Is there a standard for dynamic range? 

"You can't succeed so well over the long term by trying to appeal to the masses." "Trying to make everybody happy ends up making nobody happy." THESE WORDS ARE WISE. Well said, Paul. When Paul started talking about having to make groups happy than everybody happy, I was stunned. It's an essential wisdom waiting to be told. This is how manufacturers like PS Audio (and old pre-2006 Sony, in my situation) made audiophiles really proud. There's that certain situation when manufacturers degrade quality just to appeal to masses, it makes everyone's criteria towards something substandard. But if they appeal to small groups who know how to appreciate quality, the masses would have followed. If everyone understood this, we wouldn't have the problem of everything being made substandard. But I guess it's just how consumerism works. You impress with a golden ratio of rock bottom pricing with abysmal quality.

Bob Carver’s Autocorrelator was a valiant effort to restore dynamic range to FM, cassette and LP audio sources in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It worked surprisingly well. One just had to be judicious in how much range expansion was applied to avoid a breathing or pumping sensation in music. It also had an ancillary benefit of reducing LP surface noise and FM and cassette hiss, these being quieter and in the background were reduced further along with the quieter music passages.

Paul, as a life long musician I want to say thanks for talking about ...music. So very much of the hifi world is wrapped up in the gear and technical mechanics of sound reproduction that there is great ignorance when it comes to the very thing the hobby is based on reproducing. Talks like this help to bring people towards greater appreciation of the musician as opposed to the engineering. Thank you.

In fact, this happens also in speakers/electronics comparison. What people usually mistake for "better sound" are just differences in volume. That's why blind test must be done with SPL matched.

In the 1970s There was an FM station in Memphis, TN called FM 100 (99.7) It was rock and roll and used all the compression available to be the loudest on the dial. I worked for a Muzak franchise there and we used a sub carrier (67 kHz) that was on the FM-100 transmitter. Most of our accounts were via leased telephone lines, but for suburban and outlying areas we used the Multiplex over the air channel. Many of the SCA receivers could not handle the cross talk caused by the station's compression policy. We had to use receivers that had lower high end response to make the program listenable. I dislike compressed music, but, i can't control the industry. When it becomes a selling point for dynamic range it will get better. However it is likely to be confined to classical music and Jazz which are mostly acoustic instruments.

Great explanation and so very true! One of my favorite songs to listen to on my system may be strange to some, but is Jackson Browne - lives in the balance.

Dynamics are ESSENTIAL! Quality rules. ;) Thanks, Paul. Let's connect on Linkedin.

2:50 - Back then the radio stations' 'rationale' to using compression: it enabled them to reach a wider audience.

I remember db systems selling companders that could be used to either compress or expand the dynamic range of music. If you kept the ratio low it did a reasonable job of expanding the sound of a track of music.

Wonderfully explained Thank you sir. You are really genius.

Andrew Scheps has taken credit for a large part of the loudness wars..he says he's a reformed character now :) The advent of ITU loudness limits has helped..

Chuck Mangione - Feels So Good is a great example of a song that really delivers the emotional feelings. I just "feels so good" to hear that track... which is probably why it was so overused in movies in the 80s.

I subbed, I love listening to this kind of stuff, even though I'll never be able to afford high end audio gear.

You said Mahler last time you talked about dynamic range, let me recommend Shostakovich No. 7 (Leningrad Symphony) instead. The Snare build during the Allegretto is an absolute exercise in dynamics going from near-inaudible to as loud as the symphony can play.

I think the loudness war started back as early as the 40's, Just thinking of the one tube phonographs of the time. Any tube by nature clip in a non-linear way, so it would make sense to do that at time with tech they had, but as time went on well you can guess the rest on the story.

Why I like older music with no remastering

Thank you Paul

This dynamics is particularly important in Beethoven's 3rd symphony. Just listen to the beginning, bang!.... bang!... taadidaada taadididaada.....:-) Very difficult to get a good recording even, and then to get it sound right, as in the concert hall, no way

i remember it started with am radio, then when fm came along they left the same compression and vinyl could not produce accurate dynamics at the time, thanks Paul

-16LUFS is a good go-to standard for most material, i think. Loud enough, but not too squished.

It's this old signal to noise ratio argument again. Many years ago I was invited by a friend who was a member of some famous orchestra to attend a rehearsal in the morning. I was wonderful sitting in a large cavernous auditorium in almost complete silence listening to the crescendos and silence of symphonies being played. It's sad that a lot of dynamic range is now lost on radio broadcasts. The BBC used to put to simultaneous FM stereo and live TV broadcast of the Proms. The aim was to achieve about 70 db on FM and you turned the sound down on your TV. These days your lucky to hear more than half that on a FM broadcast. Of course you can go out and buy a FLACK player and a pice of music that will make you deaf if you want to turn it up to the max. A lot of audio companies now understand the problems of hearing damage of listening for long periods and will limit the output of personal stereos. You can of course circumnavigate this buy buying more efficient headphones or buying a headphone amplifier. Personally I think people should think about enjoying the music rather than how loud it is.

I stopped listening to music decades ago on the radio when compression started my days of listening to music and did a radio it was just a background and white noise in my ear

Radio stations also compressed things because of the huge numbers of listeners in cars. When you're competing with wind and all manner of background noise, if you don't compress low level detail is right out the window so to speak. Also, stock car radios of yore only sported a few watts. Without judicious compression from the broadcasters your radio would run out of steam in a big hurry!

Loudness WAR, Thanks to Bob Orban (Optimod) & Frank Foti.(Omnia)

Ahhhh..... Dynamics !! My favourite subject ! Paul is right on the money here with this one .. well said ! The trouble with fm radio is its nearly all commercial and 99% of the time ppl just have it on in the background or in their cars .. so they jam pack the broadcast signal with all they can .. until the next ad comes along ( there is often more dynamic range in the commercials ...!!) DAB + is much better for this and it really does sound much better. The problem with recording an artist or band or big orchestra is that although it sounds magnificent using 120+ dB dynamic range it must be born in mind that it will no doubt be played back on crappy little sound systems that would self destruct if allowed to play this ! Enter compression... it's literally a leveller .. so we can ALL get to hear it ! As Paul so correctly says .. if you really want good sound...good dynamics and maximum involvement in music you have to choose your own source... At Sony, we still issue super audio cd's with 120dB plus range with enhanced separation..

Another reason radio uses compression is that a louder signal propagates farther when using AM. Unfortunately, many station owners/execs think that this is also true for FM. The CD, and digital in general, is capable of more dynamic range than any other distribution medium to date. Unlike analog, digital also provides producers with a very exact loudness limit. This allows them to ignore the notion of a nominal level and to bring levels up to that limit without fear of distortion when played back on less sophisticated devices. In TV broadcasting, however, many facilities reject source material with a nominal level other than approximately -20 dBfs. This results in a noise floor 76 dB below the nominal level which is typically far lower than the recorded signal's noise floor.

A Limiter is what reduces peaks, loud passages. The combination of both the boost and volume limitation robs a lot of the musicality, detail and actually DELETES sounds. The justification is that a lot of listeners, listen 'casually at low volume.

nightwish loud then soft with compression

Bring back the good old days!

Foobar2000 has an addon Dynamic Range Meter, it allows you to find the peak dynamic range of each song in your music library, very telling of a recordings sound quality.

Do you make a device that can reduce dynamic range? For instance, I like to watch action and horror movies and my wife hates them, so I watch them at night. But I can't use my speakers because soft spoken passages are to quiet and have to be turned up. Then the shit hits the fan scene pops up and the neighbors get pissed, let alone my wife. Even watching TV the commercials can be too dam loud. So we need some type of compressor that doesn't sustaining the sounds being played through it. When it comes to music, it's all on!

Back in I think the late 70s a radio station in San Francisco played the opening theme song to the Star Trek movie from an experimental Sony digital reel to reel uncompressed on the air. It sounded amazing except for the distorted peaks. So they stopped it, put the compression on it .....aaaand ruined it.

If anyone wants audio questions answered, I recommend asking Mark Fischer. Paul babbles on and on and.............

I cannot have background music ,it is to distracting . I have been known to have a TV playing all day long , without a problem . I'm talking in a workplace that requires concentration .

Since audiophiles are now the only people (largely) who buy CDs and LPs there is no need for dynamic range compression any more - why don't they just compress the radio and streaming versions?

Orban etc now have auto gain control, five band compression, and clipping. Plus the PPM box to encode the audio. Sucks.

Is there a standard for dynamic range? For popular music, yes. About 3db total. LOL!

I HATE THE LOUDNESS WARS!!!! It is so unbelievably frustrating and counterproductive. So horrible and people who have or buy good equipment suffer the most. It really is the death of music.

dynamic volume on or off for a/v receiver?

What about the Red Book standard for cds

it depends on the recording medium. the best analog recording medium (studio master tapes) can have a dynamic range of up to 77 db. in digital recording, each bit per sample gives 6 db of dynamic range so a recording with a bit depth of 16 bit per sample (the most common) will have a dynamic range of 96 db and 144 db for 24 bit (that's a hell of a dynamic range, who says digital audio lacks dynamic range?) but if you meant the dynamic of sound signal, no. it's not something you can/should standardize.

Paul, how come it seems your questions only come from viewers from places other than the US?

Hi, Paul There really is no advent of loudness wars these days, as a matter of fact they are drawing to a close. You can thank streaming services for that. While audiophiles may scoff (rightfully so) at the audio quality of services like Spotify, iTunes or RU-vid, it is their playlist based service that has led to them being forced by consumers to get their loudness affairs in order, similarly the TV broadcasting world had to adopt loudness standards as a result of legislation demanded by consumers. Nobody wants to listen to content of constantly varying loudness so an agreeable standard has been set, for TV broadcast that is -24LKFS (Loudness K-weighted full scale) and for web it is in the neighborhood of -14 to -16LKFS. I don't know the specifics for youtube but right-click on this video and you'll see "stats for nerd" and they'll tell you what youtube did to loudness-normalize your audio. In case of this video the audio was 2.9dB lower than the RU-vid standard and they left it alone (they never raise levels) but if your audio (music or otherwise) had been too loud to would have been turned down by RU-vid. It seems that around -14 to -16 LKFS is the sweetspot that is still relatively loud but allows for appropriate dynamic range for most music that is marketed commercially. Some of the best recordings ever made will easily encode to RU-vid without any dynamic compression or volume reduction applied (data compression is different, of course). A DN value of 12 or higher is usually deemed acceptable. Think about what that means: As far as streaming is concerned there's absolutely no advantage left in raising loudness and forgoing dynamic range and I believe that producers of music will soon realize that there's no point to release loud content for soon to be obsolete modes of distribution such as AM/FM radio and CDs or whatever when the bulk of their business is in streaming.

Compression is a necessary evil for recording mediums with a low dynamic range!!!

So dynamic range is the speakers ability to produce a wide frequency response and high spl level without sounding harsh?

there should be forced standard, my eq gets screwed by the mess we have now. that happens when you have some gain on an eq and prevent clipping is on. then some random song mess it up.

Fellow Audiophiles... OK, lets see if anyone knows... I invented a technology that enhances dynamics per each instrument in a musical track, and also as a whole. Adds more energy, extra dynamics per each note, per say... a dark quiet background but highly enhanced detailed powerful dynamics, when it's time to execute extra db's. There is no room for much hiss & noise, which is good! Would this be considered extreme dynamics or still just all under the category of gen dynamics? Any other term for it? This is a serious question... I mean I call it in my own terms : holographic articulation with accurate bass response.

Just answer the question for gods sake!!!!!

First haha. Pathetic.

Waste of time looking for top end recordings as the music has NO energy like listening to a piano or a single violin , this is Audiophile . DEAD . We need need music with LIFE .

The range of an LP is plenty for me. Never too quiet or too loud