CD verses vinyl - help clear dispute

[WideGlide]

A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width etc
than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k digital
domain of the CD. He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
has greater frequency response than vinyl. As for why vinyl has more
"dimension" than a CD, I don't know. My friend feels he can hear "more"
information on the vinyl, and that the vinyl is more accurate than the cd.
My experience was the opposite. One thing I will mention... our comparison
tests were done in quite an inaccurate way at different times, I'm sure
there are a HOST of factors that would more or less render our tests nearly
useless, however, I still tend to disagree that the CD has "less
information" which is causing a degradation compared to vinyl. Perhaps I am
wrong. I'd really like to hear some educated opinions. My experience
listening to vinyl is that it indeed has "color", certain frequency ranges
seem more inflated than others, some seem reduced, does not seem to be as
"accurate" or precise as CD audio, but the vinyl does have that really neat
"wide" effect... sounds like you are listening to a band that is spread all
across the room... with the CD, it sounds more like the band is all stuffed
into one tiny spot right in front. The CD has more of a concentrated "in
your face" effect, where as the vinyl has more of a farther back spread out
WIDE effect. It's very interesting. I'm sure in the grand scheme of
things, the 16-bit, 44.1k digital is indeed "poor", and information is
indeed getting "lost" or distorted in some way in the digital domain, but
after hearing some vinyl, I would say there is perhaps more of a loss going
on with vinyl. Again, this is not an argument as to which medium sounds
"better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems to have less dimension than
vinyl. Thanks.

[Scott Dorsey]

WideGlide > wrote:
>A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width etc
>than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k digital
>domain of the CD. He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
>than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
>has greater frequency response than vinyl.

Most cutting systems start rolling off bigtime well below 20 KHz. If you
DO cut out to 20 KHz (which often means having to restrict the levels you
cut at), that 20 KHz stuff won't stay on the record for more than a dozen
plays before the details just wear off.

Anybody who gives you the "infinite resolution" argument is full of crap.
There is a nice rebuttal to that in the FAQ.

>As for why vinyl has more
>"dimension" than a CD, I don't know. My friend feels he can hear "more"
>information on the vinyl, and that the vinyl is more accurate than the cd.

On a lot of releases this is the case, because the CD is overcompressed,
made through crappy converters, or just generally done hastily without
much care. I have a lot of LPs that sound much better than the CD release.
The horrible butchery that early Beatles albums have suffered on CD is
really inexcusable. I can hear stereo azimuth errors on a mono recording
for God's sake. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed.

On the other hand, I also have some CDs that sound better than the LP
release. The Leon Russell and the Shelter People album has easily an
octave better bass extension on the DCC-issued CD compared with the
original LP.

In every case, the guys in the booth have a lot more to do with the
total sound than the release format does. As long as there are crappy
CD issues, though, I am not going to get rid of my turntable.

>My experience was the opposite. One thing I will mention... our comparison
>tests were done in quite an inaccurate way at different times, I'm sure
>there are a HOST of factors that would more or less render our tests nearly
>useless, however, I still tend to disagree that the CD has "less
>information" which is causing a degradation compared to vinyl. Perhaps I am
>wrong. I'd really like to hear some educated opinions. My experience
>listening to vinyl is that it indeed has "color", certain frequency ranges
>seem more inflated than others, some seem reduced, does not seem to be as
>"accurate" or precise as CD audio, but the vinyl does have that really neat
>"wide" effect... sounds like you are listening to a band that is spread all
>across the room... with the CD, it sounds more like the band is all stuffed
>into one tiny spot right in front. The CD has more of a concentrated "in
>your face" effect, where as the vinyl has more of a farther back spread out
>WIDE effect. It's very interesting. I'm sure in the grand scheme of
>things, the 16-bit, 44.1k digital is indeed "poor", and information is
>indeed getting "lost" or distorted in some way in the digital domain, but
>after hearing some vinyl, I would say there is perhaps more of a loss going
>on with vinyl.

There is usually a lot more lost with vinyl cutting than with CD cutting,
but once the mastering guys start adding processing, it's possible to screw
either one up very easily. It's harder to get away with doing abusive things
on vinyl, though.

Imaging varies so much between different playback systems it's hard to say
that there is any one characteristic sort of imaging. No two phono cartridges
have the same phase or frequency response, and they all image very differently.

> Again, this is not an argument as to which medium sounds
>"better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems to have less dimension than
>vinyl. Thanks.

You need to listen to some better CDs. Try the JVC XRCD issue of Steve Miller's
The Joker. It has a deep sense of depth that you won't find on the original LP.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[DaveDrummer]

Vinyl, given the right player and record, can sound very good. of course,
needles, scratches, dust, speakers etc all determine this sound. But the
truth is, technically speaking vinyl is of MUCH higher fidelity than any
digitial format. Now, can you hear the difference? Thats a different story.
Also, 16-bit 44.1 is perfect for most people, and very few need more than
that. Plus, you can listen in your car, your walkman, etc. CDs Very portable
and easy to distribute and copy. I really like vinyl artthough. The big
record sleeves inspired many bands to work hard on them.

Dave
"Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message
...
> WideGlide > wrote:
> >A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width
etc
> >than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k
digital
> >domain of the CD. He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency
response
> >than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the
CD
> >has greater frequency response than vinyl.
>
> Most cutting systems start rolling off bigtime well below 20 KHz. If you
> DO cut out to 20 KHz (which often means having to restrict the levels you
> cut at), that 20 KHz stuff won't stay on the record for more than a dozen
> plays before the details just wear off.
>
> Anybody who gives you the "infinite resolution" argument is full of crap.
> There is a nice rebuttal to that in the FAQ.
>
> >As for why vinyl has more
> >"dimension" than a CD, I don't know. My friend feels he can hear "more"
> >information on the vinyl, and that the vinyl is more accurate than the
cd.
>
> On a lot of releases this is the case, because the CD is overcompressed,
> made through crappy converters, or just generally done hastily without
> much care. I have a lot of LPs that sound much better than the CD
release.
> The horrible butchery that early Beatles albums have suffered on CD is
> really inexcusable. I can hear stereo azimuth errors on a mono recording
> for God's sake. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed.
>
> On the other hand, I also have some CDs that sound better than the LP
> release. The Leon Russell and the Shelter People album has easily an
> octave better bass extension on the DCC-issued CD compared with the
> original LP.
>
> In every case, the guys in the booth have a lot more to do with the
> total sound than the release format does. As long as there are crappy
> CD issues, though, I am not going to get rid of my turntable.
>
> >My experience was the opposite. One thing I will mention... our
comparison
> >tests were done in quite an inaccurate way at different times, I'm sure
> >there are a HOST of factors that would more or less render our tests
nearly
> >useless, however, I still tend to disagree that the CD has "less
> >information" which is causing a degradation compared to vinyl. Perhaps I
am
> >wrong. I'd really like to hear some educated opinions. My experience
> >listening to vinyl is that it indeed has "color", certain frequency
ranges
> >seem more inflated than others, some seem reduced, does not seem to be as
> >"accurate" or precise as CD audio, but the vinyl does have that really
neat
> >"wide" effect... sounds like you are listening to a band that is spread
all
> >across the room... with the CD, it sounds more like the band is all
stuffed
> >into one tiny spot right in front. The CD has more of a concentrated "in
> >your face" effect, where as the vinyl has more of a farther back spread
out
> >WIDE effect. It's very interesting. I'm sure in the grand scheme of
> >things, the 16-bit, 44.1k digital is indeed "poor", and information is
> >indeed getting "lost" or distorted in some way in the digital domain, but
> >after hearing some vinyl, I would say there is perhaps more of a loss
going
> >on with vinyl.
>
> There is usually a lot more lost with vinyl cutting than with CD cutting,
> but once the mastering guys start adding processing, it's possible to
screw
> either one up very easily. It's harder to get away with doing abusive
things
> on vinyl, though.
>
> Imaging varies so much between different playback systems it's hard to say
> that there is any one characteristic sort of imaging. No two phono
cartridges
> have the same phase or frequency response, and they all image very
differently.
>
> > Again, this is not an argument as to which medium sounds
> >"better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems to have less dimension
than
> >vinyl. Thanks.
>
> You need to listen to some better CDs. Try the JVC XRCD issue of Steve
Miller's
> The Joker. It has a deep sense of depth that you won't find on the
original LP.
> --scott
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Tommi]

"DaveDrummer" > wrote in message
.. .
> Vinyl, given the right player and record, can sound very good. of course,
> needles, scratches, dust, speakers etc all determine this sound. But the
> truth is, technically speaking vinyl is of MUCH higher fidelity than any
> digitial format. Now, can you hear the difference? Thats a different
story.

The truth is that vinyl is technically much worse than the Red Book
cd-standard.
Vinyl has phase shift, harmonic distortion and problems with the low
frequencies, especially in stereo.
If vinyl sounds better, that's not because of it is of higher technical
standard; more likely, it's because the way vinyl shifts frequencies sounds
quite pleasing to the human ear.
It has nothing to do with represinting a truthful signal, however.

> Also, 16-bit 44.1 is perfect for most people, and very few need more than
> that.

And if they need more, I certainly wouldn't recommend vinyl for them.

> The big
> record sleeves inspired many bands to work hard on them.

Well, that's true.

[WideGlide]

Thanks Scott! By the way, my turntable is a Harmon Kardon T20, belt
drive... about 15 years old. The cartridge is a Shure M750E. I am still
searching for the manuals. Scott, is there a specific cartridge you'd
recommend for this unit? I'd like to change it and tune up the whole unit.
I am not that happy with the overall upper end response of what I am hearing
from this thing, I guess it would make sense to start by swapping in a new
cartridge and giving it a tune up. The albums I am using are in new
condition. Any tips on getting this HK running in tip top shape would be
appreciated. Thanks.

[Bob Cain]

David Perrault wrote:


> I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.
>
> When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
> down.
>
> When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
> it up.
>
> I find the same trend in my own recreational listening: often I end
> up turning down a CD. Often I end up turning the vinyl up. And no,
> this is not some disparity between source levels.
>
> IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
> player, unless you are getting into high end players.
>
> Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
> to be true.

This has been true of my experience too and I know damn well
it isn't because of more accurate reproduction. In the end,
if an artifact or set of them results in a more interesting
or more pleasurable experience then that is just fine with me.

What if the thing some people are finding "better" about
SACD is in fact such an artifact? I hear that the
possibility is under consideration. When they nail it I'm
planning on a pseudoSACD DX plugin that will make your CD's
sound exactly like SACD's. :-)


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[David Perrault]

>,,,,, He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
>than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
>has greater frequency response than vinyl.,,,,

I think frequency response is less relevant than over-all fidelity.
Whatever that is!!!

I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.

When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
down.

When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
it up.

I find the same trend in my own recreational listening: often I end
up turning down a CD. Often I end up turning the vinyl up. And no,
this is not some disparity between source levels.

IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
player, unless you are getting into high end players.

Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
to be true.




DP

[WideGlide]

Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record album
directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the imaging be
retained? (Assuming that the AD converter is top notch and the DA converter
on the CD player is top notch as well.) I plan to try this test at some
point, but in the meantime, just wondering. My friend feels that the
"width" of the program from the vinyl would be reduced once it is put on the
CDR format. Your last response would indicate that this would NOT be the
case, but I thought this was an interesting question anyway. If indeed the
CDR would retain 100% of the perceived dimension of the vinyl, this would
quickly prove that the CDR format is not nearly as horrible as my friend
would have me think. It would also prove that the CDR format is just as
capable of reproducing such dimension, even though most "remastered" CDs do
not seem to have the nice wide dimension of most LPs.... generally speaking.

[Codifus]

David Perrault wrote:

>>,,,,, He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
>>than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
>>has greater frequency response than vinyl.,,,,
>
>
> I think frequency response is less relevant than over-all fidelity.
> Whatever that is!!!
>
> I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.
>
> When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
> down.
>
> When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
> it up.
>
> I find the same trend in my own recreational listening: often I end
> up turning down a CD. Often I end up turning the vinyl up. And no,
> this is not some disparity between source levels.
>
> IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
> player, unless you are getting into high end players.
>
> Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
> to be true.
>
>
>
>
> DP
>
>
>
>
>
That could very well be because of the 3 weaknesses of vinyl as compared
to CD:

1. Lesser dynamic range. Vinyl music is going to be less punchy, and
hence, easier on the ears at high volume.

2. High frequency headroom. A CD catches all audible frequencies in all
their glory. Records can't even hope to compete.

3. Records wear out, so their high frequencies tend to smooth out, get
more muddled, and reduce in amplitude. CDs just work great at all
frequencies, or not at all. No middle ground.

CD

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
> down.
>
> When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
> it up.

> IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
> player, unless you are getting into high end players.

This has very little to do with the player, but everything to do with
the way that CDs have been mastered over the past 10 years or so. Have
you ever listened to a serious audiophile CD, or an older CD?

The push for apparent loudness at a given volume setting has created a
CD formula that is significantly clipped and has very little dynamic
range. This sounds louder because there's more energy in the waveform
than if they had left it alone. It's also fatiguing, so eventually you
want to turn it down, or turn it off and do something else.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[WideGlide]

Another thought... I will assume that most CD remasters were done back
around the time when the CD format first started to become popular. What
year was that? Late `80's? Early `90's? I don't think I had a cd player
until 1992 or so. Anyway, as for the remastering... what digital tools did
they have back in 1992? How were these "remasters" done? With what gear?
What converters? What compressors? Was this done in a primitve DAW, or
were they using analog processing going to a DAT machine or something? This
might answer why a lot of CD remasters sound bad... because the digital gear
back in the day was poor. What were the best converters in 1992? How good
were they? I have no idea... my first digital experience other than CD was
a DA-88 in 1997 or so, and I never really got stellar results on that thing
anyway.

[Jim Kollens]

Mike Rivers: << The push for apparent loudness at a given volume setting has
created a
CD formula that is significantly clipped and has very little dynamic
range. This sounds louder because there's more energy in the waveform
than if they had left it alone. It's also fatiguing, so eventually you
want to turn it down, or turn it off and do something else. >>

It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter to
discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all! I also find it
amusing and sad to hear CD's created at homes where they have ruined the music
by normalizing the CD. A while back I picked up a big set of '50's stuff that
had been completely destroyed by some mastering house. I couldn't listen to
any CD all the way through. And I threw the set in the garbage where it
belongs. I really should have returned the set but there had been some
interval from buying to listening. But actually, that's an idea: everyone
should just take this crap back and demand a refund. They are defective and
unlistenable. Unfortunately, the average listener doesn't know what is wrong.

[WideGlide]

<< It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter to
discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!... And I threw the
set in the garbage where it belongs...>>
-----------------

A license should be needed in order to purchase and use modern limiting and
multi-band compression tools for mastering, just the same way a license is
needed to purchase and use a gun. Modern limiters and multi-band
compressors are probably more dangerous to society. It's such a shame that
any bozo can open a "mastering house" and violently mangle audio, and
somehow it gets by, often to millions of consumers. Absolutely tragic! I
haven't heard any brand new productions... is it still the trend to crush
everything to death?

[Scott Dorsey]

WideGlide > wrote:
>Thanks Scott! By the way, my turntable is a Harmon Kardon T20, belt
>drive... about 15 years old. The cartridge is a Shure M750E. I am still
>searching for the manuals. Scott, is there a specific cartridge you'd
>recommend for this unit? I'd like to change it and tune up the whole unit.

Okay, that's not a great turntable, but it's not a bad one, and it is
probably worth keeping as an entry level thing. You're going to have to
do something to damp the arm down a little bit. It's going to be clangy
stock.

I'm a big fan of the Audio-Technica AT440 cartridge, which tracks really
well and is reasonable on that arm. You might be able to get the Grado
DJ-100 to work reliably on it too. The Shure M97x is also not too bad.

But try the cartridge you have and see how well it tracks to begin with.

>I am not that happy with the overall upper end response of what I am hearing
>from this thing, I guess it would make sense to start by swapping in a new
>cartridge and giving it a tune up. The albums I am using are in new
>condition. Any tips on getting this HK running in tip top shape would be
>appreciated. Thanks.

If you aren't using a phono preamp, first off you won't have decent
sound. You need to deal with that first. If you can, look for something
like the Adcom that has switchable gain and will give you enough gain that
you can use a moving coil cartridge someday. Rotel also makes a decent
outboard phono preamp that will work well with a good range of cartridges.

THEN worry about the cartridge, and then worry about the arm. And then
get a vacuum machine. Do not forget to buy a copy of the RAP LP for ten
dollars so I can get them out of my living room.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

WideGlide > wrote:
>Another thought... I will assume that most CD remasters were done back
>around the time when the CD format first started to become popular. What
>year was that? Late `80's? Early `90's? I don't think I had a cd player
>until 1992 or so. Anyway, as for the remastering... what digital tools did
>they have back in 1992? How were these "remasters" done? With what gear?
>What converters? What compressors? Was this done in a primitve DAW, or
>were they using analog processing going to a DAT machine or something? This
>might answer why a lot of CD remasters sound bad... because the digital gear
>back in the day was poor. What were the best converters in 1992? How good
>were they? I have no idea... my first digital experience other than CD was
>a DA-88 in 1997 or so, and I never really got stellar results on that thing
>anyway.

Some remastering jobs were done by top grade engineers who were familiar
with the original material and who carefully and painstakingly used the
latest technology converters (which today are pretty good) to master a CD.
Labels like the JVC XRCD folks, Dave Chesky's crew, the people doing
the Mercury Living Presence CDs and Bob Fine's work from Everest, and
the guys at Digital Compact classics all did an amazing job.

Some remastering jobs were done by semi-intelligent monkeys at the label
who grabbed whatever materials they could find in the vaults no matter
how many generations down they are, tossed them onto machines without paying
a damn bit of attention to the alignment or tones, then smashed the hell
out of them to make them loud, and ran them through cheap converters. Back
in the early eighties, the majority of the damage was done by those awful
PCM-1610 converters. Today, most of it is done by massive compression. Either
way, some folks just horribly mangle the remastering job. I won't mention
any names, but I can't understand how anyone can listen to the CD issue of
Hotel California without earplugs.

You pays your money and you takes your chance.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Arny Krueger]

"WideGlide" > wrote in message
t

> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
> imaging be retained?

Nobody knowledgeable who wants the best results does things this way. Vinyl
transcription done right involves doing things that can't be done on most if
not all CD recorders. It takes a PC or a DAW to do a SOTA or even credible
job of transcribing vinyl.

> (Assuming that the AD converter is top notch
> and the DA converter on the CD player is top notch as well.)

There's no doubt in my mind that everything audible on a LP can be
transcribed digitally and played back without reliably detectable
coloration. Surprisingly most people who transcribe LPs seriously don't
target that goal.

Instead experienced people who transcribe LPs seem settle on the goal of
making a CD that has as many of the positive attributes of the LP ( Mike
River's recent post listed most of them) with as few of the usual
disadvantages of a LP as possible. Two unmistakable unique positive
attributes of a LP - it was never re-released in CD format or the only
re-release was poorly done.

One interesting permutation of this is the fact that there is a track on the
Toscanini CD set of the Beethoven works there is a track that is obviously a
vinyl transcription. It was done to the standards of about 20 years ago. If
it were properly cleaned up using modern tools it would be more enjoyable to
listen to.

> I plan to try this test at some point, but in the meantime, just
wondering.

Some of the unique attributes of LP playback are simply audible distortion.
For example, a lot of the imaging that people rave about actually correlates
with fairly massive amounts of AM and FM distortion that lots of playback
equipment has. Digital transcriptions can pick this up very nicely, thank
you!

> My friend feels that the "width" of the program from the vinyl would
> be reduced once it is put on the CDR format.

I don't think he could support that claim with a blind test.

> Your last response
> would indicate that this would NOT be the case, but I thought this
> was an interesting question anyway. If indeed the CDR would retain
> 100% of the perceived dimension of the vinyl, this would quickly
> prove that the CDR format is not nearly as horrible as my friend
> would have me think.

He's just reflecting years of ignorant posturing in the matter that has been
published in high end ragazines and circulated by mislead and misleading
merchants and hobbyists. There's quite a stash of anti-technology-wisdom
that is taken for revealed truth by the vinyl uber alles true believers.
Among some, vinylism is a religion that supercedes modern science.

If you read the AES and IEEE papers about optimizing vinyl from the days
when vinyl was taken seriously by a great many intelligent people, you come
up with an accurate description of what would, and mostly now is, considered
to be a highly flawed legacy medium.

> It would also prove that the CDR format is just
> as capable of reproducing such dimension, even though most
> "remastered" CDs do not seem to have the nice wide dimension of most
> LPs.... generally speaking.

In all seriousness, most people who get really good at transcribing vinyl go
beyond the mere LP with their work. They produce a CD that has many positive
attributes of a regular CD, and has a number of highly audible vinyl
artifacts removed or vastly reduced.

[Arny Krueger]

"WideGlide" > wrote in message
t
> Another thought... I will assume that most CD remasters were done back
> around the time when the CD format first started to become popular.
> What year was that? Late `80's?

Early-mid 80s.

Early `90's? I don't think I had a
> cd player until 1992 or so. Anyway, as for the remastering... what
> digital tools did they have back in 1992?

Some pretty good ones that worked on high end "Workstations" of the day.

> How were these "remasters" done? With what gear?

The audio gear was similar or identical to what was used for regular audio
production.

>What converters?

Similar or identical to what was used for regular audio production. The best
of it was really good, the worst was really terrible.

>What compressors?

Hopefully none.

> Was this done in a primitive sDAW, or were they using analog processing
going to
> a DAT machine or something?

Yes, both.

>This might answer why a lot of CD remasters sound bad...

IME it wasn't the gear, it was the staff and the context. Some remastering
gets done by skilled people who care and are given the time to do a good
job. They add art to what they do. A lot of it is done by junior staff who
would rather be doing something else, and aren't given the time and guidance
to do a good job. It's pretty artless. One eye on the clock and the other on
a crotch novel.

> because the digital gear back in the day was poor.

Not all of it.

> What were the best converters in 1992?

That would be a controversy.

> How good were they?

The best were as good as was required to do a sonically perfect job. There
were good 16/44 converters in 1970, they just cost a big chunk of a million
dollars. They were out-of-mind for anybody who did commercial audio.

> I have no idea... my first digital experience other than CD was a DA-88
> in 1997 or so, and I never really got stellar results on that thing
> anyway.

I don't think that anybody who worked with DA88s and were well-experienced
were really in love with them.

[Fill X]

I'll add a few of my own biased opinions:

1) Even die-hard vinyl people like myself recognize that you can get a lot of
the inherent sound of the vinyl if you burn it to a CD. Sure, you hear
converters and converters sound different, but it's eye opening if you're a
vinyl person and you hate CD's.

2) both CD's and vinyl have distortion. Vinyl has a lot more of it, measurably,
but it's also a different kind. Many people find this euphonic and mistake it
for "room" just like they mistake the phase channel anomalies for a wider
soundstage. The trick here I think, is while these things may be considered
"flaws" in vinyl, like anything, if they sound good, they are assets.

3) While I have heard a lot of bad sounding CD players, vinyl playback is
harder to get right. There's more geometry to it and it does make a difference.

4) one of the reasons CD's have a bad rap is that the early ones weren't over
compressed but they were transferred by people who often didn't give a damn and
with a generation of a/d conversion which has been much improved. Now we have
better stuff and people just butcher CD's with multi band compression. Bob
Olhsson mastered a CD for me recently where I wanted something that wasn't
compressed a whole lot or so forward in the high midrange, like modern CD's
are, because in this particular project, I didn't have to worry about pleasing
an audience that is used to something. It sounds a hell of a lot more like a
good LP playback than the horror we sometimes associate with CD's.

5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital is
perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is as annoying to me as
vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have been told you can get
22K half-speed).

6) all this said, I've heard CD's beat LP's and LP's beat CD's, so there's no
standard. My bias, though, having I think an equally good CD playback system as
a vinyl one, is that the best sounding LP's to me still sound better than the
best sounding CD's. Dorati's living stereo firebird, or my nautilus "moondance"
or my original blue notes, make me feel more in the moment than the CD's do.
Call it sentimentality, or love of second order distortion or plain religious
fervor, but CD's arent replacing my LP's any time soon. Life is too short and
music is too large to limit your formats anyway.



P h i l i p

______________________________

"I'm too ****ing busy and vice-versa"

- Dorothy Parker

[Johnston West]

(Jim Kollens) wrote in message

> ....where they have ruined the music
> by normalizing the CD. >

Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?

J_West


> A while back I picked up a big set of '50's stuff that had been completely destroyed by some mastering house. I couldn't listen to any CD all the way through. And I threw the set in the garbage where it
> belongs. I really should have returned the set but there had been some
> interval from buying to listening. But actually, that's an idea: everyone
> should just take this crap back and demand a refund. They are defective and
> unlistenable. Unfortunately, the average listener doesn't know what is wrong.

[Tim Padrick]

A lot of digital converters have very poor linearity - in other words they
have very high levels of distortion at low signal levels. So all the low
level "finesse" parts of the signal get wrecked. Timing errors also cause
problems - system does not have to "know" only whether it's supposed to be a
one or a zero, it has to know exactly when it's a one or a zero.
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/papers/bits.pdf
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/papers/jitter.pdf


"WideGlide" > wrote in message
t...
> A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width
etc
> than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k
digital
> domain of the CD. He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency
response
> than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
> has greater frequency response than vinyl. As for why vinyl has more
> "dimension" than a CD, I don't know. My friend feels he can hear "more"
> information on the vinyl, and that the vinyl is more accurate than the cd.
> My experience was the opposite. One thing I will mention... our
comparison
> tests were done in quite an inaccurate way at different times, I'm sure
> there are a HOST of factors that would more or less render our tests
nearly
> useless, however, I still tend to disagree that the CD has "less
> information" which is causing a degradation compared to vinyl. Perhaps I
am
> wrong. I'd really like to hear some educated opinions. My experience
> listening to vinyl is that it indeed has "color", certain frequency ranges
> seem more inflated than others, some seem reduced, does not seem to be as
> "accurate" or precise as CD audio, but the vinyl does have that really
neat
> "wide" effect... sounds like you are listening to a band that is spread
all
> across the room... with the CD, it sounds more like the band is all
stuffed
> into one tiny spot right in front. The CD has more of a concentrated "in
> your face" effect, where as the vinyl has more of a farther back spread
out
> WIDE effect. It's very interesting. I'm sure in the grand scheme of
> things, the 16-bit, 44.1k digital is indeed "poor", and information is
> indeed getting "lost" or distorted in some way in the digital domain, but
> after hearing some vinyl, I would say there is perhaps more of a loss
going
> on with vinyl. Again, this is not an argument as to which medium sounds
> "better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems to have less dimension than
> vinyl. Thanks.
>
>

[Paul Stamler]

Johnston West > wrote in message
om...
> (Jim Kollens) wrote in message
> > ....where they have ruined the music
> > by normalizing the CD. >
>
> Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?

Not necessarily. If the mastering engineer normalizes the entire disc to the
loudest signal on the disc, it doesn't hurt anything. But if the engineer
normalizes each track to the loudest signal on that track, then the levels
will be all over the place when you go from track to track. Each track will
sound okay but they won't match.

Peace,
Paul

[Paul Stamler]

WideGlide > wrote in message
t...
> Another thought... I will assume that most CD remasters were done back
> around the time when the CD format first started to become popular. What
> year was that? Late `80's? Early `90's? I don't think I had a cd player
> until 1992 or so. Anyway, as for the remastering... what digital tools
did
> they have back in 1992? How were these "remasters" done? With what gear?

Typically with a Sony mastering console and a Sony 1630 recorder, which
stored its signal on a 3/4" VCR. The console and the 1630, compared to
today's gear, stunk. (The console contained the approximate computing power
of a 286, if you remember that machine.) The console didn't have enough
computer juice in it to process at 16 bits unless the master fader was at
unity gain; it reverted to, I think, 14 bits at any other gain.

> What converters? What compressors? Was this done in a primitve DAW, or
> were they using analog processing going to a DAT machine or something?

The converters were in the 1630, and I believe they were
successive-approximation types rather than the 1-bit types universal today.
The compressors, if used, were the same ones used for good analog work, like
the 1176. If you were lucky, the mastering engineer ran the test tones at
the head of the tape through the analog playback deck and alignedit
properly. Many times you weren't lucky. (I recently found a remastered CD
where I had to slide the right track a couple of milliseconds in the DAW to
make the phase come out half-decent.)

> This
> might answer why a lot of CD remasters sound bad... because the digital
gear
> back in the day was poor.

Yep, mostly. See below.

> What were the best converters in 1992? How good
> were they?

The first converter I heard whose sound I could stand was in 1991, on a Sony
consumer DAT machine, the DTC-75ES, which had Sony's first generation of
1-bit converters in it. They put out a similar-sounding pro machine a year
or two later. The 75ES wouldn't record 44.1kHz from an analog source, so I'd
record at 48kHz, then edit in analog or convert the sample-rate. But it
sounded comparatively inoffensive compared to the godawful stuff that came
before. Yer average M-Audio Delta box these days, however, will run rings
around anything you could get back in 1992.

By the way, re. vinyl: I copy vinyl discs into the DAW all the time, so's I
can clean up the scratches and play them on the radio without subjecting
good discs to the tender mercies of the station's cartridges. I have a
decent playback setup that minimizes the worst problems of vinyl -- a Shure
V15VxMR cartridge to minimize mistracking, and the good AR turntable (the
one from the 1980s) which is pretty decent-sounding and doesn't add a whole
lot of colorations. I find that, listening back to the 24-bit 44.1kHz
recording from the Delta 66, I'm hard-pressed to hear much difference from
the vinyl; lots of that elusive stuff called "dimension". When I dither down
to 16 bits it sounds a bit drier. Still not bad, but not as good as the
24-bit original. Whether 24 bits are needed for reproduction of sound has
become a religious issue with some folks, and I'm not going to go there, but
I will say that 16 bits, in this setup, slightly degrades the sound to this
pair of ears. Of course, FM radio degrades it a whole lot more.

Peace,
Paul

[Geoff Wood]

DaveDrummer wrote:
> Vinyl, given the right player and record, can sound very good. of
> course, needles, scratches, dust, speakers etc all determine this
> sound. But the truth is, technically speaking vinyl is of MUCH higher
> fidelity than any digitial format.

In which technical aspect ?

Frequency response, dynamic range, noise, distortion, phase response. Um -
is there anything else ?


geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Jim Kollens wrote:
> Mike Rivers: << The push for apparent loudness at a given volume
> setting has created a
> CD formula that is significantly clipped and has very little dynamic
> range. This sounds louder because there's more energy in the waveform
> than if they had left it alone. It's also fatiguing, so eventually you
> want to turn it down, or turn it off and do something else. >>
>
> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter
> to discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!

The same master has a similar nature on vinyl, except for the higher
distortion and tracking problems. And minus a bunch of the frequencies.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Johnston West wrote:
> (Jim Kollens) wrote in message
>
>> ....where they have ruined the music
>> by normalizing the CD. >
>
> Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?


No, not in the slighest.


geoff

[Geoff Wood]

WideGlide wrote:
> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
> imaging be retained?

Yes.

>(Assuming that the AD converter is top notch
> and the DA converter on the CD player is top notch as well.) I plan
> to try this test at some point, but in the meantime, just wondering.
> My friend feels that the "width" of the program from the vinyl would
> be reduced once it is put on the CDR format.

They subscribe to a particular religon. There is little tat will convince
them.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Tim Padrick wrote:
> A lot of digital converters have very poor linearity - in other words
> they have very high levels of distortion at low signal levels.

Had. Today's cheapo converters are generally beter that the top pro digital
gear was only a few years ago. Unless you are talking about consumer cheapo
game cards (or 'Creative' products)

geoff

[Troy]

"2. High frequency headroom. A CD catches all audible frequencies in all
their glory. Records can't even hope to compete"


This statement is true and is also the cause why some people say vinyl
sounds better.

Let me explain.......

Most people grew up on analog sound and their ears are more acustom to
hearing that sound.Digital music has a much wider frequency range.There are
alot of frequencies on a CD that the ear / mind pick up that actually cause
some listeners to get anoyed with the sound and find they can't listen to it
for long periods of time.I watched a study on this a couple years ago
explaining the differences in the way your ears and subconcious pick up on
some frequencies in digital music that just are not there on Vinyl.The wider
frequencies range on CDs just tend to tire some peoples ears faster than
analog.I love working with digital music but as long as the music is good I
don't care what media its comming from.......to each their own!!!!

Hope I explained this in a way that it makes sense to people.







Codifus > wrote in message
t...
> David Perrault wrote:
>
> >>,,,,, He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> >>than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the
CD
> >>has greater frequency response than vinyl.,,,,
> >
> >
> > I think frequency response is less relevant than over-all fidelity.
> > Whatever that is!!!
> >
> > I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.
> >
> > When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
> > down.
> >
> > When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
> > it up.
> >
> > I find the same trend in my own recreational listening: often I end
> > up turning down a CD. Often I end up turning the vinyl up. And no,
> > this is not some disparity between source levels.
> >
> > IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
> > player, unless you are getting into high end players.
> >
> > Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
> > to be true.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > DP
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> That could very well be because of the 3 weaknesses of vinyl as compared
> to CD:
>
> 1. Lesser dynamic range. Vinyl music is going to be less punchy, and
> hence, easier on the ears at high volume.
>
> 2. High frequency headroom. A CD catches all audible frequencies in all
> their glory. Records can't even hope to compete.
>
> 3. Records wear out, so their high frequencies tend to smooth out, get
> more muddled, and reduce in amplitude. CDs just work great at all
> frequencies, or not at all. No middle ground.
>
> CD
>
>
>

[Jay - atldigi]

In article
>, "Paul
Stamler" > wrote:

> Johnston West > wrote in message
> om...
> > (Jim Kollens) wrote in message
> > > ....where they have ruined the music
> > > by normalizing the CD. >
> >
> > Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?
>
> Not necessarily. If the mastering engineer normalizes the entire disc to
> the
> loudest signal on the disc, it doesn't hurt anything. But if the engineer
> normalizes each track to the loudest signal on that track, then the
> levels
> will be all over the place when you go from track to track. Each track
> will sound okay but they won't match.
>
> Peace,
> Paul
>

And also be aware that a few "normalize" functions actually offer
options for limiting, or even just do it and don't even tell you. This
is a bad idea, and really is maximizing rather than normalizing. Know
your DAW and how it operates so that you don't get caught.

The other problem with normalization when the process is destructive
(actually does the gain change and creates a new "processed" audio file)
is when you perform further gain changes. In other words, don't
normalize and then decide it's a little too loud and lower it a little.
That's two DSP passes instead of one. In a non-destructive DAW like
Sonic and some others, it always references the original file and does
the gain change in real time DSP so you never lose a generation. Then
you can tweak to your heart's content.

Remember, since it is non-trvial DSP, you need dither to prevent
truncation distortion. The last thing to be aware of is that you should
balance track to track levels by ear. You can't rely on normalization to
provide consistency for you. If you avoid these potential traps,
normalizing done once at the end but before dither isn't going to hurt
anything - as long as it happens to leave the track at the volume you
had hoped for.

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
Los Angeles
promastering.com

[Jay - atldigi]

In article >, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam> wrote:

> WideGlide wrote:
> > Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
> > album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
> > imaging be retained?
>
> Yes.
>
> >(Assuming that the AD converter is top notch
> > and the DA converter on the CD player is top notch as well.) I plan
> > to try this test at some point, but in the meantime, just wondering.
> > My friend feels that the "width" of the program from the vinyl would
> > be reduced once it is put on the CDR format.
>
> They subscribe to a particular religon. There is little tat will convince
> them.
>
> geoff


He should just say he likes the way the vinyl sounds and leave it at
that. It can, in fact, be very pleasing to the ear under the right
conditions. There's no reason he has to come up with some nonsense
"technical" claim that "proves" his preferred format is better.
Technically, it's not. Infinite resolution does not exist in the real
world, and certainly does not come close to existing in vinyl records.
The dynamic range and signal to noise ratio on vinyl is abyssmal when
compared to CD. CD certainly beats vinyl for low end frequency response,
and while the high end frequency response of vinyl could theoretically
surpass CD at some level, in practice it simply does not. Furthermore,
even if it did, it would only be for a very limited number of plays due
to the physical wear. At least vinyl doesn't have brickwall anti-alias
and anti-image filters. But then again, it does have RIAA emphasis and
de-emphasis filters.

So it scores worse on dynamic range, signal to noise ration, distortion,
and frequency response... doesn't sound like it beats CD on any
meaningful technical ground, though subjectively, he's certainly within
his rights to prefer it. Interestingly, right after they tell you the
technical advantage for their preferred format and you proceed to prove
them wrong, they'll tell you specs aren't everything. This is true
enough. Why didn't they just go with that from the beginning? There's no
arguing with personal preference. You like what you like and that's fine.

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
Los Angeles
promastering.com

[Troy]

Another thing that should be made clear is that most re issued music on CD
has not been mastered from LPs as some people do think.The old origional
masters are digitized before mastering occures.Alot of old masters have been
digitized for archiving as analog tape does die after time.

If the origional master is no longer available for what ever reason then you
need to find the second best source available to digitize,this may be an LP
or some other form of analog media.



Fill X > wrote in message
...
> I'll add a few of my own biased opinions:
>
> 1) Even die-hard vinyl people like myself recognize that you can get a lot
of
> the inherent sound of the vinyl if you burn it to a CD. Sure, you hear
> converters and converters sound different, but it's eye opening if you're
a
> vinyl person and you hate CD's.
>
> 2) both CD's and vinyl have distortion. Vinyl has a lot more of it,
measurably,
> but it's also a different kind. Many people find this euphonic and mistake
it
> for "room" just like they mistake the phase channel anomalies for a wider
> soundstage. The trick here I think, is while these things may be
considered
> "flaws" in vinyl, like anything, if they sound good, they are assets.
>
> 3) While I have heard a lot of bad sounding CD players, vinyl playback is
> harder to get right. There's more geometry to it and it does make a
difference.
>
> 4) one of the reasons CD's have a bad rap is that the early ones weren't
over
> compressed but they were transferred by people who often didn't give a
damn and
> with a generation of a/d conversion which has been much improved. Now we
have
> better stuff and people just butcher CD's with multi band compression. Bob
> Olhsson mastered a CD for me recently where I wanted something that wasn't
> compressed a whole lot or so forward in the high midrange, like modern
CD's
> are, because in this particular project, I didn't have to worry about
pleasing
> an audience that is used to something. It sounds a hell of a lot more like
a
> good LP playback than the horror we sometimes associate with CD's.
>
> 5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital is
> perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is as annoying to me
as
> vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have been told you can
get
> 22K half-speed).
>
> 6) all this said, I've heard CD's beat LP's and LP's beat CD's, so there's
no
> standard. My bias, though, having I think an equally good CD playback
system as
> a vinyl one, is that the best sounding LP's to me still sound better than
the
> best sounding CD's. Dorati's living stereo firebird, or my nautilus
"moondance"
> or my original blue notes, make me feel more in the moment than the CD's
do.
> Call it sentimentality, or love of second order distortion or plain
religious
> fervor, but CD's arent replacing my LP's any time soon. Life is too short
and
> music is too large to limit your formats anyway.
>
>
>
> P h i l i p
>
> ______________________________
>
> "I'm too ****ing busy and vice-versa"
>
> - Dorothy Parker
>
>
>
>

[Troy]

"you should balance track to track levels by ear"

I agree 110%....trust your ears not the software or the meters!!!!

I set all my track to track levels with my ears and eyes on the meters
second..

I did a compilation master for a very well known punk band thats history has
spanned the mid 70's till now and the hardest thing was geting the track to
track levels just right as the early stuff was recorder analog and the newer
stuff was all digital.In a situation like this I highly recomend forgetting
everything including the meters and TRUST THE OLD EARS first!!!!!



Jay - atldigi > wrote in message
...
> In article
> >, "Paul
> Stamler" > wrote:
>
> > Johnston West > wrote in message
> > om...
> > > (Jim Kollens) wrote in message
> > > > ....where they have ruined the music
> > > > by normalizing the CD. >
> > >
> > > Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?
> >
> > Not necessarily. If the mastering engineer normalizes the entire disc to
> > the
> > loudest signal on the disc, it doesn't hurt anything. But if the
engineer
> > normalizes each track to the loudest signal on that track, then the
> > levels
> > will be all over the place when you go from track to track. Each track
> > will sound okay but they won't match.
> >
> > Peace,
> > Paul
> >
>
> And also be aware that a few "normalize" functions actually offer
> options for limiting, or even just do it and don't even tell you. This
> is a bad idea, and really is maximizing rather than normalizing. Know
> your DAW and how it operates so that you don't get caught.
>
> The other problem with normalization when the process is destructive
> (actually does the gain change and creates a new "processed" audio file)
> is when you perform further gain changes. In other words, don't
> normalize and then decide it's a little too loud and lower it a little.
> That's two DSP passes instead of one. In a non-destructive DAW like
> Sonic and some others, it always references the original file and does
> the gain change in real time DSP so you never lose a generation. Then
> you can tweak to your heart's content.
>
> Remember, since it is non-trvial DSP, you need dither to prevent
> truncation distortion. The last thing to be aware of is that you should
> balance track to track levels by ear. You can't rely on normalization to
> provide consistency for you. If you avoid these potential traps,
> normalizing done once at the end but before dither isn't going to hurt
> anything - as long as it happens to leave the track at the volume you
> had hoped for.
>
> --
> Jay Frigoletto
> Mastersuite
> Los Angeles
> promastering.com

[anthony.gosnell]

"Geoff Wood" -nospam> wrote
> DaveDrummer wrote:
> > But the truth is, technically speaking vinyl is of MUCH higher
> > fidelity than any digitial format.
>
> In which technical aspect ?
>
> Frequency response, dynamic range, noise, distortion, phase response.
Um -
> is there anything else ?

Emotional response. This is why it is useless having these types of
arguments.

--
Anthony Gosnell

to reply remove nospam.

[anthony.gosnell]

"David Perrault" > wrote
> >,,,,, He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> >than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the
CD
> >has greater frequency response than vinyl.,,,,
>
> I think frequency response is less relevant than over-all fidelity.
> Whatever that is!!!
>
> I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.
>
> When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
> down.
>
> When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
> it up.

This is because of dynamic range. The CD's have probably had all the
dynamic range squashed out of them.
Old records have the advantage of being made before the advent of digital
mastering.
New releases of old material has the disadvantage of being "digitally
remastered".
Old CD releases have the disadvantage of going through crappy convertors.

--
Anthony Gosnell

to reply remove nospam.

[Peter Larsen]

WideGlide wrote:

> A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to
> have more width etc than a CD is because information is
> LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k digital domain of the CD.
> He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and
> feel that the CD has greater frequency response than vinyl.

That could end up being about defining "frequency response", it could
also be about defining "distortion", because not all that comes out of a
pickup-cartridge may be what was put into the groove in the first place.

> As for why vinyl has more
> "dimension" than a CD, I don't know.

It is because the playback is microphonic. Try to get the grammophone
acoustically isolated and most differences vanish. It also makes it very
obvious just how much eigentone range (80 Hz to 320 Hz) mud that gets
created by the grammophone hearing the loudspeakers. Having the
grammophone in an adjoining room is a very good idea, I did just that
while still listening directly to the records.

> My friend feels he can hear "more" information on the vinyl

High quality vinyl and high quality digital are not all that different
sounding, if one is drastically worse than the other, then it is broken
or out of its relative quality league. It is easy to take good analog
and crap digital and say "digital stinks", it is also easy to take crap
analog and say analog stinks.

> on with vinyl. Again, this is not an argument as to which
> medium sounds "better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems
> to have less dimension than vinyl.

Either the above acoustic feedback issue or crap equipment or crap
recording and mastering. The analog that remains for comparison may tend
to be the good stuff .... digital offers many options, including may
free or cheap ways of processing sound and sometimes a processed sound
is expected. All things equal, mostly they aren't, then less processing
will sound cleaner than more processing, be it analog or digital.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

[Romeo Rondeau]

> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter to
> discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all! I also find it
> amusing and sad to hear CD's created at homes where they have ruined the
music
> by normalizing the CD.

How would nomalizing the CD ruin anything? You must mean compression.
Normalization is a different process.

[Arny Krueger]

"Romeo Rondeau" > wrote in
message
>> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital
>> meter to discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!
>> I also find it amusing and sad to hear CD's created at homes where
>> they have ruined the music by normalizing the CD.
>
> How would normalizing the CD ruin anything?

In an artistic sense, not technically.

The idea is that the entire CD tells a story composed of a sequence of
songs. Songs have a natural loudness where they sound best. It's not the
same for every song.

[Codifus]

Paul Stamler wrote:

> Johnston West > wrote in message
> om...
>
(Jim Kollens) wrote in message
>>
>>>....where they have ruined the music
>>>by normalizing the CD. >
>>
>>Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?
>
>
> Not necessarily. If the mastering engineer normalizes the entire disc to the
> loudest signal on the disc, it doesn't hurt anything. But if the engineer
> normalizes each track to the loudest signal on that track, then the levels
> will be all over the place when you go from track to track. Each track will
> sound okay but they won't match.
>
> Peace,
> Paul
>
That's exactly what I was thinking, and how I normalize. I take the peak
amplitude of the entire set of WAVs and push it up to 0 db, or -0.97 db.
I'm wondering if he's confusing normalizing with compression, limiting,
and other enhancements. Normalizing is probably the least destructive.

CD

[Scott Dorsey]

Arny Krueger > wrote:
>"WideGlide" > wrote in message
t
>
>> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
>> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
>> imaging be retained?
>
>Nobody knowledgeable who wants the best results does things this way. Vinyl
>transcription done right involves doing things that can't be done on most if
>not all CD recorders. It takes a PC or a DAW to do a SOTA or even credible
>job of transcribing vinyl.

Why?

And who mentioned a CD recorder anyway?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Tommi]

"Troy" > wrote in message
news:IMC2c.705259$JQ1.21744@pd7tw1no...

> Let me explain.......


Let me continue.
People aren't used to listening any sound sources from a very close
distance;
when you mic up a guitar, the mic is so close it catches all the harmonics
right up to 30kHz, for example.
None of us also listens to a snare drum with our ear attached to it.
Digital mediums are the ones which really can record those higher overtones,
thus they sound more unnatural to us even if they'd be telling the truth.

[Scott Dorsey]

Fill X > wrote:
>
>5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital is
>perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is as annoying to me as
>vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have been told you can get
>22K half-speed).

The systems used to cut CD-4 quad LPs had a response flat up to around 40 KHz,
which was required in order to get the ultrasonic subcarrier on the disc.
This required both half-speed mastering (which degrades your low end), and
special playback cartridges (which sounded really shrieky). And, of course,
after 20 plays or so, the ultrasonic stuff started going and your rear channel
separation disappeared.

It took a LOT of engineering to get that wide a bandwidth on a disc, but it
was done for a few years. If it had actually sounded good, it might have been
more popular.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Codifus]

WideGlide wrote:

> A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width etc
> than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k digital
> domain of the CD. He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the CD
> has greater frequency response than vinyl. As for why vinyl has more
> "dimension" than a CD, I don't know. My friend feels he can hear "more"
> information on the vinyl, and that the vinyl is more accurate than the cd.
> My experience was the opposite. One thing I will mention... our comparison
> tests were done in quite an inaccurate way at different times, I'm sure
> there are a HOST of factors that would more or less render our tests nearly
> useless, however, I still tend to disagree that the CD has "less
> information" which is causing a degradation compared to vinyl. Perhaps I am
> wrong. I'd really like to hear some educated opinions. My experience
> listening to vinyl is that it indeed has "color", certain frequency ranges
> seem more inflated than others, some seem reduced, does not seem to be as
> "accurate" or precise as CD audio, but the vinyl does have that really neat
> "wide" effect... sounds like you are listening to a band that is spread all
> across the room... with the CD, it sounds more like the band is all stuffed
> into one tiny spot right in front. The CD has more of a concentrated "in
> your face" effect, where as the vinyl has more of a farther back spread out
> WIDE effect. It's very interesting. I'm sure in the grand scheme of
> things, the 16-bit, 44.1k digital is indeed "poor", and information is
> indeed getting "lost" or distorted in some way in the digital domain, but
> after hearing some vinyl, I would say there is perhaps more of a loss going
> on with vinyl. Again, this is not an argument as to which medium sounds
> "better", but an argument as to WHY a CD seems to have less dimension than
> vinyl. Thanks.
>
>
Another thing with this vinyl vs CD comparsion which is not usually
mentioned is time, and the competition that was out there when the
medium was evolving. Vinyl had what, like 50 years to mature as medium?
When vinyl was twenty ears old, how good did it sound? Weren't they
still 78s at the time? Not only that, but vinyl developed all thsoe
years without any competition but itself. Cassette was invented and was
more convenient, but vinyl always sounded way better. So, mastering
engineers had only other records to compete with all that time,
therefore producing a forum to let vinyl grow to its best.

CD , on the other hand, is "only" 20 years old, already obsolete, has to
compete with vinyl, and now has to sit there while the new boys in town,
DVD-A and SACD, trounces its glory. CD hasn't had too much time to
itself. Of course there are great examples of CD, like JVCs XRCD. To me,
that is the best of what CD has to offer. But watch out, as XRCD also
depends its source. I've had good XRCDs and bad XRCDs, but i knew the
bad ones were at fault due to the master tapes they were made from.

Because of the above mentioned, the best of vinyl is more often compared
with the so-so of CD.

CD

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter to
> discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!

> A while back I picked up a big set of '50's stuff that
> had been completely destroyed by some mastering house. I couldn't listen to
> any CD all the way through.

That may not have been a result of the CD mastering. While there
wasn't the push for maximum loudness in the '50s (but there was some -
remember that they had jukeboxes that were the day's equivalent of
multi-disk CD players) records that were cut as 45's were cut with
signal-to-noise ratio a priority over extended dynamics, and there was
a lot of (to put it politiely) tape compression used in the original
recordings - not as hard clipping as you get with digital mastering
for maximum energy, but lots of stuff staying at the tape saturation
level for many hundreds of consecutive cycles.

> I really should have returned the set but there had been some
> interval from buying to listening. But actually, that's an idea: everyone
> should just take this crap back and demand a refund. They are defective and
> unlistenable.

Most record stores will take back a truly defective CD and replace it
with another copy of the same CD, but that won't help. The thing to do
is to stop buying altogether. Let them prove that they can make
records you enjoy listening to before you buy another one. But human
nature doesn't support that.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?

Only aesthetically. Since normalizing doesn't do anything but increase
the level so that the highest peak reaches full scale, it doesn't
change the shape of the waveform. Since it raises the noise floor as
much as it raises the signal it makes noise more apparent if the s/n
ratio isn't very good to begin with. However, with people tracking and
mixing so that the meters always hit zero somewhere in the song ("so I
won't lose resolution") more often than not, normalizing does nothing.

There are, however, certain programs that, when you select Normalize,
actually do something else, essentially a loudness maximizing process
that doesn't just find one peak and move everything up to the level
required to bring it up to full scale. What happens is that some (preset)
compression is applied first to raise the average level of the file,
then it's normalized to full scale. Some programs let you select this
mode as an option, others (I'm told - I can't name names) just do it
on the assumption that this is what you want to do.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> A lot of digital converters have very poor linearity - in other words they
> have very high levels of distortion at low signal levels.

That'a pretty bold statement in 2004. If you were talking 1984, it
would be true, but it's the rare converter today that isn't adequately
linear over the dynamic range of an LP.

Get in step with the times. The technology is no longer a limiting
factor in making good recordings. It's the technique that's lacking
much of the time.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <znr1078662914k@trad>, Mike Rivers > wrote:
>
>Get in step with the times. The technology is no longer a limiting
>factor in making good recordings. It's the technique that's lacking
>much of the time.

It is true that the technology today is better than it ever was, and the
average studio technique is worse than it's ever been.

But, if you like the sound of vinyl, then release on vinyl. There are
still plenty of folks cutting vinyl, and it sounds good. If you are
doing non-hip-hop stuff, send me some tapes and I'll ship you out some
lacquers.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Rob Adelman]

Geoff Wood wrote:

>
> Frequency response, dynamic range, noise, distortion, phase response. Um -
> is there anything else ?


Yes! The problem is it just hasn't yet been identified.

[Jim Kollens]

Mike Rivers: >In article >

>writes:
>
>> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital meter to
>> discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!
>
>> A while back I picked up a big set of '50's stuff that
>> had been completely destroyed by some mastering house. I couldn't listen
>to
>> any CD all the way through.
>
>That may not have been a result of the CD mastering. While there
>wasn't the push for maximum loudness in the '50s (but there was some -
>remember that they had jukeboxes that were the day's equivalent of
>multi-disk CD players) records that were cut as 45's were cut with
>signal-to-noise ratio a priority over extended dynamics, and there was
>a lot of (to put it politiely) tape compression used in the original
>recordings - not as hard clipping as you get with digital mastering
>for maximum energy, but lots of stuff staying at the tape saturation
>level for many hundreds of consecutive cycles.

In this case, I believe it was the recent mastering. Why? Because the meter
levels were just a fraction below 0 ALL THE TIME!!! I have seen this quite a
bit, but usually coming from home studios who have normalized their CD. When I
say there was no dynamic range at all, I really mean it. This CD was literally
pegged at the top - all the time, with no let up, even on ballads!

>Most record stores will take back a truly defective CD and replace it
>with another copy of the same CD, but that won't help. The thing to do
>is to stop buying altogether. Let them prove that they can make
>records you enjoy listening to before you buy another one. But human
>nature doesn't support that.

It's very complicated, actually, because I believe the compression/limiting
problem is related to musical problems that are causing the release of bad
albums, but that is another subject. Or is it?

[THERMIONIC]

Going on a tangent slightly, but one issue to be aware of in modern vinyl-cutting is that (to my knowledge) there are only a "handful" of cutting-suites able to cut an "all analogue master".

The vast majority of cutting-facilities I visit tend to use something along the lines of a 480L / 960L / TC 5/6000 to create a delay, so the head receives the direct feed from the source, but the actual signal cut to laqcuer / dmm comes through a digi-delay.

For pressings made in the last 10yrs or so one would have to suggest that any debate of their merits would be made somewhat "blurred" with regards to what is an "analogue artefact" and what is a "digital artefact" on account of potential digital colouration introduced by the delay.

Out of interest, is anyone around here able to cut vinyl with an all-analogue chain? What is the name of the Neumann tape delay attachment you need? Are they rare nowadays, or have modern facilities just mothballed them due to reduced demand?

Cheers,
Justin




----------
Sent via SPRACI - http://www.spraci.net/ - Parties,Raves,Clubs,Festivals

[WideGlide]

<<... Do not forget to buy a copy of the RAP LP for ten dollars so I can get
them out of my living room. --scott >>
--------------------

Absolutely! Scott, where can I find the details as to where to send
payment, shipping cost, etc? I will order one right away. Thanks for all
the info! wg

[Romeo Rondeau]

"Arny Krueger" > wrote in message
...
> "Romeo Rondeau" > wrote in
> message
> >> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital
> >> meter to discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!
> >> I also find it amusing and sad to hear CD's created at homes where
> >> they have ruined the music by normalizing the CD.
> >
> > How would normalizing the CD ruin anything?
>
> In an artistic sense, not technically.
>
> The idea is that the entire CD tells a story composed of a sequence of
> songs. Songs have a natural loudness where they sound best. It's not the
> same for every song.

In the old days (of digital! <g>) we would sequence the whole CD, get the
levels right, then normalize the entire thing, so that the loudest peak of
the entire album was at 0dB. It don't hurt a thing! Now if you normalized
each song individually, I could see the problem.

[Romeo Rondeau]

> CD , on the other hand, is "only" 20 years old, already obsolete, has to
> compete with vinyl, and now has to sit there while the new boys in town,
> DVD-A and SACD, trounces its glory. CD hasn't had too much time to
> itself. Of course there are great examples of CD, like JVCs XRCD. To me,
> that is the best of what CD has to offer. But watch out, as XRCD also
> depends its source. I've had good XRCDs and bad XRCDs, but i knew the
> bad ones were at fault due to the master tapes they were made from.

Vinyl does not compete with CD. Vinyl is dead, period. Even though there are
some new formats out there, CD is king.

>
> Because of the above mentioned, the best of vinyl is more often compared
> with the so-so of CD.

It's only done by engineer or audiophile types, the vast majority of the
music-buying public has never owned a turntable.

[Rob Adelman]

Romeo Rondeau wrote:

> Vinyl does not compete with CD. Vinyl is dead, period. Even though there are
> some new formats out there, CD is king.

Vinyl is dead, period?

<http://tinyurl.com/2rhfl>

This is just one store. 840 pages of brand new vinyl releases.

[Troy]

WideGlide wrote:

> A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to
> have more width etc than a CD is because information is
> LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k digital domain of the CD.
> He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and
> feel that the CD has greater frequency response than vinyl.

One thing I have to say about this is......When I fist got a CD player (way
back when) one of the first CDs I bought was Led Zepplin 4....an album I was
VERY comfortable with as I listened to it all the time.When I had a couple
of listens to it all the way through I noticed that there were little things
I never heard / noticed on the LP that stood right out on the CD.This really
impressed me and sold me on CDs,but as I said......as long as the music is
good,I don't care what the play back format is.After all "it's only rock n
roll and I like it"

[Geoff Wood]

Arny Krueger wrote:
> "Romeo Rondeau" > wrote in
> message
>>> It is quite entertaining to play current CD's through a digital
>>> meter to discover that there is literally NO dynamic range at all!
>>> I also find it amusing and sad to hear CD's created at homes where
>>> they have ruined the music by normalizing the CD.
>>
>> How would normalizing the CD ruin anything?
>
> In an artistic sense, not technically.
>
> The idea is that the entire CD tells a story composed of a sequence of
> songs. Songs have a natural loudness where they sound best. It's not
> the same for every song.

That was not the question. The question was whether the process of
normalisation messes things up. Nothing to do with the mis-use of
normalisation in an flawed mastering paradigm.

And nothing to do with mis-named 'normalisation' tools that include
cpmression.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Jim Kollens wrote:

> In this case, I believe it was the recent mastering. Why? Because
> the meter levels were just a fraction below 0 ALL THE TIME!!! I have
> seen this quite a bit, but usually coming from home studios who have
> normalized their CD. When I say there was no dynamic range at all, I
> really mean it. This CD was literally pegged at the top - all the
> time, with no let up, even on ballads!

Nothing to do with normalisation. Or home sudios - take a look at the
envelopes of almost all opop or rock these days.

geoff

[Jim Kollens]

Geoff: << Nothing to do with normalisation. Or home sudios - take a look at
the
envelopes of almost all opop or rock these days. >>

Maybe that's why I find it so amazing; I listen to and record virtually
nothing but jazz and this stuff is not common in my world.

[David Perrault]

On 6 Mar 2004 23:09:44 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>I can't understand how anyone can listen to the CD issue of
>Hotel California without earplugs.

How about the MilesDavis/Gil Evans Complete Columbia Studio Recordings
boxed set?

Yikes! What were they listening on!!!




DP

[Zoot]

"Geoff Wood" -nospam> wrote in message >...
> DaveDrummer wrote:
> > Vinyl, given the right player and record, can sound very good. of
> > course, needles, scratches, dust, speakers etc all determine this
> > sound. But the truth is, technically speaking vinyl is of MUCH higher
> > fidelity than any digitial format.
>
> In which technical aspect ?
>
> Frequency response, dynamic range, noise, distortion, phase response. Um -
> is there anything else ?
>
>
> geoff

uh huh. sample rate. the difference between music that is made from
samples and music that flows continuously like a stream. however if
the sample rate is high enough you will need something
better than the human ear to tell the difference. c ds have a slow
enough rate that there are some people that can tell. for me musical
content matters so much more.

[Arny Krueger]

"Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message

> Arny Krueger > wrote:
>> "WideGlide" > wrote in message
>> t
>>
>>> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
>>> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
>>> imaging be retained?
>>
>> Nobody knowledgeable who wants the best results does things this
>> way. Vinyl transcription done right involves doing things that can't
>> be done on most if not all CD recorders. It takes a PC or a DAW to
>> do a SOTA or even credible job of transcribing vinyl.

> Why?

No CDR seems to have the necessary processing power - editing, equalization,
speed adjustment, declicking, denoising - that are commonly done while
transcribing a LP. Every CDR I've ever seen has a volume control and that's
about it. As I read the statement "record music from a vinyl record album
directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter", it does not allow for
the use of any signal processors other than a preamp.

> And who mentioned a CD recorder anyway?

Isn't the use of a CDR implied by the phrase "record music from a vinyl
record album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter"?

[Arny Krueger]

"Fill X" > wrote in message



> 2) both CD's and vinyl have distortion. Vinyl has a lot more of it,
> measurably, but it's also a different kind. Many people find this
> euphonic and mistake it for "room" just like they mistake the phase
> channel anomalies for a wider soundstage. The trick here I think, is
> while these things may be considered "flaws" in vinyl, like anything,
> if they sound good, they are assets.

Digital media has zero distortion, both in theory and practice. Any
distortion that might find at the analog output terminals of your CD player
is not due to the CD media, but rather is due to processing steps that
precede or follow the mastering, pressing, and playback of the media. This
contrasts with the LP, where distortion is added during mastering, pressing
and playback.

> 4) one of the reasons CD's have a bad rap is that the early ones
> weren't over compressed but they were transferred by people who often
> didn't give a damn and with a generation of a/d conversion which has
> been much improved.

Agreed, and with a bullet!

> Now we have better stuff and people just butcher
> CD's with multi band compression.

It's a real shame, isn't it?

> 5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital
> is perfect, because they do have to implement it.

Neither analog tape nor vinyl have ever to be without sonic coloration, but
it is quite possible for an implemented digital system to be sonically
transparent. IOW there are a number of ADCs and DACs that will pass a
straight-wire bypass test when put back-to-back.

> This is as annoying
> to me as vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have
> been told you can get 22K half-speed).

You can brick wall filter wide-band audio starting at about 16 KHz without
any sonic effects. The idea of this gives lots of people headaches, but if
you do the actual experiment yourself, that's what happens.

Furthermore, while vinyl can be tricked up with half-speed mastering and
other technology to have response beyond 22 KHz, this is not full-power
response. Amplitudes have to be cut back dramatically. Vinyl isn't capable
of full-power response above something like 10 KHz. Digital is capable
full-power response right up to the Nyquist frequency - which is about 22
KHz for the CD format.

[Arny Krueger]

"Tim Padrick" > wrote in message


> A lot of digital converters have very poor linearity - in other words
> they have very high levels of distortion at low signal levels.

Any properly-designed digital system has dither, and a properly-dithered
digital system has zero nonlinear distortion.

> So all the low level "finesse" parts of the signal get wrecked.

Any properly-designed digital system has dither, and a properly-dithered
digital system has zero distortion at any level, high or low. The distortion
we find in digital systems occurs in the analog domain. In fact high quality
ADCs and DACs are among the most linear of all audio components.

> Timing errors also cause problems - system does not have to "know" only
> whether it's supposed to be a one or a zero, it has to know exactly
> when it's a one or a zero. http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/papers/bits.pdf
> http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/papers/jitter.pdf

If jitter bothers you, you best stay way clear of vinyl. Jitter is just FM
distortion, and the FM distortion in vinyl is very large compared to that of
digital. You might want to get out the back of an envelope and figure out
how many picoseconds of jitter is equivalent to 0.1% flutter and wow on a 3
KHz test signal.

The period of a 3 Khz tone is 330 micorseconds, and 0.1% of that is 330
nanoseconds which is the same as 330,000 seconds. So, a SOTA analog playback
system can easily have 50,000 to 330,000 picoseconds of jitter. In contrast
a really bad CD playback system might have 5,000 picoseconds of jitter while
a good one might have as little as 40 picoseconds of jitter.

[Ben Bradley]

In rec.audio.pro, "WideGlide" > wrote:

><<... Do not forget to buy a copy of the RAP LP for ten dollars so I can get
>them out of my living room. --scott >>
>--------------------
>
>Absolutely! Scott, where can I find the details as to where to send
>payment, shipping cost, etc? I will order one right away. Thanks for all
>the info! wg

http://www.recaudiopro.net
Click on (ironically) "RAP CD's", set four, and scroll to the bottom.

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

[xy]

just a quick jump in,

when you cut deep bass on a record, you need wide, deep grooves.

that's why dj dance records cut to 10" and a single song will "waste"
an entire side.

trying to fit 25 minutes of music on a typical 33 1/3rpm vinyl means
less bass. its a fact. you simply can't get that many songs on a
side if you want deep bass.

so classical dudes can have their world of vinyl and listen to string
quartets and form their own opinions. but if you want deep bass,
vinyl has its drawbacks.

i personally think vinyl is cool, but keepin' it real too...

[Tommi]

"Zoot" > wrote in message
om...
> uh huh. sample rate. the difference between music that is made from
> samples and music that flows continuously like a stream. however if
> the sample rate is high enough you will need something
> better than the human ear to tell the difference. c ds have a slow
> enough rate that there are some people that can tell. for me musical
> content matters so much more.


Oh no.
This is 100% wrong and is a common misconception, I know because I've been
wrong myself.

Read the basics of sampling, about Nyquist.

[Chris Johnson]

In article <OYJ2c.735939$ts4.504223@pd7tw3no>,
"Troy" > wrote:
> One thing I have to say about this is......When I fist got a CD player (way
> back when) one of the first CDs I bought was Led Zepplin 4....an album I was
> VERY comfortable with as I listened to it all the time.When I had a couple
> of listens to it all the way through I noticed that there were little things
> I never heard / noticed on the LP that stood right out on the CD.This really
> impressed me and sold me on CDs,but as I said......as long as the music is
> good,I don't care what the play back format is.After all "it's only rock n
> roll and I like it"

I can do that with obnoxious multiband compression ;)

Actually, I can do that with obnoxious multiband noise gating
as well- or 'all of the above' with mad treble boosting.

It's not a matter of whether you can hear the singer's nose
hairs rustling. It's whether the music WANTS you to hear the
singer's nose hairs rustling. Very possibly not...

Regarding RIAA equalization, this is why vinyl noise floor is
so frequency-dependent- it's mostly rumble, and up around 10-20K
vinyl noise is damn quiet, as it is equalized to be so. If you
didn't have the RIAA equalization the groove noise would be a lot
more annoying.

Regarding the transient compression of vinyl and vinyl
mastering, this is indeed a euphonic trick. It makes mixes 'gel'
more, and hang together more, which can be desirable in some cases.
In digital you have to actively choose to do that, or you get a
default brittle and fragmented sound that is rather crystalline, the
result of the process having mathematical clarity. Not even the AIR
has mathematical clarity, it's nonlinear a tiny amount (more when
under stress like in the throats of horns)

I only got sold on CDs when I figured out how to fix the parts
I didn't like. Now I have to watch out so I don't take mastering
jobs and 'over-soften' the hard brittle digitalness ;) I really
don't like stuff that doesn't vibe. I really don't like sound that's
cold and sterile- some people hate 'mud' but it's HARD to get the
RIGHT kind of mud into digital. Even if you start with exactly the
right source you still gotta pay attention to your wordlengths and
do a decent job reducing to 16 bit if you want to really nail it.

I refer the mud-curious to the Atco vinyl original release of
Dr. John's "Gris-gris" ;) try 'Jump Sturdy'. That is one
swampy-sounding record...

...and I could nail it, on 16 bit CD, or get some other source
materials to sound like that. But I would of course have to distort
the hell out of other sources to do it- and would have to be careful
with a transfer of the already-swampy vinyl to maintain it.

Chris Johnson

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 23:36:19 +0200, "Tommi" >
wrote:

>
>"Zoot" > wrote in message
om...
>> uh huh. sample rate. the difference between music that is made from
>> samples and music that flows continuously like a stream.

>Oh no.
>This is 100% wrong and is a common misconception, I know because I've been
>wrong myself.

*Everybody* gets this wrong at first, because the facts are
not intuitive. Well worth a little exploration though.

>Read the basics of sampling, about Nyquist.

And about quantization. Together they'll give a very
powerful insight into the natural world, into our technical
world, and into information in general.

Even into the topic at hand!

Chris Hornbeck

"Second star to the right,
Then straight on 'til morning."

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >, THERMIONIC <> wrote:
>Going on a tangent slightly, but one issue to be aware of in modern vinyl-cutting is that (to my knowledge) there are only a "handful" of cutting-suites able to cut an "all analogue master".

There are plenty of them that can do that if you want to cut constant pitch.
If you want margin control, it's true that most of the guys today make you
go with a digital delay line. This is unfortunate, but you have to realize
that most of the stuff currently released on vinyl came into the mastering
room on DAT or CD-R anyway.

>The vast majority of cutting-facilities I visit tend to use something along the lines of a 480L / 960L / TC 5/6000 to create a delay, so the head receives the direct feed from the source, but the actual signal cut to laqcuer / dmm comes through a digi-delay.
>
>For pressings made in the last 10yrs or so one would have to suggest that any debate of their merits would be made somewhat "blurred" with regards to what is an "analogue artefact" and what is a "digital artefact" on account of potential digital colouration introduced by the delay.

Most pressings in the last ten years have been dance music. There is a pretty
strong break between the folks cutting dance music vs. the people doing
audiophile work.

>Out of interest, is anyone around here able to cut vinyl with an all-analogue chain? What is the name of the Neumann tape delay attachment you need? Are they rare nowadays, or have modern facilities just mothballed them due to reduced demand?

I can, without any problem. I have a Fairchild tape machine with the loop
delay. I think that Don at Europadisc can sort of do it; he has an MCI
tape machine with the delay loop, but he has only the digital console so
you won't be able to do any processing. But the guys who deal with the
audophile market like Stan Ricker all have no problem doing old-style
margin control.

Oh yes, and Charlie Kittleson at Kinura Records is still cutting variable
pitch records by the seat of his pants with no margin control system at
all and no delay. He's been doing it for the past sixty years so he's
sort of used to it. I don't have that kind of skill at all.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

WideGlide > wrote:
><<... Do not forget to buy a copy of the RAP LP for ten dollars so I can get
>them out of my living room. --scott >>
>
>Absolutely! Scott, where can I find the details as to where to send
>payment, shipping cost, etc? I will order one right away. Thanks for all
>the info! wg

Send your ten dollars and a label with your return address on it to

Scott Dorsey
BOX 1229
Williamsburg, VA. 23187

Melissa is asking me if I am pushing RAP LPs again, and the answer is yes.
It's got everything from Debussy to some kind of weird noise rock, and it
has a cut that won't play on a Stanton 681 without mistracking. We do not
want to move these discs! We don't want to keep tripping over them! We
want you to buy them.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Arny Krueger > wrote:
>"Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message

>> Arny Krueger > wrote:
>>> "WideGlide" > wrote in message
>>> t
>>>
>>>> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
>>>> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will the
>>>> imaging be retained?
>>>
>>> Nobody knowledgeable who wants the best results does things this
>>> way. Vinyl transcription done right involves doing things that can't
>>> be done on most if not all CD recorders. It takes a PC or a DAW to
>>> do a SOTA or even credible job of transcribing vinyl.
>
>> Why?
>
>No CDR seems to have the necessary processing power - editing, equalization,
>speed adjustment, declicking, denoising - that are commonly done while
>transcribing a LP. Every CDR I've ever seen has a volume control and that's
>about it. As I read the statement "record music from a vinyl record album
>directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter", it does not allow for
>the use of any signal processors other than a preamp.

Why would I want to do ANY of that stuff?

I play back vinyl, and it sounds good all by itself. If I do a transcription,
I want it to sound the same way.

>> And who mentioned a CD recorder anyway?
>
>Isn't the use of a CDR implied by the phrase "record music from a vinyl
>record album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter"?

No. I would hope anyone using a workstation would use a good stereo
A/D converter as well.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[El Evans MMDeuce]

Elvis is dead, Marilyn is dead, John's- Lennon, Cash, Kennedy-are
dead, because they were people, and people are animals, and animals
are living things, and living things die. Vinyl is an inert material
made from a substance all too common-oil-and therefore cannot die. So
to say "vinyl is dead" is a stupid statement.

Making phonograph records of PVC is a technology, a process, an
activity, and as long as there people who want it and oil to make it
from, vinyl will continue to be made.

The majority of "music buyers" may never have owned a record player,
because the average buyer is a fourteen year old female and when she
was born records were already rapidly disappearing from Wal-Marts.
However, if you are reading this, you are probably between 25 and 55,
are probably male, and own no nSync, Britney Spears or Hilary Duff CDs
anyway, and your target market is going to be people whose music
buying started when CDs didn't exist or were brand new. Therefore,
unless they relied on cassettes or 8-tracks, they had a record player.

Odds are pretty strong they still do, and that it's a better one than
they had twenty years ago. Good turntables are still in production.
Look at any high-end stereo magazine.

You can't average batting averages. Vinyl is still a viable
technology in certain markets, provided you are not going after
14-year-olds or their soccer moms.

[Rob Adelman]

Rob Adelman wrote:

> This is just one store. 840 pages of brand new vinyl releases.


Oops, my mistake. 42 pages. 840 selections.

[Troy]

Maybe you can do that with obnoxious multiban compression as well as
obnoxious multiband noise gating
The point is that a CD has a wider range......and the average listener
doesen't care about or even know what compression is.

The point I was making is that I could here things on the CD that were ment
to be heard but were very muddy on the LP.I'm not talking about nose hairs
rustling either.I am talking about clarity in the vocals and in the music
that really stood out over the LP.





Chris Johnson > wrote in message
m...
> In article <OYJ2c.735939$ts4.504223@pd7tw3no>,
> "Troy" > wrote:
> > One thing I have to say about this is......When I fist got a CD player
(way
> > back when) one of the first CDs I bought was Led Zepplin 4....an album I
was
> > VERY comfortable with as I listened to it all the time.When I had a
couple
> > of listens to it all the way through I noticed that there were little
things
> > I never heard / noticed on the LP that stood right out on the CD.This
really
> > impressed me and sold me on CDs,but as I said......as long as the music
is
> > good,I don't care what the play back format is.After all "it's only rock
n
> > roll and I like it"
>
> I can do that with obnoxious multiband compression ;)
>
> Actually, I can do that with obnoxious multiband noise gating
> as well- or 'all of the above' with mad treble boosting.
>
> It's not a matter of whether you can hear the singer's nose
> hairs rustling. It's whether the music WANTS you to hear the
> singer's nose hairs rustling. Very possibly not...
>
> Regarding RIAA equalization, this is why vinyl noise floor is
> so frequency-dependent- it's mostly rumble, and up around 10-20K
> vinyl noise is damn quiet, as it is equalized to be so. If you
> didn't have the RIAA equalization the groove noise would be a lot
> more annoying.
>
> Regarding the transient compression of vinyl and vinyl
> mastering, this is indeed a euphonic trick. It makes mixes 'gel'
> more, and hang together more, which can be desirable in some cases.
> In digital you have to actively choose to do that, or you get a
> default brittle and fragmented sound that is rather crystalline, the
> result of the process having mathematical clarity. Not even the AIR
> has mathematical clarity, it's nonlinear a tiny amount (more when
> under stress like in the throats of horns)
>
> I only got sold on CDs when I figured out how to fix the parts
> I didn't like. Now I have to watch out so I don't take mastering
> jobs and 'over-soften' the hard brittle digitalness ;) I really
> don't like stuff that doesn't vibe. I really don't like sound that's
> cold and sterile- some people hate 'mud' but it's HARD to get the
> RIGHT kind of mud into digital. Even if you start with exactly the
> right source you still gotta pay attention to your wordlengths and
> do a decent job reducing to 16 bit if you want to really nail it.
>
> I refer the mud-curious to the Atco vinyl original release of
> Dr. John's "Gris-gris" ;) try 'Jump Sturdy'. That is one
> swampy-sounding record...
>
> ...and I could nail it, on 16 bit CD, or get some other source
> materials to sound like that. But I would of course have to distort
> the hell out of other sources to do it- and would have to be careful
> with a transfer of the already-swampy vinyl to maintain it.
>
> Chris Johnson

[Kalman Rubinson]

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 18:19:06 -0600, Rob Adelman
> wrote:

>
>
>Rob Adelman wrote:
>
>> This is just one store. 840 pages of brand new vinyl releases.
>
>
>Oops, my mistake. 42 pages. 840 selections.

Brand new? The vast majority seemed to be reissues. Or did you mean
that the vinyl itself was brand new?

Kal

[Bob Cain]

Johnston West wrote:

> (Jim Kollens) wrote in message
>
>
>>....where they have ruined the music
>>by normalizing the CD. >
>
>
> Does normalizing really ruin a CD in mastering?

Not necessasarily. The main problem is that it is
normalized so that the largest _sample_ is at 0 dB rather
than the largest peak. Reconstruction of an analog waveform
from its samples, as is done by a DAC, can produce peaks
that are much larger than the largest sample. This could be
handled by a normalize process that was more sophisticated
in creating a higher resolution reconstruction before
deciding how much to increase the amplitude but I don't know
of one.

If you really care about that, you could always upsample by
a factor of ten or so with a good resampling plugin to
determine the real maximum gain that would keep the
reconstruction at or below 0 dB.

I've never found a good answer on how much headroom a DAC
has with respect to reconstruction overs.

As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:

...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...

(with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
.... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
is pretty darn big. In real life music +6 dB seems to be
pretty safe.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Rob Adelman]

Kalman Rubinson wrote:

> Brand new? The vast majority seemed to be reissues. Or did you mean
> that the vinyl itself was brand new?


Sorry, I meant current releases or re-releases. Recent pressings.

[Scott Dorsey]

Kalman Rubinson > wrote:
>On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 18:19:06 -0600, Rob Adelman
> wrote:
>>Rob Adelman wrote:
>>
>>> This is just one store. 840 pages of brand new vinyl releases.
>>
>>Oops, my mistake. 42 pages. 840 selections.
>
>Brand new? The vast majority seemed to be reissues. Or did you mean
>that the vinyl itself was brand new?

Probably five or ten percent regrind...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Kalman Rubinson]

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 20:08:19 -0600, Rob Adelman
> wrote:

>
>
>Kalman Rubinson wrote:
>
>> Brand new? The vast majority seemed to be reissues. Or did you mean
>> that the vinyl itself was brand new?
>
>
>Sorry, I meant current releases or re-releases. Recent pressings.

Sigh. I know.

Kal

[Fill X]

>
>Vinyl does not compete with CD. Vinyl is dead, period. Even though there are
>some new formats out there, CD is king.

so much for your hyperbole, now...

>It's only done by engineer or audiophile types, the vast majority of the
>music-buying public has never owned a turntable.

well, a lot of older people buy cd's, it's whole demographic. But is there a
use to your assertion? A lot of people don't read Auden or Kant either but does
that mean they are less valuable than people who are more widely read?


P h i l i p

______________________________

"I'm too ****ing busy and vice-versa"

- Dorothy Parker

[Geoff Wood]

Zoot wrote:

> uh huh. sample rate. the difference between music that is made from
> samples and music that flows continuously like a stream. however if
> the sample rate is high enough you will need something
> better than the human ear to tell the difference. c ds have a slow
> enough rate that there are some people that can tell. for me musical
> content matters so much more.


But the samples come at you quicker than the stream flows. So many of those
who claim to hear this differnce fail to demonstrate their skill in
controlled conditions.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Arny Krueger wrote:
> "Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message
>
>> Arny Krueger > wrote:
>>> "WideGlide" > wrote in message
>>> t
>>>
>>>> Another related question... if you record music from a vinyl record
>>>> album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter, will
>>>> the imaging be retained?
>>>
>>> Nobody knowledgeable who wants the best results does things this
>>> way. Vinyl transcription done right involves doing things that can't
>>> be done on most if not all CD recorders. It takes a PC or a DAW to
>>> do a SOTA or even credible job of transcribing vinyl.
>
>> Why?
>
> No CDR seems to have the necessary processing power - editing,
> equalization, speed adjustment, declicking, denoising - that are
> commonly done while transcribing a LP. Every CDR I've ever seen has a
> volume control and that's about it. As I read the statement "record
> music from a vinyl record album directly to a CDR through a good
> stereo AD converter", it does not allow for the use of any signal
> processors other than a preamp.
>
>> And who mentioned a CD recorder anyway?
>
> Isn't the use of a CDR implied by the phrase "record music from a
> vinyl record album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD
> converter"?

[Geoff Wood]

Arny Krueger wrote:
>
>> And who mentioned a CD recorder anyway?
>
> Isn't the use of a CDR implied by the phrase "record music from a
> vinyl record album directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD
> converter"?

I think CDR meant CD-R - the medium - rather than a CD Recorder.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
> . This is unfortunate, but you have to
> realize that most of the stuff currently released on vinyl came into
> the mastering room on DAT or CD-R anyway.

Yes , but the vinyl adds the stuff that affecionados love - the distortion,
frequency limitations (low and high) , dynamic range limitations, noise,
euphonic microphonics, etc.

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

Bob Cain wrote:

> analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
> infinite value.

But this scenario implies that something else was broken in the recording
chain. Hardly the fault of normalisation.

geoff

[Rob Adelman]

Geoff Wood wrote:


> Yes , but the vinyl adds the stuff that affecionados love - the distortion,
> frequency limitations (low and high) , dynamic range limitations, noise,
> euphonic microphonics, etc.

I don't love any of that. Yet I am a big vinyl fan.

[Bob Cain]

Geoff Wood wrote:

> Bob Cain wrote:
>
>
>>analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
>>infinite value.
>
>
> But this scenario implies that something else was broken in the recording
> chain. Hardly the fault of normalisation.

That example was just to illustrate the effect with the most
pathological possible case (which I found as far as I know
although it took someone else, RBJ I think, to show that the
peak was infinite.)

The effect of reconstruction overs is nonetheless a
legitimate consideration in normalization. The usual
normalization function will normalize to the largest sample
rather than to the real peak and to have the real peak
correspond to the max sample would in fact be a rarity.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

anthony.gosnell wrote:

> "David Perrault" > wrote
>
>>>,,,,, He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
>>>than CD due to its "infinite resolution". I disagree and feel that the
>
> CD
>
>>>has greater frequency response than vinyl.,,,,
>>
>>I think frequency response is less relevant than over-all fidelity.
>>Whatever that is!!!
>>
>>I've never kept notes but the following seems to be pretty consistent.
>>
>>When I've played a CD loud, at some point someone asks to turn it
>>down.
>>
>>When I play vinyl in a similar setting someone invariably asks to turn
>>it up.
>
>
> This is because of dynamic range. The CD's have probably had all the
> dynamic range squashed out of them.

Well, compression was not unknown with vinyl since it is one
of the best ways to beat its fairly poor SNR.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

> Fill X > wrote:
>
>>5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital is
>>perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is as annoying to me as
>>vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have been told you can get
>>22K half-speed).
>
>
> The systems used to cut CD-4 quad LPs had a response flat up to around 40 KHz,
> which was required in order to get the ultrasonic subcarrier on the disc.

The what? I dunno nuthin about this, care to fill me in?


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[TonyP]

"WideGlide" > wrote in message
t...
> A friend of mine insists that the reason vinyl seems to have more width
etc
> than a CD is because information is LOST in the "poor" 16-bit, 44.1k
digital
> domain of the CD.

Here we go again.

>He feels that the vinyl has a greater frequency response
> than CD due to its "infinite resolution".

No such thing as infinite resolution, but CD does have far more than vinyl.

> My friend feels he can hear "more"
> information on the vinyl,

Of course he can, vinyl has *FAR* more noise and distortion than CD.

>and that the vinyl is more accurate than the cd.

He has compared the original musicians playing in the studio to the vinyl
and CD playback to be able to make this comparison?
What he *PREFERS* has nothing to do with accuracy.

<snip more proof of ill-informed opinion>

TonyP.

[Bob Cain]

Fill X wrote:

> A lot of people don't read Auden or Kant either but does
> that mean they are less valuable than people who are more widely read?
>

Yes. :-)


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Romeo Rondeau]

> >Vinyl does not compete with CD. Vinyl is dead, period. Even though there
are
> >some new formats out there, CD is king.
>
> so much for your hyperbole, now...

I'm not sure why you said this. Vinyl is dead, CD is king. Am I stretching
the truth?

>
> >It's only done by engineer or audiophile types, the vast majority of the
> >music-buying public has never owned a turntable.
>
> well, a lot of older people buy cd's, it's whole demographic. But is there
a
> use to your assertion? A lot of people don't read Auden or Kant either but
does
> that mean they are less valuable than people who are more widely read?

Let's not get emotional about it. This is business. CD's outsell everything
else by huge margins. BTW, yes these people are less valueable. They sell
less books, therefore they are less valueable.

[Geoff Wood]

Romeo Rondeau wrote:

> Let's not get emotional about it. This is business. CD's outsell
> everything else by huge margins. BTW, yes these people are less
> valueable. They sell less books, therefore they are less valueable.

Red-heads are by far the minority of hair-colour people. But this does not
mean that gingers are all dead.


geoff

[Paul Stamler]

Scott Dorsey > wrote in message
...

> >No CDR seems to have the necessary processing power - editing,
equalization,
> >speed adjustment, declicking, denoising - that are commonly done while
> >transcribing a LP. Every CDR I've ever seen has a volume control and
that's
> >about it. As I read the statement "record music from a vinyl record
album
> >directly to a CDR through a good stereo AD converter", it does not allow
for
> >the use of any signal processors other than a preamp.
>
> Why would I want to do ANY of that stuff?
>
> I play back vinyl, and it sounds good all by itself. If I do a
transcription,
> I want it to sound the same way.

Why I want to do some of that stuff is that I play back vinyl that *doesn't*
sound good all by itself. It's scratchy, mostly, and I want to get the
scratches out. Or it has rumble in it, not from the playback turntable, but
present in the record. Or it was mastered by some idiot who made it
screechy. I spend time on these imperfect records because they have music on
them I want to listen to, and play over the radio. So I declick and
sometimes filter and EQ, in the DAW.

Peace,
Paul

[Paul Stamler]

El Evans MMDeuce > wrote in message

> Elvis is dead, Marilyn is dead, John's- Lennon, Cash, Kennedy-are
> dead, because they were people, and people are animals, and animals
> are living things, and living things die. Vinyl is an inert material
> made from a substance all too common-oil-and therefore cannot die.

Actually it can, or at least can become geriatric. The plasticizers in vinyl
eventually outgas, and the vinyl becomes brittle. Audiophiles hear this,
sometimes, as better detail in those old Mercury Living Presence records. I
usually hear it as brittleness, and the sound of the stylus smashing the
no-longer-plastic plastic.

Peace,
Paul

[Peter Larsen]

WideGlide wrote:

> searching for the manuals. Scott, is there a specific cartridge
> you'd recommend for this unit?

Other people will have different local brands to recommend, the Ortofon
X5MC high output MC is quite tolerant with tone arms and it is the local
brand ovcer here and I very much want them to stay alive to have them
around when I need a new one.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

[Romeo Rondeau]

"Geoff Wood" -nospam> wrote in message
...
> Romeo Rondeau wrote:
>
> > Let's not get emotional about it. This is business. CD's outsell
> > everything else by huge margins. BTW, yes these people are less
> > valueable. They sell less books, therefore they are less valueable.
>
> Red-heads are by far the minority of hair-colour people. But this does
not
> mean that gingers are all dead.

Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead? This conversation is stupid.

[Arny Krueger]

"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message

> Geoff Wood wrote:
>
>
>> Yes , but the vinyl adds the stuff that affecionados love - the
>> distortion, frequency limitations (low and high) , dynamic range
>> limitations, noise, euphonic microphonics, etc.
>
> I don't love any of that. Yet I am a big vinyl fan.

That's like saying that you like to eat Sno Cones, but don't like things
that are cold or sweet.

[Arny Krueger]

"Bob Cain" > wrote in message

>
> Well, compression was not unknown with vinyl since it is one
> of the best ways to beat its fairly poor SNR.

Agreed, but the compression on most legacy LPs was moderate and often it was
nil or took the form of manual gain riding which is generally more tolerable
to listen to. I've seen numerous cases where the LP version of a given
musical work had more dynamic range than a modern CD version. Obviously, the
compression on the CD version was not demanded by CD digital technology.
But, it was there nevertheless, and it was audible.

[Arny Krueger]

"Bob Cain" > wrote in message

> Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> Fill X > wrote:
>>
>>> 5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory
>>> digital is perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is
>>> as annoying to me as vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K
>>> (though i have been told you can get 22K half-speed).
>>
>>
>> The systems used to cut CD-4 quad LPs had a response flat up to
>> around 40 KHz, which was required in order to get the ultrasonic
>> subcarrier on the disc.
>
> The what? I dunno nuthin about this, care to fill me in?

Oh, it is true as far as it goes.

However, the response wasn't flat in the same sense as it is up to 20 KHz
with CDs. It wandered around by quite a few dBs. And the dynamic range was
about nil. Cutting enough carrier to be recovered was one of the challenges.

Here's a relevant paper:

Further Improvements in Discrete Four-Channel Disc System CD-4
Author(s): Owaki, Isao; Muraoka, Teruo; Inoue, Toshiya
Publication: JAES Volume 20 Number 5 pp. 361·369; June 1972

Figure 4 on PDF page 3 shows Shibata stylus FR +/- 3 dB to 50 KHz, but the
elliptical stylus response was down about 15 dB from peak response at 50
KHz.. The noise floor of the system was as little as 45 dB down at 10 KHz,
and remember that SNR is the integral sum of the noise floor. Noise
reduction (compression-expansion) was part of the system.

Everybody who plays with these things will tell you that a few dozen plays
with even the best cartridges will attenuate the carrier enough to make the
disc non-useable for 4-channel.

[Scott Dorsey]

Geoff Wood -nospam> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> . This is unfortunate, but you have to
>> realize that most of the stuff currently released on vinyl came into
>> the mastering room on DAT or CD-R anyway.
>
>Yes , but the vinyl adds the stuff that affecionados love - the distortion,
>frequency limitations (low and high) , dynamic range limitations, noise,
>euphonic microphonics, etc.

No. Most of this stuff is dance stuff, where the folks playing it back
mostly want it on vinyl so they can manipulate it, not because of the
sound.

There _are_ folks who buy vinyl because of the sound, but that's a
totally different market.

It's interesting to see how the rise of the CD basically took the mainstream
out of the LP market, and left two fringes with no intersection between them
at all.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Bob Cain > wrote:
>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> Fill X > wrote:
>>
>>>5) I wish the digital camp would drop the idea that in theory digital is
>>>perfect, because they do have to implement it. This is as annoying to me as
>>>vinyl people who say vinyl goes up to 30K (though i have been told you can get
>>>22K half-speed).
>>
>> The systems used to cut CD-4 quad LPs had a response flat up to around 40 KHz,
>> which was required in order to get the ultrasonic subcarrier on the disc.
>
>The what? I dunno nuthin about this, care to fill me in?

Okay, there were three basic standards for quadrophonic sound on LPs back
in the seventies. There were two competing matrix formats, QS and SQ,
which were basically the predicessors to the current Dolby Stereo matrix
format. These could not offer four completely discrete channels any more
than Dolby Stereo can.

The only way to get discrete channels on an LP was using the CD-4 format,
which put an ultrasonic subcarrier on the disc that carried the surround
channel information. You could play the disc back on a normal stereo system
and you'd hear the front channels only (and also probably wipe whatever
ultrasonic stuff was on the disc off in the process too). You could play
it back on a turntable with a special CD-4 cartridge into a special CD-4
decoder, and have four discrete channels come out of the decoder.

Most of the discrete quad recordings were available originally on 4-track
1/4" open reel tapes for home use, but there were a limited number available
on CD-4 discs. Then the whole quad thing collapsed.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Peter Larsen > wrote:
>WideGlide wrote:
>
>> searching for the manuals. Scott, is there a specific cartridge
>> you'd recommend for this unit?
>
>Other people will have different local brands to recommend, the Ortofon
>X5MC high output MC is quite tolerant with tone arms and it is the local
>brand ovcer here and I very much want them to stay alive to have them
>around when I need a new one.

It is, and it's very dry sounding if you like that. But it still has
a very low output and a lot of MM preamps won't like it. Also, it does
not track worn records as well as the van den Hul styli do. But I have one
and I use it a lot.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Arny Krueger > wrote:
>"Bob Cain" > wrote in message

>>
>> Well, compression was not unknown with vinyl since it is one
>> of the best ways to beat its fairly poor SNR.
>
>Agreed, but the compression on most legacy LPs was moderate and often it was
>nil or took the form of manual gain riding which is generally more tolerable
>to listen to. I've seen numerous cases where the LP version of a given
>musical work had more dynamic range than a modern CD version. Obviously, the
>compression on the CD version was not demanded by CD digital technology.
>But, it was there nevertheless, and it was audible.

Depends a lot on the disc. I'd love to hear what some of the A&M releases
might sound like with less compression.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> I spend time on these imperfect records because they have music on
> them I want to listen to, and play over the radio. So I declick and
> sometimes filter and EQ, in the DAW.

Too bad you work for a cheap radio station and can't bill them for
your time. <g>




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Rob Adelman]

Romeo Rondeau wrote:

>
> Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead?


Vinyl is not dead. If so, why are they still making vinyl records and
selling them?

> This conversation is stupid.

?

[Les Cargill]

Rob Adelman wrote:
>
> Romeo Rondeau wrote:
>
> >
> > Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead?
>
> Vinyl is not dead. If so, why are they still making vinyl records and
> selling them?
>
> > This conversation is stupid.
>
> ?

It's retro.
--
Les Cargill

[Paul Gold]

David Perrault > wrote in message >...

> IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
> player, unless you are getting into high end players.
>
> Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
> to be true.


I think that a large portion of this is due to the high frequency
limiting that is all but required when mastering for vinyl. The louder
things get the less high frequencies there will be. This is
pleasurable and easy to listen to, but not accurate.

Paul Gold
www.vinylmastering.net
brooklynphono

[Paul Gold]

(THERMIONIC) wrote in message >...

> Out of interest, is anyone around here able to cut vinyl with an all-analogue chain? What is the name of the Neumann tape delay attachment you need? Are they rare nowadays, or have modern facilities just mothballed them due to reduced demand?


I have a Studer A80 preview deck. I just put a Neumann SP66 transfer
console into service. I can do analog transfers with variable pitch
and depth. The console has EQ and HPF/LPF for processing. I don't have
an A/B path set up so I can't have different settings set up for each
band. An A/B setup is the grand plan.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >,
Paul Gold > wrote:
>David Perrault > wrote in message >...
>
>> IMHO vinyl playback has a smootheness that is hard to find in a CD
>> player, unless you are getting into high end players.
>>
>> Not very scientific, but I'll bet you could test this out and find it
>> to be true.
>
>I think that a large portion of this is due to the high frequency
>limiting that is all but required when mastering for vinyl. The louder
>things get the less high frequencies there will be. This is
>pleasurable and easy to listen to, but not accurate.

That shouldn't be the case. The safety limiter is just there to keep you
from running the head out past maximum excursion. You shouldn't be hitting
it all the time. It might clip a peak or two now and then if you're cutting
something reasonbly hot, but it shouldn't be doing anything on a regular
basis.

If you can hear the limiting cutting in throughout, you're cutting too hot.
And if you pull the levels back, you'll find that it actually sounds louder
when the top end returns.

The cutting head has certain physical limitations, and if you're using
something ancient like I am, you don't get the kind of wide excursions that
the newer Neumann stuff will give you. But you can work around that.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Paul Gold]

(El Evans MMDeuce) wrote in message >...

> You can't average batting averages. Vinyl is still a viable
> technology in certain markets, provided you are not going after
> 14-year-olds or their soccer moms.


Umm. The vast majority of the vinyl buying public are DJ's on the
short end of 25. Most of the music released on vinyl is electronic,
hip hop, and indie rock.

Paul Gold
www.vinylmastering.net
brooklynphono

[Paul Stamler]

Mike Rivers > wrote in message
news:znr1078750260k@trad...
>
> In article >
writes:
>
> > I spend time on these imperfect records because they have music on
> > them I want to listen to, and play over the radio. So I declick and
> > sometimes filter and EQ, in the DAW.
>
> Too bad you work for a cheap radio station and can't bill them for
> your time. <g>

No ****.

Peace,
Paul

[Paul Stamler]

Scott Dorsey > wrote in message
...

> >Agreed, but the compression on most legacy LPs was moderate and often it
was
> >nil or took the form of manual gain riding which is generally more
tolerable
> >to listen to. I've seen numerous cases where the LP version of a given
> >musical work had more dynamic range than a modern CD version. Obviously,
the
> >compression on the CD version was not demanded by CD digital technology.
> >But, it was there nevertheless, and it was audible.
>
> Depends a lot on the disc. I'd love to hear what some of the A&M releases
> might sound like with less compression.

Back in the 70s, when Fairport Convention records were released on A&M in
the US and Island in the UK, we all were floored to hear how much dynamic
range the British pressings had, and how squashed the American ones were.

Peace,
Paul

[El Evans MMDeuce]

When you build the Federation Starship with cloaking, transporter
room, and the ability to go back in time, we'll just BEAM DOWN and
listen to the original mixdowns-it's only there the sound as intended
comes into existence-and set up our stuff when they're out and A/B/X
them. Until and unless-you're jacking off in public. It's impossible
enough unless you're really well connected to do this with modern
recordings-let alone, ones of crappic rock groups and FDS-era
ringer-dingers, the stuff of audiophile obsession today.

Trying to reproduce the true and real sonic experience, in toto,
makes a nice mantra but a lousy reality. Art is the selective
representation of reality and recording is, ultimately, an art.

Get a good room to set up in (elsewise, you as well may wear
headphones) FIRST, wire it properly, interface the speakers to the
room, and get the best electronics you can keeping in mind the
speaker/amp compatibility-big McIntosh amps and big Klipsch speakers
DO NOT go well together. For the type of listening I do, EQ is a must,
the full-time purist doesn't need it. Et al.

[Scott Duncan]

Let me start this off by stating I'm no pro, just a lurker interested in
this topic. I have done extensive comparisons between the two formats and I
thought it might be of some interest. I would also like to get some
insight, as to why I get the results I've gotten, because (technically) it
shouldn't be so!

Some history. Luckily, I never unloaded my LP's and inherited many from
friends and family. For years, I stored them, replacing the recordings with
CD's (remasters when available). So, I have many of the same recordings to
compare the two formats. All of these recordings were not exclusive to
older recordings. Some I have are post 1992 and were/are availble on both
cd and vinyl. The equipment may not be the greatest, but it is what I used
in the comparisons: Speakers-Klipsch Chorus II. Amp-QSC USA 900 (which beat
out a Audio Research D-70 re-tubed and biased). Pre-Amp-Yamaha DSP-A1.
Phono Pre-Amp-Rega Phono. Turntable-Rega P3 fitted with a Shure V15xMR.
Nitty Gritty RCM. CD Recorder/Player-Fostex CR 300. CD Player-Carver
S/DA-390. Reel-to-Reel-Pioneer RT-707. Cassette Deck-Aiwa
XK-S9000.SACD/DVD-Audio-Pioneer 563.

To try to match levels the best I could and for quick access, I would record
the vinyl onto cd then compare the manufactured cd (using the carver) to the
"vinyl" cd (in the fostex). I have them both hooked up digitally and use the
dac in the DSP-A1 then switch between the two sources. My brother was
included in these comparisons, eventhough I knew, he never knew which cd was
playing. In every instance, with the exception of two recordings, the vinyl
sounded better. The vinyl gave the impression of listening to the actual
band, while the cd sounded like a recording. The "vinyl" cd sounded more
natural and the instruments would decay better, especially percussion and
vocals.

I know some will think, as I did, that it is because I like the distortions
of the vinyl and that the cd can faithfully reproduce the lp. I chalked it
up to poor mastering, since most of the music I compared is rock. The real
revelation came when I recorded vinyl at 7.5 ips to the Pioneer (which has
not been aligned and also needs one of the pinch rollers replaced). The
reel tape (Sony) I used came with the Pioneer when I bought it from ebay. I
have no idea of the history of this tape, but it seemed to have lived it's
lifespan. Well, what I found. I recorded The Beatles-Hard Day's Night
(parlophone stereo pressing) onto cd and reel tape. On playback and
comparing, the reel trounced on the cd. The cd copy sounded unnatural,
compressed and void of life. This indicated, to me, that cd cannot
faithfully reproduce vinyl. Now, if I was to hear the "vinyl" cd without
the reel for comparison, it would sound very nice indeed. But once you hear
the difference there is no going back.

Another comparison I made was with a "vinyl" cd, sacd and cassette. The
cassette was better to the "vinyl" cd. Although, hard to match the levels,
the cassette sounded more open while the "vinyl" cd sounded compressed,
coming from a local center area. Comparing the "vinyl" cd to the sacd, the
sacd was close but still no cigar. The "vinyl" cd sounded better.


I do not claim this as a scientific study with lab coats and absolutes, just
simple comparisons with recordings and equipment I have access to. I should
also note, I started these comparisons wanting the cd to be better. It
would be so nice to walk into a store and get the recording I want, as
opposed to hunting for an acceptable vinyl copy. I'm sure many will shoot
holes in my process, equipment, etc., which is fine, this is one of the
reasons I posted. Can someone explain (technical or otherwise) why the
"vinyl" cd did not sound as good as the reel or even cassette? Why would
some of the recordings, post-1992 (which surely have digital in the chain
somwhere) sound better on vinyl? I'm sure most here have access to orginal
masters of some sort, what format best represents the master?


As a side note, thanks to all that post here regularly, I have learned alot.


"Kalman Rubinson" > wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 18:19:06 -0600, Rob Adelman
> > wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Rob Adelman wrote:
> >
> >> This is just one store. 840 pages of brand new vinyl releases.
> >
> >
> >Oops, my mistake. 42 pages. 840 selections.
>
> Brand new? The vast majority seemed to be reissues. Or did you mean
> that the vinyl itself was brand new?
>
> Kal
>
>

[Rob Adelman]

Paul Gold wrote:

>
> Umm. The vast majority of the vinyl buying public are DJ's on the
> short end of 25. Most of the music released on vinyl is electronic,
> hip hop, and indie rock.

Paul, why does acoustic sounds have such a large selection of other
styles? Somebody must be buying them.

<http://tinyurl.com/2rhfl>

[Roger W. Norman]

"Bob Cain" > wrote in message
...
> This has been true of my experience too and I know damn well
> it isn't because of more accurate reproduction. In the end,
> if an artifact or set of them results in a more interesting
> or more pleasurable experience then that is just fine with me.


Perhaps it's still a loss of dynamics with digital because people CAN put it
all up at the top, whereas with vinyl, you simply cannot have everything at
the top because a good bass line will pop the stylus right out of the
groove. Playback volume may well be relative and even exacting in
measurement, but since the source material isn't the same, it's not an even
playing field. Now my guess is that if one has as much dynamic range on a
CD as is used to maintain stylus contact with vinyl, you'd have more people
asking for the CD to be turned up too. Obviously the easy way to find out
is to create a CD and vinyl from the same mix with the same overall dynamic
range and put 'em both up for playback. Other than inherent playback noise
from vinyl, I doubt that one being a digital source at that point will
present a problem.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

>
> What if the thing some people are finding "better" about
> SACD is in fact such an artifact? I hear that the
> possibility is under consideration. When they nail it I'm
> planning on a pseudoSACD DX plugin that will make your CD's
> sound exactly like SACD's. :-)
>
>
> Bob
> --
>
> "Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
> simpler."
>
> A. Einstein

[Rob Adelman]

Careful Scott. They be calling you crazy. <g>

Scott Duncan wrote:

> In every instance, with the exception of two recordings, the vinyl
> sounded better. The vinyl gave the impression of listening to the actual
> band, while the cd sounded like a recording. The "vinyl" cd sounded more
> natural and the instruments would decay better, especially percussion and
> vocals.

[Joakim Wendel]

In article >,
Rob Adelman > wrote:

> Romeo Rondeau wrote:
>
> >
> > Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead?
>
>
> Vinyl is not dead. If so, why are they still making vinyl records and
> selling them?
>
> > This conversation is stupid.
>
> ?
>

Check this thing out - ordered the demo CD (!) and NO vinyl is NOT dead.

http://www.smartdev.com/LT/laserturntable.html

And, no I'm not involved in their company in any way but stunned at the
effort they have made to get maximum out of the old vinyl :)

I do not think many ppl know how much 'music' actually gets engraved
on an LP, and i'm not sure how many ppl understand exactly how lousy
a bad CD player sounds in comparison to a really good one ...
J.

--
Joakim Wendel
Remove obvious mail JUNK block for mail reply.

My homepage : http://violinist.nu

[Scott Duncan]

Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)


"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message
...
> Careful Scott. They be calling you crazy. <g>
>
> Scott Duncan wrote:
>
> > In every instance, with the exception of two recordings, the vinyl
> > sounded better. The vinyl gave the impression of listening to the
actual
> > band, while the cd sounded like a recording. The "vinyl" cd sounded
more
> > natural and the instruments would decay better, especially percussion
and
> > vocals.
>

[Arny Krueger]

"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message

> Paul Gold wrote:
>
>>
>> Umm. The vast majority of the vinyl buying public are DJ's on the
>> short end of 25. Most of the music released on vinyl is electronic,
>> hip hop, and indie rock.
>
> Paul, why does acoustic sounds have such a large selection of other
> styles? Somebody must be buying them.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2rhfl

It apparently takes a lot of titles to build up enough volume to have a
business.

[Scott Dorsey]

Joakim Wendel > wrote:
>
>Check this thing out - ordered the demo CD (!) and NO vinyl is NOT dead.
>
>http://www.smartdev.com/LT/laserturntable.html
>
>And, no I'm not involved in their company in any way but stunned at the
>effort they have made to get maximum out of the old vinyl :)

I use one, and it's basically the same thing as the old Finial laser
table. It's interesting, and it's handy in that even on very badly worn
records you can usually find an undamaged part of the groove and get good
tracking. It's also a pain in the neck since little pieces of dust that
would be pushed out of the way by a stylus record as huge pops. You need
to get records immaculately clean before transcription, and even then the
surface noise level is much, much higher than with a stylus.

>I do not think many ppl know how much 'music' actually gets engraved
>on an LP, and i'm not sure how many ppl understand exactly how lousy
>a bad CD player sounds in comparison to a really good one ...

I sadly agree.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Bob Cain]

Joakim Wendel wrote:

> In article >,
> Rob Adelman > wrote:
>
>
>>Romeo Rondeau wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead?
>>
>>
>>Vinyl is not dead. If so, why are they still making vinyl records and
>>selling them?
>>
>> > This conversation is stupid.
>>
>>?
>>
>
>
> Check this thing out - ordered the demo CD (!) and NO vinyl is NOT dead.
>
> http://www.smartdev.com/LT/laserturntable.html
>
> And, no I'm not involved in their company in any way but stunned at the
> effort they have made to get maximum out of the old vinyl :)
>
> I do not think many ppl know how much 'music' actually gets engraved
> on an LP, and i'm not sure how many ppl understand exactly how lousy
> a bad CD player sounds in comparison to a really good one ...
> J.
>


--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[WideGlide]

<<...i'm not sure how many ppl understand exactly how lousy a bad CD player
sounds in comparison to a really good one ... J. >>
--------------------

Please list a few examples of some really "good" cd players. Other than the
DA converters, how important are the other technical features? What specs
and features are most important to look for? What I plan on doing is taking
a decent CD player that has a digital out (like a Denon DN-C550R), and
hooking up good quality DA converters (like a Benchmark DAC-1). How would
this set up rate in terms of "good" cd players? If this does not cut it,
what do you recommend? Thanks.

[Bob Cain]

Joakim Wendel wrote:

> In article >,
> Rob Adelman > wrote:
>
>
>>Romeo Rondeau wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead?
>>
>>
>>Vinyl is not dead. If so, why are they still making vinyl records and
>>selling them?
>>
>> > This conversation is stupid.
>>
>>?
>>
>
>
> Check this thing out - ordered the demo CD (!) and NO vinyl is NOT dead.
>
> http://www.smartdev.com/LT/laserturntable.html
>
> And, no I'm not involved in their company in any way but stunned at the
> effort they have made to get maximum out of the old vinyl :)
>
> I do not think many ppl know how much 'music' actually gets engraved
> on an LP, and i'm not sure how many ppl understand exactly how lousy
> a bad CD player sounds in comparison to a really good one ...
> J.
>

That sure brings back memories. The guy that first began
developing that and got the original patents was an old
hippie, designer of some of the first arcade games and all
purpose self taught solder jock who rented the Palo Alto
house next to mine for a while in the '70s.

His first version simply shot the laser straight down and
tracked the groove. He found but, could not explain, that
the left and right channel were each reflected back up
toward the opposite side as a band of light that oscilated
in position with the groove modulation. His first detector
was 16 discrete photodetectors which he thought was going to
give him 16 bit position information. The first thing was
to persuade him that he had a four bit converter and get him
to even decode that properly. It seemed rather noisy and
distorted but was definitely recognisable stereo information
from the record. :-)

I couldn't rest until I figured out what was happening. He
took it as a mystery and was satisfied with there being some
magic interference going on somewhere. Turns out that what
was happening was that the beam completely covered the
groove and the bands he was seeing were coming from the
reflection of the rounded corners on each side as the flat
turned down into the groove. Took a _long_ time to persuade
him it was that simple and then we investigated the specs to
see if that was a controled surface in any way and it wasn't
but he wasn't detered by that. Looks like they fixed that
with two lasers actually pointed at the groove faces.

Next I researched solid state optical detectors to find
something that could give an analog signal as a function of
position with a bit better resolution than he was getting
and found a long strip diode called, IIRC, a PIN diode that
gave an analog voltage proportional to the position of the
spot hitting it. He had moved before incorporating that
improvement but he eventually did. I didn't expect it to be
adequate in terms of noise or linearity and I doubt it was
in those days.

The biggest problem I found by analysis was that the angular
modulation of the beam and thus the band position was a
trigonometric function of the linear modulation of the
groove. Not sure how they fixed that.

Damn glad to see after all these years that he didn't give
up. People from big companies often showed up for demos as
he sought investors but after hearing it he didn't get any
givers while he lived next door and eventually poverty
forced he and his family back up to a shack in the hills.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that he was the Finial Technology
that these current guys bought out. I sincerely hope he
came out of it well. He deserved it. A beautiful example
of what no education but what you get by doing things can
accomplish when fueled by a dream (and helped a little by
friends.)

Of course CD's came along not too much later and badly
limited his prospects. Heavy sigh.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Codifus]

El Evans MMDeuce wrote:

> if you are reading this, you are probably between 25 and 55,
> are probably male, and own no nSync, Britney Spears or Hilary Duff CDs
> anyway, and your target market is going to be people whose music
> buying started when CDs didn't exist or were brand new. Therefore,
> unless they relied on cassettes or 8-tracks, they had a record player.
>
> Odds are pretty strong they still do, and that it's a better one than
> they had twenty years ago. Good turntables are still in production.
> Look at any high-end stereo magazine.
>
> You can't average batting averages. Vinyl is still a viable
> technology in certain markets, provided you are not going after
> 14-year-olds or their soccer moms.


Wow, you're good. You've got me all figured out! Really. But I can't
afford those high end turntables:)

CD

[Codifus]

El Evans MMDeuce wrote:

> When you build the Federation Starship with cloaking, transporter
> room, and the ability to go back in time, we'll just BEAM DOWN and
> listen to the original mixdowns-it's only there the sound as intended
> comes into existence-and set up our stuff when they're out and A/B/X
> them. Until and unless-you're jacking off in public. It's impossible
> enough unless you're really well connected to do this with modern
> recordings-let alone, ones of crappic rock groups and FDS-era
> ringer-dingers, the stuff of audiophile obsession today.
>
> Trying to reproduce the true and real sonic experience, in toto,
> makes a nice mantra but a lousy reality. Art is the selective
> representation of reality and recording is, ultimately, an art.
>
> Get a good room to set up in (elsewise, you as well may wear
> headphones) FIRST, wire it properly, interface the speakers to the
> room, and get the best electronics you can keeping in mind the
> speaker/amp compatibility-big McIntosh amps and big Klipsch speakers
> DO NOT go well together. For the type of listening I do, EQ is a must,
> the full-time purist doesn't need it. Et al.
Uhhh, OK. Beam me up, Scotty:)

That was my first repsonse when reading your response. But, reading it
again, I can see you make a whole lot of sense. I get the impression
that you've been in this audio thing for a long long time . . . . .

That statement of art being the selective representation of reality is
superb.

CD

[Codifus]

Arny Krueger wrote:


> If jitter bothers you, you best stay way clear of vinyl. Jitter is just FM
> distortion, and the FM distortion in vinyl is very large compared to that of
> digital. You might want to get out the back of an envelope and figure out
> how many picoseconds of jitter is equivalent to 0.1% flutter and wow on a 3
> KHz test signal.
But jitter on vinyl, even though it is measurably worse, is completely
linear in the way it affects all frequencies. I guess with the wow and
flutterbeing that way makes listening to it more palatable.

>
> The period of a 3 Khz tone is 330 micorseconds, and 0.1% of that is 330
> nanoseconds which is the same as 330,000 seconds. So, a SOTA analog playback
> system can easily have 50,000 to 330,000 picoseconds of jitter. In contrast
> a really bad CD playback system might have 5,000 picoseconds of jitter while
> a good one might have as little as 40 picoseconds of jitter.
>
>
>
CD jitter, on the other hand, tends to concentrate on the high
frequencies, and contributes more significantly to the harshness of CD
audio.

CD

[Fill X]

>Are you disputing the fact that vinyl is dead? This conversation is stupid.

The conversation was an aesthetic one not about sales. Anyway, people buy it.
Not as many people as used to. People also buy tubes even though american
companies stopped making them, the transistor "rules" as you say, but the tube
isn't dead. CD is king? Wait a little while...


P h i l i p

______________________________

"I'm too ****ing busy and vice-versa"

- Dorothy Parker

[Paul Stamler]

Well, Scott, if dubs from a badly-aligned 7.5ips R-R deck and a cassette
deck sound better than a CD dub, my guess is that the softening of the highs
due to the bad alignment is compensating for the harshness of the Klipsch
speakers, mellowing out the whole experience.

Peace,
Paul

[Arny Krueger]

"Codifus" > wrote in message
. net
> Arny Krueger wrote:
>
>
>> If jitter bothers you, you best stay way clear of vinyl. Jitter is
>> just FM distortion, and the FM distortion in vinyl is very large
>> compared to that of digital. You might want to get out the back of
>> an envelope and figure out how many picoseconds of jitter is
>> equivalent to 0.1% flutter and wow on a 3 KHz test signal.

> But jitter on vinyl, even though it is measurably worse, is completely
> linear in the way it affects all frequencies.

Jitter always affects signals at all frequencies.

Jitter is FM distortion. The "carrier" being FM'd is the music. Some
internal or external frequency is the source of the modulation.

Being a mechanical system, vinyl is most susceptible to external mechanical
sources of modulation such as flutter and wow. Flutter and wow are primarily
limited to low and medium frequencies. The ear is most sensitive to FM
distortion at low frequencies. Wow is related to rotation of the LP disc
and is therefore at 0.55 Hz and harmonics thereof. It can be quite large -
as little as 20 dB down.

However, FM distortion in analog recordings is not limited to low
frequencies. There is an effect called "scrape flutter" in analog tape, that
modulates the music with a high frequency - a band of frequencies up in the
range of several KHz. Flutter and wow in tape machines is pretty common. We
recently reviewed some high quality professional recordings that had quite a
bit of FM distortion at about 250 Hz. I was testing a common kind of better
quality consumer cassette deck yesterday and interestingly enough it had
quite a bit of FM distortion around 250 Hz as well.

There is some incidental geometric fore-and-aft motion in most cutters and
playback styluses associated with LP production and playback. This would
cause some self-FM. It is well known that tonearms with offset angles
(universally used to reduce tracking error during LP playback) produce
self-FM at low frequencies. There's a Rabinow/Kalmanis AES paper that covers
this. It's actually quite extreme and quite audible in LPs with lots of low
frequency content.

Note that in all cases, all frequencies present in the music are being
modulated by the jitter.

In the digital domain there are many sources of jitter. For example, the
signal that comes into a CD player from the optical pickup is pretty trashy.
The good news is that jitter in a digital system can be reduced to any
desired degree, if you are willing to work hard enough. CD players typically
do such a good job of cleaning up the digital signal that any jitter present
is created within the CD player itself. After testing 100's of digital
recording and playback devices, I can tell you that the most common jitter
frequencies are around the power line frequency and harmonics. So, we're
talking 50, 60, 120, 180 240 Hz, etc. Presumably the local clock is getting
a tad contaminated by the power line.

There is also a form of self-jitter that can be due to common digital
interfaces like SPDIF and AES/EBU.

It needs to be reiterated that in legacy analog systems, jitter is not
reversible. Once added, it is rarely removed, except by exceptional and even
in this day, heroic means.

In digital systems, jitter once added can be inexpensively reduced to
incredibly low levels. I have an inexpensive DAC that will take the most
horribly jittery digital signal and reduce the jitter to about 115 dB down.

>I guess with the wow and
> flutterbeing that way makes listening to it more palatable.

Hey, if you want to listen to music with lots of added distortion of a
number of kinds, the LP is for you!

>> The period of a 3 KHz tone is 330 microseconds, and 0.1% of that is
>> 330 nanoseconds which is the same as 330,000 seconds. So, a SOTA
>> analog playback system can easily have 50,000 to 330,000 picoseconds
>> of jitter. In contrast a really bad CD playback system might have
>> 5,000 picoseconds of jitter while a good one might have as little as
>> 40 picoseconds of jitter.

> CD jitter, on the other hand, tends to concentrate on the high
> frequencies, and contributes more significantly to the harshness of CD
> audio.

As I've discussed above, this is completely and totally wrong. Analog media
can have high frequency jitter and digital media can have jitter at lower
frequencies. In general the jitter in even inexpensive modern digital
systems can easily be at least 50 dB lower than it is in the best analog
playback systems.

If you want to listen to music with lots of added audible distortions and
noises of a number of defend of kinds, the LP is for you! If you just want
to listen to music, digital beckons.

[TonyP]

"Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
...
> Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)

I guess that says it all :-)

As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions. A lot
of people do it seems, but why should the rest of us care?

TonyP.

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> Please list a few examples of some really "good" cd players.

I know this isn't the list you want but there are:

- CD players that you can buy anywhere for cheap, none of which are
significantly better than any other.

- Audiophile CD players that cost hundreds of dollars that aren't
significantly better than those that cost $50 but they look a lot
better. Some are even built in two pieces, the transport and the
electronics.

- The CD players that we all wish we had.

> Other than the
> DA converters, how important are the other technical features? What specs
> and features are most important to look for?

Unfortunately what you need to look for you won't find in any
published specs. The real answer is "D/A Converters" but that
encompasses much more than just the chip. You need really good
isolation between the transport/laser power supply and the D/A system
power supply (separate packages help here), a really good clock, good
analog electronics. They all say "THD 0.001%" and that doesn't mean a
thing.

> What I plan on doing is taking
> a decent CD player that has a digital out (like a Denon DN-C550R), and
> hooking up good quality DA converters (like a Benchmark DAC-1). How would
> this set up rate in terms of "good" cd players?

It would be better than anything you could buy. This is what to do if
you want good CD playback.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Arny Krueger]

"WideGlide" > wrote in message
. net

> Please list a few examples of some really "good" cd players.

Among modern optical players, it's almost easier to talk about the players
that aren't very good.

What kinds of CD players aren't very good?

The headphone jack on a PC's CD ROM
$10-35 portables
Boombox CD players, particularly if the boombox costs less than $100

Look at it this way. Two of our more outspoken resident golden ears have
recently recommended fairly inexpensive DVD players as CD players. One of
them just went ga-ga over on RAHE over the Panasonic S55 which can be had
for maybe even under $100. There's a sister model that lacks the snake-oil
upsampling feature, for more like $60...

> Other than the DA converters, how important are the other technical
features?

Actually, the one thing that is concrete and inarguable that leads to the
most complaints is players that won't do even a fair job of playing a CD-R
or a somewhat damaged disc.

> What specs and features are most important to look for?

Ergonomics. Can you operate it in the dark?

> What I plan on doing is taking a decent CD player that has a digital
> out (like a Denon DN-C550R), and hooking up good quality DA
> converters (like a Benchmark DAC-1).

Vast overkill. Overkill can be fun, been there done that or something like
it, but you asked, right?

> How would this set up rate in terms of "good" cd players?

99th percentile plus if the host CD player tracks a variety of marginal
discs well. One of the purported strengths of the Benchmark is that it
sounds good even with fairly-messed up digital inputs. I think this means
that the host CD player need not be chosen for sound quality, just good
tracking and a reasonably unprocessed digital output.

>If this does not cut it, what do you recommend?

Oh, it cuts it, but I recommend obsessing less over playing CDs. IMO making
them is where the real fun is.

[David Satz]

Bob Cain wrote:

> As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:
>
> ...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...
>
> (with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
> ... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
> analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
> infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
> length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
> is pretty darn big.

That sequence could never occur. It represents a full-scale sine wave at
1/2 Fs, which by definition must be filtered out prior to quantization.

--best regards

[Chris Hornbeck]

On 9 Mar 2004 07:56:14 -0800, (David Satz) wrote:

>Bob Cain wrote:
>
>> As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:
>>
>> ...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...
>>
>> (with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
>> ... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
>> analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
>> infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
>> length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
>> is pretty darn big.
>
>That sequence could never occur. It represents a full-scale sine wave at
>1/2 Fs, which by definition must be filtered out prior to quantization.

This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.

Thanks,

Chris Hornbeck

"Second star to the right,
Then straight on 'til morning."

[Scott Dorsey]

Chris Hornbeck > wrote:
>
>This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
>low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
>processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.

Yes. All DACs have reconstruction filters. Some have better filters than
others.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Chris Hornbeck]

On 9 Mar 2004 11:35:11 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>Chris Hornbeck > wrote:
>>
>>This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
>>low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
>>processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.
>
>Yes. All DACs have reconstruction filters. Some have better filters than
>others.

Thanks, Scott. But I wonder if there are any filters upstream,
maybe in firmware, before conversion takes place. Or are you
saying that these are functionally equivalent?

Thanks,

Chris Hornbeck

"Second star to the right,
Then straight on 'til morning."

[Scott Dorsey]

Chris Hornbeck > wrote:
>On 9 Mar 2004 11:35:11 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>
>>Chris Hornbeck > wrote:
>>>
>>>This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
>>>low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
>>>processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.
>>
>>Yes. All DACs have reconstruction filters. Some have better filters than
>>others.
>
>Thanks, Scott. But I wonder if there are any filters upstream,
>maybe in firmware, before conversion takes place. Or are you
>saying that these are functionally equivalent?

Most DACs today use oversampling, where they run the converter at an extremely
high speed and use a digital reconstruction filter after upsampling the data.
This means that they can have an analogue reconstruction filter after the
converter which only cuts off at very high frequencies (half the frequency
the converter is running at, rather than half the frequency the original
samples come in at), so you can get by with much more relaxed analogue
filters.

Many older converters used very sharp "brickwall" oversampling filters,
which resulted in a lot of phase shift in the top octave.

Some sample rate converters today use bitstream or sigma-delta methods,
which employs a very, very fast oversampling converter with a small word
length. Doing this means you can have a very easy analogue reconstruction
filter.

The whole point of oversampling is to move as much of the filtration as
possible into the digital domain, where constant-phase FIR filters are easy
to build, and get it out of the analogue domain. But you always need some
degree of analogue filtration.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 16:41:40 GMT, Chris Hornbeck
> wrote:

>On 9 Mar 2004 11:35:11 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>
>>Chris Hornbeck > wrote:
>>>
>>>This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
>>>low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
>>>processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.
>>
>>Yes. All DACs have reconstruction filters. Some have better filters than
>>others.
>
>Thanks, Scott. But I wonder if there are any filters upstream,
>maybe in firmware, before conversion takes place. Or are you
>saying that these are functionally equivalent?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Chris Hornbeck
>
Chris,

I've written a paper on this. Have a look at the Aliasing paper on my
site and all this is explained. http://www.pearce.uk.com/papers/

It is all related to oversampling, and yes filters must be implemented
in both firmware and hardware.

You may find the paper on dither useful for the other side of the coin
as well.

d

_____________________________

http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 16:53:48 +0000, Don Pearce >
wrote:

>I've written a paper on this. Have a look at the Aliasing paper on my
>site and all this is explained. http://www.pearce.uk.com/papers/
>
>It is all related to oversampling, and yes filters must be implemented
>in both firmware and hardware.

Thanks, Don. Nice website.
Should I interpret from this that my worries about "illegal" samples
generated by processing are misplaced, at least for the case of
modern (oversampled) DAC's?

Chris Hornbeck

"Second star to the right,
Then straight on 'til morning."

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 17:18:02 GMT, Chris Hornbeck
> wrote:

>On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 16:53:48 +0000, Don Pearce >
>wrote:
>
>>I've written a paper on this. Have a look at the Aliasing paper on my
>>site and all this is explained. http://www.pearce.uk.com/papers/
>>
>>It is all related to oversampling, and yes filters must be implemented
>>in both firmware and hardware.
>
>Thanks, Don. Nice website.
>Should I interpret from this that my worries about "illegal" samples
>generated by processing are misplaced, at least for the case of
>modern (oversampled) DAC's?
>
>Chris Hornbeck
>

I think you can take that as read. This problem was sorted out years
ago in the early days of digital audio. It has just carried on getting
better as chip density has increased, as well as processing speed.

d

_____________________________

http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Paul Stamler]

Arny Krueger > wrote in message
...

> In digital systems, jitter once added can be inexpensively reduced to
> incredibly low levels. I have an inexpensive DAC that will take the most
> horribly jittery digital signal and reduce the jitter to about 115 dB
down.

Yes - *playback* jitter. Jitter of the clock signal during recording is not
fixable.

Peace,
Paul

[Arny Krueger]

"Chris Hornbeck" > wrote in message

> On 9 Mar 2004 07:56:14 -0800, (David Satz) wrote:

>> Bob Cain wrote:
>
>>> As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:
>>>
>>> ...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...
>>>
>>> (with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
>>> ... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
>>> analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
>>> infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
>>> length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
>>> is pretty darn big.

>> That sequence could never occur. It represents a full-scale sine
>> wave at 1/2 Fs, which by definition must be filtered out prior to
>> quantization.

But it might arise as a consequence of processing in the digital domain.

> This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
> low-pass filter prior to conversion?

None do. They all have low-pass filters after conversion,

It is ADCs that have low-pass filters prior to conversion.

>Seems that modern
> processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.

The only way I know to do it involves point editing or its automated
equivalent.

However, the sequence described above is something like a worst case. Other
sequences that reconstruct waves that go just a little bit higher than FS
are more likely.

[Scott Duncan]

Paul, I can appreciate what your saying about the speakers, Klipsch does
have that reputation. But, my problem with the comparisons I made, was that
the cd (recorded) sounded compressed to the reel (recorded) counterpart. It
was if the life was sucked out of the recorded cd. Not sure what to make of
it all.


"Paul Stamler" > wrote in message
...
> Well, Scott, if dubs from a badly-aligned 7.5ips R-R deck and a cassette
> deck sound better than a CD dub, my guess is that the softening of the
highs
> due to the bad alignment is compensating for the harshness of the Klipsch
> speakers, mellowing out the whole experience.
>
> Peace,
> Paul
>

[Scott Duncan]

"TonyP" > wrote in message
...

"Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
...
Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)

> I guess that says it all :-)

Mr. Iommi, Is that really you? :-)

>As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions. A
lot
>of people do it seems, but why should the rest of us care?

> TonyP.

Tony, Why would you think it is the analog distortions that I'm
hearing/preferring? I thought the recording of the reel (vinyl) was better
the cd (vinyl). I'm probably wrong, but this seems that the cd cannnot
reproduce the vinyl faithfully. For all I know, maybe my cd recorder is
starting to fail.

I didn't think anyone should care per se. Just thought it might be
interesting to some and trying to get explainations.

[Arny Krueger]

"Scott Duncan" > wrote in message

> "TonyP" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> "Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
> ...
> Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)
>
>> I guess that says it all :-)
>
> Mr. Iommi, Is that really you? :-)
>
> >As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog
> distortions. A lot
> >of people do it seems, but why should the rest of us care?
>
>> TonyP.
>
> Tony, Why would you think it is the analog distortions that I'm
> hearing/preferring?

Because they are there, they are audible, and you object to a medium that
lacks them.

[Paul Gold]

(Scott Dorsey) wrote in message news:<

> That shouldn't be the case. The safety limiter is just there to keep you
> from running the head out past maximum excursion. You shouldn't be hitting
> it all the time.
..
I don't hit the HF limiters hard. I back off if I am. I like it to
sound good and faithful to the source. Even if I am the source. Mixers
and mastering engineers used to take this into account. CD's today are
in general much brighter than records were. My point was that many
albums today use pumped up top and bottom end to get clarity and
punch. You couldn't use those tricks when cutting lacquers so you had
to get the same results with a more band limited signal. This is
harder to do and somewhat of a lost art.

Paul Gold
www.vinylmastering.net
brooklynphono

[David Collins]

In article >,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

> Yes. All DACs have reconstruction filters. Some have better filters than
> others.
> --scott

I think the Audionote runs 1fs with no filter!

DC

--
Dave Collins Entropy just isn't what it used to be!


www.collinsaudio.com

[Paul Gold]

Rob Adelman > wrote in message >...

> Paul, why does acoustic sounds have such a large selection of other
> styles? Somebody must be buying them.


I just said "the vast majority". I'm glad there is a wide variety of
material available. After all I'm a mastering engineer at a pressing
plant. I wish everything was released on vinyl. I assume the majority
of audiophile pressings are done at RTI. They do the 180g pressings.
If they have that market sewn up than the dozen or so other plants are
doing other things. Even RTI does a lot of other stuff.

Paul Gold
www.vinylmastering.net
brooklynphono

[Scott Dorsey]

Paul Gold > wrote:
>Rob Adelman > wrote in message >...
>
>> Paul, why does acoustic sounds have such a large selection of other
>> styles? Somebody must be buying them.
>
>I just said "the vast majority". I'm glad there is a wide variety of
>material available. After all I'm a mastering engineer at a pressing
>plant. I wish everything was released on vinyl. I assume the majority
>of audiophile pressings are done at RTI. They do the 180g pressings.
>If they have that market sewn up than the dozen or so other plants are
>doing other things. Even RTI does a lot of other stuff.

RTI has a lot of that market, but a surprising amount of it gets done
in Europe these days. Record Industries wound up doing the recent Pink
Floyd reissues, for instance.

Europadisk has some of that market, and they have even done some touchy
stuff like the Shure test records with the square waves on them.

But there are still a lot of smaller outfits that can compete with the
big guys. I still keep getting impressed with Alpha down in Florida.
They don't offer a lot of the services that some of the audiophile labels
demand, like extra-heavy pressings, but they really do some very quiet
pressings for reasonable prices, and they won't dehorn if you ask them
not to.

It is really interesting to see, though, how seperated the dance and
audiophile markets are.... and the audiophile market is very much smaller
than the dance market.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Bob Cain]

David Satz wrote:

> Bob Cain wrote:
>
>
>>As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:
>>
>> ...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...
>>
>>(with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
>>... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
>>analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
>>infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
>>length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
>>is pretty darn big.
>
>
> That sequence could never occur. It represents a full-scale sine wave at
> 1/2 Fs, which by definition must be filtered out prior to quantization.
>

Of course it couldn't be recorded and would be unlikely to
be generated. Did you notice the word "pathological"? The
sequence was given as the absurd limit of things that
actually can happen for pedagogical purposes only.


Bob


--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

Chris Hornbeck wrote:

> On 9 Mar 2004 07:56:14 -0800, (David Satz) wrote:
>
>
>>Bob Cain wrote:
>>
>>
>>>As a pathological example, if you have the sequence:
>>>
>>> ...+1,-1,+1,-1,+1,+1,-1,+1,-1,+1...
>>>
>>>(with +1 standing for 32767 and -1 standing for -32768) and
>>>... is infinity, then an accurate reconstruction of the
>>>analog waveform between the two +1 samples results in an
>>>infinite value. Even if ... is such to make the total
>>>length 65536 then the peak that occurs between those samples
>>>is pretty darn big.
>>
>>That sequence could never occur. It represents a full-scale sine wave at
>>1/2 Fs, which by definition must be filtered out prior to quantization.
>
>
> This reminds me of a question: Do any/all DAC's perform a
> low-pass filter prior to conversion? Seems that modern
> processing might generate all kinds of "illegal" samples.

Yes, it is called the reconstruction filter and a perfect
realization of that filter is exactly what would give an
infinite output from that sequence.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

Chris Hornbeck wrote:


> Should I interpret from this that my worries about "illegal" samples
> generated by processing are misplaced, at least for the case of
> modern (oversampled) DAC's?

No. Those illegal samples are perfectly legal and if they
weren't generated it would amount to clipping.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

TonyP wrote:

> "Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)
>
>
> I guess that says it all :-)
>
> As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.

Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe
it or not.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Rob Adelman]

Bob Cain wrote:

>> As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.
>
>
> Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or not.


And how would it do that?

[Scott Duncan]

Well, I don't object to any medium, I'm just stating what I heard. Could
distortion impose a wider soundstage? And, Could distortion cause things
like cymbols and voices to sound more natural and have better decay time?
Not trying to be a smart---, just trying to learn and figure out what I
heard. I know ears are funny instruments and maybe I'm listening/focusing
for the wrong thing.


"Arny Krueger" > wrote in message
...
> "Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
>
> > "TonyP" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >
> > "Scott Duncan" > wrote in message
> > ...
> > Well, I am an Ozzy fan. :)
> >
> >> I guess that says it all :-)
> >
> > Mr. Iommi, Is that really you? :-)
> >
> > >As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog
> > distortions. A lot
> > >of people do it seems, but why should the rest of us care?
> >
> >> TonyP.
> >
> > Tony, Why would you think it is the analog distortions that I'm
> > hearing/preferring?
>
> Because they are there, they are audible, and you object to a medium that
> lacks them.
>
>
>

[Rob Adelman]

Scott Duncan wrote:
> Well, I don't object to any medium, I'm just stating what I heard. Could
> distortion impose a wider soundstage? And, Could distortion cause things
> like cymbols and voices to sound more natural and have better decay time?

No, these things you speak of you have just imagined. The analog
distortions have so disoriented you that the rest is nothing but a mirage.

Eliminate these distortions and your brain snaps back into reality. The
soundstage will shrink back to normal. The voices will sound small and
recorded just like you are used to. The cymbols will once again sound
like samples on a drum machine. :)


> I know ears are funny instruments and maybe I'm listening/focusing
> for the wrong thing.

Ears hear details that have not yet been quantified. If you are focusing
on what sounds good, you are focusing on the right thing.

[Arny Krueger]

"Scott Duncan" > wrote in message


> Well, I don't object to any medium, I'm just stating what I heard.

> Could distortion impose a wider soundstage?

By all means. Vinyl doesn't impose a wider soundstage, it creates the
perception of a wider sound stage by artificially adding inter-channel
differences.

> And, Could distortion cause things like cymbals and voices to sound more
natural and have
> better decay time?

The claim that cymbals and voices sound more "natural" is highly suspect.
All voices and cymbals don't sound the same. How do you know a priori that a
given cymbal sound or voice sound is more or less natural? Do you have
access to the original performance as a reference?

>Not trying to be a smart---, just trying to learn and figure out what I
heard.

You heard a combination of euphonic distortion and your preconceived
perceptions.

> I know ears are funny instruments and maybe I'm listening/focusing for
the wrong thing.

Maybe your experiment is all wrong.

[hank alrich]

Rob Adelman wrote:

> Bob Cain wrote:

> >> As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.

> > Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or not.

> And how would it do that?

DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

--
ha

[Rob Adelman]

hank alrich wrote:

> Rob Adelman wrote:
>
>
>>Bob Cain wrote:
>
>
>>>>As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.
>
>
>>>Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or not.
>
>
>>And how would it do that?
>
>
> DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
> Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

Seems like digital artifacts that mimic analog ones would have to be
intentional. I'm skeptical, but hey, whatever works.

[Bob Cain]

Rob Adelman wrote:

>
>
> hank alrich wrote:
>
>> Rob Adelman wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Bob Cain wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.
>>
>>
>>
>>>> Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or not.
>>
>>
>>
>>> And how would it do that?

It seems to me that a couple of people that find SACD an
exceptional experience also seem to find vinyl preferable in
some respects. A connection is possible.

>>
>>
>>
>> DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
>> Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

And an enlightening discussion it was. All is not as it
seems with that technology and the guys probing it are fully
equipped to both hear the distortions and provide fully
techincal reasons for it.

>
>
> Seems like digital artifacts that mimic analog ones would have to be
> intentional.

Nope, they are the consequence of cyclicly noise shapped
dither of a two valued signal. An unexpected side effect.

> I'm skeptical, but hey, whatever works.
>

Yes, that is the bottom line. Some of us wonder why,
though. It's possible, once it is determined via DBT that
such preference is statistically signifigant and the reason
for it is known, that this subtle miracle could be
transported to the CD as a perceptual improvement. This is
called science. :-)


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[hank alrich]

Rob Adelman wrote:

> hank alrich wrote:

> > Rob Adelman wrote:

> >>Bob Cain wrote:

> >>>>As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog distortions.

> >>>Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or not.

> >>And how would it do that?

> > DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
> > Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

> Seems like digital artifacts that mimic analog ones would have to be
> intentional.

Why? Not that he said they did, just that artifacts might be heard
euphoniously by some listeners.

> I'm skeptical, but hey, whatever works.

Skeptical that DSD could have artifacts?

--
ha

[Fill X]

hey scott,

how does one get in touch with Alpha in fla.? I cant seem to find them...


P h i l i p

______________________________

"I'm too ****ing busy and vice-versa"

- Dorothy Parker

[Paul Stamler]

Scott Duncan > wrote in message
...
> Paul, I can appreciate what your saying about the speakers, Klipsch does
> have that reputation. But, my problem with the comparisons I made, was
that
> the cd (recorded) sounded compressed to the reel (recorded) counterpart.
It
> was if the life was sucked out of the recorded cd. Not sure what to make
of
> it all.

How was the CD dub made?

Peace,
Paul

[Joakim Wendel]

"WideGlide" > wrote in message
. net

> Please list a few examples of some really "good" cd players.

Sorry for not being able to produce a good list, the one player i have
heard that was to my satisfaction musically is the Linn Sondek CD12,
I would think that it can suit your experiment excellently ...

On another note, there is nothing saying that the most technically
perfect D/A helps the 'music' as much as the most technically perfect
drive unit (the one that is least sensitive to vibrations etc) but if
both are perfect it's likely that the result will be 'good' (i hope).

I listen to my vinyl recordings with pleasure and still like to buy new
pressings of music just released because my LP-player (even with all the
bad artifacts it produces as explained in this thread) gives me great
musical moments when i listen to it.

Bad technique is a hinderance for music, we all agree ?(especially
obvious is bad mastering i think).
A good LP is a good LP and a good CD is a good CD (hehee).
A good LP player will give you a good time and a good CD player will
also make life quite a bit nicer.

Don't tell me that the truncated CD's of today (the BAD ones) are
something better than an LP cuz i will not take that without a struggle.

To me art is atmosphere and it takes good technicians to capture that
and reproduce it on a media that i can use in my home. i can't stand
most of the new CD's that i hear but i have a couple of hundred LP's
that i can recommend anyone to listen to (i have some terrible LP's too
trust me but they are not all up on 0Db for 45 minutes), this is strange
i guess but i 'think' it has something to do with who is mastering the
whole thing.
Cheers
J.

--
Joakim Wendel
Remove obvious mail JUNK block for mail reply.

My homepage : http://violinist.nu

[Arny Krueger]

"hank alrich" > wrote in message

> Rob Adelman wrote:
>
>> Bob Cain wrote:
>
>>>> As for your tests, you have proved you prefer the analog
>>>> distortions.
>
>>> Which could also explain Rob's preference for SACD believe it or
>>> not.
>
>> And how would it do that?
>
> DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
> Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

OK, I haven't done the listening tests, but AFAIK SACD can reasonably be
expected to be sonically transparent.

The criticism of SACD that has come out of the AES has really been of a
highly theoretical nature. On the one hand the technical proponents of SACD
(as contrasted to the usual technical ignorant radical subjectivist "sounds
better" posturing) have been making technically esoteric and subjectively
irrelevant but theoretically interesting claims of superiority over PCM. The
AES-based critics have been demolishing those theoretical claims. They've
drawn blood because the SACD advocates have had to substantially change
their story about their implementation of SACD. SACD is now known to start
out as a form of PCM, which basically demolishes their claim that SACD is
better than PCM since SACD is just PCM audio data processed into a
bitstream format.

The whole discussion is up "There", while what we hear is down "Here".

[Arny Krueger]

"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message


> Seems like digital artifacts that mimic analog ones would have to be
> intentional. I'm skeptical, but hey, whatever works.

Rob, if you were really that dedicated to "whatever works" we wouldn't hear
one critical word out of you about audio CDs. The format works fine, its the
implementations that are flawed. At this time the audible flaws are
technically trivial - basically you don't agree with someone's approaches to
mixing and mastering.

However, I suspect that it is more trivial than that. You're a changes
junky. If it sounds different to you, you get a gigantic sonic woody.
Someone should give you an equalizer of your very own to put in your home
stereo system. Change the knob positions randomly every few days and you'll
be in audio nirvana for the rest of your life! I can't imagine what would
happen if you had a multitrack master to play with. You'd die of ecstasy.

;-)

[Scott Dorsey]

Scott Duncan > wrote:
>Well, I don't object to any medium, I'm just stating what I heard. Could
>distortion impose a wider soundstage? And, Could distortion cause things
>like cymbols and voices to sound more natural and have better decay time?
>Not trying to be a smart---, just trying to learn and figure out what I
>heard. I know ears are funny instruments and maybe I'm listening/focusing
>for the wrong thing.

Well, in the case of the Ozzy stuff... again, the reissues on CD are so
horribly butchered in mastering that it's hard to tell what is going on.

It's unfair to compare an LP with a CD that has been squashed to hell and
back. And as long as there are such lousy CD reissues coming out, you're
still going to need to keep the turntable.

This is not saying anything is wrong with the CD format... just that
something is terribly wrong with the folks at the labels who think that
everything should be loud and bright at all cost.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Rob Adelman]

Arny Krueger wrote:

> Rob, if you were really that dedicated to "whatever works" we wouldn't hear
> one critical word out of you about audio CDs. The format works fine, its the
> implementations that are flawed. At this time the audible flaws are
> technically trivial - basically you don't agree with someone's approaches to
> mixing and mastering.

CD's work. SACD's work better. You say CD specks out perfectly. If so,
how can the converters have gotten better over the years? And even
today, how can one converter sound crappy and another one so much better
if they are both technically perfect? Please explain why the differences.






> You're a changes
> junky. If it sounds different to you, you get a gigantic sonic woody.
> Someone should give you an equalizer of your very own to put in your home
> stereo system. Change the knob positions randomly every few days and you'll
> be in audio nirvana for the rest of your life! I can't imagine what would
> happen if you had a multitrack master to play with. You'd die of ecstasy.

This is absolutely a bunch of bs. But I would expect anything else from
you.

[Arny Krueger]

"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message

> Arny Krueger wrote:
>
>> Rob, if you were really that dedicated to "whatever works" we
>> wouldn't hear one critical word out of you about audio CDs. The
>> format works fine, its the implementations that are flawed. At this
>> time the audible flaws are technically trivial - basically you don't
>> agree with someone's approaches to mixing and mastering.
>
> CD's work. SACD's work better.

I'm willing to stipulate that the SACD format has better technical
perforamnce and the CD audio format. However, the CD audio format is already
overkill for the purpose of distributing regular 2-channel musical
recordings. Therefore, 2-channel SACD is overkill squared.

>You say CD specks out perfectly.

Not at all. I've never said that CD specs out perfectly. Rob, you've got
some very severe perceptual issues if you really believe that I've ever said
that the CD audio format specs out perfectly. It has known technical
parameters are less than technical perfection. But SACD also has known
technical parameters that are less than technical perfection.

>If so, how can the converters have gotten better over the years?

What's unclear about the word "implementation"?

> And even today, how can one converter sound crappy and another one so
much
> better if they are both technically perfect?

Clearly Rob, you've got severe perceptual problems with fairly common
English words like "implementation".

> Please explain why the differences.

Rob, please start demonstrating nominal competence with the English
language. It's the only natural language I write in, so I'm kinda hamstrung
in this matter until you show some usable level of competence with reading
it.

[Rob Adelman]

Arny Krueger wrote:

> Rob, please start demonstrating nominal competence with the English
> language. It's the only natural language I write in, so I'm kinda hamstrung
> in this matter until you show some usable level of competence with reading
> it.

You know, I told myself a long time ago I wasn't going to read or
respond to your posts. I should have stuck with it. I'll try much harder
in the future, promise.

[hank alrich]

Arny Krueger wrote:

> > DSD artifacts and their possible causes came up for discussion in the
> > Pro Audio list during Oct 2003.

> OK, I haven't done the listening tests, but AFAIK SACD can reasonably be
> expected to be sonically transparent.

> The criticism of SACD that has come out of the AES has really been of a
> highly theoretical nature.

The thread in question is not about theary; it's about hearing something
consisently and wondering what it is and where it comes from. It's worth
reading for those who are willing to admit that most of us are on page
one pr three, while a few folks are on page seven hundred and twenty
six. I'll send it to you, if you email me so I can get around your spam
avoidance.

--
ha

[Arny Krueger]

"Rob Adelman" > wrote in message

> Arny Krueger wrote:
>
>> Rob, please start demonstrating nominal competence with the English
>> language. It's the only natural language I write in, so I'm kinda
>> hamstrung in this matter until you show some usable level of
>> competence with reading it.
>
> You know, I told myself a long time ago I wasn't going to read or
> respond to your posts. I should have stuck with it. I'll try much
> harder in the future, promise.

Just goes to show Rob, that when things get a little warm in the kitchen,
you can't stand the heat. I called your bluff on your ridiculous posturing,
and suddenly you decided to take your ball and bat and go home. Maybe
someday you'll learn not to try to poke a stick in my eye.

[5016]

"Scott Duncan" > wrote in message >...
> Let me start this off by stating I'm no pro, just a lurker interested in
> this topic. I have done extensive comparisons between the two formats and I
> thought it might be of some interest. I would also like to get some
> insight, as to why I get the results I've gotten, because (technically) it
> shouldn't be so!
>
> Some history. Luckily, I never unloaded my LP's and inherited many from
> friends and family. For years, I stored them, replacing the recordings with
> CD's (remasters when available). So, I have many of the same recordings to
> compare the two formats. All of these recordings were not exclusive to
> older recordings. Some I have are post 1992 and were/are availble on both
> cd and vinyl. The equipment may not be the greatest, but it is what I used
> in the comparisons: Speakers-Klipsch Chorus II. Amp-QSC USA 900 (which beat
> out a Audio Research D-70 re-tubed and biased). Pre-Amp-Yamaha DSP-A1.
> Phono Pre-Amp-Rega Phono. Turntable-Rega P3 fitted with a Shure V15xMR.
> Nitty Gritty RCM. CD Recorder/Player-Fostex CR 300. CD Player-Carver
> S/DA-390. Reel-to-Reel-Pioneer RT-707. Cassette Deck-Aiwa
> XK-S9000.SACD/DVD-Audio-Pioneer 563.
>
> To try to match levels the best I could and for quick access, I would record
> the vinyl onto cd then compare the manufactured cd (using the carver) to the
> "vinyl" cd (in the fostex). I have them both hooked up digitally and use the
> dac in the DSP-A1 then switch between the two sources. My brother was
> included in these comparisons, eventhough I knew, he never knew which cd was
> playing. In every instance, with the exception of two recordings, the vinyl
> sounded better. The vinyl gave the impression of listening to the actual
> band, while the cd sounded like a recording. The "vinyl" cd sounded more
> natural and the instruments would decay better, especially percussion and
> vocals.
>
> I know some will think, as I did, that it is because I like the distortions
> of the vinyl and that the cd can faithfully reproduce the lp. I chalked it
> up to poor mastering, since most of the music I compared is rock. The real
> revelation came when I recorded vinyl at 7.5 ips to the Pioneer (which has
> not been aligned and also needs one of the pinch rollers replaced). The
> reel tape (Sony) I used came with the Pioneer when I bought it from ebay. I
> have no idea of the history of this tape, but it seemed to have lived it's
> lifespan. Well, what I found. I recorded The Beatles-Hard Day's Night
> (parlophone stereo pressing) onto cd and reel tape. On playback and
> comparing, the reel trounced on the cd. The cd copy sounded unnatural,
> compressed and void of life. This indicated, to me, that cd cannot
> faithfully reproduce vinyl. Now, if I was to hear the "vinyl" cd without
> the reel for comparison, it would sound very nice indeed. But once you hear
> the difference there is no going back.
>
> Another comparison I made was with a "vinyl" cd, sacd and cassette. The
> cassette was better to the "vinyl" cd. Although, hard to match the levels,
> the cassette sounded more open while the "vinyl" cd sounded compressed,
> coming from a local center area. Comparing the "vinyl" cd to the sacd, the
> sacd was close but still no cigar. The "vinyl" cd sounded better.
>
>
> I do not claim this as a scientific study with lab coats and absolutes, just
> simple comparisons with recordings and equipment I have access to. I should
> also note, I started these comparisons wanting the cd to be better. It
> would be so nice to walk into a store and get the recording I want, as
> opposed to hunting for an acceptable vinyl copy. I'm sure many will shoot
> holes in my process, equipment, etc., which is fine, this is one of the
> reasons I posted. Can someone explain (technical or otherwise) why the
> "vinyl" cd did not sound as good as the reel or even cassette? Why would
> some of the recordings, post-1992 (which surely have digital in the chain
> somwhere) sound better on vinyl? I'm sure most here have access to orginal
> masters of some sort, what format best represents the master?
>


I recently carried out my own, inadvertent tests. I recently carried
out a substantial upgrade of my speakers. I used to use Tannoy PBM
6.5's, and recently bought a pair of PMC's that cost around 10x as
much. Previously, I used to think that vinyl sounded better than CDs.
Since upgrading the speakers, getting good stands, and actually
thinking about where the speakers actually sit in the room, I now find
vinyl almost unlistenable relative to a well-recorded recent CD. I was
actually quite disappointed to find this out.

There are a number of possible explanations for the phenomena that you
have observed, including:
- you like the sound of analog medium distortions (both vinyl and
tape)
- you don't like the sound of your Fostex A/D converters
- you don't like the sound of your Fostex D/A converters
- your monitor system obscures any differences between the different
media

[David Satz]

Scott Duncan wrote:

> [M]y problem with the comparisons I made, was that the cd (recorded)
> sounded compressed [as compared] to the reel (recorded) counterpart.
> It was [as] if the life was sucked out of the recorded cd. Not sure
> what to make of it all.

Well, I used to make my living at RCA Studios "remastering" old Red Seal
and other classical recordings for CD re-release, and can tell you that
the CD-buying public has approximately zero idea what goes on or doesn't
go on in the "remastering" process. The engineers can indeed suck all
the life out of a recording and issue it as a CD--and I think that a lot
of them (or more precisely, us) do that, whether we mean to or not.

Why on earth anyone would assume that an LP and a CD made from the same
musical performance might sound anything alike is beyond me, given that
they probably came from different source material and went through totally
different signal processing along the way. Such comparisons say little or
nothing about the LP or the CD formats themselves, and should _never_ be
used as the basis for judging anything other than the particular LP and/or
CD release that is immediately at hand.

You made an implicit judgment of the CD medium when you copied your analog
source material onto it for the purposes of this comparison: You acted as
if you trusted the material to sound the same when you played back the CD-R
as it sounded going in to the recorder. That's where you have a chance to
test that medium: Does the playback sound like the signal _you_ recorded?

But anything else is a test of the engineers and the producers who mastered
the CD and the LP. To whatever extent those folks made different esthetic
decisions from each other, you'll get different-sounding results. And to
whatever degree they had access to different generations of source material,
different information about the intended compression or EQ settings, or
different-sounding equipment for working with the signals prior to committing
to the final A/D conversion, you will also get a different sound.

Please consider that "all of the above" is the norm in actual practice when
a CD is remastered from analog source materials. I've never met a producer
who said, "Let's try to duplicate the sound of the original LP release as
closely as possible, because those people got it right." Instead what every
producer I've ever met has said was, "Those old guys were great, but I want
to show my boss and the world how much 'better' I can do." Only they don't
realize it when they use those little quote marks around the word 'better'--
they really think that they _are_ better ... and some of them are as good or
occasionally even better, but certainly not all of them, all the time.

(This message dedicated to the memory of Jack Pfeiffer and Tony Salvatore)

--best regards

[Joakim Wendel]

In article >,
"Arny Krueger" > wrote:

> "Rob Adelman" > wrote in message
>
> > Arny Krueger wrote:
> >
> >> Rob, please start demonstrating nominal competence with the English
> >> language. It's the only natural language I write in, so I'm kinda
> >> hamstrung in this matter until you show some usable level of
> >> competence with reading it.
> >
> > You know, I told myself a long time ago I wasn't going to read or
> > respond to your posts. I should have stuck with it. I'll try much
> > harder in the future, promise.
>
> Just goes to show Rob, that when things get a little warm in the kitchen,
> you can't stand the heat. I called your bluff on your ridiculous posturing,
> and suddenly you decided to take your ball and bat and go home. Maybe
> someday you'll learn not to try to poke a stick in my eye.
>
>

Please take your quarrel in private and try to be constructive in
NewsGroup.
--
Joakim Wendel
Remove obvious mail JUNK block for mail reply.

My homepage : http://violinist.nu

[Bob Cain]

Arny Krueger wrote:

> Just goes to show Rob, that when things get a little warm in the kitchen,
> you can't stand the heat. I called your bluff on your ridiculous posturing,
> and suddenly you decided to take your ball and bat and go home. Maybe
> someday you'll learn not to try to poke a stick in my eye.
>
>

And I hope, Arny, that some day you set aside the ad hominem
karate. Your technical points stand by themselves and all
that other stuff weakens your argument by association.


Bob

--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Arny Krueger]

"Bob Cain" > wrote in message

> Arny Krueger wrote:
>
>> Just goes to show Rob, that when things get a little warm in the
>> kitchen, you can't stand the heat. I called your bluff on your
>> ridiculous posturing, and suddenly you decided to take your ball and
>> bat and go home. Maybe someday you'll learn not to try to poke a
>> stick in my eye.

> And I hope, Arny, that some day you set aside the ad hominem
> karate. Your technical points stand by themselves and all
> that other stuff weakens your argument by association.

Just trying to talk to Rob in a way that he'll understand.

[Geoff Wood]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
> It's unfair to compare an LP with a CD that has been squashed to hell
> and back. And as long as there are such lousy CD reissues coming
> out, you're still going to need to keep the turntable.
>
> This is not saying anything is wrong with the CD format... just that
> something is terribly wrong with the folks at the labels who think
> that everything should be loud and bright at all cost.


He he he, I wonder if you take a horribly mastered/squashed/whatever CD
release, then transcribe it to LP, whether people will start running around
with stiffies saying how wonderful it now sounds ?!!!!

;-)

geoff

[Geoff Wood]

David Satz wrote:

> world how much 'better' I can do." Only they don't realize it when
> they use those little quote marks around the word 'better'-- they
> really think that they _are_ better ... and some of them are as good
> or occasionally even better, but certainly not all of them, all the
> time.


Some are 'better' and some aren't. The 'aren't' ones can be due to
indifference or lack of skill by the remasterers, or technical contraints of
the time when the remastering was done.

The first generation of CD remasters of catalogue material was done when AD
and processing didn't go much about 16 bits. Now there is less excuse on
the technical side....


geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >,
Geoff Wood -nospam> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> It's unfair to compare an LP with a CD that has been squashed to hell
>> and back. And as long as there are such lousy CD reissues coming
>> out, you're still going to need to keep the turntable.
>>
>> This is not saying anything is wrong with the CD format... just that
>> something is terribly wrong with the folks at the labels who think
>> that everything should be loud and bright at all cost.
>
>He he he, I wonder if you take a horribly mastered/squashed/whatever CD
>release, then transcribe it to LP, whether people will start running around
>with stiffies saying how wonderful it now sounds ?!!!!

Probably not, but you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I get in for
cutting to disc. Some of it is already limited to hell and all the dynamics
are gone. I usually send it back saying it just won't sound good on LP.
The overprocessing just in mixdown has got me mostly out of the vinyl business.
Most of the customers don't have any clue how to mix stuff to sound good on
vinyl.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Fill X > wrote:
>
>how does one get in touch with Alpha in fla.? I cant seem to find them...

Alpha Records
1400 NW 65 Avenue
Plantation, FL.
954-587-6011

These folks don't have any in-house mastering or plating services. They
will contract mastering and plating out for you on request but it's often
cheaper to send them out yourself.

I found out about them from Charlie at Kinura Records (www.kinurarecords.com)
whose weird automated lathe I covet.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Arny Krueger]

"Arny Krueger" > wrote in message

> "WideGlide" > wrote in message
> . net
>
>> Please list a few examples of some really "good" cd players.
>
> Among modern optical players, it's almost easier to talk about the
> players that aren't very good.
>
> What kinds of CD players aren't very good?
>
> The headphone jack on a PC's CD ROM
> $10-35 portables
> Boombox CD players, particularly if the boombox costs less than $100

> Look at it this way. Two of our more outspoken resident golden ears
> have recently recommended fairly inexpensive DVD players as CD
> players. One of them just went ga-ga over on RAHE over the Panasonic
> S55 which can be had for maybe even under $100. There's a sister
> model that lacks the snake-oil upsampling feature, for more like
> $60...

I just ran an Audio Rightmark test on an Apex AD-1201 DVD player that cost
me the princely sum of $39.95.

Here is the measured performance:

Frequency response +0.10 -0.16 dB 20-20 KHz into a 5.6 K load.
Zero signal noise -95 dB A-weighted, -94 dB unweighted
Dynamic range 96 dB A-weighted 93 dB unweighted
THD 0.001%
THD+N A-weighted 0.007%
THD+N 0.007% unweighted
IM (18 & 20 KHz) 0.003%

Build quality was sub-Behringer. It was broken as received. I had to take it
apart to put the tray belt back in place. It is composed of one power supply
board and one other board with two big chips on it. A couple of small boards
with the front panel pushbuttons on them. No display. All boards and
components connected with plugs. No hot melt glue.

[TonyP]

"Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message
...
> Probably not, but you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I get in for
> cutting to disc. Some of it is already limited to hell and all the
dynamics
> are gone. I usually send it back saying it just won't sound good on LP.
> The overprocessing just in mixdown has got me mostly out of the vinyl
business.
> Most of the customers don't have any clue how to mix stuff to sound good
on
> vinyl.

You can safely remove the words "On LP" and "On Vinyl" from that statement.

TonyP.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >,
TonyP > wrote:
>
>"Scott Dorsey" > wrote in message
...
>> Probably not, but you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I get in for
>> cutting to disc. Some of it is already limited to hell and all the
>dynamics
>> are gone. I usually send it back saying it just won't sound good on LP.
>> The overprocessing just in mixdown has got me mostly out of the vinyl
>business.
>> Most of the customers don't have any clue how to mix stuff to sound good
>on
>> vinyl.
>
>You can safely remove the words "On LP" and "On Vinyl" from that statement.

Yeah, but the thing is that aggressive limiting will actually made things
sound louder on a CD. The CD gives you a maximum peak level, and you can
set the signal levels to match it. It will make things sound nasty and
distorted, but louder.

On vinyl, the aggressive limiting doesn't even make things sound louder.
If anything, the excessive high frequency trash makes me have to turn the
levels down to make the records possible to track. So you get worse sound
_and_ lower levels, which is probably the opposite of what the customer wants.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[EggHd]

<< The conversation was an aesthetic one not about sales. >>

Speaking of sales, vinyl sold more units than SACD and DVD-A combined last
year.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

[hank alrich]

EggHd wrote:

> << The conversation was an aesthetic one not about sales. >>

> Speaking of sales, vinyl sold more units than SACD and DVD-A combined last
> year.

Whoa! That's gotta chap some butts! <g>

--
ha

[EggHd]

<< Whoa! That's gotta chap some butts! <g> >>

SACD may not make it....



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

[hank alrich]

EggHd wrote:

> << Whoa! That's gotta chap some butts! <g> >>

> SACD may not make it....

Man, have you no sensitivity?? I mean, to say that in front of Rob A.!

--
ha