Vinyl Compression Dynamic Range

The only signal that can exist between the bits of a cd is drowned out by random noise from the vinyl surface grain.

Vinyl compression dynamic range.

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 noise floor is even lower for an audiophile pressing on good quality vinyl. Consumer analog cassette tapes have a dynamic range of 60 to 70 db. Pcm of any flavor has a flat response to fs.

The dynamic range meter is designed to give the same information as the popular pleasurize dynamic range meter. Vinyl s dynamic range is dependant on frequency because vinyl doesn t have a flat maximum output curve. Participants on the dynamic range database use the dynamic range meter a foobar2000 component to take their measurements. 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.

There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often. This is clearly a significant difference but what does this have to do with needle skipping. 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. Any user can submit their test results to the site. 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. Dynamic range compression is a lossy compression. And this is for a mass produced commercial lp purchased second hand from a thrift store for around 1. As implemented the bit depth of cd and dvd digital audio formats accommodates a higher dynamic range than vinyl is capable of.

On the site users can search by artist or album. An album would have to be remastered to get the range back. A vinyl record on the other hand only has about 55db to 65db of dynamic range. The dynamic range of digital audio systems can exceed that of analog audio systems.

The dynamic range of a direct cut vinyl record may surpass 70 db. He goes on to explain far more eloquently than i can why dynamic bass can cause the stylus to skip but ironically this can be solved by yet more compression reducing the dynamic range.