Some good points, a good recording (of a great song) trumps the method used many times over (indeed a bad recording of a great song often trumps a good recording of a bad song!)Originally Posted by Alan
Just a point of pedantry here though, the honour roll doesn't present 'uncompressed' masters it presents 'appropriately' compressed masters and helps the listener to begin to understand the difference between dynamic range control and absolute volume. It's also a good way to begin to get your head around Mr Katz's 'K-Metering' system, which adapts the traditional cinema standard of linking certain meter ranges with particular SPLs (cinema's don't have a volume knob per se so films are made to a defined standard of volume so that they don't have to recallibrate the sound each time they put a new reel in, this is part of what 'Dolby certification' means).
K-20 is broadly equivilent to 'cinema' sound, in that the meters are set so that '0' on the meter is 20dB below the actual clipping point of the converter (0dBFs with 20dB of headroom) to do this the amps are callibrated so that a -20dBFS RMS pink noise signal will generate 83dB (Cweighted Slow) actual SPL in the room.
Once your room and your volume control are callibrated then you actually have a real world reference to be able judge exactly how loud something is. I found it a revelation for mixing but it's also an interesting exercise for listeners too.
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