Vinyl Rippers: How has 30 years of CD listening affected how we hear our vinyl?

I'm not an audiologist, but that is not my understand of how high-frequency hearing loss works. I don't think it's the case that as your hf hearing range diminishes that you "crave" more and more treble to compensate. From the little I've read (and it's very little), I think it actually works the other way, that you start to find excess treble energy in the regions you can still hear more annoying, so that you are more, not less sensitive to brightness. Perhaps someone with some expertise on the subject could weigh in.

 

Not if it sounds dull.

I know there was another thread about neutrality, and I chimed in a few times there as well. For me, the bottom line is "does it sound good?". I'm not trying to win a race here, I just want to enjoy my music. My uppper range is gone (past 13 or 14khz, going on tests I've done) so I suppose that bright = good to me. But it's not like that's going to change unless someone makes a pill to fix my hearing - so if bright it must be, then bright it is.

I was wondering the same. It could have little to do with it and might just be a personal preference, kind of like liking rock vs R&B vs hip-hop?

 

I find it fascinating and telling that the same +6dB at about 11kHz is the treble boost setting built into Audacity's EQ function.

 

Sometimes it's not about the brightness being annoying, it's about knowing that the bright sound is wrong.

 

Also keep in mind that we all assume that LP's are EQ'd "correctly". Maybe some are treble heavy, or treble anemic? The latter was certainly the case with last last year's John Lennon RSD boxed set, imho of course. Are CD's really bright versus an LP, or is it a case-by-case basis and assuming a neutral cart on the TT?

Would be interesting to pull my younger self into a time vortex and have him fiddle with my stereo today and see what he prefers -- maybe his EQ settings woud be wildly different from my own? Right now all I have to go on are old tape dubs from 15 years back, where I EQ'd manually before I recorded to MP3 (and I'm pretty sure it was a smiley face).

That's where I disagree with you. Imo, there is no "wrong", it's all personal preference. Even the mastering engineer made a decision on this using their own personal preference that might be different than my own.

This seems to come up a lot - "as the artist intended". Well, if I can't stand the sound, then it really doesn't matter if it's what the artist (or more likely the engineer) intended, because I don't like it. So in comes the EQ. We hoo and haw about the loudness wars even if that's what the artist intended, but not the EQ? I see this as similar.

Again, not looking to win a race - I just want to enjoy my music. If a bright cart or an EQ helps me to do that, then I'm going to use it. It's also why I love my Cowon DAP - it definitely colors the sound with its JetEffects, but man it sounds good to my ears.

Btw, sometimes I wonder what the sound is like in the mastering booth itself -- if I had the opportunity to play my LP / CD in there, would I like it "flat" given the type of equipment in use? Would be interesting to find out.

 

I have to admit it's getting better

I'd guess that my system is more or less flat between 100hz and 2000hz, where it shelves down considerably between 3khz and 8khz, tipping back up and peaking around 14khz. The Acoustic Research 3, my first 'real' speakers, also had a suck-out in the presence/lower treble region. Clicks and pops mostly live and do their dirty work in this region of the audio spectrum. The Shure 97 sounds a bit recessed which I attribute to its [very similar] frequency response:

http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/shure_m97xe_e.html

However, the best LPs sound superb. I'm sure the Jico sas stylus will open things up on top. CDs, curiously enough, fare particularly well with my current set-up. Brass and percussion, usually problem areas in sound reproduction, are unusually plausible with little smear or distortion, in both digital and analog formats.

 

Just about all the Columbia remasters of 50's/60's recordings suffered from a massive treble boost in their 1970's reincarnations. I bought a lot of the Columbia Masterworks/Odyssey reissues of Bruno Walter, Leonard Bernstein and other luminaries of the Classical scene. Most were excruciatingly bright in comparison to the original masterings.

 

I notice this on LP's. I was listening to my B-52's "Cosmic Thing" lp the other day, and the first half of the side was crisp and trebly, but near the end, it started to sound slight more dull, less treble etc.. It didn't worry me much though, as it's better than having to suffer inner-groove distortion, which my old elcheapo chinese crap player had horribly.

 

I operate not on just what subjectively sounds good to me, but what objectively sounds correct. The brighter cart usually does not, except with an unusually dull album.

Say I have an old LP. It does sound a bit wrong in the EQ upon initial listening. So, if I have a couple of CDs in my collection with a common track on them, I will listen to all of those CDs, taking into account the mastering history, and determine which one(s) are correct, or closer to it. Sometimes, the vinyl can be dull, and a bright cart brings it about where it should be. But, most of the time, I find that the cart is too bright, and dialing in the adjustment EQ brings the LP into compliance with what else is out there. I have been collecting records since I was five years old, and CDs since 1985, and have tons of reissues and various artists comps done by people like Bill Inglot, Leo Sacks, Dennis Drake, and other highly respected reissue producer and mastering guys.

I approach my needledrops as if I am actually producing them for a commercial release, personal taste usually notwithstanding. I recently decided to redo an album I did with my old Shure M97xE. I played it with the AT 150mlx cart, applying the corrective EQ in Audition, and determined that the sound was better. So, I redid the drop, but, after listening to my final results, I found that it didn't sound quite right. So, I compared it with the older drop, and decided the older one really did nail the correct sound, despite the slight dullness from the Shure cart. I arrived at that decision after listening to any other masterings on other Cds and digital versions, and considering the history of the recording way back to 1979 when it came out. As you see, I consider a LOT when I make my needledrops.

Even when I apply my corrective EQ with that AT cart, I find that it still adds a little of it's sonic signature to the recordings that presents itself as a kind of thinness or slight brightness, most likely due to the nude or file-line stylus getting deep into the groove.

When you deal with vintage material that was originally released on vinyl before the CD age, compression is not an issue.

Again, we have different goals and philosophies. Mine is about preserving the sound of the source as closely as possible. Yours seems to be about what sounds good to you and no one else.

I think after many years of obsessing about sound, you develop the ability to "hear into" what they probably heard in the mastering room, despite your playback. It's like how a mastering engineer can listen to something on different monitors and rooms and translate that into how the music sounds on his own. I have talked to several active engineers and they all can do that. I can do that to a degree. You also get an idea, listening to recordings, of what was probably boosted.

 

I strive for neutrality in the needledrop process, modulo clean and repair tasks and normalizing sound level. I still want the result to sound like vinyl. In fact, my goal is to make it sound as much like new vinyl as possible. And I save my recordings so that I can process them differently if the mood ever strikes (new tools, new techiques, new appreciation for how badly I might have done it the first time )

Cheers!

 

I think you're missing the point I was making. The idea is that you have a neutral cartridge so that when you switch back and forth between CDs and vinyl, you're not going to hear that big of a difference in the tonality (if any). But if you want bright, then perhaps gear other things in your system to sound bright. Stick an EQ in there and jack everything above 13kHz up... or get some bright sounding speakers.

 

I guess it does depend on the person's individual tastes too. Neutral will still sound neutral to somebody, no matter how bad or good their hearing is. For example, somebody who can't hear anything above 12 kHz will be used to hearing things like cymbals in real life without anything above 12 kHz. So if they were to suddenly hear a recording with everything above 12kHz jacked way up, then it would sound bright to them. Even though they'd be hearing it as if they had good hearing again, it wouldn't sound right to them.

 

Nope, definitely not neutral haha.

 

That's a good point - with an EQ for example, I can jack things up whoever I like and yet the original source is unaffected. This might be important for needle drops since that ends up being the "source" recording.

I've been bouncing this very idea around in my head with my own drops. Again, it goes back to each LP as some really are (I think) treble anemic whereas others are treble heavy to start with. If I'm hearing things a little too high during recording, it's going to definitely sound too bright once I play it back on my EQ'd system, so that's when I usually consider using a different cart that can tone down the treble a bit.

 

I was in the interesting position this week of being able to directly compare "straight" remasterings (i.e no compression, limiting, eq, etc) of a particular piece of music on vinyl, CD and high res download. Each were remastered from the exact same master tape, though the commmercial CD I have is simply derived from the high res download I bought last week. The vinyl was absolutely brand spanking new when I needledropped it and it was remastered at around the same time as the 24 / 96 high res download was made, so the tape was also in much the same condition.

I guess the high res download vindicated my needledrop setup as the sound was very similar between them with certainly no evidence whatsoever of any brightness difference at all between the vinyl and high res download, though the high res download had more midrange presence which I attribute to the losses inherent in the vinyl production and replay process.

The CD version, however, was more metallic and closed-in sounding, had less clarity and had worse pace, rhythm and timing. But it was still similarly bright to both the vinyl and high res download, but the latter two had a warmer sound partly because the top end was more resolved and transparent.

In my experience, save for the caveats mentioned above, any differences in brightness between CD and vinyl is due to differences in the remastering and / or manufacturing process and the quality of the vinyl reproduction equipment. Both mediums are easily capable of delivering identical brightness and I see this all the time in those cases where both versions come from the same master tape.

 

With all the talk about using CD as a reference, I thought I would post this clip, which I think provides a more useful kind of reference. It's a clip from Tom Petty's Mojo, one part recorded from the LP, the other is the digital source that was used to cut the LP (according to producer Ryan Uylate). This gives you a better picture of how the LP playback chain deviates from neutral better than comparing to a CD that may or may not have been mastered very differently than the LP.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/M3BrYUo5NmNVbTgwTWRVag

I didn't do any processing on these other than to match the volumes and then dither down to 16 bits (so the file would fit on yousendit). Equipment = Music Hall MMF-7 turntable; Cruise Control 2.0; Shure M97xE with Jico SAS stylus; phono preamp built into Anthem Integrated One.

 

I only used my computer system to listen to it, but its pretty close. I hate to have to ask, which is which?

Im thinking the first one is the digital source, but I am probably wrong...

The first one has more treble for sure. The 2nd one "seems" to have less separation.

 

Yes, the first clip is the source file, the second is the needledrop. Sorry, it seemed so intuitive to do it that way that I neglected to mention which was which. Channel separation is a weak point for almost all MM carts I've heard (some MCs can do that a lot better).

Overall I like the sound of the M97xe/Jico combo. It brings just a touch of heft to the lower midrange without sounding obviously colored, and tracks great. It gives up a little bit in the treble, but to me that is preferable than a big bump in that range. Replacing the stylus every couple years at $160 is a much better option for me than buying a new MC cart or retipping every couple years. I have kids.

 

awesome comparison, and your system does indeed sound pretty good. Ya I noticed about 3-4 db of loss in the treble, and the separation was a bit narrower. I have a decent computer sound system, but its not really anything like Hi-fi at all.

I used to have an ortofon OM-30, that I loved. Im not sure how neutral it was, as it seemed to almost rise on the upper end some..

 

If you get a chance, listen over speakers and tell me what you think. Thanks for the feedback.

 

There's a lot of opportunity for variability in sound at the consumer end of the chain for analog. Even within that same set of components I could reach a different sound with a different dither, different cartridge loading and so on.

I guess I don't understand what the comparison was otherwise trying to show, but I disagree that it's to show that the LP is less than neutral as a whole.

 

I think it shows that the vinyl and the source are fairly similar is all. CD and Vinyl when taken from the same master, will sound quite similar, in fact they should tonally sound Very close.

 

Yes, with same source I agree. This is the snippet of Pete's that raised my eyebrow:

"This gives you a better picture of how the LP playback chain deviates from neutral ..."

A chain, not the chain. Or, "can deviate" would have fit better with yours (and mine) assessment.

 

I can't imagine the transport or laser would have affect on anything except the clock jitter. Tonality would be determined by the DAC and the preamp stages.

 

You are correct, I was talking about my playback chain, not some imaginary universal LP playback chain with the assumption that that they are all identical.

The point of the exercise for me is not to "prove" a point, but to see how close to neutral my LP system sounds with with real music, rather than with test tones and graphs which I find hard to relate to. I think it is better to do it this way than to compare to a CD that may have been mastered very differently than the LP.

I think you are picking at the words I chose unnecessarily because you've assumed that I am trying to make some ideological point that I actually have no interest in. In the future, perhaps I should submit my posts to for careful editing before submitting.