[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 06:09:30 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:45:47 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Scott" wrote in message

On Jul 27, 4:48=A0am, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message



On Jul 25, 2:49=3DA0pm, bob
wrote:
Occasionally, during one of our long threads about
vinyl vs. digital,someone suggests the invention of a
"vinylizer," a knob that can dial in any amount of
the various distortions characteristic of vinyl
playback. Well, it isn't that simple yet, but
technology finds a way:
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/
Too bad this one completely missed the mark. It would
be a good idea if it were done right without the
cyncism. Maybe somebody who gets vinyl will make
something that will actually do the job.

What is "getting vinyl"?

Understanding the sonic aesthetic virtues that can be
found with vinyl.

The facts about vinyl in approximate order of
importance to most people:

Sorry you don't get to speak for most people.

Not only most but the vast majority of people have long
since forgot about vinyl. The RIAA market share data
makes that quite clear.

Yet enough people DO value vinyl that records are still
pressed and hundreds of manufacturers still make
turntables, some costing a small fortune, Cartridges are
still available at all price points from $20 on the low
end to tens of thousands on the high end with new ones
being introduced all the time. Not to mention a myriad of
phono preamps available, again at all price points, as
well as recently introduced preamps and integrated amps
that have phono stages either built-in as standard or
available as an option.

Two words: Niche products.

One word: Irrelevant. MacDonalds sells more hamburgers in an hour than
Morton's or Ruth's Chris steak houses sell steaks in a year, does that make
these "high-end" restaurants "niche" restaurants? Market share is no
indication of viability in markets catering to different strata of the same
market or different markets.


Again, rumors of vinyl's demise is greatly exaggerated.

Especially given your well documented prejudices on
vinyl.

What prejudice of mine is that? Is it not true that my
comments about vinyl have been 100% factual, and backed
by published, peer-reviewed technical papers,
statistical evidence from reliable industry sources and
decades of personal experience?

Your facts are not in question here. Your obvious and oft
stated disdain for vinyl is what gives away your
prejudice.

That's where you've got me wrong. I have no more or less disdain for vinyl
than I have for any other audio media with similar performance levels.

You should re-read the above. Your disdain for vinyl is palpable here and I
don't believe we've ever discussed "other audio media with similar
performance levels".

Furthermore, I have repeated defended the use of vinyl based on the unique
musical content that it carries.

There's a phrase that covers that. It's called "damning with faint praise".

This product misses the mark IMO.

But you don't say why in a detailed, convincing way. In
fact, you've presented no evidence that you've ever
actually listened to it. Could it be that your opinions
of it are based only on prejudice?

I am speaking as an
audiophile who is interested in the aesthetic value of
sound

Given that you have presented no first hand information
about the sound of this product...

Wouldn't the fact that this "Vinylizer" introduces wow,
flutter, tracking distortion, ticks and pops
automatically disqualify it from serious consideration by
ANY music lover?

Those very same performance problems do not diqualify vinyl itself,

That's because those are not inherent qualities of phonograph records
themselves, they are, however, possible DEFECTS in phonograph records. I must
say that my collection exhibits very few of any of those defects. And while
they might show-up more often than any record listener might like, it does,
in no way. alter the fact that these defects are unwanted.

according to the paragraph that forms your initial response to my post.

People who listen to vinyl, at least in
my considerable experience, still listen to it because of
two distinct and different reasons. One faction holds
that LP sounds "better" than digital, and the other
faction sees LP as just another source of music (that's
the faction to which I, mostly, belong), like CD, FM
radio, tape, downloads from the internet, etc. Neither
like warp wow, eccentric records, ticks or pops,
mis-tracking, Inner-groove distortion, or any of the
other ills that can plague vinyl playback, and most, if
not all vinyl listeners strive to avoid those things. The
fact that this "Vinylizer seems to re-introduce these
unwanted artifacts to digital playback is missing the
point. Now if it made digital SOUND like a well recorded,
well pressed vinyl record WITHOUT those unwanted
artifacts, then he'd have something.

I see a misidentification of a problem that we all agree exists. Digital
recordings on occasion fail to sound good simply because they are accurate
reproducers of mediocre technical work.

I wish that were true. The fact is that most CD releases do not represent,
accurately, the information that is on the master tape. CD is capable, with
out being a so-called "high-resolution" format such as SACD or DVD-A or even
high-definition download formats such as 24/96 or 24/192, of much higher
levels of performance than most commercial releases put on them. Fact is,
most commercial releases, irrespective of the level of performance available
on CD or other digital media, is a pale shadow of the master. I've heard it
dozens of times. One here's a master or a copy of a master, and then buys the
CD when it's released only to find that it's been compressed and limited and
had whatever else done to it to render it extremely disappointing. This seems
to be the rule rather than the exception and I don't know why. CD can be
astonishingly good, but it rarely is - even so-called "audiophile releases"
sound nowhere as good as the digital masters from which they were cut. Hell,
I have highly touted recordings where the vinyl reissue sounds so much better
than the CD of the same performance, that it's hard to believe that both
renditions came from the same master tape.

Saying that DIGITAL needs some
add-on to make it sound good rather obviously paints all forms of digital
media with the same overly-broad brush.

Nothing wrong with digital. It's potentially as good as technology can
provide. There is a lot wrong with most releases, however. It's funny that a
lot of people spend a lot of money and time chasing these high-resolution
formats around the Internet, when the truth is that most of them have never
even heard a glimpse of what plain-old Redbook CD is capable of doing.

I play Redbook CDs for people made from my own digital recordings without any
signal processing whatsoever, and their jaws drop at the quality. Most have
simply never heard anything that sounded THAT real. The funny part is, it's
relatively easy to make recordings of this quality. Why commercial interests
feel that they have to water recordings down so much before releasing them is
beyond me.

Anybody who is familiar with the
ins and outs of the process of producing musical recordings should be
well-aware of the fact that there is no single magic box that will undo all
of the careless and slipshod work that has been recorded on digital.

While that is true as well, a lot of seems to me to be deliberate.

Indicting DIGITAL, as we frequently see being done here is a clear case of
shooting the messenger.

Well, you certainly won't find me condemning digital AS A PROCESS, but I will
condemn what most commercial record companies do with it. And increasing the
bit-rate and depth won't help much because most of those so-called
high-resolution releases are flawed in the same manner as the Redbook
releases of the same materials.

Like I have often said on this forum. Vinyl LP is NOT the end-all or the
be-all of high-fidelity listening, but it is another viable source of music
(KEY phrase here). Often, it's preferred to the digital releases of the same
recordings because it's more honest to the original master tape than are the
digital releases. It just seems that often, the processing that occurs in
vinyl mastering does less audible (or at least more musically pleasing)
damage to what was captured on the "master tape" than is the CD mastering of
the same material. Again, I don't pretend to know why this would be so. All I
know is that it's there for all to hear who want to hear it.

But again, (Another KEY phrase coming) regular old Redbook CD is capable of
astonishing levels of quality playback, but the average consumer doesn't get
to hear that quality because it's NOT transferred to the CD by the record
companies.

[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 06:09:30 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

I see a misidentification of a problem that we all agree
exists. Digital recordings on occasion fail to sound
good simply because they are accurate reproducers of
mediocre technical work.

I wish that were true.

It's truth is proven fact.

The fact is that most CD releases
do not represent, accurately, the information that is on
the master tape.

It takes considerable naivate about the normal production process to
consider that to be a technical flaw.

Master tapes very frequently are not commerically acceptable when they are
accurate representations of the master tape. That's why mastering engineers
are still a valuable resource.

Commerical recordings must satisfy a large number of listeners to be good
commercial products. Musical recordings often have excess dynamics and
often contain excess power at the low end of the audible spectrum to sound
acceptable in the limited environments that most consumers listen to them
in.

[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 12:08:45 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 06:09:30 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

I see a misidentification of a problem that we all agree
exists. Digital recordings on occasion fail to sound
good simply because they are accurate reproducers of
mediocre technical work.

I wish that were true.

It's truth is proven fact.

The fact is that most CD releases
do not represent, accurately, the information that is on
the master tape.

It takes considerable naivate about the normal production process to
consider that to be a technical flaw.

Who said it was a "technical flaw"?

Master tapes very frequently are not commerically acceptable when they are
accurate representations of the master tape. That's why mastering engineers
are still a valuable resource.

Whatever the reason, the reality is that commercial CD rarely, if ever, lives
up to its potential in terms of sound quality.

Commerical recordings must satisfy a large number of listeners to be good
commercial products. Musical recordings often have excess dynamics and
often contain excess power at the low end of the audible spectrum to sound
acceptable in the limited environments that most consumers listen to them
in.

That's true. But what it means is that the CD buyer is not getting what CD is
capable of. I'm glad we agree on this point.

[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 12:08:45 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in
message
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 06:09:30 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

I see a misidentification of a problem that we all
agree exists. Digital recordings on occasion fail to
sound good simply because they are accurate
reproducers of mediocre technical work.

I wish that were true.

It's truth is proven fact.

The fact is that most CD releases
do not represent, accurately, the information that is on
the master tape.

It takes considerable naivate about the normal
production process to consider that to be a technical
flaw.

Who said it was a "technical flaw"?

Master tapes very frequently are not commerically
acceptable when they are accurate representations of the
master tape. That's why mastering engineers are still a
valuable resource.

Whatever the reason, the reality is that commercial CD
rarely, if ever, lives up to its potential in terms of
sound quality.

It's true. Due to the sfar more audibly significant audible failings in the
rest of the audio chain, particularly rooms and transducers, CD playback
never lives up to its potential for excellent sound quality.

[Audio Empire]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 07:20:43 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 12:08:45 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in
message
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 06:09:30 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

I see a misidentification of a problem that we all
agree exists. Digital recordings on occasion fail to
sound good simply because they are accurate
reproducers of mediocre technical work.

I wish that were true.

It's truth is proven fact.

The fact is that most CD releases
do not represent, accurately, the information that is on
the master tape.

It takes considerable naivate about the normal
production process to consider that to be a technical
flaw.

Who said it was a "technical flaw"?

Master tapes very frequently are not commerically
acceptable when they are accurate representations of the
master tape. That's why mastering engineers are still a
valuable resource.

Whatever the reason, the reality is that commercial CD
rarely, if ever, lives up to its potential in terms of
sound quality.

It's true. Due to the sfar more audibly significant audible failings in the
rest of the audio chain, particularly rooms and transducers, CD playback
never lives up to its potential for excellent sound quality.



Sorry, Arny, you're putting words in my mouth (or should I say keyboard). I
said that commercial CDs do not have the information on them that would make
them sound as good as what the medium itself is capable. I said nothing about
limitations "downstream" of the CD playback itself.