Re dynamic range of orchestras.
For recording one needs more than CD standard 16 bits because
one never knows when some instantanteous peak may stick
way out and clip nastily if one does not have a lot of headroom.
Thank goodness for 24 bits!
But seriously, no orchestral music really has more than 96 dB of dynamic
range, not in any real sense. After the fact, putting things on CD works
fine. Listen if you will to Kavi Alexander's (and my) Shostakovich 7.
As people probably know this piece has huge dynamic extremes. The
recording is totally uncompressed. As a result it is really hard to
play it on most home stereo systems without "gain riding" the playback.
If you turn up the soft places enough to sound lively , the loud places
are enormously loud. And yet it fits fine on CD. Moreover, if we
had compressed one very brief thing(and unless you are meter reading you
may not know which thing it is--it does not sound as loud as it actually
is), we could have pulled the overall level up 6 dB. That one moment
made us give up 6 dB!
Really, more than 96 dB is unplayable at home, if one is realistic about
things. And it hardly ever happens live either.
Robert
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