What is dynamic range?

Dynamic range is the difference between two extremes.…In audio, dynamic range represents the ratio between the loudest and softest…signal being produced over any given interval.…Every day we experience this concept of dynamic range almost constantly…across all of our senses.…And as humans, we're quite adept at recognizing it:…light and dark, hot and cold, hard and soft, and for the purpose of this…course, loud and quiet.…A sound's amplitude directly correlates with its loudness.…

But what is loud? What is quiet?…Is a concert loud? Is a library quiet? That depends.…But I can assure you, if you walked out of a library and into a rock concert,…you would have a pretty good idea of the difference in loudness between the two spaces.…Loudness in our minds is not finite.…It's all about perception.…The key thing to understand is that we need both ends of the spectrum to fully…evaluate what's loud and what's quiet.…The distance between these extremes is what we call dynamic range.…

For example, if you heard a book fall off a desk in a library, it would startle you.…