The Distribution of Signal Amplitudes in Recorded Music

The story starts with the pumblens which beset any broadcaster wm attempts to make the best of the available wectral space and dynamic range.Attention to these problens is accentuated by considerations, on the one hand, of the types of equipment used tocarry the signal from the radio station to the transmitter, andontheother, bytheapparentincreaseinthedymndcrangeandspectral oontmt of currmt pop music recordings.Pbst of the discussions which result talk about the spectral density, signal probability, dynamic range and so on, but often without any data being presented.Where equipment intended to modify such parameters is proposed a practical selection might be made (11 the basis of sane lista'u'ng tests.However the technical arguments can only be vell rehearsed when data is present.Indeed this data might suggest alternative directions in which attention might be focussed and it nay well pose a few mare queries than it attanpts to answer.Studies have, of course, been carried out in the past.D J Meares investigated the relationship between frequency and Sound Pressure level's in sound control rooms [1] which have beenupdated by K E Randall [2].Others have written on the statistics on: the spectral content of sound signals [3,4,5] .More recently L G Mueller [6] has investigated the statistical amplitude differences between older and nodern recordings.