Dynamic Range of Recordings

[AudioFreak]

In my quest to find the best recorded material I can, I have been over the last six months or so been trawling through the endless lists of material on The Dynamic Range Database. http://dr.loudness-war.info/ This has been driving me mad looking for as near perfection of the recording for high bit rate downloads from HDTracks etc. :mental:

I have now banned myself from looking, as I was finding I was not buying CD's or downloading FLAC files because of less than perfect dynamic range. I have come to the conclusion that I will just buy what I fancy, play it and decide myself whether I think the music is good or not and not get hung up on the technical dynamics.

Does anyone else have these obsessions with perfection in recordings, or is it just me. :scratch: Maybe just an age thing. :eek:

Gary

[RobbieGong]

Yes, I'm obsessed with regards to vinyl and only purchase 1st / original press in as close to near mint / mint as possible. As a result it can get expensive but I've some fab original music in fab order that likely plays as close to how it was recorded, whether thats good or not so good ;)

[struth]

Aye, Ive looked at it, but not mostly my music, although ones that it lists that Ive got I would not always agree with... its not, or shouldn't always be about dynamics anyways. Most new stuff I get info and ideas from the mafia ;) I dont buy a lot of new to me artists but some... Sara K for instance recently. She'd been going along since the 70's I hadnt noticed :eyebrows:

[AudioFreak]

Aye, Ive looked at it, but not mostly my music, although ones that it lists that Ive got I would not always agree with... its not, or shouldn't always be about dynamics anyways. Most new stuff I get info and ideas from the mafia ;) I dont buy a lot of new to me artists but some... Sara K for instance recently. She'd been going along since the 70's I hadnt noticed :eyebrows:

I could not agree more about Sarah K; I fist found out about her a few years ago and hunted down Stockfisch Records online, decided to buy Waterfalls in Metal Master vinyl and have to say it's probably the best vinyl recording I have in my collection. Since then I have bought more of her albums, both vinyl and CD and have been pleased with all of them.

Another artist is Keb' Mo, I only found out about him by chance and have most of what he has recorded, without doubt one of the best modern blues artists around today.

Gary

[Macca]

I must confess to using the DR database when buying new CDs.

Recently bought the Rage Against The Machine first album - the original release has a significantly higher DR than the 20th Anniversary re-issue.

I then proceeded to order the re-issue by mistake...

It isn't the be-all and end-all of sound quality, though. I try not to get hung up on the quality of recordings, I think it is a big mistake. Very few recordings are so bad it is impossible to enjoy them. Almost all are of a sufficient standard that they should sound 'good' on a system that has no major flaws. If you find yourself skipping stuff you might like to play because 'that recording sounds a bit rough' then that is a system issue, not a recording issue.

[Pete The Cat]

I came relatively late to CD as it became harder to find new releases on vinyl, and as a result I picked up quite a lot of CDs on sale at the end of the 90s when those original releases were being replaced with so-called remastered and repackaged re-releases. As a rough generalisation they seem to sound better than what followed and so if I'm buying a back catalogue CD my very simplistic approach is to look for pre-late 90s versions. I should probably avoid using the database for my own sanity.

How the "loudness wars" got us to a point where some albums sound like they're being played through a transistor radio on medium wave is beyond me. Surely some of the artists must get to hear their albums on half decent kit and ask what went wrong ?

I still buy new music but find it hard to ignore when you get a real shocker like the last Rival Sons album.

Pete

[Macca]

You'd be fine with the database Pete as it pretty much corresponds to what you've found - the original releases have the best dynamic range, then the re-release, then the 'Anniversary' / 'box set' / special edition releases are worse still. Re-masters seem to vary. Some better DR than the original, some worse.

Ideally avoid compilations and 'Best Of' as they are almost always diabolical i.e down in the red where it really starts to wreck the sound. The worst I have are some compilation CDs that came free with the News Of The World.

[surv1v0r]

[SNIP]- the original releases have the best dynamic range, then the re-release, then the 'Anniversary' / 'box set' / special edition releases are worse still. [SNIP]Do you have any idea why this might be the case? Surely Re-releases, 'Anniversary', 'Box sets' and Special Edition releases would usually come from the same original source material and there is no obvious reason why they would be inferior?

News of the Screws releases are of course a different matter ;)

[Macca]

Do you have any idea why this might be the case? Surely Re-releases, 'Anniversary', 'Box sets' and Special Edition releases would usually come from the same original source material and there is no obvious reason why they would be inferior?

News of the Screws releases are of course a different matter ;)

They just use more overall compression so that it sounds a bit more punchy, and is easier to listen to on earbuds or in the car where quiet passages will be too quiet and loud passages too loud otherwise. Problem is on a proper hi-fi system that is capable of full dynamic range it will sound 'loud' and shouty as soon as you turn it up a bit. Although as I sais earlier I have found this is only a problem for me once the DR gets down to about 7 or below.

There is a good case for having two versions - an audiophile release with the maximum DR possible, and one for the idiots.

I'm talking CD here of course, you can't compress as much with vinyl so the vinyl versions often have a higher DR.

[dave2010]

Do you have any idea why this might be the case? Surely Re-releases, 'Anniversary', 'Box sets' and Special Edition releases would usually come from the same original source material and there is no obvious reason why they would be inferior?
Quality of remastering can also depend on media. For digital releases the source material should be digital and not degrade. Older recordings may have been mastered to tape, and tape degrades. Also it may be hard to find appropriate equipment to replay older tapes - this can affect the remastering. Some companies, such as Decca, have done very good remastering in the past from tapes, often reworking the tape edits to get an improvement - even undoing tape splices, and then remaking them. Some newer remastering may be worse as what one actually achieves sometimes with more modern advanced techniques is a better rendition of a more degraded tape master.

[surv1v0r]

They just use more overall compression so that it sounds a bit more punchy, and is easier to listen to on earbuds or in the car where quiet passages will be too quiet and loud passages too loud otherwise.
[SNIP]
There is a good case for having two versions - an audiophile release with the maximum DR possible, and one for the idiots.
[SNIP]A reasonable, credible explanation, thanks - also to Dave2010.

I am not quite sure how one would identify an "audiophile release of a CD with the maximum DR possible" without hearing it - even if that helped :(
Whatever, I am not at all sure I would want to duplicate all of (or even any of) my CDs.

[Macca]

I agree it isn't actually that big a deal in the real world. Even if they did re-release everything with max poss DR I doubt I would replace anything I already have but it would be my first choice if buying something I didn't already have. You might as well have the best version if possible - assuming it is no more expensive.

[AudioFreak]

I also believe that the data collected is somewhat flawed. So much depends on how it has been ripped, I see some HDCD titles that are showing 16 bit and have less DR than the standard CD, when I rip HDCD discs I use dbpower amp and rip to 24 bit +6db extended, the results are excellent and can be better than the CD version.

All this is very dependant on the system it's played on of course.

Gary