I thought I’d repost something I put on a discussion thread as a new feature request for DR…
The DR v R128 debate reminds me of the outside temperature meter in our kitchen (bear with me).
My American wife insists that we leave it on Fahrenheit at all times because this is what she’s familiar with from growing up & living in the 'States. Me, I’m a Brit and I grew up with Michael Fish talking about Centigrade on the telly, so naturally I want it on that setting. I can still admit and appreciate that Fahrenheit is more accurate (granular), but frankly I don’t care because I have years of personal experience and mental reference of what a specific Centigrade temperature feels like, what clothes I’ll need on the bike today and so on.
Coming back to music, I also have years of listening to tracks with measured DR ratings in front of me (JRiver & Foobar) so that, like the temperature outside, I immediately get a sense of what to expect in terms of compression. Sure there are some exceptions (eg tracks with lots of silence), but these are vastly in the minority. Similarly, I can reference the DR Loudness database and broadly get the same sense of a particular recording.
I guess what I’m saying is, R128 is clearly the more sensible metric from an accuracy point of view, but DR appears to be far more widely used, and therefore more useful in many ways (not including volume leveling here). I would really like to see Roon adopting both and giving us a choice.
I would second having a choice. I had a little examine of some results last night and I am really not keen on the R128 figures that are being reported. Some pre-loudness war albums I have are being reported with values very similar to post-loudness wars ones, which just isn’t right! I can understand that the R128 is useful for the volume leveling but it doesn’t reflect what I am hearing.
Sorry to bring in a dissenting opinion, but I fail to see a real use case here. While I can understand the interest of some to compare the DR ratings of different album versions (with some difficulty, as DR is an inherently flawed metric) and acquire the desired copy afterwards – I cannot see why it is of value showing this number in Roon.
Would you let the DR rating decide whether to play the album or not? Will you collect multiple album versions and compare them over and over?
If Roon were to calculate the ratings, it would mean expensive extra analysis for no other use than to show the value. If Roon could somehow tap into an API – there will be lots of albums not covered in the ‘loudnesswars’ database.
The purpose of introducing R128 was not to show numbers in the interface, but to facilitate quality volume levelling and thus not comparable to DR in a ‘why can’t we have both’ kind of way. As far as I’m concerned, even showing the R128 numbers on primary screens has little value.
As said: I can see the DR rating playing a role in the decision making process before buying an album version. But I can’t see what use it has once the music is in Roon. Maybe I’m dense – but I am interested to know why you do think it has merit.
I think I made my feelings for requesting this clear in the original request above. For some people, DR will be irrelevant…this is where the “DR off” slider button comes in. You may not find it of any use, but many people clearly do, which is no doubt why it is available (and widely used based on my experience/discussions) in other software like JRiver and Foobar.
It’s just nice to have, more info never hurts and since it’s done in a tasteful way and not an eyesore on the screen.
In no way am I going to judge my playing habit on DR ratings (IMO some of the DR police people don’t even listen to the music before judging an album and it could be the worst music ever, but because it has a great DR, it’s awesome).
I am dissenting with you. I respect those who want to look at these statistics, but I’m much more interested in listening, and in reading interesting stuff about artists, music, connections etc. That’s what Roon is about, I thought. I’m not interested in DR at all.
There isn’t one, though - you know that, right? Or at least not one that turns it off in the Album Details.
No, this is not consistent. We are told all the time that this and that little feature will not happen because of “screen real estate”. And then DR is forced on us, using up a whole line the width of a CD cover. As a result of this, it’s hard to take seriously “screen real estate” as a reason for not doing something.
Not really. What I fail to grasp is: why is the display of this metric relevant when you sit down to listen to music? Will a good rating make you enjoy what you hear more – and a bad rating less?
Implementing this comes at a cost (at more levels than time and money alone) and for it to be worthwhile it needs to have value and purpose that go beyond ‘I like it’. That is what I’m trying to understand.
A low DR rating doesn’t mean I won’t listen to the album, it’s rather a metric that I find interesting because I’m rather nerdy and I appreciate the technical side of music reproduction. Having said that, I’m also of the opinion that the DR rating is a fairly good indicator of how compressed an album will sound. This is from experience of hearing thousands of albums with a DR rating attached to them. I am interested in whether an artist/label is releasing music that is highly compressed, or indeed not. I respect modern artists who take care over their mastering in this way, and I’m more likely to seek out their music in the future than an artist that releases a painful DR6 load of noise.
Rene, I recall that we’ve had this discussion before and you do tend to appear whenever this issue crops up to belittle it. It would be really great if you could just accept that there are many people who do find the DR metric useful, even if you don’t.
I don’t think we’re belittling it. We just don’t want to have to look at it. You’re welcome to though, and it’s great that Roon has implemented the feature.
It does stand for Dynamic Range, but the two metrics, “DR” and “R128” use different algorithms, and the output of one is not compatible with the other. In my experience, DR is far more widely used, and therefore in one sense more useful. R128 is more relevant to volume levelling.
It is not my intention to belittle anything (and I don’t think I have given any reason to think I do). I am just trying to understand why this metric should be available in Roon.
Right now, between all of your libraries, you have a larger combined DR database than dr.loudness-wars.info – maybe we should make that info shared so you can see if there are better versions of the same album/track… hrm…
