I think I understand all the jargon, haha. I believe classical music is quite a pain to listen to through headphones and sadly thats how I listen to it most of the time. Whether I'm around my parents or friends, I try to keep the volume as loud as I can without it bursting out of the headphones. When I'm in noisy crowds, I have to listen to a piece that's extremely loud so It doesn't suddenly change from p to f. I think my ears take quite a beating for doing this though, so hopefully I don't pull a Beethoven.. I always thought this was just a consequence of listening to classical...Sometimes you can hear it and sometimes you cant, lol. Anyways, I agree, maybe I should buy a dynamic compressor... whatever the hell that is...

 

Every once in a while the dynamics get too excessive; these, however, are almost always on brand-new CD's, while those from, say, 1960's and '70's are not so much so. Anyway, I think for the most part that they're quite alright.

 

I've often wondered why portable CD or Mp3 players don't include a switchable compression to raise the volume of the quieter bits and reduce the loudest bits so it's possible to listen while travelling without having to keep adjusting the volume. One of the great features of the CD is its capability to reproduce a huge dynamic range but when listening against background noise (particularly a varying one) this is a nuisance.

However, I'm generally happy with the dynamic range of CD for home listening.

Rachovsky, there's a thread about headphones in the "hi-fi" sub-forum. Take care because once you damage your ears' ability with high frequency sounds, it's gone forever. I use Beyerdynamic at home and some little Sennheisers when travelling - not ideal but among the best as far as these things go!

 

I've often wondered why portable CD or Mp3 players don't include a switchable compression to raise the volume of the quieter bits and reduce the loudest bits

Not CD or MP3 players, but cheap amplifiers or TV sets (especially old ones) do that job all the time.

I think this is the real origin of the problem here:

1) Sound engineers who make the recording assume it will be listened to on a cheap or old system

2) They artificially increase the dynamic range so that their recording sounds more or less realistic on a cheap / old system

3) If you use a more modern / top of the line system (such as a portable CD / MP3 player), the dynamic range is too high. The only way to get it real is to use a dynamic compressor.

There are several software dynamic compressors, but none of them works very well in my experience. I still much prefer the analog compressor (I am using a Drawmer, which you can buy from $300 on Ebay - just type [drawmer compressor] into Ebay's search box).

Still, it's a bit strange that we need to spend money to make our top-of-the range systems sound more like old / cheap systems, because sound engineers assume their recordings are going to be listened to on old / cheap systems.

 

I see that many of you listen through headphones. The problem is that the music you are trying to reproduce does not originally come into you exclusively through your ears. In a real concert hall with real musicians, you perceive music through the ears, lungs, ribcage and your entire body. Limiting music only to the ears seriously limits the experience, and causes you to increase the volume excessively out of frustration. Good loudspeakers avoid that problem.

 

Most classical music was never intended to be heard through either loudspeakers or headphones anyway. Both have good and bad points. At least with headphones you aren't wrestling with the room acoustics but as you say, listening is a different experience. There's no substitute for live audition; even getting a seat in an acoustically poor part of the auditorium has its compensations in live performance.

 

Live? You should try sitting behind the brass section during a concert of Russian Favourites! Russlan and Ludmilla followed by Night on a bare mountain.... ouch! !

 

A professor at the university told me he attended once a London PO concert in which Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony was the centerpiece. As he was sitting very close to the percussionists he said he really suffered each and every time the guy knocked the timpani. Furthermore, he said that after the concert he had to wander for an hour by the streets of London until the echoes of the timpani would decide to abandon his shaken head.

 

I'm going to Russian Favorites night but i'll be on the East Balcony with a faint view of the Pianist Joyce Yang playing Rach's Rhapsody ... ... . . . . . .. . Hopefully I'll get good acoustics.. Tchaikovsky's 5th should sound good though. I had never listened to Polovtsian Dances by Borodin so I bought it and its played at a rather fast tempo but then I looked at Seiji Ozawa on youtube and his is slow (and not as dancish IMO). What's the correct tempo? anyone know? Sorry for my bad grammar im too lazy to type well..

Now that I listen again, they sound like two completely different pieces -.-

(They play it bad, but it shows the difference)

 

I have had a hard time finding a CD of Mahler 5th with reasonable dynamic range. I really agree that the loud parts are too loud and the quiet parts are hard to hear without adjusting the volume. Even the CSO version with Solti has that problem and my old LPs never did.

 

In other fields of music the recording is likely to be very compressed in order to be heard above other noises without gaps. This particularly applies to rock and pop, as these styles are heard via radio by people who are not really listening but who would be disturbed by pauses in the endless flow of drivel.
Heavy compression, boosting all weaker sounds to almost the level of the peaks, also helps to explain why TV adverts sound so loud.
A CD made to be heard this way can sound really bad on a proper hi-fi, lacking dynamic range.
Thus, by means of technology employed for commercial gain rather than in the service of musical experiences, we are acclimatised to pseudo-music with almost no dynamic range. Even BBC Radio 3 FM is strongly compressed, so listening to it does not prepare us for CD-quality sound. A live performance or a well-recorded CD played on good equipment in a quiet room might take some getting used to.

 

I'm a little torn on this. I do think the dynamic range is a bit excessive. Listening to music in the car for example.. the old problem of not hearing the quieter passes and having to fiddle with the volume.

I think it's sort of a show-off of what digital technology can do.. maybe not perhaps what it should do, if that makes any sense.

Using a compressor.. that's an interesting approach.

With classical music, I don't mind the dynamic range so much. Now movies on the other hand.. I hate when the music and sound effects are so LOUD and you can barely hear the dialogue.

 

I don't think classical music is that great to listen to in a car... unless it's Ginastera's second quartet or something. Especially orchestra music by Mahler, Debussy, that lot of composers who really knew how to make the orchestra whisper like the wind and cry out with the voice of God.

However, I still hold to my opinion that it really depends on the year the recording was made. With all this newfangled SACD stuff, it seems to me it only really captures the concert-hall sound - rather weak, actually. It doesn't cut through anything.

The older recordings, on the other hand (Toscanini, those older guys) have recordings that truly resound and can slice right through any sound out there. The dynamic range isn't that high, and the analog sound just catches the pure sound, not the echoes in the hall as much. It's far stronger, if you can stand the quality (and I don't see anything wrong with it).

Either that or you could just listen to Ives or something all the time... Huge walls of sound...

 

Addressing the OP
If the dynamics are too much or to little on a CD then the main problem lies with the recording engineers, if he/she dose not get it right then things will and do sound messy, as does very bad editing where a note is cut off prematurely instead of being allowed to die as in the original performance [bad editing is a sore point with me] with a good set up as you have the aim is to get as near to the original sound (Hi Fi) as possible. And bad recording is a pain but is not so noticeable on a more basic set up.

 

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to in the music industry as the "loudness war" or "loudness race", as explained in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

The following simple article discusses the problem using some further examples: http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm.

As explained in these articles, it's all a matter of whether the dynamic range has been set so high by the recording engineers (presumably in order to make the music sound louder, and hence more "appealing") that it results in "clipping", i.e. attenuation of the sound at high levels.

Apparently, according to the sources above, this loudness problem has shown some tendency to increase since the time CDs were introduced in the early 1980's. However, I've never bought a CD with this problem but I don't dispute that it may sometimes happen.

I have noticed that some streamed music (eg from the BBC i player) has an excessively high dynamic range, which if left untouched sounds really awful. What I do to get round this problem is to record the material using the "automatic recording volume limiter" facility in the Creative Labs software which I use. Normal, live digital broadcast material from the BBC doesn't suffer from this problem and is usually, if anything, slightly conservative in regard to dynamic range.

 

You are getting it totally wrong, it's the other way around. Loudness war is a about excessive compression not about keeping a wide dynamic range. This thread is about to much dynamics.

 

Artemis, the instances to which you provide links are examples of the reduction of dynamic range in order to boost perceived loudness. My previous post to this thread tries to cover that.
Increasing dynamic range only makes the louder bits louder still, making the listener uncomfortable. Quiet bits can drop right off the recording.
It's easy to confuse overall volume level with dynamic range, but in reality they are very different things.
I don't know of a CD that has been made with artificially large dynamic range, but if it happens it must sound really bad.

 

I realised that. The point is that there are web articles on problems about the dynamic range of music CDs which refer to the tendency among some audio engineers to over-compress the available dynamic range (ie reduce it) in order to boost volume. I've not come across any articles arguing the opposite, that the dynamic range on CDs is too high before any compression is applied. On the contrary, where the full dynamic range for a CD of 90 db is left in tact, this is usually applauded as the goal of good sound engineering. I wonder therefore whether people who have voted in this poll know exactly what they have voted for in saying that they find they need to adjust the volume. I suspect there is some confusion and they could, in effect, be saying they think dynamic range is too low as a result of compression. I'm not clear what they think but the situation is probably more complex than many believe.

 

I'm with you there, Artemis.
There are so many variables. Plus, as you say, a full dynamic range is to be desired. So as it comes down to personal taste and listening circumstances, perhaps some amplifier manufacturers will intruduce compression settings like those on many car radios.
I don't even use tone controls, and my favourite amplifier doesn't have one. Less is more. But that's easy for me to say, listening to Baroque chamber music, guitars, lutes and pre-war jazz. A Wagner nut may well have a different view.
Back to the point though: are any CDs made with artificially enhanced dynamic range? If not, then either some people are uncomfortable with natural dynamics, or their hi-fi equipment has a non-linear response.
Interesting stuff.

 

It shouldn't be necessary to de-compress commercially available CDs unless possibly some really weird settings have been applied one-off at the recording/mixing stage. Certainly I can't see any need to do this on a routine basis to all CDs, as stated in the OP. More likely there could be something amiss with the amplifier or its settings, or possibly if the sound is played via a PC there could be a fault of some description with the sound card or its software settings.

It's extremely unlikely that one needs to buy a £500 (US $1000) de-compressor in order to get the best out of music CDs. If this were case it would be big news and common knowledge, and if so it would probably never happen as the necessary corrections would be applied at source in recording studios.

Regards amplifier settings, of course you are right that they serve no purpose but to distort the sound. I always set mine to "off" in all circumstances. Interestingly, I once saw a thread on another music Forum which was discussing the best sounding PC music player, like Windows Media Player, Real Player, Jet Audio, etc. The correct answer, of course, is that they all sound exactly the same provided they're set to the default "off" positions for the various sound"enhancing" features. But it was quite funny watching all the nonsense about how some media players allegedly sounded better than others, and in what respects.

 

When you mentoin de-compressor do you mean the DA converter? These were sold in their thousands in the late 80s to early 90s.

 

In post No 20, I meant to say "compressor", not "de-compressor", so apologies for that slip.

I certainly don't mean DA converter, which is a totally different thing. A DA converter is an essential and (normally) integral component of a CD player and sound card which converts digital signals into an analogue sound wave.

What we're talking about here is an electronic box called a "dynamic compressor" which is capable of reducing the dynamic range (ie the difference between high and low decibels) of a piece of music. In the OP it is suggested that many classical music CDs have too high a dynamic range, and therefore a home version of a "dynamic processor" is a useful supplementary piece of kit to add to one's hi-fi gadgetry in order to make appropriate adjustments to the sound one actually hears.

Now, in recording studios dynamic processors are used as part of the stock in trade of manufacturing CDs. The author of the OP is saying that in his view insufficient dynamic compression is applied at the manufacturing stage, and that he finds it necessary to apply yet more compression (using a domestic version of the same kit) to give acceptable results in terms of his perception of the range of sounds emanating from certain instruments.

I was suggesting instead that the main criticism of parts of the recording industry is exactly the opposite, i.e. that CDs are sometimes over-compressed in order to (somewhat paradoxically) boost average levels of volume. This compression is done as a selling gimmick to make the music sound "better", ie louder. Whether or not excessive compression has been applied, it hardly seems appropriate to compress the music even further by home versions of dynamic compressors, since the achievement of high dynamic range (up to the 90 DB limit of a CD) is the "holy grail" of hi-fi enthusiasts and music lovers. If there's a problem with the sound, I would guess that more likely it's a fault of some description elsewhere in the system.

 

In a medium to large city there are constantly planes flying overhead, lawnmowers next door, dogs barking, and rude people shaking the ground with trunk rattling sub-woofers half a mile away. Absolutely the dynamic range for some classical music is too wide to hear the soft parts over all that without blasting at rock volumes in the louder parts. Just because we have the technology to have a noiseless wide dynamic range doesn't mean we should - not in today's world. Wagner didn't have planes roaring and refrigerators and air conditioners whirring in his world.

Artisitcally it doesn't need to drop below pp for me to get the general idea it's softer.

 

That looks like a cogent point to me, Weston. Where you live, your music source needs to be compressed. That ought to be done at the user end, ie. by your hi-fi system. In my view, the CD itself should have a dynamic range as close to the original sound as is possible. There are enough impediments between the performance and the listener at home without adding compression that is unnecessary, even intrusive, in a quiet place.
I hope someone can recommend a good, affordable compression system for domestic usage, so that you can enjoy your CDs to the maximum.

Where we live, the noises are the waves on the sand/shingle beach, many species of birds (sea birds in front of the house, woodland birds behind), vehicles passing from time to time, the occasional pleasure boat or fishing vessel, wind in the trees, and gales in the Winter. None of these sounds spoils our enjoyment of music. Indeed, some of them sound better to me than many of Carol's CDs. I'll stop there, before I begin to upset any Romantic period listeners.

 

Where we live, the noises are the waves on the sand/shingle beach, many species of birds (sea birds in front of the house, woodland birds behind), vehicles passing from time to time, the occasional pleasure boat or fishing vessel, wind in the trees, and gales in the Winter. None of these sounds spoils our enjoyment of music. Indeed, some of them sound better to me than many of Carol's CDs. I'll stop there, before I begin to upset any Romantic period listeners.

Like you, Mr Harwood, where I live, the noise of the rain falling on the roofs of the factories, trucks passing from time to time, the occasional plane landing never spoil my enjoyment of music.

In fact I don't really realise that there is a problem with the dynamic range on most CDs.

 

Weston I sympathise with you regarding a noisy environment it must be hell and apart from soundproofing a listening room or shooting the neighbours there is not much you can do unless you can d/l a program to rehash the recording, I am sure they are around check this out http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ it may have something,
I must agree with mike that the adjustment should be at the listening end and not the production end.
I have a sportscar and these are notorious for wind noise hence I have the CD player loaded with Jazz which I can play very loud but even so there are passages that are just too quite to hear and classical is just imposable.

Weston I have just thought of another one you could try http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

 

Weston I have just thought of another one you could try http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

I have had some software that will compress the audio. That would be a rather large undertaking for all my music at home and a good hi-fi might be the more economical solution in terms of time I think.

However - this is an excellent idea for work! At work I'm not really listening and would not need it to be a perfect reproduction. It's just pleasant background. So I could start to compile CD's of compressed classical music for work, and while I'm at it make mp3's so more can fit on a disc. That way I can have my pleasant music and not have The Lark Ascending descend into oblivion. And it will be leveled so I won't disturb my coworkers if a big orchestral crash comes in.

(Anyone mortified by the idea of great classical music as mere audio wallpaper can rest assured I do sit down and listen with all my attention for an hour or so at least a couple of times a week.)

This MediaCoder looks like it does it all. I'll give it a try. Thanks.

 

One of the problems with wide dynamic range arises because many of us have neighbours to consider. Often it simply isn't feasible to reproduce music at realistic volume levels (even if one wants to) purely through consideration of others who may not want to hear climactic orchestral sounds coming through the walls.

One of the most disappointing purchases I ever made was the Haitink box of Vaughan Williams symphonies, where I soon discovered that I had to choose between scaring the neighbours, not hearing frequent passages of quiet music, or sitting there twiddling the volume control. The result: I never play the Haitink set at all unless my neighbours are out!

It seems a retrograde step to compromise the sound quality at source, so surely the solution is to have some optional compression facility incorporated into amplifier systems, just as tone controls often are. I can't see it happening though.

 

Hello Elgarian.
Your problem is that you wish to be a good neighbour. Much credit to you.
Since domestic systems struggle to reproduce the grand scale of real orchestral sounds anyway, have you tried good headphones?

 

Since domestic systems struggle to reproduce the grand scale of real orchestral sounds anyway, have you tried good headphones?

I do use headphones quite often (particularly if I'm listening in the garden), but there are two reasons for not doing so. First, quite often my wife and I listen to music together - so we want the music 'in the room' rather than 'in the head'. But also, the LS3/5A loudspeakers I use are very transparent and have a natural feel to them that would always be my preferred way of listening. I must confess, though, that I've never considered spending really serious money on headphones - I suppose because it isn't my first choice of listening method.

I agree about the inability of domestic systems to reproduce realistic levels, but I suppose I abandoned that particular chase many years ago. That's what's given rise to this thread, after all - I mean, the clash between the realistic dynamic range of the concert hall and the restrictions in the domestic environment (which will be different for all of us).

 

I voted yes. Didn't realise that my little problem about listening to classical music was called "too much dynamic range". This problem haunts me. I listen to music on my pc mostly and very loud. I like to listen to every detail of whats going on in the orquestra. I want to listen to andante, moderato, etc., everything. And I have the same problem on headphones. I mess a lot with my eardrums.

 

I also never use tone control.
I also find that if the engineer has done the job right and the listener is positioned correctly, relative to the speakers no other adjustments are required, but I can see if some short cuts are made then problems can arise, luckily I have not had that experience, I have some recordings on which you can hear traffic going by and what appears to be the rumble of the underground in the London recordings, but the musical dynamics are fine.

 

There are so many varients involved in this issue that I don't think there is one answer. The quality of the sound system, the room it is in, the quality of the recording, the preferences of the sound engineer making the recording- everything has an impact.

It is interesting to compare a very early recording of an operatic aria where the recording was obviously made on one take, with a modern recording of the same aria, even the same singer, possibly with many takes, which has been manipulated in the studio.

Dynamic range is only one consideration, absolutely everything including bad intonation can be altered these days, so one just has to listen and select what appeals. Then adjust our sound system accordingly. It all adds to the listening experience.

 

There are so many varients involved in this issue that I don't think there is one answer.

I agree 100%. It is a good idea to investigate all possible settings, including turning loudspeakers in various directions etc.

The huge dynamic range means that these two Berlioz CDs are almost worthless to me.

This just proves that a dynamic compressor should be part of any good hi-fi system. I never regretted buying mine. On some recordings, I can bypass it. On the majority, I run it at 1.5. The maximum compression level is 20, followed by "infinite". So, I am rather using my compressor at a very conservative level. Your cd would probably sound right at 2 or 3.

 

here's a guy who knows what he's speaking of:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

And when say Kancheli specifies a long ppp on the viola followed by a choir + orchestra fff, could it be that he's asking that consciously?
So, if that what he wants, I'd appreciate the technicians to stick to their job. Proces the sound respectfully.

Then afterwards, when you want to listen to "the best possible copy of the (life) original, you can. (Provided you have the equipement and environement). If and when you want a bland version (for during car driving or whatever reason), you can always manipulate the rich version into a bland one.

That's why, for me, respect the dynamic range of the life intrument(s)

 

Well, I encountered this dynamic range problem today, with a vengeance.

I'd bought the Colin Davis/LSO live 2CD set of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust on the basis of unequivocal recommendations from Penguin and from Gramophone as 'the' version to have. I noted that both refer to the fact that 'the transfer is at rather a low level', but thought little of it. It turned out to be a massive understatement.

In order to get an initially acceptable, comfortable level, I had to wind the volume control into unknown territory - not far from full on: such a high setting, in fact, that if this had been any 'normal' CD, I'd have been afraid of my loudspeakers being blasted into their constituent parts, or my neighbours phoning the police - or both. This seemed mighty strange, so I played various sections of the CD - at a more cautious volume setting - until I understood the nature of the choices that had been made in mastering this recording. The recorded level seems to have been backed off excessively in order to accommodate the climaxes of the 'Ride to the Abyss' towards the end of the piece. If I had in fact continued to play the whole of the second CD at my original volume setting, I suspect my neighbours would have wondered if World War 3 had begun when I got to the 'Abyss'.

I transferred the first half-hour's worth of the tracks from the second CD onto my computer and looked at the audio wave profile - here's a screenshot, courtesy of the excellent Audacity program:

That great mass of high amplitude stuff at the far right is the 'Ride to the Abyss' section. The much lower level stuff at the far left is Marguerite's wonderful (or what should be wonderful) 'D'amour l'ardente flamme' which, when played at a volume setting that could reasonably accommodate the Ride to the Abyss, is basically reduced to an unrealistically low level devoid of all power.

The huge dynamic range means that these two Berlioz CDs are almost worthless to me. I can't play this recording, sensibly, in what I would consider to be a pretty average domestic environment. And to listen to it on headphones may well be, I suspect, potentially dangerous to my hearing. If I were to set a comfortable listening level for 'D'amour l'ardente flamme', I certainly would not like to be wearing those phones when the 'Ride' begins. If ever a recording needed some compression, this is surely it.

So I have two questions:
1. Why has attention not been drawn by reviewers to the really quite serious problems that will be presented surely to the majority of listeners by this excessively large dynamic range?
2. Can someone please recommend a good version of Damnation of Faust that I can actually listen to in comfort and without fear?

 

I love your descriptions of neighbours phoning the police, world war three beginning, etc. I am greatly annoyed by this issue myself. I have several classical recordings which to my ears have far too much dynamic range (at least for home listening), which leads to the exact same problems as you are having. Thanks for the moral support