Many people use music more as a soundtrack to their lives than a sit-down-and-listen experience.
However, pop music lives in a different world. Even if you’re not a fan of classical music, it’s not hard to become a convert when you hear a really well-recorded orchestra with full dynamic range over quality loudspeakers that-unlike headphones-actually move waves of air over your body. Some forms of music, like classical and jazz, take advantage of the CD’s dynamic range and use very little – if any – dynamic range reduction. So I guess we don’t need dynamics control any more, right? Some companies even produce 24-bit files for streaming whose dynamic range exceeds that of a CD. Technically, it’s a bit less due to limitations within the audio converters and circuitry of CD players, but techniques like dithering can increase the perceived range. With the introduction of digital audio – first the CD, and now streaming – we now had potentially 96 dB of dynamic range.
So, reducing the dynamic range “shoehorned” the music into the available medium by bringing up the low levels and lowering the peaks. If signals exceeded the available dynamic range, the result was distortion low-level signals became lost in the noise floor.
Broadcast was even worse-about 50 dB for FM radio, and 30 dB for AM. Cassette tapes were around 55 dB, although noise reduction increased that to 65 dB or more. Vinyl records could accommodate about 60 dB when new. In either case, the playback media couldn’t handle it. Live music’s dynamic range is potentially as high as 120 dB, although practically speaking, our limit of perception for live music is around 80 dB due to the way the ear hears. For decades, dynamic range reduction was necessary. The two main processors used for mastering are equalization to control tone, and dynamics to control the dynamic range. Should you try to win the loudness wars, or do you retain as much dynamic range as possible? You can achieve both! Learn exactly how to fine-tune your mix's dynamics and gain the best of both worlds.
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