3/10/2023 0 Comments Poweramp volume reset resumeIn digital recording, things start out simpler. But even jazz and classical vinyl recordings typically required a fair amount of dynamics processing to produce a pleasing product for the consumer. So they used a lot of compression and limiting (and a few other techniques) to reduce the dynamic range of their recording and cut the master with as loud a sound as they thought would still play without skipping or excessive distortion on people's turntables. And in the case of pop music, many producers wanted their recordings to sound "loud" because they were (are?) of the opinion that they would sell more records if the record was "loud". The source material generally exceeded the difference between what on the loudest side would make the record unplayable on the consumer's turntable, and on the quiet end would be impaired by the noise of the vinyl (or of the analog tape used in the production of the music). In the days of records, almost every record had quite a bit of dynamics processing. Why is that? because of the use of dynamics processing of the audio content. Much pop material has limited dynamic range, jazz and classical usually more. Now we have to look at the dynamic range of the source material. Whatever the definition, most people would consider the potential dynamic range of records,particularly used records to be less than that of CDs. What kind of noise? Hiss, rumble, pops and clicks, and how is it measured? Also, are you concerned about the noise floor when the record is newly pressed, or after it has been played, and quite possibly damaged. Furthermore, the location on the record (the inner grooves have issues) and for bass, whether the signal is mono (equal in both left and right channels, or only present in one channel. This decreases the perceived noise, but significantly decreases the loudest recordible high frequency audio. In the case of vinyl, the upper limit can vary widely, and is controlled in the cutting lathe depending on the spacing between the grooves (which may have been varied within the recording), the frequency being recording, as a recording equalization curve (think RIAA EQ) is used which especially boosts the loudness of the high frequencies during the mastering of the record, and decreases the loudness in your turntable preamp. But all of that is way beyond the scope of this post.Īnalog audio is more complicated. It is actually more complicated because of the probable application of dither, the possibility of source identification by adding "inaudible" digital patterns to the source audio, the possible application of HDCD processing, etc. In theory, that sets the noise floor for a 16 bit recording at -96 dB. CDs have 16 bits, common audio files may have 16, 24 or more bits per sample. The lower limit is determined by the number of bits in the sample, each additional bit adds 6 dB. Think of it as a binary word with all "1"'s. The upper limit is defined as 0 dBFS (FS stands for Full Scale). For digital media, this is dependent on the number of bits used to quantize the waveform. To begin with, the dynamic range capability of media is the difference between the loudest sound that the media can store and the "noise floor" of the media. And your source material, transfers from vinyl, probably deserve different treatment than bit-accurate rips of (digital) CD's. I'll attempt to explain in a not too technical manner, but it is quite a bit to chew on all in one post. It would be worthwhile to educate yourself concerning dynamic range as applied to digital recording and as applied to analog vinyl recordings, the term "headroom", the term "loudness", the term "normalization", how the "replay gain" tag is supposed to function, how dBpa's "Replay Gain (apply) works, and the basics of dynamics processing. But really at this point, I'm somewhat flying blind as I'm not sure about the other features. I ran on test (Peak to Peak) but it did not boast it enough. I can do that for each album in VinylStudio and then re-run each of the following steps above, or I can do so in bulk using "Volume Normalize" in dBPoweramp (much more attactive). I have been advised to normaize the volume in the ripped copy to give it more punch. Abbey Road was a real clean copy and that is the one I'm using for this comparison. I've also experienced the same when comparing other LP to CD rips. The LP rip appears to be more muted while the CD has a crisper sound. I recently ripped a clean copy of Abbey Road from the LP as a hi-res rip ( MFSL version) and then compared it to an earlier CD rip.
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