DIALNORM: All studios now? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Reuben]

Turn the master volume up 5dB and you will hear what the audio mastering engineeer at Sony (or where ever) heard before he applied the dialnorm.

No question about it. The only time that doesn't work is when the offset is greater than what the master volume allows. I've seen Columbia discs where the offset is a negative value greater than 10 (thankfully, always on supplements, never on the feature -- so far). That's higher than I can compensate by raising my volume from reference level.

M.

 

[Robert George]

I thought I recalled someone once mentioning Lexicon uses -31 as the reference point. Thanks for confirming that.

IMO, not a particularly wise design choice. As you point out, Michael, there is only so much gain left on the master volume above the 0 db reference point on a THX controller. Since the vast majority of DD tracks use -27, Lexs put one in the position of having to bump the gain on just about all discs to some degree to get reference level. This could contribute to increasing audible noise as well with the system volume so high.

On the other hand, Lexicon is a very well designed processor so I'd be curious as to their reason for settting up the DD decoder as they have.

 

[Adam Barratt]

I didn't know Lexicon displayed a soundtrack's dialnorm attenuation that way, but I would actually find it easier to understand as it's the way I've always thought about dialnorm values.

The system Obi describes makes sense too, but I was completely baffled when I first saw it in action (expecting at most a figure of zero and most likely a negative value, but getting a +). I guess it's all a matter of what you're expecting to see/used to.

Adam