Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    The commercial masses expect music to sound like what they are
    accustomed to; recordings. Compressed.
    
    Full dynamic ranges bug 'em.
    
    You'll never be a rock star with this silly idea...;^)
    
    Edd

    My experience is that the noise in the listening environment is more a
    factor than the noise on the tape.
    
    It depends on your audience.  Do you envision people sitting in their
    living rooms listening to your stuff?  Or maybe at work in a quiet
    office listening with headphones?  You can get real quiet.
    
    Or are they listening in their car on the way to work?  Forget it; the
    quiet parts will be inaudible over the road noise.   I used to try to
    listen to "Morning Pro Musica" while driving to Maynard (back when I
    used to work there) and it drove me nuts that Robert J. would put on
    all those Beethoven piano/violin pieces during "drive time".  They are
    way too quiet to listen to in a moving car.

    Another factor is the dynamic range of the amps and such that the
    signal has to go through after coming of the, for example, CD.  I would
    imagine that an average CD player is capable of introducing much less
    noise than the average amplifier system.
    
    Steve

And the effect of quiet pieces is different in concert and recorded
for individual listening.  Quiet pieces or moments in concert can 
really draw an audience in.  To me it dosn't have the same effect when 
listening at home.  There isn't the same "everyone on the edge of their
chairs" effect of being in an audience.

    .. and you pump up the volume to listen to quiet passages, esp. in
    listening environments like a car, and then get BLASTED out when the
    'normal' volume passages kick in.
    
    karl

    
    There are a few (very expensive) car audio systems that monitor the
    in-car noise level and boost/compress so that the audio always sounds
    acceptable (but perhaps a little different than expected).
    
    Re:signal/noise:  People can hear sounds that are several dB below the
    noise level (how far below is arguable- I've heard it is around 20 dB). 
    Vision is even better- a human visual cortex can *see* digits at 26 dB
    below noise- i.e. the power ratio of the valid signal to the noise
    signal on the video line is 400:1 against the valid signal...    
    
    This is one of the claims against "digital audio"- although a good
    vinyl record may deliver only 85 dB, the ear can hear 20 dB down
    into the noise, giving an effective range of 105 dB.  The CD 
    has 96 dB S/N- but anything smaller than the LSB is gone completely,
    so you don't get the additional 20 dB adder.
    
    	-Bill

    An old radio handbook of mine gave a standard of -0dB for voice and
    -3dB separation for morse.  I don't remember what the standard meant.
    Maybe a minimum guideline.
    Tom

    >.. and you pump up the volume to listen to quiet passages, esp. in
    >listening environments like a car, and then get BLASTED out when the
    >'normal' volume passages kick in.
    
    Sony has just introduced a new portable CD players (ala D-2, D-4, etc.)
    that includes digital audio processing.
    
    Among the things you can do is have the player do compression, which
    according to the literature on it is intended to solve the problem
    you brought up.

    Well, the tapes I made that have some quiet pieces on them should just
    be re-recorded (what a pain) with higher dynamic markings in the score
    (it's a score-based player).  When I recorded a movement from
    Beethoven's 9th for commusic ca. vii, I found that just transcribing
    the pianissimo's and triple-pianos  into the score was too quiet. 
    Maybe what I will make mf's into f's.  Or go the other way and make
    fff's into f's and set the -0dB to that for the set.
    That would bring up the mfs.
    tom

    Hmmm. Mahler 2 is my favorite piece in the 'either you don't hear it,
    or it makes your ears bleed' category. In the final movement, the line
    'er auf su bebn' is sung at ppp level, and is followed by the line
    'bereite dich' with is sung ff. If you know it's coming, no problem.
    I've knocked the socks off some riders with that piece. Beethoven 5
    also doesn't work in the car. The slow crescendo in the bridge between
    the 3rd and 4th movements can get you to crank the stereo, and then get
    blown out on the three tutti chords that open the 4th movement.
    
    blah blah blah
    dp

    Mr. Pickett, that's what you get for learning a vocal part phonetically
    ;^).
    
    Hort auf zu beben.
    
    len.
    

    I always wondered who Milly was.  :)

    The Mahler Watchdog Force strikes again! I knew I should have consulted
    the libretto before posting a note that would be undergoing the
    exacting scrutiny of Len. Bagged again...  ;^)
    
    dp
    
    owf-er-shtain ya owf-er-shtain