Apple MA261Z/A User Manual - Page 585

Dynamic Range Dynamic range is the difference between the quietest and loudest sound in your mix. A mix that contains quiet whispers and loud screams has a large dynamic range. A recording of a constant drone such as an air conditioner or steady freeway traffic has very little amplitude variation, so it has a small dynamic range. VIII You can actually see the dynamic range of an audio clip by looking at its waveform. For example, two waveforms are shown below. The top one is a section from a well-known piece of classical music. The bottom one is from a piece of electronic music. From the widely varied shape of the waveform, you can tell that the classical piece has the greater dynamic range. Waveform from a well-known classical piece Waveform from an excerpt of electronic music Notice that the loud and soft parts of the classical music vary more frequently, as compared to the fairly consistent levels of the electronic music. The long, drawn-out part of the waveform at the left end of the top piece is not silence-it's actually a long, low section of the music. Dynamic sound has drastic volume changes. Sound can be made less dynamic by reducing, or compressing, the loudest parts of the signal to be closer to the quiet parts. Compression is a useful technique because it makes the sounds in your mix more equal. For example, a train pulling into the station, a man talking, and the quiet sounds of a cricket-filled evening are, in absolute terms, very different volumes. Because televisions and film theaters must compete with ambient noise in the real world, it is important that the quiet sounds are not lost. The goal is to make the quiet sounds (in this case, the crickets) louder so they can compete with the ambient noise in the listening environment. One approach to making the crickets louder is to simply raise the level of the entire soundtrack, but when you increase the level of the quiet sounds, the loud sounds (such as the train) get too loud and distort. Instead of raising the entire volume of your mix, you can compress the loud sounds so they are closer to the quiet sounds. Once the loud sounds are quieter (and the quiet sounds remain the same level), you can raise the overall level of the mix, bringing up the quiet sounds without distorting the loud sounds. Chapter 42 Audio Fundamentals 585