SME

I don't believe so. This is the only nspace Shuttle Launch recording I've found that isn't either fake (e.g. IMAX Hubble movie) or clipped to death. To my ears on my system, it is totally clean. However, note that if your system cannot adequately resolve the high frequency transients from the solid rocket booster crackle, then it may sound clipped to you.

By the way, now that I'm thinking about it, I have media to submit for measurement. I think this should have no trouble claiming 5 stars all the way around: http://www.digido.com/articles-and-demos12/13-bob-katz/13-we-have-lift-off.html This is a live recording of a NASA Space Shuttle launch at 3 miles away. Be sure to download the 5.1 channel 24-bit 96kHz FLAC version. Note that the correct playback level is +7 relative to theatrical reference! The recording is 4 channel (front-left, front-right, surround-left, surround-right). The 5.1 channel FLAC contains silence for the LFE and center channels. According to Bob Katz, this thing has 119 dB at 25 Hz and 116 dB at 16 Hz and below. On my system with multiple 16 Hz ported Hsu subs (capable of producing clean and audible bass to 12 Hz in-room), I can typically hear and appreciate the difference between 3 and 4 stars extension. While this recording sounds incredible on the system, I have no doubt my system doesn't even begin to do it justice. Those of you with walls of woofers or rotaries will likely be very pleased.

I think what's needed is to weight the response using equal loudness contours (ELCs) to assess how subjectively loud it sounds. Dynamics could be determined using a ratio of the max ELC-weighted response over short-times vs. ELC-weighted long-time response. There's still the question of how long of a window to use for the short-time average. It might be helpful to use a few window sizes with different filters (i.e., low-pass with lower cut-off for longer window) to give fair weighting to the ULF. The tricky part is knowing the proper reference volume for each track. In my mind, that's a more fundamental issue since I'm fairly certain many highly-rated (and some not so highly-rated) bass Blu-rays were mixed with monitoring at lower levels, so that theatrical reference is too loud. For example, Star Trek sounds to me like it was mixed at or very near theatrical reference; whereas, STID sounds like it got mixed closer to -10 (and clipped to death in the process of giving up 10 dB headroom). If this difference in reference volumes were taken into account, STID would end up with an even lower rating! Sad to say, we may never know the correct reference levels for a variety of Blu-ray releases. The best we could try to do is guess by doing some kind of analysis against the dialog. From what I've read out there, both -3 and -6 are common monitor level choices for DVD and Blu-ray mixes. From what I hear (subjective interpretation) listening to media some other recent releases were likely mixed at or near -10 dB. I think Looper may also have been mixed closer to -10. This is a big deal, because if Looper were played back at -10, the deep bass wouldn't be anywhere near as loud subjectively, and it sounds more like a movie with 3 stars extension than one with 5. I'd sure appreciate it if the studio would print the reference level somewhere on the box or at least populate the appropriate metadata like Dialnorm properly. Anyone remember the VHS days when they added the disclaimer at the start of the film: "this film has been modified to fit your TV screen"? I think they should be obligated to add a similar notice whenever they do a separate mix for Blu-ray. It's rather disingenuous in my view to claim that the a lossless "DTS-HD" or "Dolby TrueHD" track is "bit-by-bit" identical with the theatrical master as some of the early Blu-ray advertising implied. Really, I wish they'd just ship the theatrical mixes in the lossless formats and do the "made for the home" mixes with reduced dynamics in lossy Dolby Digital or DTS. My experience has been that the differences between a good lossy codec and the lossless original are most apparent with tracks having very high dynamic headroom. Also, I'd hazard a guess that it is in the process of creating the "made for the home" mixes where a lot of clipping as well as high-pass/high-shelf filtering tends to happen. In many instances the filtering we frequently observe may have been added in that mix process to reduce or prevent clipping.