Quote:
Originally Posted by YouNeverKnow25
I'm sorry if it's been discussed, but what's up with the relative slamming, dynamics-wise?
I love the thing either way and I never really could tell a huge difference anyway, but looking at the dynamic range database entry for the 24/96 flac, there's a whole lot of red on that page:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/138376
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If you take a look at all the tracks, only three hit "7", nothing less than a "7". DR8 starts the "transition" scores and is the number that Ian Shepherd, mastering engineer and founder of Dynamic Range Day, considers the minimal score for eligibility into the annual awards - Babel I believe won the award several years ago and was a DR8 album.
Ideally the 24-bit files would have more dynamics in them and have more headroom, consider the SACD mastering of Rage Against the Machine's debut album by Steve Hoffman:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/115621
But now look at the 20th anniversary mastering compared to the DMB 25:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/56873
All tracks have clipping, of the actual album tracks only a single one hits as high as 7 and a couple of DR4s in there.
Albums like Californication which are mostly DR4s and 5s (
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/83434) are noticeable pretty immediately and sound not very good. When you get into the transitional phase you're hitting the middle ground, DR7~9 without any clipping should sound noticeably better than DR3-5 regardless of clipping. Crash scores a DR8 but has loads of clipping, so when you go from the vinyl to the CD and crank it you'll notice that it sounds pretty cold and harsh, lower volumes not so much.
For me it's disappointing that it isn't a fully dynamic mastering (like some of the DMBLive releases have been and most recently the WH10v3), but it's definitely come a long way from the original digital masterings of Live Trax 1-5 and has hit the "compromise" point of not so quiet that people complain they can't turn it up loud enough, and not slammed so that people complain it's a victim of the loudness wars.
That's my $0.02 anyway.
It does cost more to do two masterings, but I would love to see the modern LTs with 24-bit offerings be mastered without any dynamic range compression and then release the 16-bit options with a volume level more similar to what people are used to. Until then I consider what we're getting "acceptable".