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RE: The 4 ways to decode digital

Posted by Thorsten (M) on October 16, 2015 at 20:26:32

In Reply to: RE: The 4 ways to decode digital posted by Tony Lauck on October 15, 2015 at 22:30:38:

Tony,

> The better classical labels do not gain ride.

With CD or better this an (almost) valid option, as seedee's have a reasonable dynamic range and 24/96 is great.

When I recorded back in East Germany we used dual half track tape machines without Dolby. Gainriding was almost unavoidable for larger works, or you ended up overloading the tape on the crescendi (anything marked fff in the score), while anything pianissimo (ppp) would drown in tape noise.

Given the SPL limits of many commercial (not high end HiFi) systems and the common background noise in many living situations a fair bit of dynamic range compression may be needed.

If the original engineer does not do this in post production (or as we used to have to do - live) and as light-handed as possible the producer will probably get the mastering guy to put a compressor on the final bus and max. out the control labelled "compression" (it should be labelled "Loud").

I once attended a recording session in a London Church by a label famous for it's (earlier) classical recordings. This was after they had shut down the recording facility and laid off all staff and instead started using freelancers. The Desk was a commercial "live grade" Soundcraft and there was a compressor, parametric EQ AND an Eventide reverb on the Bus (and active) going straight to 16/44.1.

I went "WTF" to have explained to me that because of the crowd the mikes had to be placed near-field, that this of coursed fluffed the sound up (which I agreed with) so EQ was needed. As this was a recording in a large church much reverb was expected - as the microphone placement reduced this a lot it was compensated for with a digital reverb. And as the producer was present he had complained during the initial takes the music was not loud enough on the recording, so the compressor was added.

I felt quite sick at that. The performance was great but the recording released on CD was predictably awful.

So, some recordings are very purist, some are as pure as the lady who sells her virtue for a nickel...

Thor

At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to intolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?

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