Quick question, while we're talking about dynamic range and the like.
I know that even though Falling Into Infinity isn't generally that well regarded as a whole, people really like the sound of the album. It's often thought of as one of the best sounding DT albums, even though the songwriting leaves a lot to be desired.
But when I look at any song file from FII in Audacity, it looks terrible. Frankly, it looks worse than the songs from DT, almost a solid rectangle, no dynamic range at all. So if that's the case, then why do people like the way it sounds so much, yet they're shitting all over DT from a sonic perspective?
I'm not much of an audiophile, so excuse my ignorance on the matter, but it seems a bit like a double standard.
The differences are a bit subtle at a glance, but here's the summary as I see it-
If you see the whole songs zoomed out, yeah, everything is going to look like a block of noise. Zoom in to say a 10 second sample of a similar section from each album. You should see that FII does look noticeably more dynamic. It's not as dynamic as say IaW, but it should still be noticeably better.
Also, the reason they're "loud" is a little different, and is the most important distinction here. DT12 is very compressed, so all of the louder sections are compressed into that narrow, louder volume area.
FII isn't as compressed in that way, but the volume is a bit too high, which results in louder sections simply being clipped off (as opposed to being squished down as compression does). So it may still suffer from clipping problems (clicky, fuzz sounds), but the music before it was clipped off was not as compressed.
Using a program to measure the DR probably doesn't really make much distinction as to why something is loud, or a measure of whether something truly sounds good or bad, it simply spits out a number. When taken as a simple number, DT12 averages DR6. FII averages a DR7. Not a huge difference on paper, but I actually find that at that DR range, that little bit goes a long way.
Also, the production of the albums is very different. Modern production tends to compress each instrument separately before mixing, so it makes it sound louder even if it's a dynamic master.
The numbers and pictures are all good and well to help understand the issue a bit, but the ears should always be the final judge of quality.