“Just get the remaster”

I'm hoping that @Ephi82 would at least be searching for threads discussing music in which he already has an interest...

 

Well, we need to draw a distinction between the strawman variation some have put forth suggesting some people think all early CDs sound great. I don't think anyone thinks that. There are, however, people who think they will always represent the least bad ("best") digital alternative. These people tend to have zero tolerance for digital compression and other mastering tomfoolery. Some even claim to get a headache from any amount of digital compression.

And who are any of us to discount their personal experience and preferences? I can't dismiss that anymore than I can dismiss the personal experiences of vinyl-phobes who purport to hear all kinds of abnormalities on every record that make even the crappiest cd mastering sound better to them. I can't relate to either position myself, but it takes all kinds. I think these kinds of extremes are minority positions, although sometimes very loud minorities

 

Understood. I was really just being cheeky. I don't have much opportunity to listen to lps at home these days either. I'm undertaking a major project to digitize all my lps that I don't have on cd, so I can listen on my iPod at work where I do have time. The problem now is making time to process my needledrops

 

It depends what you are looking for in sound. I want clarity and detail and I am OK if it's a bit compressed to get that. What I don't like is a transfer from umpteenth generation tape where you lose the details and the only plus side is that it isn't compressed. People's preferences are different and rarely you will get everyone to agree on to "just get the remaster" or not.

 

Just stick with the original

 

No offense taken. Right now, I'll take a lossless file on the iPod through my pair of budget Grados or even 320 kbps AAC in the car over not being able to listen at all.

 

And here I am at work listening to Kathleen Edwards Back To Me (cd ripped lossless to ipod) and wondering why the $&@%# did they have to master it like this?

 

I've heard this criticism before but honestly I don't understand it. How would someone know what to listen for, when there are so many other factors involved with mastering?

 

Ah- 2005 release date...firmly into "it's probably squished flat" territory. Too bad- the title track sounds catchy & she certainly has talent.

 

I guess sometimes it's more apparent than others. Kind of a blanket statement tho- many, many early transfers that sound stellar, so they weren't all terrible. I think the CD players & D>A converters of the day were more of a barrier to good sound than the encoding.

 

It's a very acknowledged fact among all audio professionals that the converters up until the late 80s or early 90s ware terrible.

 

Yeah I've read about it, but I'm not hearing it. Seems like the kind of thing only mastering engineers would be able to distinguish.

 

Wrong.

 

So you're saying you can tell them apart? Well I can't, ignorance is bliss I suppose.

 

Well, then, do not speak for everyone. Speak only for yourself.

 

I seriously doubt if that's the case. There are plenty of music fans here with little to no focus on equipment. I know plenty of music fans with cobbled-together systems... it doesn't get in the way of their enjoyment of music.

I consider myself a major music fan, but I don't know if I have an "entry level system" or not... 99.99% of Americans would have no idea what the term "entry level system" means. I bought my Marantz CD5005 based on some quick research here on the Audio Hardware Forum and I'm happy with it. I have a Thorens turntable and AudioTechnica cartridge that I like. My Radian Research speakers are more than 30-years old, but they still sound good to my ears (I've replaced the woofers twice). I have a Yamaha amp, Grado headphones... all told about $2,000 worth. It doesn't matter to me if I got my foot in the entrance door or not.

 

Problem is cd's are not just a little bit compressed nowadays, often there is quite severe compression/limiting going on. This compression will change the signal more than 4th-gen tape will do. Yes i'm sensetive about this stuff

I'll take loss of detail any day compared to compression/limiting. I like to hear what the musicians and producer ment, not what the mastering-engineer ment. Mastering should be transparent and enchance the product, that is fixing obvious misstakes, nothing more nothing less. Absolutly no tampering in the digital-domain.

 

Have the Beatles been mentionned yet?

 

Just by you

 

Where is Lucidae speaking for everyone and not making a personal observation? (I am not seeing it.)

 

At the risk of sounding like a sycophant, don't you think brick-wall mastering is less prevalent today, due in part to the impact of this forum on the music industry? I know people who scoff at these concerns, but will admit there's something just plain wrong with a CD like Bruce Springsteen's Magic. I still encounter overly-compressed CD's, but not as extreme or as often as I did six or eight years ago.

 

I thought I was being clear. You do know that I was referring to CDs that are victims of the Loudness Wars and not all compression used in the history of recording, right?

 

Compression in analog-domain while recording and digital-domain while remastering are two very different things.

 

I think I agree with you, and it is part of what I find fascinating with this hobby. Some of the earliest CDs sound better almost by accident. Like they hadn't bothered futzing with things yet and just did a flat transfer from what happened to be a very good source. Then there are others where the person doing the mastering really knew what they were doing. And there are others that do not sound that great & were improved with later remasters.

 

I absolutly agree, they probably didn't have the time in 87' when most back-catalog were mastered to cd. That's why they are so great. They were not overthinking it. Many of them were jusr flat-transferred with minor EQ tweaks. Just they way i like them. The time-constraints brought another problem though. They used the tapes available, simply no time to locate the 1st master in every single case.

Edit: The engineers making the cd-masters came from a vinyl background, i think that added some warmth to them.