On 19/10/2012, Richard L. Hess wrote:

> Hi, Don,
>
> In a perfect world I would agree with you. However I receive
> complaints when I hand out a CD that doesn't work in the kitchen or
> the car. So, I make compromises.
>
I don't think it is possible to make one CD that will work both in a car
and on a good audio setup. The noise level in a car is so high that
compression is essential.

If the equipment in cars included a compressor (with a control knob)
there would be no problem, as the driver could adjust it to suit
himself.


> For my most recent concert (last Saturday), I'm doing the manual
> tweaks to the 96 kHz and 44.1 kHz files where the entire symphony
> (Beethoven's 7th) was normalized as a whole (and kept a hair below the
> "Russian Easter Festival Overture"). The Franz Strauss Horn Concerto
> was raised a bit more than the Russian Easter Festival Overture, but
> the former is still not as loud as the latter.

So if I was listening to the recording, the horn concerto would sound a
bit distant.
>
> For the MP3s, additional multiband compression was added prior to
> encoding the files.

You can do whatever to MP3s as this is not a serious listening format.
It is in the same league as commercially duplicated cassettes.

>
> The actual master recording is kept at the same level throughout the
> concert UNLESS I see a train wreck coming (which is infrequent). I do
> record part of the rehearsal and use that to inform my final level
> setting.
>
> I won't disagree with Tom about normalizing to -1 dBFS--I just do it
> to -0.5 dBFS and have had no complaints.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 2012-10-19 2:09 PM, Don Cox wrote:
>> In a classical work with several movements, one would want to
>> normaise the work as a whole, not each movement separately. Otherwise
>> a quiet movement would come out too loud relative to the loudest
>> (typically the finale).
>>
>> If recording a concert, it would be best to keep the same level
>> throughout the concert, not normalise for each piece.
>
Regards
--
Don Cox
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