DCC Archive Beatles For Steve

Steve, here's something to think about. If you *did* have to chance to remaster the Beatles, what would you do in cases like This Boy? The edit on the stereo mix is *terrible*. Would you just leave it as-is, or go ahead and tidy it up? Just for the hell of it I went ahead and "fixed" the edit here - it actually sounds good now! Hell, I can't even tell there's an edit any more...

I'm not sure how many other cases there are like that, but...

 

Hmm...I still don't know why. Doing a simple edit doesn't change the sound (as changing levels would)...

 

I wouldn't think so either, but I remember awhile back, Steve mentioned that for the Elton John Greatest Hits disc he mastered, he had to leave a sliver of "You're Sister Can't Dance..." on "Saturday Night" because of limitations in the way he works. One could easily go to a computer program and edit that out, but again, that would require it being put on a digital workstation.

Does Steve's work just get carved into a glass master while he's mastering it? I don't think I've ever seen music mastered without some aid of a digital workstation before.

 

Well, What I think Steve is saying is that its not the "edit" that changes the sound, its the A/d conversion needed to dump it to the digital workstation. In that scenario, the quality of the finished piece is only as good as the Digital audio card in the workstation. I surmise that Steves way of working involves only analog manipulation, then conversion to Digital tape at the very end using super high end recorders with the highest A/D converters, something you just will not find on an audio card in a workstation. There is most definelty an audible difference in quality in the two methods. steve...agree?

Mikey

 

No, I don't think so - there's no reason why you need to do the A/D conversion on the workstation itself. Unless I'm out in left field, we're talking about taking an existing digital master, transferring it to a workstation (digitally), then editing it.

 

Well Luke, how in the hell do you figure the analog sound is going to run through A/D conversion without going through some workstation? In other words, where is the digital master coming from? You don't want to use someone else's digital mastering because you have no control over transfer. You get what you get, good or bad.

Again, if you run a 16-bit digital master through a workstation you will alter the quality.

Yeah, i'd say you were out in left field!

 

Steve would do his digital mastering the way he's been doing it - I don't know how he does it, but it's obviously not on a workstation. Take *that* digital master and put it on a workstation. What's so hard to understand?

Just like taking a DCC CD, doing DAE, putting it in ProTools, doing the edit, then burning a CD-R. Obviously it would be silly to first burn a CD then do DAE to get it on the workstation, but you get the idea - there's no need to do A/D conversion on the workstation itself.

Which I still debate. That article you linked to specifically stated that when doing editing the only audio affected is that directly surrounding the edit (a few miliseconds). The stuff I've done would seem to support this.

 

Luke, in theory you are right. One *could* use a high end Sony 1694 recorder to make a digital master of an old analog tape, then digitally transfer THAT master to a workstation. However, two points:

1) If the card in the workstation doesnt doesnt support the EXACT same bit rate and sampling freq, it will have to convert it. Start doing that, and the sound DOES suffer. I hear a difference when I downconvert from my 20 bit ADAT to my 16 bit Alesis AI-1 converter box. Amd thats only 20 bit. The new Sonys (ABC radio has them) are I think, 32 bit.
And after that, it has to be converted AGAIN to 16 bit for CD replicaion.
And I'm a guy with not so great hearing from 30 years of playing the drums, and I can still hear the diff!!

2) I believe Steve doesnt work that way!! He does all sound manipulation in the analog domain.It would be silly for Steve to use only his expensive, modified , 50s/60s period analog gear to get maximum audio extraction from the tapes, then dump his work to a digital workstation!! He would not allow any digital editing after the fact, as he has already said. So doing it that way may not be an option for DCC releases.

 

Good call Mikey,

and besides it being digital. It's just another unnecessary addition to the signal path, which will add more noise.

The whole key is making the signal path as short as possible. Leaving the music unaltered from the tape machine. Im no techie
but it really makes sense.

-Wes

 

Well, the point is using a workstation that does exact digital copies, with no conversion. The article that Grant posted even stresses this.

Steve has said he doesn't do this because the processes he's used have "hardened" the sound. If Steve can use a process that *doesn't* do this, I don't see what the problem is. If the *results* are what they should be, what else matters?

 

That's not true. If you make a digital copy of something (a *straight* copy with no conversions), there's *no* difference in the sound.