DR ratings: vinyl era vs modern era

[BillyBones]

Can I just say that the Robson and Jerome CD sits in my collection, bought by my wife 20 years ago, and not been played for 20 years

[jammy395]

So good Billy, that Lindsay never even bothered to score em.......

1993 Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell Meat Loaf 11 v13
1994 Cross Road Bon Jovi 8
1995 Robson & Jerome Robson & Jerome
1996 Jagged Little Pill Alanis Morissette 9 v12
1997 Be Here Now Oasis 5 v11

[slinger]

Here's a link to a rather limited (for audiophile purposes) bit of software that will measure the DR of a file, or a folder (read "album") full of them. It will only measure MP3 or WAV type files unfortunately, but it's interesting all the same.

http://www.dynamicrange.de/sites/defaul ... 201_4a.zip

[EDIT]

I've just found this page which has a link to a DR measurement plugin for Foobar 2000 which I've tested and is working for me. It accepts FLAC files.

http://www.metal-fi.com/measuring-dynamic-range/

[Lindsayt]

There were some albums, like the Robson & Jerome that didn't have an entry in the DR database.

Feel free to measure them with the right tools and add them to the DR website.
.

[BillyBones]

Life's too short to be measuring the DR of a Robson and Jerome CD

[Lindsayt]

As a follow up to this. Does anyone here think that there are certain recoridngs / music performances that would be "improved" by a certain amount of dynamic compression?

Does this, for example, have too much dynamic range for you:

Tielman Susato - Dansereye 1551



Where you want to turn up the quietest bits or turn down the loudest bits?

(ref http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/wha ... ou?page=25)

[Geoff.R.G]

The Permed one has thousands of records. All of which are 12" singles.

Old LP's sound dire to Permy, got shut of em thank heavens.
Modern records are of no interest to Perms what so ever if i wanted a digital job id buy a CD What the hell is the point in a Digitally farted about record??

12" single proove to me a number of things for example:

1.Old LP's make my system sound tripe where as my 12" singles make my system sound fantastic, moral to that story is that i find old LP's are cack imho
2. New LP's sound shrill & toppy, My 12" single dont in any way, moral to that story is i find new LP's are cack imho.

So you can buy your new fangled Cartridges & phonostage to try make your LP's listernable if you want but you can not get blood from a stone

If you are happy to spend your time changing records, fine. Unfortunately most of the music I listen too won't fit on a 12" single so it is LP or CD for me.

[Geoff.R.G]

I don't get why they have to makes a CD sound like an MP3 download as they are different markets.

I suspect the idea is to encourage the use of MP3 by making the CD sound the same. If the CD sounds no better why pay for it? There are fewer overheads with MP3.

[Geoff.R.G]

How is d/r measured and his it a a] factual b] consistent in time a space ?

example

a] A centimetre is a factual measurement ,it requires no subjective interpretation where as say sound quality of an record is a subjective measurement .

b] A centimetre in 1974 was the same as it is now .

Excellent question. I am used to seeing dynamic range expressed in dB which are an objective measure and, as with your example a 1974 dB is the same as a 2017 dB. The ratings shown in this thread are apparently not expressed in dB.

The theoretical dynamic range of Red Book CDs is around 96dB and Vinyl apparently offers around 80dB but 12" singles may be better than that but, if so, not by much.

Given the above, I too would like to know what a DR rating of 11 means in dB.

[_D_S_J_R_]

I understand that Vinyl offers a measurable 40db s/n maximum (usually much less) in the bass and midrange, mainly made worse due to the necessary RIAA playback curve which boosts bass by varying amounts with frequency. Conversely, hf is progressively reduced with increasing frequency and this gives vinyl up to 70db s/n at high frequencies, about the same as FM radio at its best and still not as good as the best analogue noise reduction systems such as the best Dolby A setups or more typical Dolby SR in its heyday. It's all on the web for further research if anyone's interested. Typical records and players come nowhere near to these ideal conditions although the very best styli playing a super-clean record probably can approach it. Compression was routinely added to vinyl cuts as well as eq, so this varies from disc to disc and proper CD mastering was 'supposed' to correct for all of this (as long as record company bean-counters are kept out of it!).

My vibe on CD was that cheaper players of old weren't any good on low level signals, bleaching everything out and sounding gutless, either because the early '16 bit' DACs weren't good enough (forget the first 14 bit players and very early studio editing suites which ruined sense of air and space imo), or most likely because the analogue output chips weren't supplied properly. As I've gone on, I've lost my distrust of IC based op-amps and the Doc has shown me a few times now how excellent these can be if a, they're correctly specified for the job and b, they're correctly supplied by a powerful and cleanly regulated supply.

By the way, lean sounding CD's usually means bassy playback monitors. I'd love to hear some of my gutless pop/rock recordings played back on huge JBL's for example. I bet they're not lean sounding then