The Real World of Acoustics

Mostly, audio dynamic range is good enough now that the limiting factors for music playback through speakers are in the acoustical realm. This is to say that the accumulated noise floors of the recording space and the playback spaces, balanced against the loudest music performance or loudspeaker playback levels, usually define the dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratios of the music - the audio system does not significantly degrade the music's dynamic range further.

The acoustical reality is: mostly, music isn't going to be performed louder than about 110 dBA SPL. Meanwhile, acoustical noise floors will be somewhere between 30 and 50 dBA, so that the dynamic range of music-plus-silence will be somewhere between 60 and 80 dB. Playback level is limited by loudspeaker efficiency, amplifier power, and neighbors. The best you can reasonably hope for, with 10 dB of headroom, is about 90 dBA SPL, while in suburban or urban residential dwellings with no particular acoustical soundproofing, 80 dBA is a more reasonable level. Noise floors remain about the same, so that the playback dynamic range will be 70 dB at best, 40 at worst.

	A not-to-scale expression of possible dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, and headroom. Values in the acoustical and audio realms are approximate, and don't exactly line up.

This raises an obvious question: why do we need 96 dB dynamic range if 70 dB is about the best our customers can use? While in fact most of the time we don't, a compelling answer lies in our obsessive desire for perfection and the attainment of what Rupert Neve refers to as "Inky Black Silence," a silence underlying the recorded music that is so profound in its ability to reveal musical detail that we find it addictive. More rationally, we desire to use as broad a palette as possible, in terms of loudness as well as frequency, and also to serve our fans who own HESs (High End Systems) as well as those with AMIs (Audio Mayhem Inducers).