Big Fight tonight!
So one of my audiophile friends and I sat down to listen to a 1/2 speed mastered LP version of Springsteen’s Born to Run, and compare it with the Bob Ludwig remastered CD version from a couple of years ago, and it was not even a contest. The LP kicked the CD’s sonic behind. It wasn’t just that the mastering job seemed to end up with the vocals a bit more buried and seemed to produce some weird effects on the kick drum, e.g., at the beginning of the title track. The low end on the LP was better, the drums sounded smoother, the piano sounded much smoother, the vocals sounded richer, the whole thing was just easier to listen to. It was just totally obvious. 
With all due respect, sonic tastes are very subjective. Also the engineering is a signficant variable whether you record in analog or digital or 16 bit or 24 bit. In other words, you do a shitty job engineering the process with or without shitty equipment, it will still sound like a polished turd. I grew up listening to records, 8-track, and cassettes. While I certainly have an appreciation for the mediums used, I bought them at the time for the music in of itself…not for audiophilistic reasons.
I think these arguments are pretty pointless considering only a miniscule of the listening public that are mostly just obsessive-audiophiles and engineers actually hears or cares about the “sonic details” whether it was in digital, analog or the infamous 16 or 24 bit.
The market for mp3 players are stronger than those investing thousands of dollars or pounds for DVD fidelity that has yet to find a consistent format or even an efficient speaker set up. The music is more important regardless of format. I can definitely respect the personal tastes of people’s preferred format, but again…its a pointless moot argument.
Yes the albums I used to enjoy that have been digitally remastered and released on CD are major dissapointments to me. At the same time I recently spent 5 days mixing down a cover tune my daughter and I recorded and turned into the anal retentive engineer. After multiple mixdowns and masters, keeping all and burning to cd, I previewed them for my wife in the den thru the surround sound system and played her all 5 mixes/masters. At the end of the listening experience, my wife made one comment, “What the #### was different about all of them”, at which point I chunked the cd into the garbage and went outside for a smoke thinking to myself, just do it and forget it, most people could care less about sound, they just listen to the music.
Anal retentive Yaz:D
Pointless! Pointless? POINTLESS?
Why, I am in search of audio nirvana! 
Sure, most people don’t care, but we do, don’t we?
Mobile Fidelity Labs half-speed masters tend to blow away just about any copy you compare them with, especially when played on a superb system. I’m no purist and my ears aren’t that golden or anything. (When my buddy was comparing a $10K system versus a $25K system, all I could say was, well … there seems to be a difference, but I’m not sure which is better – surely not $15K worth! And that was just for speakers, preamp, & amp.)
But listening to a dearly loved album (like Dark Side of the Moon) mastered by those guys is a real treat. This doesn’t mean analog is better than digital. It means that purists mastering and using excellent vinyl and manufacturing processes will beat the pants off of any effort for the mass market.
Comparing vinyl to CDs, we get more mixed results. In the 80’s and even much of the 90’s, CD masters of albums released on vinyl were rather disappointing. Things are better now (as long as they’re not mastered by folks in the “loudest is bestest” category). Quality for the same LP varied a lot back in the days – I remember comparing new LPs with relatively unused old LPs of the same album and noticing a huge difference. Mostly, it depended on whether the LP was pressed when the presses were new or after pressing a few thousand disks. (Presses were preiodically periodically replaced with newly made ones as they wore out, using normal market considerations.) Vinyl quality varies a lot and the difference can be quite audible. And of course, using records wore them out if you weren’t very careful.
Quality for CDs is much more even, but different masters of the same CD sound different. For popular titles, new CD masters aren’t unusual. I believe that DSOM was done at least 3 times, improving each time we learned more about digital technology, and as converters improved.
In any case, it’s clear that good vinyl and a good turntable far exceed the information carrying capacity of the 16b/44.1k sampling format. (We knew that at the time, too. That format was chosen by Sony or whomever parly because they could fit the entire Beethoven’s 5th on one CD.) It’s not clear whether it exceeds 24/44, but I believe it’s generally well accepted that if you’re going to do much processing, it’s better to sample at higher rates to avoid cascading time-domain quantization issues.
In the long run, analog will have nothing over digital, because we can keep improving digital, while for analog we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. (However, some improvements to digital sound will be in the arena of the analog circuitry surrounding the digital circuits.) And we still have a lot to learn about stuff that was going on with our analog gear that made it sound “better”, where the gear wasn’t behaving linearly as designed but was doing something unexpected and somehow special, making our recordings sound more musical. We still have a lot to learn in that arena.
Interesting point, Learjeff, that in terms of development digital and analog are at different points, one fully mature the other only a youngster, so to speak. I will say that 24/96 sounds really good - I wonder how Born to Run would fare in a vinyl vs. digital shootout at 24/96?
What you said about the “louder is better” thing is why I thought it was significant that Bob Ludwig was the mastering engineer for this release - 'cause it seems to me to suffer a bit from overcompression. 
1976 I sold Audio equipment. There was no camparison of reg vinyl versus’ half speed masters. Purchasing Steely Dan’s greatest hits and Little Feat Waitin’ For Columbus sold countless systems for me. It also got my butt chewed out occasionally by the customer who came back and complained the system didn’t sound so “fine” at home as did in the store. Like Learjeff pointed out digital is still an infant compared to where we last heard vinyl. Should we care about the perfection Tom? Yes, but as I said, to 98 percent of the public, it doesn’t matter the sound quality as much as whether they can groove, dance, screw or eat to the music.
Everyone isn’t a musician or audiophile.
Everyone doesn’t have a SpongeBob Squarepants Lunchbox either!
This is what Greg Allman says. This is a great movie on Tom Dowd.
Its called “Tom Dowd & The Language of Music”. Check it out sometime.Analog all the way.
| Quote (YazMiester @ Jan. 10 2005,11:45) |
| Yes, but as I said, to 98 percent of the public, it doesn't matter the sound quality as much as whether they can groove, dance, screw or eat to the music. |
Exactly. Lots of folks today are happy with their CDs made from compressed music files they bought from Walmart.com. As expected, convenience and low cost win-over the masses.
Tony
| Quote (YazMiester @ Jan. 10 2005,11:45) |
| ... but as I said, to 98 percent of the public, it doesn't matter the sound quality as much as whether they can groove, dance, screw or eat to the music. |
Just as long as it's not all four at once...?
What’s wrong with that ??
I bought Yes’ Fragile on 24bit, 192khz DVD audio disc…and the sound is amazingly bad. The dynamics are all over place - like it was run through a bad vcr with auto recording levels. I should get out that old turntable…
I can’t speak for “Born to Run” which I purchased for 3.99 in 1975 on regular vinyl by riding my 3 speed bike (banana seat, playing cards in the spokes)4 miles to the mall (I was 10, my parents would have killed me!) but all things considered stuff sounds much “smoother” on vinyl because the top end response is WAY different than digital (much less high end, more natural compression on vinyl) and so is the low end for that matter…you couldn’t put much low end on a record or the stylus would literally jump out of the groove…so we grew up listening to mixes and masters with limited dynamic (55 db)and frequency range in mind…just remastering stuff that is mixed with a particular medium in mind is dicey anyway…now a full remix and a remaster is an entirely different story…forget vinyl…wanna hear some really good analog? try listening to 7.5 ips open reel prerecorded tapes…I used to own some Fogelberg, Boston’s first and Fleetwood Mac Rumours on reel to reel…made the vinyl versions (that I also owned) sound like the AM radio in a 1966 Plymouth Valiant …I LOVE analog…I still cut tracks to 15 ips analog tape and dump them into N for mixing but you can keep your vinyl…I agree almost every remaster I have heard on cd sounds like crap but, so does almost every modern mix and master I have heard…'Gaucho" from Steely Dan was the first recording I heard that was done digitally (in 1980!) and it sounded great then and still does…digital done right sounds good but simply grabbing a 30 year old 2 track and trying to spice it up for cd will never be quite right…here is another interesting thing. I have a cd player from 1986 (great way, back then, to pick up chicks in college ). It is a 20X oversampling Harmon Kardon. If I play a cd in that and then play another thru my modern Sony (SAME cd)…it is WAY different. There is a song by Acoustic Alchemy where the percusion track disapears, almost entirely, on the Sony and on my portable…So it seems that the newer. cheaper, MASH bit technology in cd players is a culprit as well…
soap box broken…old man tired…
Ray
Which is true of any hardware that comes out of the electronics family. The first VCR’s back in the 70’s actually looked rather good, but then it turns into quantity instead of quality, the price bottoms out cause everyone owns one. Same with cd players and now with dvd players, the bottom is dropping on the price, but be prepared to replace these newer machines about every year or so, that’s just part of the price going south.
Same can be said also of guitar players, there are so many guitarist today,if one quits the band, dozen or so waiting to take his/her place LOL:D
No way a 7 1/2 IPS 1/4" tape, or even at 15 IPS, sounds as good as good vinyl, unless maybe it’s a half-track. Better than off-the-shelf records sometimes (because many are crap), but not as good as a decent pressing of a well mastered LP, and nothing like a half-speed master.
If you use dbx or similar on the tap, you get a better S/N ratio than the LP, but you also get some artifacts. Nevertheless, I generally used dbx on mine. Especially when recording tracks; it meant I didn’t have to sweat the levels nearly so much, and could concentrate more on playing than on watching the meters.
Yeah, doesn’t a 7 1/2 inch recording roll off at like 10,000? Maybe lower? 
edit: Well, I was looking around at some specs for some older reel to reels, and I am stunned, they claim really good responses, like 40 - 20K at 7 1/2, e.g.:
http://www.compassnet.com/concept/Tapes/TG12A.htm
or 20 - 30K (!) for:
http://www.classic-audio.com/pioneer/rt0909.html
| Quote (learjeff @ Jan. 11 2005,10:39) |
| No way a 7 1/2 IPS 1/4" tape, or even at 15 IPS, sounds as good as good vinyl, unless maybe it's a half-track. Better than off-the-shelf records sometimes (because many are crap), but not as good as a decent pressing of a well mastered LP, and nothing like a half-speed master. If you use dbx or similar on the tap, you get a better S/N ratio than the LP, but you also get some artifacts. Nevertheless, I generally used dbx on mine. Especially when recording tracks; it meant I didn't have to sweat the levels nearly so much, and could concentrate more on playing than on watching the meters. |
Actually, ALOT of stuff, probably the majority of LP masters over the years were on 1/4" 2-Track 15 ips. 1/2" 30ips was not universal. Second, they don't always take the mix master, whatever the format, to the mastering house to make the lacquer, they'd often spin off some dupes of the mix on 1/4" 2-track 15 ips and bring those. And you'd be down another generation at the mastering house if they output to tape first instead of directly to the lathe.
(One of the reasons early CD remastering sometimes sucked is because they just grabbed one of these dupe tapes rather than the original mix master... which was sometimes lost or [gasp] recorded over)
So, yeah, it's very possible that a 1/4" 2-track 15 ips tape can sound as good as or better than an LP... most of them came from there.
When I had a REVOX B77 2 track, at 15ips I could get it to within +0/-2 dB out to about 18 or 20 kHz at 0 VU tape reference of 250 nanoWebers per meter squared. (God it's been years since I thought about this stuff...). My TEAC 2340 at 7.5 ips could make it out to 18 kHz (+0/-2 db) at -10 dB VU reference, but the highs were a trifle unstable and scratchy.
dbx was OK to keep individual tracks quiet, but we never liked using it on mixes. We did use Dolby A or SR on masters.
| Quote (archimedes @ Jan. 11 2005,14:25) |
| (God it's been years since I thought about this stuff...). |
Betcha don't miss it either do you?
Seriously, people can debate the analog versus digital thing until the end of time. The ease, flexibilty, AFFORDABILITY of digital has me sold on it. No WOW, no FLUTTER, no hissing and scratching..... nope don't miss that stuff at all. Not to mention the extreme amounts of maintenance invloved with tape decks, consoles etc....GONE!
TG
| Quote (gtr4him @ Jan. 11 2005,15:51) | ||
Betcha don't miss it either do you? Seriously, people can debate the analog versus digital thing until the end of time. The ease, flexibilty, AFFORDABILITY of digital has me sold on it. No WOW, no FLUTTER, no hissing and scratching..... nope don't miss that stuff at all. Not to mention the extreme amounts of maintenance invloved with tape decks, consoles etc....GONE! TG |
Amen, brother. (... weeelll, I do miss it a bit)
When I think I can buy a 24bit soundcard for under $300 ( eg M-Audio 2496) and 24-bit multitrack software for $80... there's no going back.
I have absolutely no issue with the constant comparisons between state-of-the-art analog and digital, though, because it helps keep the pressure on digital manufacturers to cover that last mile.
Re maintenance - I am planning my retirement around the hope that in about 10 or 15 years there'll be this HUGE nostalgia for analog tape, and all these old machines will come out of the attics, and they'll be paying a fortune to old ex-maintenance engineers like moi to get them running again.
I better put some blank tape in cold storage...