Perceptual Effects of Dynamic Range Compression in Popular Music Recordings

摘要

There is a widespread belief that the increasing use of dynamic range compression in music mastering (the loudness war) deteriorates sound quality but experimental evidence of perceptual effects is lacking. In this study, normal hearing listeners were asked to evaluate popular music recordings in original versions and in remastered versions with higher levels of dynamic range compression. Surprisingly, we found no evidence of preference for the less compressed music. We also failed to find differences in ratings of perceived "depth" between the original and more compressed audio. A low degree of response consistency between different presentations of the same music suggests that listeners are less sensitive to even high levels of dynamic range compression than often argued.