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RE: Dynamic range power

Posted by Paul Joppa (P) on January 7, 2009 at 18:45:36

In Reply to: Dynamic range power posted by gymwear5@hotmail.com on January 7, 2009 at 13:50:16:

A small point, but I think what matters is the instantaneous peak for the song, vs some measure of the average peak - at least in terms of amplifier power/speaker sensitivity. This looks like it's closer to 13dB. If there's a higher crest factor when the levels are lower, the system won't have a problem.

Not a great deal of difference, my comment certainly does not invalidate the point being made - loss of peak sound pressure is audible.

Two other points, which really I should not make in this forum - I may get a (cyber-)brick or two thrown my way! Anyhow:

1) Traditional recordings made on magnetic tape would normally rarely exceed 0dB(VU) on the recorder's meters; this allows a crest factor of about 14dB for tapes and recorders used most often. Movies with the full Dolby treatment will run around 20dB to allow for car crashes to be even louder.

2) Here's where some will have a problem - studio engineers will listen at a maximum of 85dB SPL both channels (i.e. 82dB one channel), measured as a short term average corresponding to "fast" weighting or VU response roughly. The standard deviation is said to be about 2dB around this figure.

I got both of these observations from papers in the AES journal, as written by mastering engineers. I do understand that some audiophiles like to listen louder than mastering engineers - hey, it's your ears, and if you listen less than 8 hours per day you may not damage your hearing at louder levels, but 85dB is I believe the regulatory maximum for 8-hour average occupational exposure in the EU.

Based on these numbers, and assuming you do not need to listen louder than a mastering engineer, then a maximum system level of 96dB per channel would be adequate for the average system, or 102dB for a movie system. I use 102dB at 1 meter for audio as a rule of thumb to allow for a room and listener variation of 6dB. So the 85dB speaker needs 50 watts, not 1000 watts.

OK, those who want it louder than that, flame away! I don't plan to argue with anyone!!

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Kimber Kable

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