|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
194.237.142.17
In Reply to: RE: This thread is surreal posted by jazz1 on June 10, 2012 at 01:31:46
and not touch dynamic level. That's what Hi-Rez means as well. SACD format has about 120 db dynamic range according to Sony. Does it mean too much for Hi-Rez inmates?
Follow Ups:
most speakers, except Hi Eff horns fall into the 80-90 DBmW range. so achieve 120 DB on an 84 DBmW speaker requires two channels amps that can pump out 26900Ws to move that piston enough to go that loud...the most power amps in the big iron range top out around 600W so you are already a bit short on the top... We listen about 6-15 feet from the speakers, so subtract 3 db for every doubling of the distance you could be down 18 db easily form the 120 db max. there you lost 18 on top. let go to the bottom...a good microphone has a noise floor of 20 dB. and may be able to get up to 130 dB on the top. so there you already lost 10 on the bottom, a quiet studie has a noise floor around 30 dB...so you lost 30 there so the practical dynamic range of a good recording made by the best mike of the lodest sound has a reproducible dynamic range of about 84 db...ok leave a little room and you could swing a 90 DB on an exceptional system. A listening room has a higher noise floor than a studio say 35 or 40 db...so another 10 db loss. so the realistic dynamic range that one can reproduce without fiddling with volumes is about 70 to max 80 DB but then you really have to perk up your ears to hear the stuff down there on the bottom through the tinnitus you just acquired listening to the fortissimos :)a solo harp or violin in a large concert hall will be in the neighborhood of 80 db peak a player has to really push it, a piano may be banged up to 90 db a full orchestra at the finale of Wagner's may peak at 120 :) normal sound level of a solo instrument will be around 60 db. the noise floor in a good concert hall is 35-40 db. so making recordings where the dynamic range extends beyond 70 dB is not only hard but almost impractical
dee
;-D
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
quote by Kurt Vonnegut
Edits: 06/12/12
There is absolutely no reason why recordings of acoustic music should have any compression whatsoever. Any decent system should be able to deal with this The biggest problem isn't with the recordings, its with the culture of compressed music and multi-tasking. People should listen to orchestral music with 100 percent of their attention. I used to turn off my refrigerator so as to lower the room noise level.
Fifty years ago I used to wish that the idiot engineers and producers who occasionally compressed recordings would be murdered. Now I see that there are many "music lovers" who are in need of the same treatment.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
not advocating for compression, just stating the realities of recordings, room acoustics, and real dynamic range of music. 70 to 80 db is pretty much all you get on playback, even if your hi res digital chain has a stated S.N of 120 db. Any wider range will make you reach for the volume control to either compensate for room noise or distortion. It would also be interesting to get some real dynamic range numbers for various pieces as they are performed in real environments. Having a very wide dynamic range available to the recording engineer is a good thing, make it possible to make the recording sound as realistic as possible. Pretty certain almost nothing has that wide a dynamic range :). As a practical matter the peaks should be as close to the max signal level as possible thus allowing the quietest passages to be well above the noise flow of the system, and give the quiet passages the maximum possible resolution. Compression is a non linear function therefore is a form of distortion.
dee
;-D
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
quote by Kurt Vonnegut
Reading this thread I do not think that anybody is asking for compressed music. I think that they just find BIS SACD's to be at level that are a little low. I never heard anybody complaining about "Living Stereo" SACD's even if they are probably compressed. The fact is that BIS seems to be the only label that is controversial. I also do not find BIS SACD's to be more dynamic than the other labels. In my opinion they sound less dynamic.
The "Living Stereo" recordings should not be used as a reference to discuss dynamic range. They are great recordings, to be sure, but they show the technical limitations of the era.
The classic RCA "Living Stereo" recordings were made on magnetic tape. Because of limited dynamic range in this pre-Dolby period most of these recordings had fortissimo passages at high levels, which caused the tape to dynamically compress these peaks. In extreme cases, there is tape saturation distortion. This is obvious in the Reiner Mahler 4, for example, where tape distortion is present in every format of this recording that I have, starting with pre-recorded tape and LP. (I don't have the SACD.)
IMO, it is inappropriate to use any analog tape sourced recordings from this era as a benchmark for natural dynamic range. What you hear is not what the musicians played unless you are also hearing a lot of tape hiss, indicating that the engineer preferred noise over distortion and compression. When I was in college I worked at a radio station and used to record Boston Symphony concerts over leased lines live from Symphony Hall and Sanders Theater. The tapes we made (using Ampex full track 601 and 350 recorders) were never equivalent to the live microphone feed because of noise, distortion and dynamic compression. Today, one can achieve a high level of transparency with digital recordings, e.g. with DSD128.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I do not worry about technicalities; I just enjoy what sounds right to me.
And Yes I do have a preference for vintage performances and sound.
Lots of "Living stereo" sounds more exiting to my ears, even with all the warts.
It is like audio gear specs! do they give you an idea of how it will sound?
From my experience; no.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: