CD-sourced vinyl — myth or reality?

But would you buy an LP mastered from a great sounding DCC CD, when you can also find the DCC CD itself? Both are well mastered, but the LP is one more generation away from the master tapes.

Many audiophiles buy LP reissues of analogue recordings because they want to avoid the 16/44 bottleneck, not because of the format itself.

 

You are a very optimistic person

 

I just want to add my perspective.

There is no excuse for the big labels to NOT do a special mastering for the LP edition of a new album.

Most of the time independant artists or very small labels pay me to do a different mastering for each format, be it CD, Hi-Res or vinyl... If they can...

 

That couldn't be more true about the Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light".

 

That's why personally I prefer not to bother anymore with most new vinyl reissues unless it's a trustworthy company. When I read people going on about 180g this, and flat, heavyweight that, surely it's utterly meaningless IF the thing came from a CD? Why bother risking a possibly/probably (?) CD-sourced record; the CD is always flat and standard weight, and probably costs a heck of a lot less!

 

I'm saving up the money I save from no longer buying overpriced new vinyl, to buy a better digital rig.

 

If all my music buying was driven by Spock-like logic and calculation, I’d agree with you. But once I got a high-quality vinyl rig up and running and got all my old LPs out of storage, I felt an emotional and sentimental commitment to buy vinyl versions from artists that mean a lot to me. I admit that some of it is the epic packaging, design, and artifact appeal of a vinyl record. But for favorite bands where I’ve got both CDs and vinyl, I play the vinyl nine times out of ten.

That includes Neil Young, Arcade Fire (who sound MUCH better on vinyl), My Morning Jacket, White Stripes, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Wilco, and The Black Keys. My love for those guys demands the vinyl connection.

In only a handful of cases has the listening made me sorry I bought vinyl (e.g. British Sea Power, “Do You Like Rock Music?” and The Strokes, “Room on Fire”).

 

There are, apparently, tens of thousands of people who are smugly confident that anything they hear emanating from the groove of a 12" vinyl platter is inherently superior to its CD counterpart. If you don't believe that, seek out the dozens of vinyl vs. CD threads in these very forums. Perhaps it's cruel to burst the balloons of these true believers by announcing that they could very well be listening to a copy of an unmusical, notchy, grainy, harsh-sounding CD.

I look at it as the recording industry taking one final opportunity, for old times' sake, to screw its customers before it disappears.

 

Well, with this post we come full circle back to the phenomenon I was trying to get past in the OP, which is a believe-the-worst assumption about 16/44 digital sourcing for vinyl releases. On the other hand, it’s been pretty well established in this thread that CD mastering or its equivalent has indubitably been the source for many vinyl LPs — in a lot of cases because that’s the best source available for an older album recorded digitally, and in some recent cases because labels don’t care and can get away with it. And in some cases 16/44 digital has been the source for vinyl that sounds excellent.

I love playing vinyl and I love playing tons of the great-sounding CDs I own, and I’ve never subscribed to the vinyl-beats-CDs religion, for what it’s worth. It’s a pretty boring faith.

 

This doesn't have to be a vinyl vs. CD thread. I own both, I enjoy both and trust me when I say that I'd like nothing better that for contemporary CD's to sound the same (or better) than contemporary LP's because it ends up saving me time and money.

But I use my ears as my guide and my contemporary vinyl sometimes (not always, but sometimes) sounds better than the comparable CD. Is it 16/44 sourced? I have no idea. But when I A/B test it's pretty clear that getting the vinyl was worth it most of the time. Maybe the source is 16/44 but the CD is just pressed louder than the vinyl? I really don't know.

Is that 100% of the time? Nope. Sometimes it's really hard to tell, or even completely indestiguishable to me. But I only have one modern LP so far that actually sounds worse than the CD (or even the MP3's download it came with -- yuck). I'm not sure how many I have, but it's probably at least 50 or 60 modern LP's so one out of 50 isn't bad.

 

Actually I think it's more a case of the industry just putting out a product they hope will sell given a demand large enough to justify pressing the vinyl and getting the product on the shelves in the most expedient way possible. Sure there are some companies targeting the audiophile market and generally digging out the best available masters, but in may cases, decision makers probably consider the CD master to be superior. Don't forget that there's still a large number of people out there who think digital recordings and CDs are perfect.

Besides, in the good old days, many of the vinyl pressings out there were issued for years from copies of copies of masters, sometimes several generations from the mixdown tapes, and mastered for the taste of the day (think of all that glossy, shiny 80's high end with the scooped out bass cloud that Steve's written about on here) plus with at least 2:1 compression and other compromises to deal with the perceived limitations of vinyl playback. So perhaps industry decision makers see a market for vinyl and assume the shiny new remasters they paid for not so long ago would be the best source for mastering the vinyl. In addition, there's the consistency issue. An example of this is the 2003 Stones Abkco vinyl reissues. When they started assembling all the masters for the SACD series, they apparently did 30ips copies of all the masters and considered reissuing the vinyl versions from these, but decided to use the SACD masters so Bob Ludwig's mastering moves would be the same on all three versions (the SACD's contained a redbook layer).

Anyway, whether we like it or not, audiophile concerns may not be the one and only or even prime factor for most vinyl releases.

 

I think you're hallucinating somewhat. I don't recall any talk in any of the vinyl v. CD threads about CD-sourced vinyl being superior to the CD. I think that most vinylphiles may consider that any analog-sourced vinyl is superior to a CD equivalent, and many may say that an LP sourced from a digital master may be superior to a CD of the same title, but this idea that anyone would consider an LP sourced from a CD to be inherently superior to the CD is, I think, something you're presuming to be true as opposed to something you've heard actually stated here. I suspect that you're just trying to work a not-so-subtle "I hate vinyl" angle into the discussion.

 

But sometimes the overpriced new vinyl is less bricked up than the cd release, so you end up with a nice digital rig to listen to LOUD dynamicless butcherings. After a few of these purchases, you start to buy the expensive new vinyl again in hopes of getting some sound dynamics. Rinse, repeat.

 

Just ordered "All Eyez on Me" vinyl. Now debating sending it back. I've read that Tupac was insistent on recording to tape even though that practice was steadily losing popularity to digital recording in the mid-90s, so I got stoked to order All Eyez on Me (which I always thought was a great sounding album on CD even though its DR is a lousy 8) on vinyl. Then I get it, and open the box only to see DIGITALLY REMASTERED in huge letters on the cover.

 

What approximate years would those 15 years of 16/24 be, and did you get any feedback on whether digital became de-facto standard or pre-dominant mastering technique at any point int time?

 

Approximately 1982-1997; digital mastering started being ubiquitous in 1987 I think? But digital *recording* started in 1976.

I'm sure some members will be more precise than me.

 

This deserves to be raised because when it comes down to it, it is about integrity on the part of the labels who put out material in differing forms to be clear about what the source material was -just a digital transfer of an analogue tape or the mastered end product - and what they did with it for these other editions.
I'm happy to buy digitally sourced vinyl where it's not just a finished cd master being used to cut it from and critics please don't forget how many times we bought lps in the past where the mastering credits on the jacket sure didn't match the clues in the dead wax. Original mastering as claim for lp re-issues existed for a reason!

 

AFAIK, the vast majority of pop recordings were fully analogue (including mixing) until the mid-80's. Digital recordings were still the exception when the CD format was launched (early 1983).

 

Indeed if you're talking about Pop-Rock. The question was what is the time bracket when productions only had masters in "low" resolution digital.

 

LOL

 

1) Perhaps... it really has been a long, strange trip.

2) No, I do not hate vinyl at all. Analog vinyl playback has the capability of sounding absolutely wonderful, and I enjoy the physical qualities of the medium and its playback equipment.

 

For the record, I do not hate vinyl either, only the people who listen to it.

 

The thing is when buying a modern release we don't necessarily know if it is mastered from cd or high rez. I can sometimes decipher before the purchase but it's really just an educated guess based on past experiences. Sometimes I drop the needle and if the sound is suspect I assume it's a cd master but thankfully this rarely happpens. I do believe a lot of modern releases are from high rez and many are from cd masters as well. I'd say my purchases in this category have been 90/10% high rez to cd master respectively.

As far as remasters, it's easier to pick out the stinkers from the gems.

I personally don't own a home cd player so I have to take this gamble on modern releases. I do as much research as possible before the purchase though.

 

This is a bad assumption simply listen to Outkast's Aqemini on vinyl. I grew up on the cd. While both are good, the vinyl is a pretty amazing sounding record.

 

I thought most or at least to a certain cat. # of the OJCs were sourced from analog tapes. This is has been stated on this forum many times.