Bought CD Vs Needledrop CD-R ?

The only vinyl rip of yours that I recall hearing some distortion on was "Fireball" by Deep Purple. I'm not sure if this is IGD or the result of that particular LP being cut to hot.

 

I just listened to a great 44/16 needledrop of a UK first pressing of G. Harrison's All Things Must Pass. This is so far above the lastest CD mastering, it isn't funny. The vinyl isn't spectacular, but it has the "breath of life." I don't think it is the fault of the CD medium, necessarily. They just digitize the master tapes and fiddle with them in ProTools until they suck most of the subtle detail out of them and turn the vocal and instrumental timbres into cold metallic slabs of sound. And that's the industry standard nowadays. It doesn't have to be that way. But I suppose the average guy listening on a Sansa MP3 player through $5 earbuds is not going to notice.

I want to raise another question, though. I've used LAST for years, and I think it leads to cleaner needledrops. It makes the high frequencies more precise, less hashy, more relaxed. I wonder why people don't talk about it more. To me it seems like a no-brainer, a cheap way to improve the sound of your system, and if you're going to go to the trouble of making a needledrop, why not take that extra step to make your source sound as good/clean as possible?

 

Personally I don't use any expensive chemical treatments..I use a mix of sporicidin and industrial crystal green (no dye or fragrance) with distilled water

 

Of course, people have their own preferences, and who am I to argue? The customer is always right.

I can only say that from the first time I used LAST, I never had a thought NOT to use it, if it was an important album. I'm not buying any vinyl other than "fun" vinyl I find at Goodwill for a buck. I don't have any LAST now, but if I was buying new vinyl or prime vintage vinyl of classic albums, I would certainly be using it. Otherwise, every time I played the record I would be thinking how much better it would sound with LAST.

Absolute Sound called it not just a record preservative, but a "distortion reducer, in fact dimension restorer." But you kind of have to hear for yourself. The majority of the stuff I've been needledropping was treated a long time ago with LAST, but the benefit does not seem to wear off. Those albums are, as a class, much cleaner and purer in the mids and highs than my untreated LPs.

 

Yes, you may be right in any of the cases.
I think the phono output signal path from the receiver is not as good as the signal path from the MOTU when it plays back the 96/24, therefore the difference in sound.
If the rip adds anything , then that's a whole different ball game (I wouldn't rule it out, though).
I like my analogy of the rip being a magnifying glass compared to the "overall" from a few feet further back viewpoint of the phono signal chain....

 

I have used LAST and also GrooveGlide, but only on used vinyl, and only after a good clean. I think it helps supress some of the surface noise on worn records. I don't think putting anything on a new record is a good idea.

 

I saw you mention industrial Crystal Green before somewhere, so I ordered a bottle and tried it on a couple of frashed records at 50% strength. It definitely improved them, although scratches simply can't be removed, only grunge.

I'm curious about the sporicidin. Does this help?

I've recently ordered some Disc Doctor brushes and fluid. It took some experimenting to hit on the right method (soaking the rinse brush in a bowl of distilled water between records seems to be the key, alon with rinsing using filtered water before the rinse brush), but it's the cleanest I've ever got my records consistently. Ironically, I tried the same method using my home brew cleaning solution (30% iso alcohol, 70% distilled water, several drops of dishwater rinse agent as a surfactant) and the results seemed to be as good as with the actual Disc Doctor fluid. Mind you, the DD fluid came concentrated wtih a big bottle for mixing/storage plus a small one for applying to the brush and so far I've cleaned about 100 records and have only used 1/2 of the small bottle, so it will last me for a long time.

 

I don't have any financial connection to LAST, but I obviously think it is a great product. Do you mean that you do not hear the reduction in intermodulation distortion that creates essentially a "cleaner window" through which to hear the music? You only hear a bit of surface noise reduction? Because to me the latter effect is the least significant.

It would be advisable to clean a new record to remove mold release compounds and any dust that might have settled on it in the pressing process before applying LAST. But I've never heard LAST make a record sound worse, and therefore I wouldn't have any qualms about applying it to a new record, personally.

Stereophile mentions LAST recently here: http://www.stereophile.com/news/last_seeks_new_ownership/

Oddly, Fremer "unhesitatingly" recommends it, but says it does not make his records sound better or worse. I find that a startling claim, because it makes my records sound better. Perhaps his more hifalutin turntable and multi-thousand dollar cartridges are able to achieve the fidelity improvement that LAST does by different means. Audio Advisor quotes the April '06 Stereophile as advising that LAST "Significantly improves the sound of even new records."

I'll quit now, because I only wanted to make people more aware of this product, especially in the needledrop context. I haven't bought a bottle in years because, as I said, I have moved away from vinyl playback, except for making needledrops. I just hope some of you will try it, and if you are deeply into vinyl, you owe it to yourself. It will cost you about $40 for a bottle. Some of you easily drop that much on one record. IMO it will do for all your albums at least as much as a cartridge upgrade. I've almost convinced myself to buy a new bottle to treat albums before needledropping -- even the less important ones that I hadn't treated before.

 

First of all, trust me, the customer isn't always right!

But, it seals in the sound, and appears to not fade away. I also highly endorse the product. I have a LOT of LPs and 45s from the early 80s that I preserved with it, and they sound as good as they day I bought them, and they weren't always treated with the best of care.


I used LAST when it was known as Sound Guard. When that went away, I had to quit using it for lack of availability (to me).

I loved the stuff, and it really preserves the records. The only thing is that one had to treat a totally clean, preferably mint record, or you would wind up sealing in all that noise, which I unfortunately wound up doing to one record I recently tried to clean up. Ugghh!

 

Sporicidin is a mold removing agent. Depending on the disc it can have amazing results but if there's no mold present in the grooves it won't do much.

Pbthal can respond to this better and hopefully he will.

 

I guess it also depends on which masterings one uses for the experiments. My CD-R of Dave Edmunds' "Get It" (UK LP) is so much better than the Swan Song and Wounded Bird releases, that I gave the 1st one away and threw the 2nd one out.

 

It certainly made my day!

Is there anything else like that on the web?

 

No one can share that sort of links in this forum, but send me a pm if you're interested

 

Hmm tough choice for me as i like to have the physical medium, whether it be original cd or vinyl and sometimes availability and funds dictate which way i lean. That being said i have a few PB needledrops, even of vinyl i own but with his equipment it far surpasses the present state of my mid-fi (at best) analog setup. A well done needledrop does much more for me than present state cd's, but i have recently been picking up a lot of original cd's discussed in these forums.

 

That there has to be an excpetion.

 

I think it helps...I mix it with the Crystal green, but have not done any scientific experiments. I think the steam also helps the process

 

I have been having some ear opening sessions myself. Nothing that would make me go back to vinyl for my needs but I cannot deny what I am hearing.

 

No Criticism

Guys, believe me this is not a criticism but a personal observation. This is an example of what I perceive to be anal/obsessive behavior that I exhibited with vinyl that drove me away. The incessant efforts to "get it right" just overcame me. I couldn't do it and hence, no vinyl for me.

 

I fully understand, since getting my vintage systems going I finally, even for a mid-fi setup, have something that allows me to here the differences, some like a brick and some very subtle. I'm just glad i didn't dump a lot of my 80's cd's for RM's.

 

It is especially in the case of the RM's where needle drops exceed. In comparisons to some original version CDs and CDs from MoFi or DCC the differences may not be as dramatic but still it does make me think.

 

I have a hard time just needledropping something and not de-clicking, summing channels (when doing a mono LP), doing the fades at the start and end of a track, etc. It's a lot of work, so I'm very particular about what I choose to transfer now.

Recently, I started doing 24/88.2 needledrops. This adds another step if I'm making a CD, but the quality is that much closer to the actual LP. Once I get a Squeezebox Touch set up, I'll be able to listen to my hi-rez needledrops, CD-Rs will be a thing of the past, and what a pampered fool I'll be.

 

I totally get what you are describing in the creation of something like a needle drop. I would do the same thing to acheive the best results. I guess I was pointing more towards the preparation for simply playing albums and the cleaning and balancing that I use to do to ensure it was right before playback. Like I said, I have no criticism of that only my own personal experience.

 

A lot of here are OCD. I've said it before; it's part of being an audiophile.

 

Well, I'm trying to find a balance. I hear the differences, I just try not to magnify their importance. I can listen to an MP3 file to save me the hassle of getting up and finding the CD. I can hear the degradation, but choose not to focus on it. Today I compared a needledrop of the original vinyl of Tears For Fears album Songs From The Big Chair with the Deluxe Edition CD. The CD sounds just slightly foggy by comparison, and the EQ favors the midrange making things more forward. But it sounds good. I could enjoy either one.

 

Try the original CD. It will fair better against the lp than the dynamics-compromised/EQ-messed-with DE.