Where the hell did dynamic range go?

[Special K]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Compression reduces the crest factor so it can be played louder on most mediocre equipment without the amps clipping or speaker overload.

Think of it this way, just 30 dB of dynamic range means if the lowest level is 1W the loudest is 1000W. Not even Wesley Snipes' ghetto blaster has 1kW! :laugh:

Right, but isn't there a limit to how loud most people would want to listen to their music at, unless you are running a nightclub or something?

I mean my computer speaker system is a POS, but my "comfortable listening level" is still well below the max volume.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Special K

Right, but isn't there a limit to how loud most people would want to listen to their music at, unless you are running a nightclub or something?

I mean my computer speaker system is a POS, but my "comfortable listening level" is still well below the max volume.

I agree for personal use as well as broadcasting, etc. they have processors that kill the dynamic range. Even most tellies have a night mode that compresses the sound. That's great. Producing a CD for everyone that's flattened punishes everyone including folks that want the music to have its realistic qualities. Pity.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
That's the beauty of it - realism. A whisper should be a whisper and a grenade should rattle the audience with 135 dB crack and 150 dB of single digit low frequency effect. Few movie houses do this.

Originally posted by: gsellis
... when it went boom... the cat looks like a cartoon on the wood floor

Oh the humanity! Think of the poor animals!

I hate clipping. ESPECIALLY when I did it.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Oh the humanity! Think of the poor animals!

I hate clipping. ESPECIALLY when I did it.

If you have ported/vented bass bins and have small pets you definitely want grilles covering them. Can you say aperiodic feline cannon? :laugh:

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Special K

Right, but isn't there a limit to how loud most people would want to listen to their music at, unless you are running a nightclub or something?

I mean my computer speaker system is a POS, but my "comfortable listening level" is still well below the max volume.

I agree for personal use as well as broadcasting, etc. they have processors that kill the dynamic range. Even most tellies have a night mode that compresses the sound. That's great. Producing a CD for everyone that's flattened punishes everyone including folks that want the music to have its realistic qualities. Pity.

I know, but earlier you said the reason why they do this is because if they didn't, the dynamics of a lot of songs would cause most people's cheap audio systems to clip out and distort on the high peaks, right?

Well my question is, couldn't a low end system handle the high peaks of a really dynamic song if the overall volume was turned down low enough? Better yet, do you have any really dynamic tracks that I can test out on my POS computer speakers to expose their weaknesses

Also, aren't pop song recordings not very dynamic to begin with?

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Compression reduces the crest factor so it can be played louder on most mediocre equipment without the amps clipping or speaker overload.

Think of it this way, just 30 dB of dynamic range means if the lowest level is 1W the loudest is 1000W. Not even Wesley Snipes' ghetto blaster has 1kW! :laugh:

Originally posted by: Special K


I know what you are saying, but for movies, when you have to turn the volume down to make explosions non-deafening, sometimes the spoken dialog becomes nearly inaudible in the process.

For music I agree with you.

That's the beauty of it - realism. A whisper should be a whisper and a grenade should rattle the audience with 135 dB crack and 150 dB of single digit low frequency effect. Few movie houses do this.

So most DVDs are also heavily compressed? What about in the theater? I recall some movies seemed to have quite a bit of dynamic range when I saw them in the theater.

 

[Rubycon]

No they do it because most people are sold on louder = better.

Especially in the car where you have 100 db of background noise. People turn the volume and when they hear distortion they think the music stinks. :|

Low end systems can handle a full range recording if they use ALC in the preamp. It sounds bad but not as bad as woofer voice coil bobbins hitting the back plate or tweeter distress from amplifier clipping.

Originally posted by: Special K


So most DVDs are also heavily compressed? What about in the theater? I recall some movies seemed to have quite a bit of dynamic range when I saw them in the theater.

Theaters aren't showing DVD's - that's a completely different thing. DVD's are like CD's - the range in audio quality (and picture quality too!) varies tremendously. Some DVD's have HORRIBLE sounding music and effects that are barely 128kbps MP3 quality and others are stunningly close to master tape quality. YMMV.

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
No they do it because most people are sold on louder = better.

Especially in the car where you have 100 db of background noise. People turn the volume and when they hear distortion they think the music stinks. :|

Low end systems can handle a full range recording if they use ALC in the preamp. It sounds bad but not as bad as woofer voice coil bobbins hitting the back plate or tweeter distress from amplifier clipping.

Originally posted by: Special K


So most DVDs are also heavily compressed? What about in the theater? I recall some movies seemed to have quite a bit of dynamic range when I saw them in the theater.

Theaters aren't showing DVD's - that's a completely different thing. DVD's are like CD's - the range in audio quality (and picture quality too!) varies tremendously. Some DVD's have HORRIBLE sounding music and effects that are barely 128kbps MP3 quality and others are stunningly close to master tape quality. YMMV.

What is ALC? Can you recommend me a really dynamic track to see how my computer speakers fare?

EDIT: You mean automatic level control? So basically the speakers compress the audio for me?

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Special K

What is ALC? Can you recommend me a really dynamic track to see how my computer speakers fare?

ALC = Automatic Limit Control.

Try this.

 

[HendrixFan]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Compression reduces the crest factor so it can be played louder on most mediocre equipment without the amps clipping or speaker overload.

Think of it this way, just 30 dB of dynamic range means if the lowest level is 1W the loudest is 1000W. Not even Wesley Snipes' ghetto blaster has 1kW! :laugh:

Originally posted by: Special K


I know what you are saying, but for movies, when you have to turn the volume down to make explosions non-deafening, sometimes the spoken dialog becomes nearly inaudible in the process.

For music I agree with you.

That's the beauty of it - realism. A whisper should be a whisper and a grenade should rattle the audience with 135 dB crack and 150 dB of single digit low frequency effect. Few movie houses do this.

So most DVDs are also heavily compressed? What about in the theater? I recall some movies seemed to have quite a bit of dynamic range when I saw them in the theater.

DVDs have quite a bit of compression, though not as bad as current Audio CDs. Most movies in theatres use Dolby Digital compression, which includes dynamic range compression. DLP theatres use losslessly compressed 24 bit audio, and you can really tell the difference. The last two movies I have seen in DLP were Miami Vice and The Departed. Both movies are absolutely jarring when you hear gunshots. I saw Miami Vice a second time on film, and it just wasn't the same movie.

 

[NL5]

Just to add to MS Dawn's excellent posts. It's more to do with Brick-Wall Limiters that are really killing dynamic range. Square wave technology FTW! (not really)

 

[MysticLlama]

I've noticed this too, and with a nice sound system it drives me nuts.

The volume level that you can listen to and enjoy on a 1200w RMS system with great speakers without fatigue is far higher than some little crappy system.

I can listen to things at 10-15db higher easy than my bookshelf speakers in the other room (which are still pretty decent) and have less hearing discomfort.

But I can only really do that on a few demo CDs (which just straight up sound real, it's crazy) and my older discs from the 80s and early 90s, and on a very rare occasion, something new.

It's amazing how terrible the new stuff sounds when turned up on a decent system. I haven't got into SACD or DVD Audio yet, but I'm about ready to try it, it just sucks that the selection isn't that great.

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: davestar
agreed.

however, U2 at any compression/volume level makes my ears bleed

What has this world come to?

:laugh:

awesome.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Count on ATOT to bash the actual artist rather than the point I was trying to make about dynamic range

Z-5500s are no awesome set of speakers, but they're still better than what 75% of the people listening to these crap, super compressed CDs are using, and it just isn't fair to the people who AREN'T using a $25 Sony boombox to listen to their music to have to suffer. Wouldn't it just be smarter to build something silly like that into the cheap players/speakers, oh wait, they already do. Tell me how many different takes on the term "Mega Bass" you've seen on low end consumer audio products?

 

[NL5]

The whole reason for the "loudness wars" is the basic principle that louder sounds better. So, if you have your stereo's volume knob on 2, and you play a cd from the 80's, then play one from 2006, the new one will SEEM better to you. Now, if you adjusted your volume knob so that both had the same output level, you would be BLOWN AWAY by how much better cd's used to sound.......

 

[SludgeFactory]

I just assume anything mastered in the last 10 years or so is approaching a square wave, including "remasters."

There should be a market for true remasterings of the shyte they've put out since the mid 90's, but unfortunately I'm convinced about 95% of the general public has ears made of stone and wouldn't hear a difference.

To people that still like to listen to music, it's sickening.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Special K
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but isn't compression used so that you CAN turn the song up louder? The OP's post made it sound like the compressed tracks were the ones he didn't want to turn up louder.

What I mean is, in an uncompressed, highly dynamic song (think of a classical orchestra performance), you will have certain sections that are very loud, and certain sections that are very soft. Because the total volume will be limited by the loudest part of the song, that will force you to hear the quiet parts as quiet, because you don't want the loud parts to be too loud.

On the other hand, if a song is heavily compressed, the volume will be equalized across the entire song, and you can therefore turn it up louder.

Am I right, or am I missing something?

<-- audio n00b

see this

Originally posted by: NL5
The whole reason for the "loudness wars" is the basic principle that louder sounds better. So, if you have your stereo's volume knob on 2, and you play a cd from the 80's, then play one from 2006, the new one will SEEM better to you. Now, if you adjusted your volume knob so that both had the same output level, you would be BLOWN AWAY by how much better cd's used to sound.......

I don't know the best way to describe it, but besides being essentially one volume all the way through and ruining the dynamics of the performance, compressed/limited CD's have no breathing room in them, the instruments are all blurred together. It's difficult or impossible to sit and listen and pick out individual instruments or details from the mix. Even if you're not focusing on it intently, it's incredibly fatiguing, and the fatigue has nothing to do with volume. It's your brain screaming for a break from the square wave. You should expect to be able to crank a reasonably mastered CD or vinyl and listen for a long time.

Pop/rock songs, while not classical music, have a lot more dynamic range than the measly -3dB they seem to be getting from CD these days.

 

[Jeff7]

I wish that audio players like Winamp and such had what software DVD players have - dynamic range compression. Then those who want to hear the songs as they were meant to be heard can do so, and those of us who don't want to be straining to hear quiet parts, only to then be blasted by loud parts, can also enjoy the music. Sometimes I don't mind dynamic range, sometimes I do. The Matrix, my first DVD, made me think that DVD audio was just busted, or was horrible - whispers were whisper quiet, gunshots were damn loud. If I want to hear guns at full volume, I'll buy one and go to a shooting range. Even dynamic range correction doesn't quite do the trick.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Anything I can do for songs that were raped by a stupid engineer? Now that I KNOW the difference is there I can't bear to listen to anything after 2000, and that's being lax. That also makes half of my music collection now fall under really annoying, just how MP3s became annoying after I was able to pick them apart from lossless files.

 

[91TTZ]

On the contrary, I think that too many movies/songs have too much dynamic range now. In most of these new movies, they suck, but completely rely on special effects. If you turn it up loud enough to hear the dialog, you go deaf from all the over-amplified sound effects. But if you turn it down so it's bearable, you can't hear people talking.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

its a scam to try and get us to go out and buy SACDs.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: OrganizedChaos
its a scam to try and get us to go out and buy SACDs.

Wish they'd release stuff I want on SACD. Everything that comes out on SACD (let's see, classical, yeah that's about it) isn't raped on CD anyways, so it's not like that's any help.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Nobody's going to deal with raw music files when doing digital recording. I've spent a fair amount of time in a studio- the signal does get compressed so the equipment can work with it. If this didn't happen, you'd have to deal with a 100 gig track to mix.

read up

That article had a chart in it. Charts cause me to fall asleep instantly. It's an affliction I aquired after too many Powerpoint presentations at work

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Nobody's going to deal with raw music files when doing digital recording. I've spent a fair amount of time in a studio- the signal does get compressed so the equipment can work with it. If this didn't happen, you'd have to deal with a 100 gig track to mix.

read up

That article had a chart in it. Charts cause me to fall asleep instantly. It's an affliction I aquired after too many Powerpoint presentations at work

Attention span compression

 

[Rubycon]

SACD/DVD-A will do *NOTHING* for sound if they use the same FUBAR stereo masters as the CD's.

It's no different than arguing over hard disk speed of SATA150 vs. SATA300.

But people do. :|