knudsen (05/09/83)
At last! Some others have seen that too much dynamic range is not good for anything other than serious (sit still with headphones) listening. I have long wished that car radio/tape stereos would contain built-in compressors or AGC (automatic gain control) for reasons already menitoned in this group. The same applies to home listening in most cases. It's a pain to want to hear classical music in your car but end up with the jazz or rock station because you can't take the dynamic range of classical. Many times I wonder if the classic station has finished the piece and the announcer is just daydreaming, only to find (upon cranking up the volume) a soft horn solo under the hiss and static (Was it Goebbels or Geohring who coined the term "static-free FM"?) Anyway, there should be a teremendous untapped market for compressors at there, both auto and home. I guess DBX systems would do; in fact, you could tape a record in compress mode (as usual) and play it back with a second compression (un-usual). I also like the earlier suggestion of two volume controls, one for minimum and other for maximum. Or perhaps one for range, the other for overall level (that would make it easier for hard rock fans to get threshold of pain +3dB, after someone else had messed with the knobs). mike k