Vinyl Compression Dynamic Range

Participants on the dynamic range database use the dynamic range meter a foobar2000 component to take their measurements.

Vinyl compression dynamic range.

Dynamic range compression is a lossy compression. That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings. When i cut a master for vinyl and a cd master from the same digital master tape they sounded pretty much the same except for the noise floor. Vinyl can still push music to the limits of its dynamic range 55 70db but it often shies away from doing so in order to maintain sound quality.

Consumer analog cassette tapes have a dynamic range of 60 to 70 db. An album would have to be remastered to get the range back. Analog fm broadcasts rarely have a dynamic range exceeding 50 db. Another significant impact of finite quantizing resolution is finite dynamic range.

Lp s surface noise which is responsible for the poor dynamic range is mainly concentrated below 500hz where the noise level is around 50db. The dynamic range of digital audio systems can exceed that of analog audio systems. As many of us know in a fair amount of digital masters the dynamic range is typically limited. 17 in late 2008 mastering engineer bob ludwig offered three versions of the guns n roses album chinese democracy for approval to co producers axl rose and caram costanzo.

You can t get back the dynamic range once it s gone. A version of the album without dynamic range compression was included in the downloadable content for the video game guitar hero iii. There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often. The dynamic range meter is designed to give the same information as the popular pleasurize dynamic range meter.

This is clearly a significant difference but what does this have to do with needle skipping. A vinyl record on the other hand only has about 55db to 65db of dynamic range. The dynamic range of a direct cut vinyl record may surpass 70 db. Vinyl s dynamic range is dependant on frequency because vinyl doesn t have a flat maximum output curve.

On the site users can search by artist or album. His post on why custom mastering for vinyl isn t necessary is well worth a read if you d like to know more about his take on the topic. The only signal that can exist between the bits of a cd is drowned out by random noise from the vinyl surface grain. The noise floor is even lower for an audiophile pressing on good quality vinyl.

As implemented the bit depth of cd and dvd digital audio formats accommodates a higher dynamic range than vinyl is capable of. Any user can submit their test results to the site.