wrote in message
...
Ok. I have spent enough time getting feedback from objectivists
regarding their views on the accuracy of CDs in the real word. So it's
high time to state my case.

1. Live music in a goo acoustic space is my genereal reference. james
Boyk says it better than I can.
"What interest me in audio is perception, not technology. One
perception often lost in all the getting and spending is that live
sound is beautiful, while reproduced sound rarely is."
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/ear.htm
It is the *intrinsic* beauty of live music that I seek when I listen to
recordings of acoustic music. I know what it is. It is easily
recognizable when I hear live music and it is recognizably missing in
most playback. When it is there it is amazing. It is a matter of degree
not a black and white issue though.

OK my views on CDs vs.LPs as they help me achieve my goals in audio.
1. All else being equal IME LPs offer more of the intrinsic beauty than
CDs. I base this on comparisons of CDs and LPs made from the same
source by the same team of mastering enginees and producers. One
example I cited was the James Boyk recording of Pictures at an
Exhibition. i have also made the comparison with a number of oferings
fom Classics and APO. The diffeences were not huge but I did favor the
LPs.
2. The best sounding LPs sound better to me than the best sounding CDs
I have heard. Granted there is a limited sampling to sure and one can
claim I am comparing apples to oranges here but I am comparing the best
of the best on both sides. All in all it seems fair if one wants to
know which is providing the very best.
3. By and large when I compare the many CDs and LPs of a given title an
LP will usually sound the best. It used to be almost all of the time
but now it is about 70 to 80 percent of the time.


As for accuracy. Well I have a number of opinions on that but lets
start with the asertions below.


wrote:
Perhaps a beaten horse but still a hot topic. Before going into my
views on the subject v. the views of objectivists I would like to pose
some of my impressions about objectivist views to objectivists. Just to
get a fair representation of those views I would like to hear from
objectivists on the accuracy of my impressions
. It is my impression that
1. objectivists believe that commerical CDs from thier intorduction to
the market place to the present are audibly transparent transfers of
the signal used to make them.

Some objectivists agree with this some acknowledged that in some cases
AD/converters and manufacturing can muk up the sound. IMO this is a
very very common problem with CDs. Cds have often been considered harsh
and strident and lacking in dimensionality and lower level harmonic
detail by many who prefer LPs. It has been my experience as well. The
claims that A/D converters are audibly transparent seems to me to be n
eroneous one.
"As Mrs. Cozart Fine and I began our evaluation sessions in April 1989,
it becamevery clear to us that the A/D conversion process was a very
critical step in our produc-tion work. As the producer once described
it, the sounds from different converters wereall different "bowls of
soup"."
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache...&cd=2&ie=UTF-8

2. Objectivists blame any faults of commercial CD sound to the poor
quality of the original recordings or bad choices made by mastering
engineers but never blame the actual digital conversion or
manugfacturing of those CDs.

Some objectivists agreed with this assertion as well. While I agree it
is a common cause of some serious problems, especially in the past 10
years i don't agree that it is the only problem as claimed above.



3. Objectivists believe that CDs in the cases that no tweaking has been
done by the mastering engineers always present a more accurate sounding
version of that master than any LP played back on any TT rig and thus
will offer a more accurate representation of the artists/producer/
engineer's intentions as well as a more accurate reproduction of the
master.


Again It seems that the objectivists largely agreed with this. Up to
the intent of the artist/engineers/producers. And while I suspect it is
often true I think there is ample reason to believe it is often not
true. of course i am not speaking in terms of measured performance but
of subjective compaisons. many noted mastering engineers such as Doug
Sax and Bernie Grundman have claimed as much. They, unlike the rest of
us , actually have made direct comparisons to draw their conclusions.


4. Objectivists believe the often cited preference for LPs to CDs when
not a result of mastering differences is often the result of euphonic
colorations inherent in LPs as a medium and that while some may like
them they are never more accurate to the master tape or even the
original sound of a live recording.

Again I disagree based on cliams made by actual mastering and recording
engineers of the very LPs and CDs I have often compared of the same
titles. Audible acuracy is subjective and if an added distortion seems
to comensate for something that is lost then that add distortion will
make something more accurate to the original as far as our perceptions
go. And that is what interests me.

5. Objectivists believe the primary source of preferences for LPs over
CDs by vinyl enthusiasts is mostly a result of biases.
Let me know if I am making any misrepresentations of objectivists
beliefs on this subject.

ok not a big issue really.

But lets talk about accuracy
It seems to me that a number of objectivists seem to think a master
recording is the proper reference for audio. Aside from my position
that the common belief that if it isi on CD and hasn't been mukked with
that CDs will be more accurate to the master than LPs is often eroneous
and that many many CDs are inroducing very ugly colorations that make
their distortions more problematic in many many cases, setting up a
master tape as a reference can be a very misguided idea. Why set it up
as a reference/ Because it represents the artists intentions? How?
1. You are setting up playback as a reference for playback. master
tapes have no sound of their own. They have to be played back. The
artists recorded over mics (transducers) and listened back over another
set of transducers. It is a troublesome reference. here is yet another
problem. Many artists/enginees/ producers did not use the master tape
to judge the product. In popular music final judgement was largly based
on test pressings of the LP. IOW the LP was the reference. Matser tapes
were tweaked to get the "artists/engineers/producers intentions" for
the actual final product. One can easily go to a master tape, depending
on what tape is chosen and get nothing like what the artists intended.
The fact is mastering old mateil is not simple. choosing the right
master tape is essential and having the artists/engineers present to
guide the reissue is also very important if one is so worried about
intent of artsists and the like. Most, almost all CDs were not made
this way. OTOH just about all LPs form the advent of the medum to the
80s were. Ironically, if intent matters to you then many many LPs are
more accuratce. Consider what Rudy Van Gelder says about the subject
for a moment.
But is accuracy to the master tape the be all end all? Obviously not
in many cases. Is accuracy to the artists/engineers/producers intent
always the be all end all? in many cases I' say no. Have any of you
heard the Led Zeppelin reissues supervised by Jimi Page? Ear bleeding
trebble to say the least. should I like that better cause Jimi Page
does?

Bottom line.
There are too many variables that havegone into the making of LPs and
CDs to make any reasonableblanket claims about accuracy to the master.
We do not have access to masters and so it is difficult for us to make
our own comparisons. This along with the fact that when one uses a
master as a reference one has to use playback as a reference amkes
master tapes an unvarifiable, some what arbitrary and inherently
compramised reference. The bottom line is my goal is to get as much of
the intrinsic beauty of live music in my playback. The way I make this
call is by simply listening and comparing. My conclusions were based on
that. Thsoe conclusions being...
1. All else being equal IME LPs offer more of the intrinsic beauty than
CDs. I base this on comparisons of CDs and LPs made from the same
source by the same team of mastering enginees and producers. One
example I cited was the James Boyk recording of Pictures at an
Exhibition. i have also made the comparison with a number of oferings
fom Classics and APO. The diffeences were not huge but I did favor the
LPs.
2. The best sounding LPs sound better to me than the best sounding CDs
I have heard. Granted there is a limited sampling to sure and one can
claim I am comparing apples to oranges here but I am comparing the best
of the best on both sides. All in all it seems fair if one wants to
know which is providing the very best.
3. By and large when I compare the many CDs and LPs of a given title an
LP will usually sound the best. It used to be almost all of the time
but now it is about 70 to 80 percent of the time.

I think it is odd to adjust one's preferences to one's expectations. I
think many objectivists have done so by wrongly expecting CDs to be
accurate to the master, believing that the master is always a
reasonable and meaningful reference to begin with and thinking all
problems one hears from Cds should be accepted becasue the technology
is "superior" and that it is right even if it is not pretty. It makes
more sense to simply evaluate the playback on the merits of the sound.


Scott

So, if I can paraphrase a long post, and distill it down to a few words,
what it looks to me you're saying is that if it sounds good to you, then it
*is* good and that accuracy is a subjective thing. That's fine, but we went
through a very long thread to get to a basic subjectivist position.

I will take issue with a few specific points:

quote
But is accuracy to the master tape the be all end all? Obviously not
in many cases. Is accuracy to the artists/engineers/producers intent
always the be all end all? in many cases I' say no. Have any of you
heard the Led Zeppelin reissues supervised by Jimi Page? Ear bleeding
trebble to say the least. should I like that better cause Jimi Page
does?

Yes, if Jimi Page has produced it that way, that's the way he means for you
to hear it. Now, bear in mind that JP's hearing in all probability has
little treble left, both the normal ageing process, and the sonic abuse it
has had to stand over the years. So I'm not surprised it would have a lot of
top. More surprised that no-one told him it had excessive top, but it's hard
to tell a great man he's got it wrong......
However, if you accept that the LZ reissue is a work of art, then you have
to accept it as it is. No-one should complain, for example, because
Picasso's or Van Gogh's paintings weren't geometically accurate, even though
they are great art. If you don't like it, that's fine by me, but that's down
to you, and not a reflection on the quality of what is being provided.

Next point, A/D conversion

You say that " The claims that A/D converters are audibly transparent seems
to me to be an eroneous one."

Whilst I accept that some, especially early, A/D converters weren't perfect,
for the past 5 or so years, you can take an A/D and put it back-to-back with
a D-A whichever way round you like, and you can't hear the processes
working, they are that transparent. There's therefore absolutely no excuse
for any record company to have poor A/D conversion, or D/A conversion if
cutting vinyl from digital material. If you do this with Apogee, dCS or
Prism Audio converters, you will find them subjectively transparent.

Everything else seems to me to be confirmation of your basic premise that
your subjective reaction is your arbiter of quality. Nothing wrong with
that, but it's not objective.

S.

Serge Auckland wrote:
wrote in message
...
Ok. I have spent enough time getting feedback from objectivists
regarding their views on the accuracy of CDs in the real word. So it's
high time to state my case.


[quoted text deleted -- deb]

that. Thsoe conclusions being...
1. All else being equal IME LPs offer more of the intrinsic beauty than
CDs. I base this on comparisons of CDs and LPs made from the same
source by the same team of mastering enginees and producers. One
example I cited was the James Boyk recording of Pictures at an
Exhibition. i have also made the comparison with a number of oferings
fom Classics and APO. The diffeences were not huge but I did favor the
LPs.
2. The best sounding LPs sound better to me than the best sounding CDs
I have heard. Granted there is a limited sampling to sure and one can
claim I am comparing apples to oranges here but I am comparing the best
of the best on both sides. All in all it seems fair if one wants to
know which is providing the very best.
3. By and large when I compare the many CDs and LPs of a given title an
LP will usually sound the best. It used to be almost all of the time
but now it is about 70 to 80 percent of the time.

I think it is odd to adjust one's preferences to one's expectations. I
think many objectivists have done so by wrongly expecting CDs to be
accurate to the master, believing that the master is always a
reasonable and meaningful reference to begin with and thinking all
problems one hears from Cds should be accepted becasue the technology
is "superior" and that it is right even if it is not pretty. It makes
more sense to simply evaluate the playback on the merits of the sound.


Scott

So, if I can paraphrase a long post, and distill it down to a few words,
what it looks to me you're saying is that if it sounds good to you, then it
*is* good and that accuracy is a subjective thing.



you have stripped away too much. Your summary left out the fact that I
do have specific goals with audio and a basic reference by which to
judge the merits of playback. Your summary makes my aproach to audio
look like it might be random.


That's fine, but we went
through a very long thread to get to a basic subjectivist position.


We went through long thread because I wanted to get a fair overview of
the POVs of objctivists on the many aspects of CDs sound v. LP sound. I
think a lot of you did nice job of putting the rhetoric aside and
explained yor beliefs quite nicely. I thought it was worth while and
informative.



I will take issue with a few specific points:

quote
But is accuracy to the master tape the be all end all? Obviously not
in many cases. Is accuracy to the artists/engineers/producers intent
always the be all end all? in many cases I' say no. Have any of you
heard the Led Zeppelin reissues supervised by Jimi Page? Ear bleeding
trebble to say the least. should I like that better cause Jimi Page
does?

Yes, if Jimi Page has produced it that way, that's the way he means for you
to hear it. Now, bear in mind that JP's hearing in all probability has
little treble left, both the normal ageing process, and the sonic abuse it
has had to stand over the years. So I'm not surprised it would have a lot of
top. More surprised that no-one told him it had excessive top, but it's hard
to tell a great man he's got it wrong......
However, if you accept that the LZ reissue is a work of art, then you have
to accept it as it is. No-one should complain, for example, because
Picasso's or Van Gogh's paintings weren't geometically accurate, even though
they are great art. If you don't like it, that's fine by me, but that's down
to you, and not a reflection on the quality of what is being provided.


I disagree. we as consumers have the right to take issue with choices
made by artists. It seems you are suggesting that the Led Zeppelin
remasters should be taken as definitive even though other versions
sound much better to me. This takes me back to my conclusion. I don't
believe i have to adjust my opinions on quality because something is
"supposed" to be right even if it is ugly.By the way, art is not above
criticism.



Next point, A/D conversion

You say that " The claims that A/D converters are audibly transparent seems
to me to be an eroneous one."

Whilst I accept that some, especially early, A/D converters weren't perfect,
for the past 5 or so years, you can take an A/D and put it back-to-back with
a D-A whichever way round you like, and you can't hear the processes
working, they are that transparent. There's therefore absolutely no excuse
for any record company to have poor A/D conversion, or D/A conversion if
cutting vinyl from digital material. If you do this with Apogee, dCS or
Prism Audio converters, you will find them subjectively transparent.

That is all fine and well but you are talking about a subset of A/D
converters. While I was talking about all of them. Not all of them used
in the making of actual commercial CDs were transparent.



Everything else seems to me to be confirmation of your basic premise that
your subjective reaction is your arbiter of quality. Nothing wrong with
that, but it's not objective.


There is just as much objectivity in my choices as those made by
others.



Scott