How loud do you play classics?
I am sure many of you have noticed that the dynamic range on hirez recordings (esp sacd) is huge. For example, the series from the San Francisco Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of Mahler symphonies: you have to turn up the volume dial higher than any pop or jazz recording for an average listening level. At some point the loud sections get very loud, but the soft sections are so quiet that I can hardly tell what instruments are playing (so quiet actually, I can hear the drive of the player itself!)...
So I can turn up the volume some more, but I cautious about inflicting damage to my ears during loud sections... I don't have a sound meter, but I am guessing that prolonged exposure at these levels would not be good...
Does anyone have this same problem? Is this dynamic range representative of the live performance? It is not a problem on the CD version, which is probably compressed... sad as it would be, it may be a good idea to have dynamic compression on sacd as well!
Has anyone tried "calibrating" the volume level so that the loud sections are still acceptable, and at what dB should the loud sections be to reproduce a classical live performance?
I am sure many of you have noticed that the dynamic range on hirez recordings (esp sacd) is huge. For example, the series from the San Francisco Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of Mahler symphonies: you have to turn up the volume dial higher than any pop or jazz recording for an average listening level. At some point the loud sections get very loud, but the soft sections are so quiet that I can hardly tell what instruments are playing (so quiet actually, I can hear the drive of the player itself!)...
So I can turn up the volume some more, but I cautious about inflicting damage to my ears during loud sections... I don't have a sound meter, but I am guessing that prolonged exposure at these levels would not be good...
Does anyone have this same problem? Is this dynamic range representative of the live performance? It is not a problem on the CD version, which is probably compressed... sad as it would be, it may be a good idea to have dynamic compression on sacd as well!
Has anyone tried "calibrating" the volume level so that the loud sections are still acceptable, and at what dB should the loud sections be to reproduce a classical live performance?
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