>One thought I've had about mastering field recordings for distribution
>is that unlike a music CD, you don't necessarily want to hit full
>scale.
Right. No point in normalizing a quiet background. Hopefully a nature
sound CD should sound right at the volume setting used for music
playback.
>So I tend to assign different "cuts" (for lack of a better word)
>different nominal level ranges, depending on the exact content of each
>cut relative to the others I'm presenting. I generally think in 6 db
>increments from full scale down to -24 dbfs as the nominal level range
>for any given cut. Comments?
Sounds good. I struggle with my desire to maintain natural dynamics
in the piece; something I'd like to be able to brag about--Gordon
Hempton's work, for example--but opposing that is the problem that if
I start out with a quiet ambience, people are going to turn it up
till they hear something, and then the louder parts will be annoying.
I don't have a solution for the how-to-start problem.
-Dan Dugan
|