Do new vinyl pressings tend to sound a bit on the dark side?

Knew you'd catch that one

But our friend is saying what's up with his Abbey Road?

 

Oh no, sorry, I wasn't clear in my reply. I'm not asking you to troubleshoot my issues, I'm merely asking you to listen to those two pressings on your system and tell us whether you hear there remaster sounding darker than the previous pressings.

Would you be in the position to do that?

 

You said it.

 

Please abstain from taking my words out of the context.

 

I haven't noticed any kind of trend with new vinyl. Mastering seems to be all over the place, just like back in the good old days.

The only Beatles related product I got recently was Mono Masters last year. If anything, it is a bit bright in parts, compared to the 45s - though that's not really a valid comparison.

 

Which is the other pressing that you compared it with? There are quite a few.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Beatles-Abbey-Road/master/24047

 

Send me an original pressing and I'll let you know.

 

It's just been mailed to you...

 

Old pressings had treble boost, and possibly heaps of compression

Properly done new masterings have much better balance.

 

From what I've read, the "Abbey Road" 2012 vinyl remaster was cut from the 2009 digital remaster, which was severely criticized for applying heaps of compression. To my ears, the balance on this remaster is atrocious.

 

I suggest optimise with a 180 gram vinyl. Frankly I don't hear much difference that can be attributed to vinyl thickness. Remember when you take into account that actual thickness varies no matter what the nominal weight, plus effect of dishing and warps, the arm height difference is going to have minimal effect and is in fact very small. You would have to adjust for each record in practice which is rather impractical and inconvenient even if your arm accommodates on the fly VTA adjustment.

 

The compression is not on the vinyl version from the digital source and likely was applied to the CD master only. They just lose a bit of life against original all analogue cuts and were not from the highest resolution that could have been used.

 

(more serious now) I actually have compared a BC13 Abbey Road with the 2012 remastered version, and I do prefer the BC13 just a bit. Not sure if I'd use the word dark per se, but the remaster is a bit more sterile to my ears. If anything else, they may have actually kept the compression down just a bit which reduced the punchiness.

However, listening to new releases in general the sound quality varies depending on artist and label.

 

I think some engineers use a more neutral SQ when mastering, so you may be hearing more of what the tape actually sounds like. There is no way to know unless you can break into Abbey Road and play the masters.
There is also a trend now (which is dumb) for flat transfers. Our host has said in the past that this is not a good idea as most tapes need some EQ to sound right, very few can be transferred flat. Most master tapes do sound a bit dull by all accounts.
I guess if it sounds dull to you then reach for the treble knob or your graphic equaliser, that's what they are there for!

 

As I already mentioned, I have a number of 180 gram records that play very nicely on my turntable. It is only those new remasters that I find lacking the oomph and the sparkle that most other records exhibit on my turntable.

 

I don't use graphic or any other equalizers. I generally find almost all of my records sounding great; the only exceptions are the new remasters I've mentioned.

Your answer confuses me -- I thought that the goal of cutting vinyl is to get as close as possible to the master tape?

 

Only issues I find (leaving pressings plant issues to one side) is the quality of source material that's being used varies so much with new pressings now.
Ones that put the effort in sound fantastic, some just seem to dump a sound file to vinyl and roll the top or bottom frequencies off where needed which sounds rubbish.
And bottom of the line cuts just dump the CD cut onto the vinyl but lower the volume right down to avoid and issues
Or that's how things sound to me..
I don't like graphic equalisers or multiple frequency bands to play about with as Ive found in that past you end up endlessly searching for something sound wise that you'll never find. But as a basic rule of thumb I have 3 basic set ups for my system:
1: Older original vinyl from the 60s >late 80s /early 90s
Mid to mid high Bass and treble set to just over middle of the road
2: vinyl with with over 25min of music per side, mainly 70s & 80s compilations and 90s CD era releases squeezed into 1xLP.
Set these to treble mid way bass to almost max! To try and find boost what little is still there..
3. Modern post 2000 vinyl.
Bass wound right back quarter/mid way & the treble wound right up 3/4 or nearly full unless the vocals are too sharp in which case its back to just over half..
Not hard and fast rules but on all vinyl treble get played about with most of all as my cartridge can bring out some brilliant detail if it's there, but you have to balance that harshness.

 

I can't find the post that our host did, but he said that very few tapes are fine as they are and are suitable for a flat transfer. Nearly all tapes need some EQ, some just very minor EQ others more, to get the best possible sound. I mean that is the whole purpose of a great mastering engineer, to take a tape and make it sound better.

Audiophiles going on about 'flat transfers' don't understand and are missing the point.

 

Recent heavyweight vinyl that I think sound great and not 'dark' :

Dave Matthews - Crash
Nick Drake - all 3 titles
Van Halen - Diver Down, Fair Warning
Kiss - various titles
Led Zeppelin - all
Pink Floyd - WYWH, Meddle, The Wall
Tom Petty - Vol. 2 box
Rush - Fly by Night

 

Can you be specific as to which new remasters you find dark? It's not a universal problem with remastered vinyl even if there is a digital step.

 

I agree. Many artists pay top dollars to great mastering engineers in order to get the best possible master tape. But once that's accomplished, isn't then the goal to make a flat-as-possible transfer of that gold master tape?

 

I've already mentioned specifics a few times in this thread, but here it is again: The Beatles "Abbey Road" and The Beatles "White Album".

 

Thanks for sharing your listening experiences. One important thing I failed to mention -- when I started suspecting that the "Abbey Road" sounds congested, dull and 'dark', I reached for my old copy of "Abbey Road" and played both copies side-by-side. On that first pass, the remaster sounded much better than the old copy. However, I then cleaned, vacuumed, rinsed and vacuumed the old copy in my RCM. After removing static electrical charge from the LP, and playing it again side-by-side with the remastered version, the difference was startling! The old copy beat the remaster by a country mile.

So I think it's extremely important to properly clean the old copies before comparing them to the sealed copies. A lot of dirt and grime tends to accumulate in the grooves over the years, and that debris prevents the stylus from fishing out all the music that is engraved on the LP.

So, my last question to you, my friend, is: did you actually clean your BC13 "Abbey Road" LP before listening to it?

 

Thanks for that list, it's priceless. It will help me in my buying decisions.

The worst sounding LP in my entire collection is Erykah Badu "Worldwide Underground" (Worldwide Underground - Wikipedia ). Not a remaster, so may not be suitable for this thread, but man, the sound on that LP just sucks Disney balls! Which is such a shame, because the music is absolutely awesome (you can easily tell that I adore Erykah).

I did clean and vacuum that LP thoroughly, to no avail. While cleaning it, I noticed that the vinyl material on the LP is of the poorest quality I've ever seen -- looks like a shoddy patchwork of some low grade rejected material that was sitting on the cutting floor of the pressing plant. For shame!

 

I wouldn't pick those as extreme examples though I suppose they lack the sparkle of the original analogue cuts. You must have a few others. It would be interesting to see if there is universal agreement on this problem. There appear to be more titles listed that people are happy with. Actually I have found new titles rather than reissues to suffer more from a rounded top end possibly in an attempt to make a digital source sound more analogue.