Once home, the first thing the CD does is make its way into the high-quality CD player.
What often follows is disillusionment. Instead of a clean recording with proper dynamics, the same CD at home suddenly sounds bland and lifeless. Is the car stereo not so bad after all? Or is it time to replace the components in the living room?
You have probably fallen victim to the loudness race of the major record labels.
But where does this "volume race" come from? Dynamic compression has always been used in music production. Dynamics describe the maximum volume difference between the quietest and loudest passages.
The dynamic range of a classical concert can be up to 60dB or even 70dB. However, vinyl records can "only" contain a maximum dynamic range of about 40 dB. Since the dB scale is logarithmic, a value of +10dB corresponds to double the volume. So, while dynamic jumps with 128 times the volume of the quiet passages are possible in the concert hall, the LP can only reproduce about 16 times the volume of the theoretically quietest passage.
This makes it absolutely necessary for an LP pressing to attenuate the loudest passages of the concert and reproduce them more quietly. The volume difference between the quietest and loudest point in the concert hall is therefore much greater than on a home turntable.
Only with the introduction of the CD, with its 90dB dynamic range, was it possible to record a classical concert uncompressed for home users. However, a very high dynamic range also has its disadvantages: If one were to fully utilize the maximum dynamic range of a CD, the listener would have to constantly adjust the volume. A quiet solo would be barely audible, so one would inevitably turn up the volume. The following tutti would then suddenly be so loud that the speakers could be damaged.
The next step in dynamic compression was taken by radio broadcasting. Many people listen to the radio "casually". Whether at work, at breakfast, or in the car. The radio should ideally always be about the same volume. Imagine listening to a concert with full dynamics while driving:
Due to the driving noise in the interior of around 70dB (typical value for a mid-range car on the highway), you would set the system's level to at least 80dB during a quiet passage to hear the music well. The subsequent tutti, however, would theoretically reach 130dB (which your car speakers wouldn't be able to handle) and would thus be about twice as loud as the permissible maximum level in a discotheque. Note: The maximum dynamics in FM/VHF is approx. 50dB.
During a car journey, dynamic compression is therefore advantageous, which is why radio stations gladly (and sometimes massively) make use of it.
At home, in a quiet listening room, however, music thrives on dynamics. We listen to music consciously and often much more quietly than in the car. Last but not least, we want to be able to recreate the concert experience when listening at home. And a violin solo is simply not exactly as loud as the following tutti.
Since dynamic compression is now increasingly being implemented during music production, there are also more and more CDs that have hardly any dynamics. The following video shows how the increasingly massive use of dynamic compression affects sound:
Fortunately, there are also some labels that do not join the loudness race and still produce (almost) exclusively CDs with excellent sound quality.
These include, among others:
Acoustic-music
Actmusic
Alligator
Bauerstudios
Chesky Records
Divox
Dramatico
ECM Records
Quinlanroad
Stockfisch
Taxim
Telarc
Vollton
DMP
Townhall Records
Sugar Hills
If you know of any other labels that produce particularly high-quality CDs, we look forward to your recommendations.
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