Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
The real problem with digital, at least with uniform PCM is that you store logarithmic data in a linear file format. Sure, adding a bit will add 6db to your dynamic range. But once you go to a more silent part of your music you lose resolution exponentially. A CD has 96db dynamic range on paper? You wish, since going to the range of -90db to -96db your resolution is one single bit - on or off in that whole 6db range - in practice completely unuseable.
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This is the same with RAW-files in digital photography.
A color can range from 00 00 00 to FF FF FF, or pure black to pure white. That is 65.536 values. If you *don't* use that entire range (so your picture is not perfectly exposed), you lose at least one bit of dynamic range. So, you will get 2 to the power of 15, instead of 16, which is 32.768 values.
Therefore, not exposing your picture 100% correctly will lose you at least half of the dynamic range.
(Some people even go as far as pushing every picture to be as bright as possible, to use all the bits without overexposing, and then they darken the picture in the parts where necessary. This is called 'expose to the right', because traditionally, the brightness diagram has the dark values on the left and bright values on the right. This technique can create pictures with a huge dynamic range.)