Perceived Sound Quality of Dynamic Range Reduced and Loudness Normalized Popular Music

Abstract: The lack of a standardized method for controlling perceived loudness within the music industry has been a contributory cause to the level increases that emerged in popular music at the beginning of the 1990s. As a consequence, discussions about what constitutes sound quality have been raised. This paper investigates to what extent dynamic range reduction affects perceived sound quality of popular music when loudness normalized in accordance with ITU-R BS. 1770-2. The results show that perceived sound quality was not affected by as much as -9 dB of average gain reduction.