Ex-movie theater projectionist Steve Guttenberg has also worked as a high-end audio salesman, and as a record producer. Steve reviewed audio products for CNET and worked as a freelance writer for ...

There is a scourge infesting your music with its awfulness, and you probably don't even know. It's called compression, and it's compacting your music into a muddled mess. What started as a useful tool ...

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form (Getty ...

Dynamic range compression is a technique used to raise the level of soft sounds and lower the level of louder sounds, effectively reducing the loudness "swing" of an audio signal. Classically, this ...

The dynamic range of an audio signal is the difference between the quietest discernible part of the signal and the loudest undistorted part of the signal. It is normally expressed in decibels (dB).

EVER noticed how much louder and murkier music sounds these days? This is not entirely a matter of being out of tune with the times. Nor is it likely to be because today's iPod generation, having ...

With each passing year since the advent of CDs and mp3s, artists have turned up the volume. Digital recording now allows sound to be louder overall without introducing audible background static and ...