparison to the DR reading of the digital/CD release, but it will not make the vinyl rip sound more dynamic, as the lost dynamics in the already dynamically limited original master were already lost to begin with.
Without further knowledge of whether a particular vinyl release was made from a more dynamic original master, we can never know if it's truly more dynamic-sounding by just looking at the DR numbers found on a website like DR Loudness-War.
I just did a similar test to the one I made a few years ago, but this time I took the sound from Ian Shepherd's YouTube video named
"Why the TT Meter doesn't work on vinyl."
The song in the video was mastered by Ian Shepherd himself, so he very well knows that the same original master used for the vinyl was the same as the digital/CD release. The original master had DR8, but the vinyl rip was showing DR12, which means that things that have been done in the preparation of the vinyl, and/or things happening in the cutting process, and/or things happening in the ripping process of the vinyl have "bumped up" the DR reading by as much as 50%(!), which of course will look much better in a comparison at a website as DR Loudness-War.
The segment of the CD version of the song I took from the video shows a reading of DR8, and that same segment of the vinyl rip shows a reading of DR11. By applying an HP filter, mono the bass, and a De-esser to the audio file of the segment for the CD version, the reading also lands at DR11 as the vinyl rip. And just for you
@MatrixS2000, I also did an EQ-match for this new audio file to regain the lost bass level of the original CD, and it only lost 1 dB of dynamic range and landed at DR10.
Here are all the audio files if anyone wants to make listening comparisons or just analyse them:
1. The digital/CD version with DR8:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bxr7...ey=ma0lviuank2wzoaujazreuwwj&st=kx052qra&dl=0
2. The vinyl rip version with DR11:
www.dropbox.com
3. The digital/CD version processed with a High Pass filter, mono bass, and De-esser, which ended up with the same DR11 as the vinyl rip:
www.dropbox.com
4. The same as #3, but now EQ-matched to #1 to regain the bass level. DR10:
www.dropbox.com
In a level-matched listening comparison between the digital/CD version with DR8 and the vinyl rip with DR11, I find the digital/CD version to be better-sounding than the vinyl rip. It could be the other way around, IF the vinyl rip truly originated from a more dynamic original master, but for this particular release, that's not the case. The higher DR reading of the vinyl rip is just something that the DR metering sees, but the true dynamics were unfortunately already lost in the process of making the original master for this track.
Which version do you (and others) find sounding the most dynamic in this case, the digital release or the vinyl rip?
(And sorry if this isn't directly related to the thread topic, which is about noise floor levels, but I hope most of you find this interesting as well.)