A certain MrBitsy, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :
If you put a pillow in front of your speakers, would you be annoyed at
someone who claimed that the pillow "enhancement" sounded better, and
that anyone who had the temerity to claim that the pillow was bad was
guilty of not using their ears ?
Depends on how bad the speaker was - maybe the pillow cleaned up the
treble!
Well let's say you might argue that, and another person might disagree.
To prove it, a way would have to be found to measure the level of
treble. To do that you'd have to use an oscilloscope (one of the fancy
ones with built in FFT so you can measure harmonic content). The 'scope
would most likely show that the pillowcase had significantly altered and
deadened the sound. At this point, the "audiophiles" would stick their
fingers in their ears and say "so what about what the scope says! I can
hear it anyway!".
I have a CD system that I play regularly and enjoy. I have a vinyl system
that I play regularly and enjoy - more han CD. Why does it hurt so much
when people claim vinyl has more 'soul' or 'feeling'?
That claim doesn't hurt me at all - not in the slightest. How could I
possibly argue about someone loving the sound of vinyl and getting a
more enjoyable experience from it ? Anyone who argued against that would
be a prick. "You can't possibly like the taste of strawberries better
than raspberries!". Not reasonable.
However, when faced with a comment like this I'd usually feel the need
to point out that this "soul and feeling" is the result of significant
components of the sound being *compromised or removed completely*, as
any LP mastering engineer will tell you. This is where the problem
arises. Few "vinylphiles" are prepared to accept the *truth* of the
matter which is that apart from specialised, expensive and rare vinyl
manufacturing processes, the majority (in the order of 90% at a guess)
of vinyl LPs are significantly compromised shadows of the original
recorded work, then there would be no more arguments. However this does
not happen, and *despite* quoted testimony from LP mastering engineers
and other experts (preferably retired - so that they're not trying to
make money out of the "vinyl mania"), vinylphiles still insist that this
is wrong. This is the chief bone of contention.
I often quote this section from Wendy Carlos' website. She was an LP
mastering engineer during the 1960s, and also a well known musician in
the USA.
http://www.wendycarlos.com/open4.html
"Sunnuvagun... I've recently gotten a few letters from fans like you
seriously asking me if I think the early LP albums on CBS were any good.
Just my candid opinion: how do I think they hold up compared to the new
remasterings, the new Hi-D CD's in particular?
The short answer is: "You must be joking!" I still can't believe we all
had to be satisfied with that final release technology (mastering tapes
were usually quite decent.) It was always a bitter disappointment for
us, often emotionally so, but what choice was there? Each time we came
to put out a new album, we faced a difficult struggle, to transfer at
least 50-60% of the quality from our master Dolby tapes onto mere LP or
prerecorded tape/cassette. We were never completely satisfied, even when
we'd reach all the technology could do, and all the engineers at CBS who
helped us had taken their best shot. The "good ol' daze" was none too
good. I've never understood the lunatic fringe who to this day maintain
that this torturous, ancient roller-coaster ride of tiny mechanical
stylus trying to follow all the minute undulations of vinyl plastic
molded grooves was ever "ideal", and bemoan its demise. I hear there's a
big Bridge for sale...
Since I was a cutting engineer for some years in the late 60's, I know
of what I speak here. We resorted to many outrageous tricks at times to
try to force that dated methodology to be something less than arthritic.
It's testament to the skill and patience of many who cut records, built
the equipment, that some of them were/are not half bad ("only" 15-25%
bad). Comparing that methodology to a properly designed and aligned
20-bit digital recording system is like shooting ducks in a barrel, the
elaborate mechanical kludge being the loser.
Save your money on eBay, bidding on and purchasing those old black
plastic disks. At least don't expect quality audio, nor an exact match
to the original masters, not any I've been involved with. If you need to
own these for nostalgia, I won't argue the point. But I can't share your
delights that such old pressings sound "great". Consider having your
hearing tested ;^). Like most mind-over-matter, we can fool ourselves
much easier than most of us realize. Trust the double-blind scientific
method, just as we've done, as a check on perceived reality.
Even more important, our newest ESD CD's are not just hit-or-miss
transfers to digital of the old mastering tapes used to cut those LP's.
I'm not such a fool to spend difficult months trying to do much better
than your usual remastering. We've taken the time, made the efforts, in
a painstaking attempt to render each master to be as good as it can now
be, based on what now exists. You're not "paying for nothing" when you
purchase one of these remastered editions: a lot went into it, as
high-quality sound is no accident.
We ought repeat an important distinction he the source tapes we used
are not the "mastering" copies (read: limited, compressed and EQed) as
fed the LP cutting lathes, but are the first generation master mixes,
the moment the music was "locked down" in a final take. No new mixes
have been made: these are more authentic and genuinely original than you
ever heard before! In the end I do expect, or at least hope, that the
more golden eared among you, using good equipment, will notice and enjoy
the improvements, even the subtler ones. In careful A/B comparisons it
really is quite obvious here.
Early cassettes and prerecorded tapes made by CBS can sound a bit better
than the LP's in certain (not all) ways. But in order to manufacture
these (profitably) in large quantity, 3-4 extra generations of dubbing
were necessary, and the finals were made at very high speed. This added
its own problems of frequency response and slew limiting, etc., not to
mention tape hiss (yes, even with Dolby B). This is why those pirated
"Tron" (and a few others) CD's sound so lame: they're just dubs of
mediocre cassettes. I have heard a few better sounding cassettes from
the 80's, at least better than those earliest years, so they did improve
somewhat. Even LP's got better near their end (cutting copper blanks
helped a lot), albeit with the same surface blemishes and other
measurable distortions notably on the inner grooves.
Don't just trust me on the matter of audio quality, try comparing for
yourself. Be sure to do it double blind: let someone else pick and play
the various versions while you just listen without any cues. First
balance the levels to be nearly the same, and everything else you can do
to get a close match. Find a decent system to listen on, adjust for a
moderately loud listening level (but not "blasting"), and then you tell
me. Reality. Don't trust your memory, which can be fooled, but play
short snippets of 10 seconds or so, immediately comparing back and forth
the same spot. Try to be attentive, unprejudiced (dogma please wait
outside) and bravely honest. Nu?
--
"Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny." - cnn.com
RFD: uk.rec.audio.vinyl
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