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Dear Roger and Doug,
Would you consider making Horner's glorious score play uninterrupted by the pop songs on the reissue?
Disc 1: The Complete Score
01 Main Title (4:43)
02 The Gizmo (3:25)
03 Finding The Rocket (1:52)
04 Neville And Eddie (1:07)
05 Testing The Rocket (2:40)
06 Lothar Gets Wilmer (1:44)
07 The Helmet (0:45)
08 The Laughing Bandit (1:10)
09 Neville Eavesdrops (1:25)
10 The Flying Circus (6:35)
11 A Hero Is Born/Bye Bye Bigelow (2:51)
12 Jenny’s Rescue (3:52)
13 Cliff To The Club (0:49)
14 Cliff The Waiter (0:32)
15 South Seas Send Up (3:43)
16 Neville Sinclair’s House (7:19)
17 Cliff Caught (1:38)
18 Rendezvous At Observatory (8:10)
19 The Zeppelin (7:56)
20 End Title/End Credits (6:30)
21 Love Theme (5:10)
TOTAL TIME - 74:43
Disc 2: The Original 1991 Soundtrack Album
01 Main Title / Takeoff (4:43)
02 The Flying Circus (6:23)
03 Jenny (5:10)
04 Begin The Beguine (3:44)
05 Neville Sinclair’s House (7:20)
06 Jenny’s Rescue (3:21)
07 Rendezvous At The Griffith Park Observatory (8:10)
08 When Your Lover Has Gone (3:28)
09 The Zeppelin (7:56)
10 Rocketeer To The Rescue/End Title (6:30)
TOTAL TIME - 57:16
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Nono is partially correct about compression limiting dynamic range. But he keeps ignoring the extremely important element of noise floor. The typical home has about 40 db of background noise:
https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/Pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=tf4173
Dynamic range of an uncompressed CD is about 96 db. So, if you had a CD with "full" dynamic range and you wanted to turn it up loud enough to hear that a pianissimo flute solo on your favorite score, you would have to turn it loud enough to overcome 40 db of good old generic household background noise (refrigerator, HVAC, outside traffic, etc). That means you need to turn up your system to the point where the flute solo is at about 43 db, just so you can hear it over the background noise.
Then along comes the whole orchestra, adding another 96 db of sound pressure. Let's just do the math: 43 db + 96 db = 139 db.
Congratulations! You are now deaf!!! And you probably have blown out speakers as well.
As notated in the link I posted above, sustained exposure to SPL levels over 85 db will damage your hearing.
And, to be fair, I am exaggerating the peak level of a typical orchestral recording. Truth is, to reproduce the full dynamics of an orchestra actually only requires about 70 db of dynamic range. So, even taking that into account:
43 db + 70 db = 113 db.
That's still INSANELY loud for musical peaks, and can still result in hearing damage.
But lets take it to another common location people listen to music - their cars. Typical background noise level in a car is 70 db (!). 70db + 70 db = 140 db. Again, welcome to the exciting world of extreme hearing loss.
Bottom line is, almost all recordings not only have been compressed, they NEED to be compressed. Compression is used in every stage of the recording process. Compression is used when recording guitar, to bring out the beautiful resonance of the guitar cabinet. Compression is used when recording on-set dialogue and action (otherwise simple door slams would be the highest dynamic content on movie soundtracks - they always peg the meters, and need to be brought down).
Where I agree with Nono is that compression got WAY out of hand during the "compression wars" he speaks of. It got to a point that almost every recording was "brick-walled," where almost all dynamics were taken out of the recording for the sake of pure volume / loudness.
The trick - and art - in loudness mastering is to achieve a proper balance of dynamics while also keeping in mind the environment in which it is going to be listened to.
Having the best equipment in the world is not going to overcome 40 db of background noise - the math I outlined above still applies.
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Just a quick follow-on to the above. People in various threads here have complained about having to turn up the volume so they can hear the quietest passages in a recording, and then getting blasted back in their chairs when the full orchestra comes in. This is what can happen if you have extreme dynamic range.
So, why does this not same sense of getting blasted not seem so apparent when listening in a movie theater or in a concert hall? That's because sound propagates differently in large spaces than in small spaces. High frequencies roll off with distance, plus most of what you hear in the concert hall is reflected sound (vs. the direct sound you get out of a pair of stereo speakers). All these reflections and attenuations alter the character of the sound and spread it out over a larger space. This is why it may measure as loud with a db meter, but not seem as loud overall as the same sound coming from a point source 10 feet from you.
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Posted: |
May 28, 2020 - 12:58 PM
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By: |
JGouse0498
(Member)
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Nono is partially correct about compression limiting dynamic range. But he keeps ignoring the extremely important element of noise floor. The typical home has about 40 db of background noise:
https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/Pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=tf4173
Dynamic range of an uncompressed CD is about 96 db. So, if you had a CD with "full" dynamic range and you wanted to turn it up loud enough to hear that a pianissimo flute solo on your favorite score, you would have to turn it loud enough to overcome 40 db of good old generic household background noise (refrigerator, HVAC, outside traffic, etc). That means you need to turn up your system to the point where the flute solo is at about 43 db, just so you can hear it over the background noise.
Then along comes the whole orchestra, adding another 96 db of sound pressure. Let's just do the math: 43 db + 96 db = 139 db.
Congratulations! You are now deaf!!! And you probably have blown out speakers as well.
As notated in the link I posted above, sustained exposure to SPL levels over 85 db will damage your hearing.
And, to be fair, I am exaggerating the peak level of a typical orchestral recording. Truth is, to reproduce the full dynamics of an orchestra actually only requires about 70 db of dynamic range. So, even taking that into account:
43 db + 70 db = 113 db.
That's still INSANELY loud for musical peaks, and can still result in hearing damage.
But lets take it to another common location people listen to music - their cars. Typical background noise level in a car is 70 db (!). 70db + 70 db = 140 db. Again, welcome to the exciting world of extreme hearing loss.
Bottom line is, almost all recordings not only have been compressed, they NEED to be compressed. Compression is used in every stage of the recording process. Compression is used when recording guitar, to bring out the beautiful resonance of the guitar cabinet. Compression is used when recording on-set dialogue and action (otherwise simple door slams would be the highest dynamic content on movie soundtracks - they always peg the meters, and need to be brought down).
Where I agree with Nono is that compression got WAY out of hand during the "compression wars" he speaks of. It got to a point that almost every recording was "brick-walled," where almost all dynamics were taken out of the recording for the sake of pure volume / loudness.
The trick - and art - in loudness mastering is to achieve a proper balance of dynamics while also keeping in mind the environment in which it is going to be listened to.
Having the best equipment in the world is not going to overcome 40 db of refrigerator noise - the math I outlined above still applies.
THANK YOU!!!
Honestly, I wondered if that had something to do with it (regular background noise in the environment, but your explanation made it very easy to understand. For the record, I personally wouldn't want the labels to go overboard on compression, brickwalling, or whatever the correct terms are. At the same time though, I don't live in a hushed concert hall. I'm not listening to a live orchestra--I'm listening to a CD (or rather MP3s ripped from a CD) on a stereo I bought at Best Buy.
There's got to be a happy medium there.
Is this really relevant though? How many people have a refrigerator in or near to their listening space? In my country we don't have domestic HVACs. Outside traffic noise is dependant on where one lives, and is much less of an issue if one listens to music at night (which I'm sure many do).
Actually, it is. Like I said, I didn't have the words to explain it the way John did, but background environmental sound definitely is a factor. The best anecdotal evidence I can offer is this: listen to a movie or CD at 3:00 pm and then again at the same volume at 3:00 am. My experience is that, at 3 in the morning, it sounds twice as loud because everything else is absolutely quiet.
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