Mike Rivers wrote:

The reason to normalize is because the average listener is too lazy to
reach over (or get up) and turn up the volume. And on a lot of those
portable players that people use today, it's damn inconvenient to
adjust the volume because you don't have a knob, you have up/down
buttons.

I'm sure someone could come up with a situation where full scale on the
CD is desirable. Say a user with some cheap discman with low
sensitivity earbuds in a noisy environment. in that case, a CD that is
peaking at -18 dB may not produce sufficent output even with the volume
knob maxed out.

I'm by no mean aproving the "CD volume war" that is going on for the
last 10 years, but simple normalizing is providing several benefits for
only a minute degradation in sound quality, imho.

--
Eric (Dero) Desrochers
http://homepage.mac.com/dero72

Hiroshima 45, Tchernobyl 86, Windows 95

"Eric Desrochers" wrote in message

Mike Rivers wrote:

The reason to normalize is because the average listener is too lazy
to reach over (or get up) and turn up the volume. And on a lot of
those portable players that people use today, it's damn inconvenient
to adjust the volume because you don't have a knob, you have up/down
buttons.

I'm sure someone could come up with a situation where full scale on
the CD is desirable.

Coming up with a reason to have peaks that come within a few dB of full
scale is pretty easy, but coming up with a reason to have peaks that go to
exactly FS is pretty hard. After all, if you miss FS by 1 dB people can
hardly hear the difference between that and FS. OTOH, its not unusual to
find converters that act strange at some point within that last 1 dB before
FS.

Say a user with some cheap discman with low
sensitivity earbuds in a noisy environment. in that case, a CD that
is peaking at -18 dB may not produce sufficent output even with the
volume knob maxed out.

The 21st century real-world version of that story is typified by an European
iPod with Etymotic ER-4 or ER-6 earphones plugged into it. The problem was
so bad that Etymotic came out with a special high-output model of the ER-6.

I'm by no mean aproving the "CD volume war" that is going on for the
last 10 years, but simple normalizing is providing several benefits
for only a minute degradation in sound quality, imho.

Normalizing to -1 dB can work and provide few sonic disadvantages, if any.
Of course, not all music is optimized artistically by being played at the
highest reasonable levels.

I used the term "full scale" but really intended to mean "near full
scale"! I know of those converters with FS problems...


--
Eric (Dero) Desrochers
http://homepage.mac.com/dero72

Hiroshima 45, Tchernobyl 86, Windows 95

I used the term "full scale" but really intended to mean "near full
scale"! I know of those converters with FS problems...


--
Eric (Dero) Desrochers
http://homepage.mac.com/dero72

Hiroshima 45, Tchernobyl 86, Windows 95

"Eric Desrochers" wrote in message

Mike Rivers wrote:

The reason to normalize is because the average listener is too lazy
to reach over (or get up) and turn up the volume. And on a lot of
those portable players that people use today, it's damn inconvenient
to adjust the volume because you don't have a knob, you have up/down
buttons.

I'm sure someone could come up with a situation where full scale on
the CD is desirable.

Coming up with a reason to have peaks that come within a few dB of full
scale is pretty easy, but coming up with a reason to have peaks that go to
exactly FS is pretty hard. After all, if you miss FS by 1 dB people can
hardly hear the difference between that and FS. OTOH, its not unusual to
find converters that act strange at some point within that last 1 dB before
FS.

Say a user with some cheap discman with low
sensitivity earbuds in a noisy environment. in that case, a CD that
is peaking at -18 dB may not produce sufficent output even with the
volume knob maxed out.

The 21st century real-world version of that story is typified by an European
iPod with Etymotic ER-4 or ER-6 earphones plugged into it. The problem was
so bad that Etymotic came out with a special high-output model of the ER-6.

I'm by no mean aproving the "CD volume war" that is going on for the
last 10 years, but simple normalizing is providing several benefits
for only a minute degradation in sound quality, imho.

Normalizing to -1 dB can work and provide few sonic disadvantages, if any.
Of course, not all music is optimized artistically by being played at the
highest reasonable levels.