AF to do Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

Encyclopedia Brown: I can only conclude that the digital transfer done in the 80's was, in fact, FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPE, which was never lost!

 

One of the reasons our host's mastering projects are so tresured by some of us is because he takes the time to source the best tape possible and the best and most appropriate equipment to play the tape back. The same can be said of the remastering team responsible for the Beatles tapes. Yet, you seem to be saying this is all marginal and inaudible, that all these professionals have been wasting their time. Heck, if that's the case, let's just take whatever copies of master tapes happen to be handy.

 

Exactly, Jason. That is exactly why I'm asking for third-party verification, as there appears to be a point of honest disagreement between Mr Tate and Mr Gray, esteemed professionals both.

 

Well, I was hoping someone else would do the null test but I suspect not many people have both CDs in question. I was also going to put up a video on YouTube but that's just way too public (as opposed to this place ) and I'm going to be incredibly busy the next few days with work so I won't have any time to shoot it.

The best I can do is offer the null test I did. All I did was line up both versions 'Homeward Bound' and flip the polarity on one of them.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/td1v89

Here's a small sample of the waveforms. There are some minor differences due to the added EQ but they look this similar from the start of the album to the end no matter where you zoom in.

 

I'm not calling them a 'waste of time', but I am saying 'horses for courses'. There is nothing wrong with seeking a marginal improvement in recording and digitisation quality, but the effect it has is less than marginal.

For posterity's sake, fine. For archiving, fine. It may be a sensible move for a label to create high resolution transfers of tapes that are aged and degarding. But for the purposes of a standard Redbook release, and indeed, any contemporary release, look at the specification of these devices, and what it is you can/might hear.

This needn't get into a science argument though. This is more about whether this is as advertised/described, and using the same methods as the previous user, I have a hard time believing it is.

 

Please!!! Will somebody else do this test? Take some pressure off me! Don't forget to line them up exactly and adjust the volume. For example, Homeward Bound on the Columbia CD was 3dB softer than the AF so I raised it 3dB to get the maximum cancelation.

 

And you'll also notice that Steve, in an earlier post, made it quite clear he had nothing to do with this title's issue.

Hmmmmm.....

 

Of course the waveforms match - they're the same song!

 

Jamie, you don't need to do this or have any feeling of pressure. There are others who can do this if they please. You shared your thoughts on what you discovered and there is no obligation to go another 100 miles. Let other's do some of the work if that's what they want to do.........

 

If it's transparency and accuracy of the recording you're after (i.e. no colouration before EQ), most people will agree the best equipment is probably right for all occasions...

And I think you're twisting my words a little. I was very explicit in the point I made regarding dubs. A 2nd/3rd generation dub from the 60s is likely to introduce noise, granted. The same can not be said contemporarily. There is nothing wrong with seeking a master tape of an old recording, but it would be inaccurate to believe a new digital transfer is going to make a that recording good, or noticeably better, than a previous digital transfer.

A new EQ/mastering, news bonus tracks/etc, mind you...

I also attempted a comparison, and found the same correlation. This is not to be expected from a new transfer - agreed.

 

I'm not sure that there is. Kevin's statement is very ambiguous... nowhere does he clearly say that he did a new digital transfer of the original master tape. Marshall says that, but Kevin does not.

If we give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume no one is deliberately lying, there are only two possibilities: Marshall is mistaken about the source used for this CD, or Jamie somehow screwed up the null test and got the wrong result. I'd say the latter is highly unlikely. That is not even getting into the fact that the 80's CD and the AF both contain an anomaly (the clipping at the beginning of Homeward Bound) that is not on the Sundazed LP. That strongly suggests the AF was not sourced from the same tape as the Sundazed LP. At any rate, it will be easy enough to discover the truth as soon as someone else does a null test on both CDs and likely replicates Jamie's results.

 

Here's some waveforms of the MCA Joe Walsh CD of Smoker/Drinker album and the AF CD of the same album.

Notice they look similar but look at the area I highlighted. See how the transients are different? These were from two different sources. They also don't stay in sync at all. You can even see the drift in this picture that's only .004 seconds long.

 

Thanks Todd. I feel the burden of proof is on me right now. I really need to stay out of this thread though. I'd send the songs to someone but I'd rather they did it completely independent from me. Less accusations that way.

Luke, do you have both of these CDs?

 

OK, if you say so.

 

You are really getting off topic, AND you're not making any sense.

 

Actually, neither of these two people has directly addressed these issues themselves, despite being members here...

 

+1

Though we have gotten the chance to see the pretentious use of an obscure Latin phrase...

 

I've made perfect sense, and I've merely addressed the responses people have made to my original, relevent comment on this CD. Quite happy to say no more on the matter, though - I'd rather the issue at hand is addressed.

Obscure? Really?

Could you perhaps upload another 2 samples from other songs? Then we can be 4 for 4...

 

I'm sorry, Jason, I was not referring to whether or not it's sourced from a new transfer. I'm referring to their statements about the potential for two different transfers to match. Am I mistaken or did Kevin say they they could match due to the machine's tolerances?

I apologize for any confusion.

 

If that was actually Kevin saying that (debatable), he is wrong...

 

IMO yes and no. For recording to end product manufacturing I would say yes a waste of time as they had it right from the beginning as evidenced by many superb sounding early 80 CD's. For consumer playback systems, no it was desperately needed and today's DAC's are far superior.

 

Then I suppose Steve would just be using the DACs found on the Sony PCM-1630 for all his work.

 

Mike, this is the statement I'm referring to.

If you sync two CDs up and they run together that means both mastering
house's tape machines were running on speed. Wouldn't that be a good
thing? BTW the speed stability on Studer A-80s and Ampex ATR 100s is
amazingly good. I have compared CDs to the master tape where they are
still in sync at the end of a side. (Taken from Kevin Gray's note)

 

Assuming perfect playback speeds, you would not expect the digital transfer to cancel out in the manner these have.

Granted, if we assume there has been no change to the tape quality, no 'one-off' introduction of noise and, unrealistically, that both tape decks were identically matched in speed, the digital copy would be visually similar, audibly impossible to differentiate, but again, not exact copies of each other.

With all these variables in mind, what we've seen from these samples seems too good to be true, for a fresh transfer.

 

Yes, but do those early 80's CDs sound superb because of the A/D converters or in spite of them? I'd say mastering choices are much more the determining factor for those who prefer them, i.e., later remasters were overly tweaked, compressed, maximized, EQed, etc., even though they came from superior digital transfers.