Lest I sound too would-be definitive, I should add
that in actuality there are now concert halls with noise
levels at the threshold of human hearing, at least
when they are empty. Since an orchestra at close range
can reach 100dB and then some(though out in the hall
the level is much lower), this means that in some
abstract sense the dynamic range is more than 96 dB.
What I was getting at is that at home this is not really
usable. No one wants a recording like that, partly
because no one's home is that quiet.
Well, actually mine nearly is, at say 2:30 am if the refrigerator is not
running and no other appliance is on and the lights that buzz are off and
so on. One really hears almost nothing as long as the windows are closed
to keep
out the sound of the ocean in the distance(which is easily audible outside
but is low enough in level that one can get rid of it
with closed curtained windows).
But in more ordinary circumstances, in the daytime when there
is some traffic noise and so on, then one cannot equal those concert halls
for quiet.
And even if one's home is that quiet, for some reason that I do not
really understand, people do not like the music to go from too soft to too
loud at home. The loud end especially is a problem, not because one cannot
generate the SPL--that of course is easy with modern speakers--but because
there is too much of what I call "room roar". too much sound off the
walls. If one wants loud, highly directional speakers work better--they
are more tolerable when playing loudly than the ones that bounce sound all
over. This is ironic because of course in concert halls most of the sound
is indirect and indeed is reverberant field. But wide dispersion speakers
in a small room do not produce that kind of sound. There is for one thing
too much top end energy in the reverberant field and moreover the
reflections off the side walls are far too early(unless you live in a
palace). The effect of this is that it is easy to get too loud.
In any case, at an audience location, orchestras are typically not all
that loud. So if you start at say 20 dB absolute--which is very soft
in a home environment, or in a concert hall for that matter--then
you need only about 75 dB more to get to what seems --and is--very loud in
a home environment and is indeed as loud as audience sound at rational
locations(as opposed to way up close to the brass or the like).
My thoughts, anyway.
Robert
PS I recall that Philips used to say that they did not think
that more than 40 dB of dynamic range was usuable in a home environment. I
think that is a bit low, but certainly one would be hard pressed to use
say 90 dB in a musical way, I think.
On Wed, 25 Apr 2012, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
Robert Greene wrote:
Re dynamic range of orchestras.
For recording one needs more than CD standard 16 bits because
one never knows when some instantanteous peak may stick
way out and clip nastily if one does not have a lot of headroom.
Thank goodness for 24 bits!
But seriously, no orchestral music really has more than 96 dB of dynamic
range, not in any real sense. After the fact, putting things on CD works
fine. Listen if you will to Kavi Alexander's (and my) Shostakovich 7.
As people probably know this piece has huge dynamic extremes. The recording
is totally uncompressed. As a result it is really hard to
play it on most home stereo systems without "gain riding" the playback.
If you turn up the soft places enough to sound lively , the loud places
are enormously loud. And yet it fits fine on CD. Moreover, if we
had compressed one very brief thing(and unless you are meter reading you
may not know which thing it is--it does not sound as loud as it actually
is), we could have pulled the overall level up 6 dB. That one moment
made us give up 6 dB!
Really, more than 96 dB is unplayable at home, if one is realistic about
things. And it hardly ever happens live either.
Robert
Then, I stand corrected...
Best,
Stefan
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