[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[retard]

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:10:00 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> "Walter Bright" <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marketing
>>
>> And here's why I shoot for the old ones:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cd_loudness_trend-something.gif
> 
> Ahh, yea, that's what I thought. Maybe it's gone too far with CDs, I
> dunno. Never noticed a difference between original and remastered myself
> (but I've never gone and compared them side-by-side). I do think DVD
> Video creators have gone waaay to far the other way though, because of
> the "Volume-fiddling-test" reason I mentioned before: If I set the
> volume to a comfortable level, and the damn volume keeps changing
> anyway, enough that I have to re-adjust over and over back to where I
> had it, then there's too fucking much dynamic range.
> 
> I once recorded an Elvis Vinyl my dad had to put on a CD for him. There
> was one song (forget what it was) that had a spot in the middle that was
> SO quiet in relation to the rest (and you could tell it wasn't just from
> it being an old album) that it was completely imperceptible without
> boosting the volume all the away up. But being as quiet as it was, there
> was SO little actual data there that the quality turned to shit when it
> was loud enough to hear. Avoiding low dynamic range seems to be all the
> rage these days (among consumers), but people never seem to learn "more
> is not always better".

Vinyls have a bad dynamic range. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
RIAA_equalization )

Most consumers have absolutely no idea what the dynamic range is. They're 
actually happier when the range gets smaller and smaller because the 
louder somehow sounds better. And like you say, they don't need to touch 
the volume knob anymore.

You can try it yourself, use some basic audio library like OpenAL and 
play sounds @ 1% .. 100% volume. You need a decent hi-fi system for this 
(preferably an amp with 1000+W per channel power). Even the 16-bit 44 kHz 
LPCM is enough for most people. DVD soundtracks have a 24-bit dynamic 
range. Modern compressed CDs only cover a ridiculously small part of the 
range.