Exploring the dynamic ranges of different music genres

While it's easy to think that all music must be mastered the same way, different genres…of music have different dynamic ranges that require a different mastering approach.…Dynamic Range is a term for the degree of dynamic variation in level within a piece of music.…That is it's a difference between the loudest and softest parts of the song, and it's of main concern when mastering.…In mastering, we often use Compressors and Limiters to decrease the Dynamic Range so…that softer parts of the song are closer in volume to the louder parts.…We'll discuss how to use Compressors and Limiters to do this in other movies in this course.…

Very low values like a DR-3, which stands for Dynamic Range 3, means that there is only…a 3 dB difference from the lowest to the highest peak in the song.…This rating indicates that there's a lot of compression being used so there's not a lot…of variation in level at all.…Something that's more natural sounding might have a value of DR-12 or more, meaning that…there's at least 12 dB difference from the lowest to the highest peak in the song.…