Comment by pier25

3 days ago

> Vinyl literally has less than half the dynamic range of CD

A lot less than half.

It's around 20-30db and every 10db is a factor of 10. The CD has between 100-1000x more dynamic range.

That is a false way of saying it. Because then you are unpacking what dBs are, which is fascinating, but not how humans perceive sound. We use dBs exactly because it approaches human experience of sound better (although still shitty) than sound pressure would. A better logarithmic system would use base 2, I think phons tried to popularize that, but signal processing calculation with a base 2 log is less convenient than a base 10 log. So I think that is the reason.

For who wants to know: sound perception doubles every 10dB so. 30db of dynamic range is about 8 times as much dynamic range from the perceptual perspective.

  • > That is a false way of saying it

    As an audio engineer I'm well aware of how decibels work and why we use them.

    You're talking about subjective perception but I'm talking about objective measurements.