On Tuesday 04 May 2004 19:43, Paul Winkler wrote: > I have a (completely untested) theory that part of the reason is > due to the distortions that happen in the ear at high listening > levels (mentioned earlier in this thread). ? This bit interests me. I don't have chapter and verse on it, but I do know that this is more than just our personal theory. It possibly has been tested in work with hyperactive kids. If I find the reference, I'll post it. I don't remember where this idea came from, so don't hold yer breath (or quote me on it :-). As for the rest of this thread it seems like we would need to ground our terms a bit better before we can carry on this debate. If you've had enough of this thread, you'll be stopping reading about here:-) 'Loudness', 'relative volume' and saturated bandwidth and increased harmonics seem to me to require looking at separately with an appreciation of the difference between analog & digital clipping, brickwall limiting. Again CMIIW - I'm just learning in this field, so I'm really just mirroring back what I've understood of this conversation. The lesson I'm getting out of this is that the more 'classical' approach as put forward by Mark, Joern & others is that basically when you make adjustments, you want to cut rather than boost in order to maintain the integrity of the sound, that's if at all. Ideally you have a good room + mic sound. If you are recording digitally, then you might use a brickwall limiter to protect you from digital clipping. (I think you all know what I mean and I think we'd all agree, it's horrible:-) Basically you're aiming to make the recording sound like 'Real Life(TM)'. The 'pop' approach is basically to compress the life out of everything. Again I'm not expecting too much disagreement if I say that the nicest possible sound here is achieved using some valve compression / distortion and possibly saturated analog tape. I recently did a session where the drums and bass got compressed to fsck, you can hear the compressor breathe so hard it sounds like it has asthma. It's a great recording. It doesn't have to be 'Loud' to achieve the desired triggering of the inner ear (see above), say 80dB above 'silence' (whatever THAT is). It doesn't have to be ear blistering. The same sort of effect can be gained from 'singing bowls', which produce a consistent and harmonically 'rich' sound. I'm also promted to think of the rather atonal chanting of male tibetan monks. I think we're looking at beneficient harmonics rather than 'loudness' or the unpleasant forms of distortion / noise that are _so_ easy to create, given injudicious boosting of signal levels. That much I think I understand, the rest of this discussion has lost me. How's my driving? cheers tim hall
