Are quiet reissue CDs always no-noised?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Grant, Feb 1, 2004.

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  1. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    All this talk about CDs being no-noised is making me wonder, are some people charging the use of no-noise on reissues and compilations where when none was used? This goes for many CDs. How do we know ALL tapes have hiss? Some master tapes are very clean sounding. What if something like dbx was used on a master? Why assume just because there is no hiss, that NR was used? You don't always hear artifacts.

    What do you all think?
     
  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    Just for clarification: I know full well that dbx IS noise reduction, but I meant that a master tape was CREATED using it, not in CD mastering.
     
  3. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    When you sharp eared folks hear pumping it's a good sign THAT NOISE REDUCTION WAS USED IN DIGITAL MASTERING.

    Most things recorded after 1970 don't have much hiss; They were recorded with either Dolby A or SR.

    Doesn't matter though; some big remastering studios even No-Noise the old Dolby tapes for extra ****ty sound!
     
  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    I don't follow.:confused: Can you explain? I know pumping is a dbx artifact, but...:confused:
     
  5. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Top end coming and going as the volume drops or rises. Cymbals with that "blanket" thrown over them at fadeouts, etc. You know, the usual No-Noise bullcrap...
     
  6. Hawkman

    Hawkman Supercar Gort Staff

    Location:
    New Jersey
    At least we get SOMETHING extra for our buck!
     
  7. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    Steve, so, in other words, are you saying that if we just hear the pumping instead of the extra NR crap we hear on, say, a Jon Astly remaster, it's a good sign that it isn't worse than it already is?
     
  8. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    No. Any noise reduction sucks, big time.

    I mean MASTERING noise reduction, not recording with Dolby A, SR, etc. That stuff doesn't pump.
     
  9. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    OK, bear with me for a minute longer: I have a song on CD and vinyl, Al Wilson's "Show And Tell", and every version of it since 1974 sounds dead clean and EQ'd. I'm assuming it was dbx'ed some way. When you hear it on CD, it could lead someone to think it was NR'd for CD, when, in fact, it always sounded like that.
     
  10. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    About 1 percent of recordings used DBX, most engineers hated it. I've only come across two DBX encoded albums in my entire career (thank God).

    Probably a Dolby A mix. Remember, this is a RECORDING procedure and not an aftermarket noise reducer. It happens during recording and mixing. Any normal mastering engineer would leave it as is. Why screw with something that sounds good?

    WHAT I'm saying is that if you hear pumping or what I've been describing in my earlier posts, then the master tape was screwed with, recently.
     
  11. KeithH

    KeithH Success With Honor...then and now

    Location:
    Beaver Stadium
    Steve said:

    The record labels should put colorful, glossy stickers on the packaging that read:

    :D
     
  12. Ed Bishop

    Ed Bishop Incredibly, I'm still here

    :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:


    Wait a minute....what the hell am I laughing about?:confused: ;)


    ED:ed: :D
     
  13. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    I know how dbx works, and the difference between the two dbx types I know about (Type II was the home version)....what specifically do engineers not like about it? What I noticed using it at home was that on something like a cassette, the noise level of a cassette was too high and you could easily hear the dbx struggling with the pumping/breathing. Was this the main problem, a pumping/breathing, but to a lesser extent?

    FWIW, I like the theory behind dbx but at least for home use, it never sounded all that good. (Although I'll admit it worked better on the dbx LPs.)
     
  14. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    It just didn't work very well.

    None of the pro DBX units sounded like each other, all slightly different. So unless you carried YOUR unit around with you forever, you were **** out of luck if you wanted to remaster your recording at a different studio. I mean, look what happened to Steely Dan!
     
  15. Shakey

    Shakey New Member

    Location:
    Chicago, Illinois
    Grant,
    Not to put words in SH's mouth but what I think he meant, it's a good sign it has been subjected to some sort of Noise Reduction, not a good thing.
     
  16. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    :confused: :confused: :confused:
     
  17. Jamie Tate

    Jamie Tate New Member

    Location:
    Nashville
    Dolby doesn't pump, DBX usually does. DBX can sound like a noise gate closing around the music. When the music gets loud so does the noise.

    Digital NR has a different sound to it... more of a dulling of transients and deadening of the air around the music (listen to Get Back on LIB... Naked). Heavily applied digital NR can make perfectly fine recordings sound like MP3's, you know that chirpy metallic sound in the top end that you hear on low bit rate MP3's? That's also an artifact of digital NR.
     
  18. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    No kidding. Funny thing is, the way dbx was designed, I'd have thought it would have been immune to the kind of alignment needed by some Dolby systems. Since in theory it was just using a fixed compression ratio (2:1 recording, 1:2 playback).

    Does anyone here know what noise reduction system Concord Records used on their masters? Theirs have always been pretty much noise-free, even in the early CD days when they were reissuing Tito Puente and Cal Tjader albums. And they still sound pretty good to me.
     
  19. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    Shoot, no kidding. Try recording solo piano on a cassette using dbx II. Bursts of hiss any time the piano is played. I'm still surprised at how good the LPs sounded. They couldn't match a good MoFi pressing, but apart from some high end dulling on a few recordings (not all, though...??), it didn't sound anywhere near as bad as cassette did.

    Believe it or not, I actually had an outboard dbx decoder for the car! It was too unwieldy though, and by the time I got another car, CD players had just started to come out (remember Sony's first one, CDX-R7?), so I had no use for it anymore.
     
  20. MrPeabody

    MrPeabody New Member

    Location:
    Mass.
    Well, Dolby A CAN pump if the playback circuitry isn't aligned properly. That's a remastering engineer's error though. I've heard enough badly decoded Dolby A to last me quite a while.
     
  21. Hawkman

    Hawkman Supercar Gort Staff

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Steve, correct me if I'm wrong but 10cc used DBX a lot on their recordings, didn't they? Was it just the later stuff or did they use it on the early stuff that you remastered? Just curious.

    I actually did a recording in the early 80's and used DBX on it. When I went to remix it in 1985 we found that the original engineer had one channel of the DBX out of alignment...or so I was told. Is that possible? I'm still ignorant. :)

    When I recorded the next time, I made sure that I used Dolby A! :)
     
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