|
|
|
|
Steely Dan The Absolute Sound
From: Steven Sullivan
Date: 7/20/2004 3:53 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 20 Jul 2004 02:03:46 GMT, B&D wrote:
On 7/19/04 7:34 PM, in article cUYKc.122965$IQ4.70903@attbi_s02, "Michael
McKelvy" wrote:
I think, though, it is an apples to oranges a bit - because the
mastering
standards of CD has only recently reached the potential of the medium.
Just
as SACD comes on the horizon.
Nonsense. There have been great sounding CD's and Mastering since about
10
minutes after the first recording engineers got their hands on the
format.
Which recording engineers would that be?
The ones who did Dire Straits CDs, for a start.
The genesis of this thread, to remind everyone, was a quote indicating
that noted 'audiophile' musicians/studio mavens Steely Dan, apparently
consider high-end audio 'truisms' to be more than a little laughable.
One can find quite a variety of opinions amoung pop recording artists. Usually
citation has more to do with aagreement or disagreement with the artist. When
Neil Young lamented demise of analog recordings many people incuding yourself
challenged his hearing and his cognesense. Personally I don't think Nightfly is
a nexceptional sounding recording. It isn't bad but not something I would use
as a demo. Steely Dan's records are consistantly mediocre IMO sonically. Too
bad because I love the music. Doesn't prove or disprove the validity of Fagen's
and Becker's opinions.
Fagan was an early adopter of digital recording, with his 'Nightfly'
album, which is *still* cited as one of the nicest pop recordings
out there (most recently, IME, by Bob Katz).
CD has some definite advantages over vinyl - more convenient, no surface
noise. And both have some real stinkers as far as mastering quality is
concerned - though I have noticed that the standards of quality have risen
generally so that there are more good CD's now than there ever have been -
I
recall a lot of CD's that got released in the early days with hiss (!)
Lots of them are still being released with hiss from the analogue
master tapes - why would that be a surprise? The difference is that on
CD you can *hear* the hiss...............
Besides, it seems to me the standards of *mastering* for pop CDs have
*fallen*
not risen, since the mid-90's, due to the
'loudness wars', so I have to wonder if Bromo is talking only about the
relatively tiny jazz and classical markets. It would be erroneous, of
course,
to say that CDs sound intrinsically flawed, from the prevalence of *bad
mastering*.
This is a very good point. It makes me wonder what those who choose to abandon
the LP format altogether are thinking?
|