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Anybody read "The Death of Dynamic Range" webpage?

If this info is accurate, no wonder most rock/pop cd's sound like absolute crap on my system.

For those who haven't seen it, the webpage provides graphical representations of how music on cd's have less and less dynamic range/headroom between 1983 and present day.


1983

Bryan Adams - Cuts Like a Knife (A&M CD-3288)

This represents the earliest stage of CD audio mastering techniques. One of the big attractions of the CD format was its very wide dynamic range and absence of surface noise, so the first generation of CDs that were released made full use of this.

The CD's digital audio format is inherently limited to a peak audio amplitude that is referenced as "0 dB" or "100%". Unlike the variability of analog recording techniques, this limit cannot be exceeded. If you try to, you end up with a waveform that is horribly distorted, due to the top and/or bottom of the wave being harshly limited to the maximum level -- or "clipped." Early CDs were mastered with full respect to this loudness limit and did not use any clipping.

In this case, Bryan Adams' breakthrough album -- although full of stereotypically "loud" rock & roll music -- was mastered with a great amount of "headroom"; the highest peak level on the entire disc is only 74.8%, or -2.52 dB. This peak level only occurs a single time on the disc, in Track 9, whose waveform graph is shown here (with the stereo Left channel on top, and Right channel on bottom):

Obviously this peak (which occurs at around 2:16 in the song) is not even close to being clipped, and in fact the loudness of the whole CD could be increased by 2.5 dB without sacrificing any quality or harming the content of the recordings in any way. That single peak would simply be raised up to just below the 100% limit. You can think of this as a short person raising up the height-adjustable driver's seat in their car. They would sit at a higher level, with their head just below the ceiling, but not touching it -- in this case, literal "headroom".


1999

Ricky Martin (C2/Columbia CK 69891)

By now I don't think I have to explain what you see below. And in this case, it probably will help explain why your ears start to hurt after listening to "Livin' La Vida Loca" even for just a short time!

And as we zoom in, the audio carnage is apparent:




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Topic - Anybody read "The Death of Dynamic Range" webpage? - darkmoebius 21:20:31 11/22/06 (48)
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