Sound volume difference... again.

[cpals]

Alright so I accepted the answer about the analog/digital devices being different and that's normal and nothing to worry about.

I did a test on my Toshiba A3 and put a regular music CD in it to play; the loudest I could turn it up to without sounding like it was going to do damage on the speakers was around 50. However, when watching a movie on the same player (I've watched Batman Begins and Transformers) I don't get that same loudness until I hit around 70 or higher.

Is this difference due to how the music/sound was encoded or am I missing something here?

Thanks!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Yeah, movies have a lot more dynamic range than a modern CD.

Modern music is pretty much all recorded at a loud level. With movies, you've got the quiet bits like talking and such, and then the really loud bits like buildings exploding etc.

It's normal to have to turn things up ~20dB or so moving from music to movies.

 

[PurdueRy]

Let me add this to what jello said. If you like the dynamic range of DVD's and music(this means you will have to deal with loud explosions and such to be able to hear quiet talking in movies) then turn OFF dynamic range compression....something pretty much every DVD player defaults to ON

 

[Rubycon]

A good read why music CD's are so loud from a professional standpoint. It's disgusting.

Vinyl doesn't sound better than CD because of analog vs. digital. It's what goes into the recording beforehand AND how those bits are handled. I have some super transfers from master and pre master tapes BEFORE all the processing (castration) is done. Granted they are 24/96 transfers but compared to the CD it's stunning. Even a WMA/MP3 made of them still blows the CD away. Awful stuff what they are doing to the music. It's like a glass box too - once it's cracked it cannot be fixed.

If the listening environment is the excuse then fix the listening environment not ruin the product for everyone else. Car decks and personal music players can be equipped with compression/limiting VERY easily. Set top DVD players/receivers have it (night mode) now. If a car can have a system (onstar?)where a person can remotely unlock the doors surely they can have a feature that adjusts the compression of the sound program material based on its speed over ground.