Dynamic Range
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Dynamic Range
Dynamics Processing in Audio Mastering
All of us like our songs to sound as loud as our favorite CDs in the market, as a matter of fact when you compare your music to other songs, the first difference that is most prominent is the loudness. Loudness masks every other aspect of a piece of music when you compare it to another; brightness, detail, warmth etc..
How does a mastering engineer make your song sound louder, and what is the price?
As we all know nothing can go above zero db in digital audio, in other words you can't make a digital audio louder than 0db, so how is it that the mastered CDs you have, sound that loud? The answer is you can only make loud masters out of an audio file that has loud transients, if the whole audio file has one steady volume, and it's as loud as 0db already, you can't make it any louder.
For instance take a pop or rock song, if you look at the wave shape in a DAW you can see that the loud transients are mostly the kick drums. Now if you can make the kick drums smaller and raise the whole volume, or raise the whole volume while not letting the kick drums go any louder than zero, you will have an overall louder song.
How do you achieve that?
The processors that do such thing are compressors and limiters. While compressors may let some transients escape, limiters won't let any transients pass the specified out ceiling hence they are used at the end of the mastering chain to keep everything below 0db.
As you know the difference between the highest part and the lowest part in volume of a specified sound wave is called it's dynamic range, and what I described above is called reducing the dynamic range. This is the price you pay while making your song louder in mastering; you loose your dynamic range, meaning everything sounds closer together in volume after mastering despite the efforts you made to adjust the loudness of the different instruments in your song while you were mixing. Although so many people like the fact that they can hear everything in their mix after mastering, so many people don't, anyway loosing the dynamic range is inevitable here.
One of the other processors that are used for dynamics processing other than the compressors and limiters are the multi-band compressors. What they do is they let you compress different parts of the frequency spectrum separately.
This is so useful in controlling loud transients in the midrange especially with the vocals and guitars, it also lets you compress the bass (kick drum and bass guitar) before your audio passes through the compressors hence giving more space to make the song louder without any fluctuation in the volume.
About the Author
M-mastering provides high quality mastering services to musicians nationwide. Visit www.m-mastering.com for more hints on mastering.
Home theater dynamic range control?
My 5.1 receiver puts out 5 fine (loud) channels. I set the Dynamic Range control to MIN.
Yet, it still puts out 5 fine (loud) channels. The receiver is a Rotel 1065. How do I turn that
Rotel dynamics feature on ? I must be doing something wrong. ps DVDS are just too dynamic
Yes, the receiver DYN MIN (imum) is on. And, Dolby Digital is playing. I still get the maximum dynamic range.
Further help ?
Your owners manual states that an indicator light will be on when the dynamic range is not set to maximum. Is the indicator light on? The owners manual also states that dynamic range control is only available in Dolby Digital and that it will not function in any other mode. Are you in Dolby Digital mode?
Another thing you can do that will help with dialog is to set the center channel a few dB louder than the main channels. If the issue is that you have to keep turning the volume up and down around soft dialog and loud sound effects that may be your best solution. Just go to the speaker calibration menu and either adjust the center channel louder or the other channels softer.
mk
Digital camera Dynamic range test