Funny

Re: Funny

Dave Barnett said:
Depending on the material, it's hard to know in advance if the 24/96 file on HD Tracks is the best available mastering. Or rather, having 24/96 is no guarantee of best sound quality. The mastering can be more important than the format, a sympathetic 16/44.1 transfer could be better than a 24/96 that the mastering engineer squashed to death.
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I still prefer to listen to music on CD. It's nice to have something tangible sitting on a shelf, even if you rip them to MP3 for your iPod (Perfectly legal in Canada BTW. We pay an extra tax on iPod drives and blank CDs for just this privilege.) For delete titles, you can often get the disk for less than buying it on iTunes would cost anyway.

As for quality, I find CD to be fine. And according to this study, so does just about everybody else, if they don't know for sure what they are listening to:

http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

(Thanks to Bob Orban on the Ampex list for supplying that link.)

GTD
 
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Re: Funny

Sorry to bump this... I think the mastering is the key here. The original masters that were great on LPs in the 70s that went to CD in the early 1980s sounded horrible because they were intended for LPs. The remasters for CD sucked because the original mastering engineers weren't there. I don't know why in this time we don't have an algorithm to process the original masters into the digital formats we use now, to precisely emulate how the record pressing process affected the final product. Pretty much anything mastered for CD since the early 90s is what it is and I'm not too worried about it. I'm more concerned with the classics, particularly the 70s and 80s, as well as some of the late 60s stuff. Bob Ludwig probably has an opinion on this. I wonder what it is.
 
Re: Funny

Back in the way-back days, there were mastering and even "sweetening" steps in the process where a master mix could get tweaked (some would say "saved" ) by another set or two of experienced ears. There was windage applied for the natural HF losses in the vinyl process and some funny business related to low bass stereo separation that would cause the needle to hop out of the groove if bass was panned hard Left or Right.

The modern medium is objectively better, the content has always been variable and subjective. Listening room acoustics and speakers have always been the weaker link.

JR
 
Re: Funny

harrybrilljr said:
Sorry to bump this... I think the mastering is the key here. The original masters that were great on LPs in the 70s that went to CD in the early 1980s sounded horrible because they were intended for LPs. The remasters for CD sucked because the original mastering engineers weren't there. I don't know why in this time we don't have an algorithm to process the original masters into the digital formats we use now, to precisely emulate how the record pressing process affected the final product.
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An algorithm probably could be made that works for much of the basic limitations of vinyl, but much of mastering is subjective.

Also, the dynamic and frequency response range for a vinyl record change, worsening from the first outside track to the inside track. Since the record plays at a constant speed, the outer tracks have the needle (or cutting lathe) covering much more distance (bandwidth) than the inner tracks.

Because of this, each track needs different attention, and can be particularly troublesome for long tracks- if you want it to end with a bang, you need to start with a whimper.

If the producer decides to change the track order, a different mastering approach (or algorithm) would need to be applied to the song.
And if the album is made long, all the cuts need to be mastered at a lower level, unless you start with loud cuts and go to soft cuts, or ones that distortion or bandwidth don't matter.

Lots of decisions that don't need to be made with a digital medium.

Art
 
Re: Funny

Art Welter said:
An algorithm probably could be made that works for much of the basic limitations of vinyl, but much of mastering is subjective.

Also, the dynamic and frequency response range for a vinyl record change, worsening from the first outside track to the inside track. Since the record plays at a constant speed, the outer tracks have the needle (or cutting lathe) covering much more distance (bandwidth) than the inner tracks.

Because of this, each track needs different attention, and can be particularly troublesome for long tracks- if you want it to end with a bang, you need to start with a whimper.

If the producer decides to change the track order, a different mastering approach (or algorithm) would need to be applied to the song.
And if the album is made long, all the cuts need to be mastered at a lower level, unless you start with loud cuts and go to soft cuts, or ones that distortion or bandwidth don't matter.

Lots of decisions that don't need to be made with a digital medium.

Art
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Really interesting point. I had not considered that the mastering engineer was accounting for differences from the beginning to the end of the album. So in that case a different treatment would be in order for the inner tracks than the outer tracks. I knew the playback was altered due to the needle being at a different angle in most cases but the latest technology in record players in the late 80s early 90s accounted for that with arms that kept the needle on a center line and the angle the same all the way through. I've not seen that technology in the DJ market though. These has drawers similar to CD players and they sold them even at the Radio Shack, then one day they all disappeared.
 
Re: Funny

Hello

The speed of needle is the key - diameter goes from 29cm at start down to 12cm at end of LP-record - so there is almost 2.5 times more tracking speed at beginning. Affects both dynamics and frequency.
 
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