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[zoom+slomo]

My trial version expired though JRiver will be my DVD and BD movie player when I get my Sony OLED TV this year.

And I may use it for music listening.

Sadly, many of my favorite vintage recordings were deliberately hit with excessive dynamic range compression applied almost routinely during mastering sessions to prevent mistrackings on cheap vinyl players, to extend storage space on vinyl LPs and CDs and/or to allow higher signal levels to compete in the loudness wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#History. Consequently, somewhat depending on which speakers used, they sound flat-literally, since the natural dynamic peaks along with all the levels of all different sounds in the recording were limited and/or squeezed to one level.

Still, I'd like to have an accurate number or reliable estimate of the dynamic range of CD tracks from commercial CDs that I had ripped to uncompressed WAV files.

Searching  [ How to measure the Dynamic Range of recordings ], I found this thread
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/how-to-measure-the-dynamic-range-of-recordings.4059/

Luckybaer there said JRiver has an "Analyze Audio" function that can measure dynamic range.

I would be interested in user experiences with this apparently simple tool, especially for evaluating pop, jazz and soundtrack recordings from 1960s. 

[mwillems]

JRiver offers two different measures of dynamic range: traditional DR as seen on https://dr.loudness-war.info/, as well as R128 dynamic range which is the broadcast standard and measures dynamic range slightly differently.  Check out this wiki page for more info about how the two differ: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Dynamic_Range

I've really enjoyed having both available as they sometimes reveal that some tracks or albums are perhaps not quite as dynamic as they seem (or arguably dynamic in different ways).  For example one of the CD masters of Steely Dan's Royal Scam has an average DR of 11, but the R128 dynamic range is actually only ~5.5db!  That means that 95% of the program material is within 5.5dB of the average level, so while there are some dynamic sections, most of the album is in a pretty narrow band.  By contrast the first CD master of Yes's Close to the Edge has a DR of 12 and an r128 dynamic range of 11, meaning that the album really is as dynamic as the DR would lead you to believe.