Denon PCM Encoding in 1970s. Is it different than Sony CD PCM?

I obtained another Denon LP. this time with piano and wind instruments and no strings.: Denon OF-7009-ND; Mozart/Beethoven Piano Quintets performed by Alfons Kontarsky and Winds of the Berlin Philharmonic. This LP was recorded in March 1981 using the Denon PCM system. I don't believe any Redbook processing took place.

The sonics are pleasing with no digititus or other harshness or opaqueness in the instrumental sound. The Piano tone is very stable and the Winds blend well. The instrumental tone color is fairly good with some naturalness to the midrange. The overall sound is very refined and clear.

The sonic negatives, while easily audible, don't interfere with the musical flow. The main negative is a rather constricted sonic image of each instrument. They sound miniaturized with limited projection. The tonal color while individual sounding has rather blunted transient onset and decay. The later recording has shed the occasional coarseness I heard with earlier Denon LPs such as the Smetana Quartet LP mentioned by me early in the thread. However this LP veers a bit too much in the direction of superclean refined sound. It still is much superior to Sony Redbook PCM.

 

I spoke with the archivist at New World Records and they are not aware of a CD mastered from the Soundstream tape. They suggested that the paper that mentioned the release was wrong. I am going to contact the author of the paper and get to the bottom of this!

 

According to Wiki (LA Times + AES meeting) it was only a prototype of the Soundstream system which was used for The Mother of Us All performance in Santa Fe. drawing a feed from the primary recording chain. The Soundstream prototype had different specs from the production model also. Any CD must have been sourced from the analog tape. unless a boot somehow was made for unknown reasons from the inferior Soundstream recorder.

 

I recently got Asia's Alpha album which was track to analog (two analog Studers with 24 tracks each) and mixed-down to digital on the JVC PB90 Digital System. The SHM-SACD is stated to be DSD flat transfered from the original master tapes and later DSD edited by Masaru Takagi in Tokyo.
This SACD susprises me as it doesn't sound digital at al, although being mix-down on low rez early PCM equipment. Perhaps is the way it was mastered to beging with. On the linear notes says "DSD flat transfered fro the original tapes? How? By sample rate converting the masterstapes, which one can assume have a resolution of 44.1 Khz/16 bit to DSD (Weiss Saracon can do that and with excellent results). How they were transfered to DSD on the analog domain, that is,playing the tapes on its native PCM and capturing the sound of those tapes by a DSD recorder? And who knows what they did in Tokyo with those DSD files...

 

Oh yes the wonders of recording tape provenance. This is exactly why I limited my discussion in this thread to digital sourced LPs issued prior to 1981. After that if anyone knows what goes on with digital editing they are sworn to silence.

 

Sure. However, there is a paper that (probably inaccurately) states later CD issues of the opera utilized the Soundstream tapes. I believe the prototype recorder was a 16-bit, 32kHz machine.

 

I think it was 37k but the point is it was inferior to the analogue tape on objective grounds. So if it was used it would be an inferior version.

 

This is the paper that says New World Records released a version of The Mother of Us All made from the 16/37 Soundstream master:

Journal on the Art of Record Production » Soundstream: The Introduction of Commercial Digital Recording in the United States »

New World Records' archivist told me that Barber is wrong and denied they ever released a version (vinyl or CD) of the opera mastered from the Soundstream tape.

 

However, see here from the Barber article:

Very interesting. I looked up the Gibbs' LP on discogs. It appears to be a pretty limited release.

 

See here, too, on p.13 for an opinion about the quality of the Soundstream recording of the opera from one of the musicians, and how the recording engineer believed the digital tape "would" be released "when feasible":

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/pdf/bass/BASS-06-04-7801.pdf

 

One last final wrinkle--Gary Koh, from Genesis loudspeakers, claims that The Mother of Us All was sourced from the Soundstream tapes:

Examples of early digital recordings? - Page 9 »

The basis for this statement appears to be a presentation made to an audio society by former Soundstream engineers.

 

I appreciate your industry. Obviously there is a disconnect between Sounstream personnel and the record label. I would have to trust the label more. There could well have been an innocent misunderstanding. However, I think you would need to do a soundfile analysis to see if it came from the prototype Soundstream. 37k woould be a low ceiling. The musician's comments seem typical for the early digital period but he must not mind sheared off treble. I assume the digital aliasing filtering on the prototype system wasn't that good either. Of course they were listening directly from the tape which helps.

 

Thanks. I've done a *bit* of sleuthing. Next up is to contact Barber and see what his basis was for his statement about the opera being re-released on vinyl or CD from the 16/37.5 master. I have also been digging around online to see if I can locate where the master actually is. I've looked through online sound catalogs of several Utah institutions but haven't located it in those places.

I also found Karen Gibbs on Facebook (she has a different married name now which I have forgotten), where she references a website her son made that hosts soundfiles of her Window Panes album. However, it is a defunct me.com website. I might contact her and ask her if she has the digital master and if she would be interested in re-releasing it as it is a historically significant recording. I'm not aware of any software that will play back 16/37.5 files so some sort of SRC would need to come into play. Perhaps transcoding first to DSD to archive it and then offering 16/44.1 FLAC for download would be the way to go. There is another website that has MP3 files of several songs and Karen herself has uploaded one of the songs to YouTube. I'm not sure if it is a vinyl rip or was taken from an analog or digital tape source. All questions for her.

 

Hallo to all early PCM recordings fans !

I am a collector of Professional audio gear made by Sony and Denon till 1995 and of´course a music lover. PCM recording is one of the most important part in their recording history. I am from Czech republic (Czechoslovakia till 1989) and, as someone from us already know, this country had had one recording label which cooperated with Nippon Columbia / Denon back in a day. The name of that state owned recording company was SUPRAPHON. I got in contact with a sound engineer who had been working in this company from cca. 1970-1989. I had a talk with him and he told me some interesting stories with Denon/Sony PCM recordings in Supraphon.

I read all comments about PCM recording in this thread and can add some of my points which I collected during 20+ years. Without any doubt, Sony and Denon had been the leaders in PCM technology in the past (cca. 1970-1990). There is no any other company which put as much of effort in PCM (gear, recordings,...) as Sony and Denon did. Both companies spent a lot of time and money to develop and produce their own PCM units and recordings. 3M, Soundstream, Telarc, JVC - Victor, Decca, Mitsubishi...have produced their PCM systems too, but as I remember, they made 1 or 2 systems total, nothing else (cost factor,...). Decca, Telarc have PCM systems for their own purposes (labels) and they were never intended to be sold to anyone else nor hit the commercial market. For example Mitsubishi did not have any VTR based PCM recorder, they only produced a few R2R digital recorders (X-80) and developed new specific format - ProDigi (X-800, X-850, X-880, Otari DTR-900,..) when DASH came into place. I will do not talk about DASH machines here now, it is different story like DAT.

First of all, I must recommend to everyone, who wants the best and truthful informations, to get an access to AES Journal archive. At my point of view this is the largest archive library about professional audio ever you can find with online access (for some fee). Of´course you can get some great info with pictures from manufacturers catalogs and AD prints as well, but they are not always shared and if you look to buy them, they are obviously costly if popped up for sale (Ebay).
Some of the PCM history you can still find on internet.

My points about SONY PCM units:

some of the units were made for Professionals (studios) and some units were intended for commercial market. In some cases both are mixed up together, why? For example, here in the middle-East Europa countries all high tech audio gear cost a lot of money back in the day (cost factor). Sony´s PCM-701, 601, 501 were intended for consumer market (advertised in commercial product line catalogs together with walkmans, radios, amplifiers, tuners,..), but were very costly here in the East block of countries (Soviet era - USSR), so they obviously ended in a small recording studios only, because they could not afford genuine fully professional adapters like PCM-100, 1600, 1610...which cost thousands of dollars.
If I remember right, commercial PCM adapters were PCM-1, F1, F10, 701, 601, 501 while professionals were PCM-F100, 1600, 1610, 1630, BKH-2801 etc.. I read that many studios changed inside filters and converters for Apogee ones with better results in sound. Professional models work with High band U-matics and some R2R VTRs like BVH-2800. There have been also special U-matic recorders for PCM digital audio recording only like VO-5850DA, DMR-2000 and DMR-4000. Commercial PCM adapters can be connected to "consumer" VTR formats like VHS, Betamax,...which where not so expensive as Pro formats. Commercial ones have in many cases RCA connectors only while real Pro models have XLR, AES/EBU, SDIF-2, printer port, TC synchro and others. Build quality of Pro models is a different story to the commercial ones. Units I have seen (PCM-100, 1600, 1610, 1630, BKH-2801) all had many cards inside in separate brackets which you can simply remove, repair or exchange. Commercial ones were built like other consumer audio gear like tuners, CDs, amplifiers. The other important thing is error correction on comm-pro models which is a far superior on Pro models. In beginning of digital recording, some bits from converters need to be used for ERC and not for audio (12, 14 bit..) because magnetic tape has always some drop-outs which caused errors in digital (and analog) recording - count of them depends on many factors like new/used tape, number of threads and tape handling, fwd + rew in Play mode for searching, etc.). The weight of 2 units from the same era give you some good idea about build quality and cost: PCM-701 (about 7kg = 15.5lbs) while PCM-1610 (about 36kg = 80lbs). I own a PCM-1610 adapter and it is interesting how Sony (Sony U.S.A) had tried to improve sound quality of their product - I have at least 4 versions of DA converters for this unit (2 with Intech USA converters, 1 with Analog Devices and 1 Sony), all boards are labeled "Sony" and are original ones.

DENON PCM:

not many infos about Denon´s PCM recording systems are available online. I have some info about their first PCM adapter/VTR: DN-023R. It was introduced in AES Journal magazine in 1973. There are some pictures of the unit itself, but you can see them in TedDigital webpage as someone already posted in this thread: 世界初の実用ＰＣＭ録音機 »
Interesting note: all editing on this system may be done manually only by cutting and splicing a 2" VTR tape with microscope (!). I remember that Dr. Takeaki Anazawa worked with Supraphon on some classical music recording sessions here in Czechoslovakia back in the 1970-ties. I got this information from some czech pages, but the Supraphon enegineer who worked with Dr. Anazawa died few years ago. I am not sure which unit they used, if DN-023R, DN-034R or another, I was not be able to get this information anywhere. Here is the list with some Denon PCM records with cat. numbers and one AES Journal info about their PCM systems:
http://www.cieri.net/Documenti/Disc...ecordings - General catalogue (1980-1981).pdf
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf

Most of the best recordings were made with 2 Bruel & Kjaer mics only. They also used other mics for back up and solo instruments if necessary, but the most important were only that 2 mics. Their mastering work and tape handling was also exceptional. NC/Denon built recording/mastering studio in Japan that all rooms were connected with special bus cables to minimize wear on mastering tapes. During mastering it is necessary to play mastering tapes many times which cause wear and damage to them. Denon made a copy of any mastering tape before work and put originals to archive and never played them again. Work has been done on copies, but they are also been played very low times, because any room in that studio had direct access to the sound from VTR or mixing console played this copy of master tape in any time. Very progressive.

Collectors note: Denon´s PCM recording systems are very rare and hard to find any info about, nor units itself. I think that a very few units has been made and loaned worldwide for recording (not sold, loaned only (!)). I know that Nippon Columbia/Denon established at least one recording branch at Germany. Many times the Japanese team of NC/Denon had traveled around the world to the best concert halls to make their own digital recordings (of classical music) which then has been released on LP. Supraphon got one of their PCM system loaned, it was DN-035R, which is a portable 4-track 16bit 44.1/48khz recording system with R2R or U-matic VTR. Denon leaved this system in Czechoslovakia as a permanent loan. I was lucky and bought this system for my collection years ago (without VTR which I have never seen), after Supraphon gone. Whole system-adapter is mounted into portable 19" rack with separate power supply. You can find one picture of it in the Denon General recordings catalog, see link above. I also get into contact with sound engineer here in my country who worked on this system in 1980-ties at Supraphon.

I am still looking for any info about DN-035R system and its VTR as well as any NC/Denon digital recording systems.

...and sorry for my English

 

Dear MPK,

Thank you very much for your post and info provided. Just so you know I prepared a Discography of all known Pre Redbook digital LPs in the thread below. There are a few missing Denon catalog numbers and there may well be other pre Redbook LPs issued so if anyone has knowledge please post the additions in this Discography thread.

PRE Redbook Digital LP Discography 1972-1981 »

As for Denon, yes there seems too have been relatively little information disseminated about their digital recorders. While understandable give the dominance of Sony Redbook I and some others here continue to feel it was the most promising digital recording system along with the Soundstream.

 

Hi guys,

I have just started learning about the development of digital audio technologies and I must say that this thread has been helpful in many ways.

I have one question for user MPK, since he seems to know a lot about Denon PCM, but if anyone else knows this, feel free to answer . I am confused about the fact that Denon's devices DN-xxxR were able to record 8 audio channels, wasn't that quite advanced at the time? Were they really capable to record with bit-rate of 4.9Mb/s (47.25kHz * 13b * 8) since recording with that high throughput was the biggest problem at the time? If I understand right, multi channel recordings were introduced once the DVD technology was released, so it's confusing to me that Denon was capable of making multi-channel recording much before that time.

Regards,
Nenad

 

Hi,

Member MPK came and went with one post so he/she won't respond. You are confusing multi channel surround recordings with recorder tracks. It was an 8 track digital recorder. Sometimes the word channel is used as well but it doesn't mean the same in a recorder as a multi channel amp or a surround sound recording necessarily. Of course if the microphone set up was designed for surround sound then the 8 track recorder could capture it directly assuming only 8 tracks were needed.

In any event surround sound recordings were available on LPs beginning in the early 1970s with Quadraphonic recordings. Quadraphonic sound - Wikipedia

 

Thanks Mr. Bass for your quick answer.

Yes, it can be confusing since everyone says 8-channel digital recorder, but now I have noticed that somewhere it says for example 2-channel stereo recorder, so I think I understand the difference now. So, basically when we say 8-channel digital recorder it means it was capable of storing 8 different tracks whereas each track contained 1 channel (I suppose it's 1 since it wasn't 8-channel stereo recorder)? But, could it capture more than 1 track at the same time?

 

Sorry if it's too obvious, but have you just typed model names/numbers I to the Discogs search field? Sony PCM-F1 yielded 88 albums.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough . The second point was meant to constrain the first point. Are you sure with those 88 albums that no additional Redbook or non-F1 digital processing occurred?

There must be LPs out there that were recorded with the PCM 1 or F1 but identifying them and determining whether the entire content was recorded with them is the problem.

 

My point was that if someone went through the trouble of actually listing the equipment used in the original liner notes and then someone else entered that info when creating the Discogs entry (making them findable on a search) that it might be a way to at least start with a weeded out list.

 

Well no one is paying us to spend weeks and months interviewing people and requesting documentation as to what happened at 35 year old recording sessions. In addition Discogs is often inaccurate. As has been discussed upthread, we have relatively good documentation with respect to the Denon , Soundstream and 3M digital recorders. They were developed independently from Sony and the recording sessions up to 1980 appear to have been limited to their own recorders and editors or analog editors.

Sony represents an extremely difficult investigative problem for the obvious reason that they developed Redbook and used their earlier models as part of that development process. So we would not only need the model numbers of all recording and editing gear used in their sessions but also the engineering analysis of which circuits are the same across both pre and post Redbook Sony gear.

 

Can we make a list a the Denon/Nippon Columbia Master Sonic PCM LP’s? I am starting to collect them.

 

They are already in the Digital LP Discography thread I linked in post 240. I have them by catalog number rather than the series tag you cite. If you know the catalog number you can find them there. A few were recut for 45rpm. Otherwise just post your list in that thread if you might? Thanks

 

That was how stuff was mixed and mastered then.
A sound they intentionally went for.