"Charles Tomaras" wrote in message news:ph0Wb.14854$032.62752@attbi_s53...
[re. normalizing to 0 dBFS to set equal loudness]
It certainly happens as a matter of course with Redbook CD mastering so I
would assume given the proper equipment the same would hold true for DSD
production.

Technically, this can't happen for many forms of popular music
otherwise you'll overload the DSD modulator. The Sony blackbox at the
SACD pressing plant enforces this. This isn't necessarily a bad thing
as it will put an end to the abusive use of level compression
prevalent in pop music today, at least for SACD.

Second, this won't solve the problem that Kal mentioned originally,
because loudness perception will differ depending on how compressed
the rest of the music is. A minimalist recording of an orchestra by
Dorian normalized to 0 dBFS will be much quieter-sounding than the
latest Norah Jones release. What's needed is more and better
metadata, AND (very, very important) a strict enforcement of such
metadata's usage, otherwise the metadata will be either ignored by the
mastering engineers or abused. Lots of examples of both abound for
Dolby Digital's metadata: half the time, engineers don't set the right
room size or dialaog normalization, and the other half doesn't know
what they are, and leaves them at some random default setting.
Despite being an optimist, I agree with Kal that such playback
standards are unlikely to happen.

--Andre