8 Oct
2014
8 Oct
'14
11:17 p.m.
On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 09:15:44PM +0100, Jonathan Gazeley wrote:
However, I'm struggling a bit with dynamics
processing on the
recording. Naturally, choral music has an extremely wide dynamic
range. If you normalise the infrequent loud parts to 0dB, the rest
of the recording is too quiet, and people have complained that the
CDs are "too quiet" compared to their other CDs. I know that people
listen to these recordings on their iPod or in the car and if the
quiet parts are too quiet, then they simply can't hear them.
We all know about the loudness war and I certainly don't want to
compress the crap out of these delicate and beautiful recordings.
But I think some subtle compression would help bring up the average
amplitude without clipping the loud parts. I've experimented a bit
but I'm struggling to get a "natural" sound. After compression, it
sounds fine in the quiet parts but in the louder parts it sounds
"lumpy" and the reverb sounds unnatural.
Almost all recordings I've made during the last five years were
of contemporary or late 20th century 'classical' music, and this
can have a very wide dynamic range. They also were made for radio
broadcasting, which meant that dynamic range had to be reduced.
There are several methods, and the best approach is to make
each of them handle a few dBs, and combine them.
* If you use Ardour to record, then editing the region gain
curve is a very convenient way to reduce the dynamics in
function of the music itself (it's much easier than trying
to use automation for this). The advantage compared to using
compression is that you can anticipate level changes - as
you would when adjusting the level manually while reading
the score.
* In many cases I've used a gentle automatic compression, with
a ratio of 1.2 or so and a low threshold, so you get a very
gradual gain change over a wide range of levels. This was done
using zita-dc1, which unfortunately is not released yet.
* In most cases peaks are very short, and a peak limiter will
remove them and allow 5 dB or more extra gain without any
perceptible artefacts. The best one for this is zita-dpl1
which was designed exactly for this type of use. I've used
it on all recordings I made the last years, without exception.
Combining these, it's not at all difficult to boost your average
level by 15 dB or so (and even more if needed) in a way that will
still sound completely natural.
Ciao,
--
FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)