If 16/44.1 PCM is not transparent to the source then you could easily prove this by doing the tests I mentioned. The same thing with DSD. So go ahead and post the log of the ABX test you passed . I concur with Lipshitz and Vanderkooy's paper that DSD is a broken technology, but I also consider this fault inaudible, as I find our hearing much more forgiving than many audiophiles like to think (read: obsess about). But I am open to the possibility that DSD does produce certain audible distortions, and some people simply like this, and having a preference for that is of course okay. One person I admire quite a lot is Mark Waldrep from AIX records and RealHD-Audio, who used to be a hi-res proponent. Then he downsampled his own AIX recordings in 24/96 to 16/44.1 and couldn't hear any difference whatsoever. Then he let the public do the same (and he's still doing this), and they couldn't hear any difference either. Then he also transferred a recording from analogue tape to digital and compared them and couldn't hear any difference either. And then he publicly stated that he had changed his opinion instead of doing what most audiophools do, which is to blame the test for not giving them the results they want. As for 80s converters, I haven't tried any myself, but I am also of the impression that they were not as good as modern ones, and when I listen to CDs from the 80s they usually sound harsh, as you say. This could be due to certain mastering choices, but it's also possible that it's due to A/D converters. Lipshitz also stated that many early CDs displayed quantization distortion because the converters were "not very good and not very stable", and up until the mid 80s dithering wasn't used in A/D converters, which caused problems too. I can give you a link to this if you like. And yes, we have certainly learnt many things through the years. Although too many audiophiles obsess about jitter it's very rarely a problem anymore, but it was a problem with certain equipment for much longer than it should have been. It should, however, also be said that certain old converters were much better than others, as can be seen in this image:
Obviously everything is down to mastering and what is available from the original recording. A terrible recording will never present as a great sounding album. All the measurements in the world don't mean anything to my ears. As far as Maiden goes, I've yet to hear any digital mastered Maiden album sound better than it's analog counterpart. If someone reissues Maiden in a digital format that sounds better than an analog product I am going to listen to the better sounding product, be it digital or analog, I couldn't care less. I have plenty of hi rez to vinyl reissues that sound great. And a few that are terrible. Stating that I said analog is better because I'd like to see an analog series of reissues from Maiden is making several leaps to get to your assumption. We need an analog series of reissues because it should in theory bring us closer to the source and sound better. Again, with the right people at the helm.
I think my 18 years experience transferring thousands of analog and digital DASH / ADAT tapes to Pro Tools in the studio qualifies me to speak on what modern PCM and DSD converters sound like. And when you work at a busy professional studio sir, you have no time for self indulgence. The only log books we kept were for the couriers. When they would arrive with: analog, DASH or ADAT tape the courier would sign the log book that such and such a tape was dropped off at such a time. And he/she would sign again when they picked up a tape. The layman doesn't realize what goes on. We don't have weeks and months with the tapes. Very often it is 24 hours. It some circumstances it may be only 2 hours. You will get a few days or so if it is a Scotch brand tape between 1969 - 1982. SSS tapes have to he baked. The baking takes longer than 2 hours. We don't have time to fool around sir and waste time. All the professional equipment I have ever used is at work. And what ever log books I filled out belong to the studio. They are for legal, pay roll and tax reasons. They are Not for the general public. The ABX test is not full proof. It is only good if you are looking for something like distortion, frequency abnormalities, etc. But people don't listen to music in this way. Remember the famous WAVE vs. Mp3 test. Do you know what that was sir? 5 seconds of mono Harp music . They switched it every 5 seconds. This was supposed proof that a MP3 sounds the same as a 16/44.1 WAVE file. It is no different than putting your hands in cold water than hot water than cold water than hot again every few seconds. The brain gets confused. An ABX done improperly does the same thing. Tests measure. All they measure is that a select group of subjects couldn't tell the difference between the live analog source and a AD/DA chain. Why would they? Digital has no change in frequency response, wow and flutter, distortion, etc. For example I am really familiar with my own drum kit. (When I played and had it) where as some string quartet I am not familiar with. Five minutes of some music I have never heard before via the analog tape and then 5 more minutes of the same music I have just heard 5 minutes ago though some AD/DA chain will probably sound the same. Back in 1986 they got several people in a room and listened to some compact disks. And all of them said they sounded great. The first time you hear a CD it is impressive. No pops, clicks, record noise. Just the music. Many so called audio experts said that the CD players measured modine so therefore they must sound fine. And that we heaed was in our imagination. Maybe sorry you weren't around in the 80's. I was a 16 in 1985 and I remember all of this. And the "experts" showing us graphs. The lower the jitter the more detail a converter will give you. Although you may think it it no big deal now it certainly used to be. The professional audio field figured this out all long time ago. The only spec that any engineer cares about in a ADC is jitter. We have plug ins that introduce jitter. I can clearly show you what happens when a DAC that has less that 5 pico seconds jitter and jumps to 2000 pick seconds. The stereo image sinks in and detail is lost. Yes, unless you go out of your way to find a bad ADC most converters manufactured in the last 20 years are excellent. They just don't share the problems of converters of 30 years ago. But the sound of a analog 2 inch 16 track tape cannot be 100 % duplicated on a PCM file. More and more artists want to mix or remix directly from the original analog tape OTB into an analog board. It just isn't the same. I trust my ears. News flash! We stopped looking at spec sheets in the professional audio world a long time ago. We demo'd a pair of pro near field monitors that claimed they were flat to within +-1db at 20hz. That is of course in a properly treated studio on monitors stands. The company gave us a pair to try for 30 days. These things couldn't produce anything below 40 hz if they tried. And the company had nice pretty little graphs to show "proof." The company (I will not name them) claimed that we must have gotten a defective pair. Yea.....Sure. they were gonna give us another pair and another 30 days. We said no. DSD is a broken technology? If you have transferred any analog tapes to DSD then you would realize how silly that statement is. How is it broken? In 50 words or less please. Some very good points. Yes a Sony PCM 1630 was light years ahead of a Sony PCM 1600 and certainly better than a F1. The graphs are very nice but huh??!? I don't read German or whatever language it is in. Anyway I have no idea what it says. I had been at My Uncle studio for over 18 years. Mostly doing transfers to Pro Tools: Half inch 3 and 4 track to Pro Tools 1 inch 8 track to Pro Tools 2 inch 16 track to Pro Tools 2 inch 24 track to Pro Tools 2 inch 32 track to Pro Tools 1 inch 24 track to Pro Tools. 1 inch 16 track to Pro Tools. Half inch 16 track to Pro Tools. Half inch 8 track to Pro Tools. DASH half inch tape /24 and 48 track to Pro Tools DASH two inch tape / 48 track to Pro Tools. DASH 1 inch tape/ 32 track to Pro Tools. ADAT to Pro Tools. Quarter inch half track to Pro Tools. Quarter inch full track to Pro Tools. Half inch half track to Pro Tools. And by request we have done: Analog to analog transfers. Analog is just a better backup. I hear individual instruments on tracks most of the time as supposed to a full dense stereo or mono mix. We go by our ears not by ABX tests. There was many great CDs in the 80's made. But I actually owned a 1986 14 / 44.1 AD/DAC back in 1988. You could tell very easily that that PCM converter introduced artifacts to the music that weren't there. We have come along way since then. The graphs, data, and tests are useful to a point. But I wouldn't make them my Gospel.
Yes, unfortunately the compact disks we get these days are not perfect copies of the source. They are pumped up with unnecessary compression and excessive EQ. Cutting a record from a high definition file can sound good. If they are using the original file and it is being played back on a top of the line DAC. Not the same as a CD played back on $300 DAC. But $300 DAC are way better than they were 20 years ago. What would have exist you $10 000 back in 1993 you can get the same quality for $300. We have come along way. So with vinyl in this case you have a nice analog copy of a high definition file. Whereas with the CD you playback is at the mercy of your DAC and analog circuitry. What I am talking about sir is from what I am have observed in the studio with my Uncle. Our converters are state of the art. So we probably hear things you will never hear. The customer at home may NEVER hear what we hear. Because we master and mix our amps, monitors, mixers have to be top notch. So if I say an analog tape copied to a PCM 24/176.4 file doesn't sound the same as the original I am not talking about a dense stereo mix.. On a 2 inch 16 track you hear the bass all on it's own. Something many of you will never hear. A vocal all on it's own. There is no reason you should hear what we hear. We just don't mix but master as well. So our monitors have to be not just full range. (10 - 24 000 +-2db) but super detailed and uncolored as well. They have to show without mercy what is in the mix. No quarter. We had a clever friend build us a infrasonic subwoofer that crosses over at 30 hz at 36 db per octave. It is powered by a 1000 watt digital amp. The infrasonic subwoofer can go down to 7 hz. But it is really only flat down to 10 hz. We don't wanna miss anything. You would be surprised at how many Rap or Dance mixes have infrasonic bass thrown in to the mix. Bass that low makes your skin itch and loosens your bowels. You don't hear bass below 20 hz you feel it. And below 14 hz other wierd stuff happens. Remember the Frank Sinatra song from the 70's, ANY TIME AT ALL (I'LL BE THERE)? A few years ago we transferred that 2 inch 24 track tape to: 24 / 352.8 Pro Tools file. (24 tracks of 24 / 352.8 is massive. Don't try this at home childern.), DSD258 and 2 synchronized 2-inch 16 tracks Dolby SR encoded. I don't remember when. We didn't remix or anything special. We just got a stack of Reprise stuff to transfer one month and that song was one of them. Happens all the time... No one cares...No big deal.. They are thousands of albums and only so many studios and a lot less multitracks then they were 30 years ago. Many studios are so busy recording artists on analog multitracks. The Studer A800-24 and 827 are REALLY POPULAR.. So they don't have the time nor the resources to transfer every damn multitrack they have. And DASH tapes are even worse. Enter the Toronto studio. Yea for us!! Sometimes it may say, "tape transfers by...." and sometimes not. I just had to solo Frank's voice and the bass at the same time. Ahhhhhh.....A dream. I wish I had made a mix of that but that is lawsuit territory. That I remember. But big deal a tape transfer.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Iron-Maiden-Live-After-Death-CD-Walmart-Exclusive/384572534 First I've seen of the live album remasters.
Yes, that's the first pic of the live-album batch. Hopefully we will get some more info soon as it was only mentioned in the FC-mag but no new, anything news regarding the releases has yet been mentioned anywhere. Amazon had place holder for LAD, it was there yesterday but now it's been removed.
Absolutely. Completely agree. Okay. But that doesn't mean that the digitization process is the culprit. More likely it is what has been done to the material in the studio when making the digital master, or what has been done to the material when cutting the vinyl record, or lastly, what your analogue playback gear does to the material, mostly the altered frequency response of your cartridge. I agree, although from a practical standpoint I prefer CDs to vinyl. Just for the record (no pun intended), I have all Iron Maiden's albums up until Fear of the Dark, and have almost all of them on vinyl, and I don't want the CDs. I also recently bought two Jefferson Airplane MFSL vinyl LPs because they had different masters than all the CDs available (including the MFSL CDs), and I preferred these particular MFSL LPs. But that is due to mastering, not analogue vs. digital. I honestly don't see why my assumption is such a stretch, especially since you know say more or less the same, although now it's "in theory". So, the point you're making is that that analogue to analogue must be better than analogue to digital? Other people sometimes say that the sound waves we're listening to are analogue anyways, and any digital signal must be converted back to analogue before we can listen to it, so therefore analogue must be better. If that is what you're trying to say, then that point is actually to some extent true, in theory. But not in practice. I'll explain: If we have an analogue Iron Maiden master tape then in theory that tape should be better than if we digitize it, even with the best A/D converter in the entire world, since it is possible that the A/D conversion introduces artifacts. In practice though, these artifacts won't be audible if the converter is properly made, which the world's best converter obviously is. But if we keep it only to this step, the theory is completely true. Digitizing doesn't make it better. It doesn't. But it's not supposed to either. It only makes an audibly indistinguishable copy. But still there might be measurable differences that are not audible. So in that way the analogue tape is better. That is completely true. However, this step only applies to the one person who has the master tape, so once you start distributing the music to other people (the fans or even someone in the studio who just needs a copy) the theory falls apart, simply because of how analogue storage medias work: Every analogue tape machine and record player has much greater speed fluctuations (wow and flutter) than digital media, and analogue vinyl records are also often just a little bit off-center. Often the difference is so small that you can't see it when the record is spinning, but it's still there. So copying an analogue tape to another analogue tape or transferring it to vinyl and playing it back introduces speed variations. Every analogue tape machine has a non-linear frequency response, although some tape machines are much better than others. In case you're not aware of these differences, you can see a lot of graphs here: Response Curves of Analog Recorders So, transferring an analogue tape to another tape changes the EQ. If I'm not mistaken, no phono cartridge in history has come even close to a deviation from flat of 0.1 dB, which is the standard with digital. The flattest cartridges that I've tried myself deviated around 1-2 dB from flat. The flattest cartridge I have otherwise seen was also close to a 2 dB deviation from flat. It should also be noted that some of the most expensive cartridges in the world, such as Lyra, are nowhere near flat. They are most likely being sold at these extraordinary prices simply because they have a certain sound, meaning it changes the frequency response in a way that many people find pleasurable (and I do too in many cases). The same applies to many other celebrated cartridges, whether expensive or not (Hana, Ortofon, Zyx, etc.). Then there's noise, and analogue tapes and vinyl record have a much higher noise level than digital, even 16 bit. So transferring one analogue tape to another, or to a vinyl record, introduces noise and lowers the dynamic range. Lastly, analogue tapes can have 1-3 % distortion. Any digital converter with that amount of distortion would either be laughed out of the business by the pro-people, or sold at extortionate prices to audiophiles who would clap their hands at how "analogue" this converter sounds (Ayre's converters is one point in case). Lastly, there's the vinyl material and the transfer to vinyl, which is not an easy process either. But that's too big a topic to cover here, and it's not so relevant either. So, we completely agree that things have to be done right, but here's my point: Let's say that we get the best people in the business to do a proper remaster of Iron Maiden's material. Let's just keep it all in analogue if you like. Then you and I and everyone else comes into the studio and listen to the result, and we all clap our hands, because it's simply perfect. We could not turn any knob that would make it sound better. Simply perfect. If we then digitize this tape it wouldn't sound any different. Tests have already been made to find out if digitizing an analogue signal would be audible, and yet we haven't seen any proof that it is audible, except for when using faulty equipment like I mentioned in an earlier post (I don't know if you saw it - I mentioned Stanley Lipshitz). This entire analogue vs. digital debate is based on analogue fanboys assumption that digitizing a signal must audibly change the sound of it, yet they have never actually tried the test for themselves to find the truth.
The question was if you had passed a blind test, not how many years of experience you have. Also, bragging about your experience is just an attempt to argue from authority, and whether you have 1 second or 60 years of experience is completely irrelevant, because that's not the topic of discussion. So, when I ask a yes or no question, "have you passed a blind test?", the answer shouldn't be "I have 18 years of experience transferring tapes". It's a yes or no question, and the question still remains unanswered. As for the logs I asked for, I wasn't asking about how you sign for a delivery (?), what I mean is the following: I claim that even small volume level differences can make an audible difference. What is my proof? I took an ABX test of a 0.2 dB volume level difference. Here's the log: foo_abx 2.0.2 report foobar2000 v1.3.10 2017-03-07 18:50:58 File A: 05 The Big Time - 2 volumen sænket med 0.2 dB.wav SHA1: 8aa8e1756409c06a2ae03ff7bdaa1549b47b0f02 File B: 05 The Big Time - 2.wav SHA1: e0ab4d34d7a4eb3949002c8fbec3f0a70b5e73bd Output: DS : Primær lyddriver Crossfading: NO 18:50:58 : Test started. 18:53:56 : 01/01 18:54:49 : 02/02 18:56:17 : 03/03 18:57:29 : 04/04 18:58:45 : 05/05 18:59:44 : 06/06 19:01:02 : 07/07 19:02:29 : 08/08 19:05:18 : 08/09 19:30:36 : 09/10 23:42:59 : 10/11 23:44:19 : 11/12 23:46:27 : 12/13 23:47:57 : 13/14 23:49:58 : 14/15 23:52:10 : 15/16 23:52:10 : Test finished. ---------- Total: 15/16 Probability that you were guessing: 0.0% -- signature -- 532d0fe475741c73f1c085c81a4dbee3fad80e70 Then I also have another claim: Not all phono preamps sound the same. My proof? I took an ABX test between 5 phono preamps. Here's the most recent one: foo_abx 2.0 report foobar2000 v1.3.7 2020-03-24 16:16:51 File A: 208 - Type O Negative - October Rust - Arc Protractor - Baerwald, 2,0 gram modvægt - side 1 - Love you to death.wav SHA1: 1c13ebb120061e97225d681e83e94a4e2406e897 File B: 207 - Type O Negative - October Rust - Arc Protractor - Baerwald, 2,0 gram modvægt - Love you to Death (ja, den er optaget med NAD).wav SHA1: 8ba2e46a8cca40fb47a14d0f55316dade3c3c659 Output: DS : Højttalere (TOPPING USB DAC) Crossfading: YES 16:16:51 : Test started. 16:21:21 : 00/01 16:22:27 : 01/02 16:22:53 : 02/03 16:23:14 : 03/04 16:23:30 : 04/05 16:24:30 : 05/06 16:25:11 : 06/07 16:25:49 : 07/08 16:26:10 : 08/09 16:26:32 : 09/10 16:26:49 : 10/11 16:27:08 : 11/12 16:27:45 : 12/13 16:28:21 : 13/14 16:28:58 : 14/15 16:29:40 : 15/16 16:29:40 : Test finished. ---------- Total: 15/16 Probability that you were guessing: 0.0% -- signature -- cd2ea81ea53bc36bfe280680bcf4a2bfadd169bf In case you're interested, I would be happy to send you the files I used for these tests, so you can try to ABX them (seriously). It may not be, but it's still the best test that has been developed so far, and it has actually been improved a little bit since its inception, as a Y has now been introduced, so you can listen to X and Y as well as A and B. On one of the super-objectivist websites it was also shown with proper data that doing an ABXY test worked better than an ABX test. That said, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that an ABX might not reveal every audible difference, but we need actual data that shows otherwise, not just talk. If you weren't aware, you can listen to A for a week or a year before you switch to B, although I am of course aware that in practice this would be very difficult, unless you test amplifiers or something. But although it would be complicated it would also be possible to do a long ABX test between analogue and digital: Run your analogue signal chain through an A/D/A loop for one week/one year and then have someone come in and take out the A/D/A loop, of course without telling you when the loop is in place and when it's not. I know that this suggestion is not very practical at all, but the point was simple: There's no time-restraint when doing a blind test. The only requirements are that it should be time-aligned, level-matched and blind, preferably double-blind, as single-blind tests in other fields (psychic abilities, etc.) have shown that certain skilled people can pass single-blind tests. An easier way to test this would be to do a loop-back test. This doesn't have to be of only a 5 minute clip if you want it to be longer. We're not talking about mp3 here. This is completely irrelevant and a topic for a completely different discussion. And of course, any test done improperly gives you misleading results. No argument there. I was the one bringing up jitter, although it was irrelevant and off-topic. I only brought it up to say that improvements have been made and that the technology in the past was not as good as it is now. That was all. But at least we seem to agree there. If you're so sure of this claim then you should easily be able to ace an ABX test with 16 out of 16 correct within a few minutes. Although the following is not necessarily directed at you personally, I have seen that the people who are the loudest at proclaiming that digitizing a signal audibly changes it are invariably the ones who are the most reluctant to back up their claims by taking a simple blind test, although a pass would give them eternal bragging rights, as long as everything checks out. No surprise there! So? The company lied. That's nothing new. Many people lie. It's irrelevant to the topic at hand, since we're not discussing lying, speakers or claims made by speaker manufacturers. No problem: 1 bit conversion introduces enormous amounts of quantization distortion, although as I mentioned previously I believe this to be inaudible, which tests have also shown. That was 25 words, so half of your requirement. So hopefully you can also respond within your own required word count, and stay on topic, please. But wait! Don't just take my word for it. That would be plain ole ignorant! Don't just trust my XX years/months/days/minutes/seconds of experience and self-proclaimed authority on the matter. Read a proper examination of DSD for yourself: https://timbreluces.com/assets/sacd.pdf So? This is, also, irrelevant and off-topic. The topic is still one question and one question alone: Have you passed a level-matched, time-aligned blind test between an analogue signal and the same signal properly digitized at 16/44.1? The answer is either yes or no. To add to that: If you think 16/44.1 is not transparent, but that 24/96 (or higher) is, or that at least the higher sample rates and higher bit depths are more transparent, then you could easily take a true hi-res recording, downsample it to 16/44.1, upsample it to hi-res again (just to avoid your dac doing something wrong) and pass an ABX test. Just make sure that, as always, it's time-aligned and level-matched, as some downsamplers introduce some extra milliseconds in the beginning and lower the volume level when downsampling.
Sorry if my experience intimidates you. But not my problem. What we hate the most in our field is the dreaded backseat engineer. Have you mixed a song from an artist? Have you ever transferred a half inch analog tape to Pro Tools? Sorry that you seem to be suffering from Dunning-kruger effect. Let me know when you are well. Wow! You o.k. dude? Why so angry? It is not off topic. My point is I have way more experience with analog to digital transfers then most. I never said I was right just that my opinion mattered and that I should be listened to. Maybe you should improve you reading comprehension skills Board.
To all members. Hey guys. Love to be here! Some members on here (they know who they are) are taking my posts personal. Please stop! I have a learning problem. My short term memory is really crappy. I would ask all the kind members responding to me (most of you) to please avoid long muti point quote posts. I find them confusing. And cannot respond the same way. Make many posts if you must. Thanks guys. Just a request. I can only ask. If you wonder what I mean take a look at the long ass muti-quote post Board Wrote. Not the content. The style. I do not know how to post the way he did which puts me at a disadvantage. P.S. Sorry but I know longer work as an audio engineer and cannot evaluate any ABX tests. Most of you seem to know that I lost my job standing against the loudness war. Apparently some of you do not know.
I would like to thank all the members that gave my post a LIKE. Apparently some of you did not ,and had a fit over it. FYI: If any member thinks talking about analog to digital tape transfers is bragging, then you are easily impresed. And it was very on topic. My point was to show that I had a lot of experience comparing analog to digital. And not just dense stereo mixes either. For some clients we have mixed from the analog 2 inch 16 / 24 track tape as well as the 24/176.4 Pro Tools transfers. When we played the clients both versions the clients most of the time preferred the direct analog 2 inch mixes. I will take that over some ABX study. All that study says is that 30 or 50 people couldn't tell the difference between PCM and analog or whatever. Some audio study result does not make it a fact. And this is the fallacy the member in question was engaging in. It is a good study and it tells us a lot but it doesn't mean modern PCM is the same as analog. Not by a mile.
I'm not intimidated by your experience. You're making assumptions now . What astonishes me, not intimidates me, is your arrogance, your silly insults, and your poor reading skills. I wrote: Somehow you read that as I must be intimidated, maybe even jealous . This is exactly the point I'm trying to make: Analogue tape has a sound, digital doesn't, and some just prefer the sound of analogue tape. There's no problem in having a preference. In the words of Bob Ludwig analogue tape can work like "glue", because it's dense and smears things together. Even hyper-objectivist Ethan Winer mentioned that he transferred his own digital recording to cassette tape because he liked the effect, or the "sound", of the tape. But that's exactly what it is: An effect. And to many it's a pleasant effect. And just for the record: I actually think more artists should record on analogue tape, because most recordings are less than stellar, so the smearing, distortion and EQ'ing that analogue tape does to a recording can hide a lot of the nastiness present in the recording itself. But a preference for a certain sound is not the same as a superior technology. No, it wasn't. The question wasn't "how many tapes and how many different types of tapes have you transferred to digital and how many years of experience do you have?", the question was "have you passed a properly conducted blind test between analogue and digital?" But in your second comment you finally answered my question: So you haven't done a blind test test. That was what I was asking all along. Thank you. So all you have are anecdotes and attempts at arguing from authority. All in can say is: "What is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof". If you really can hear a difference, you could hear the difference when closing your eyes. Then you could pass a blind test. Easily. I've made two or three girlfriends watch me pass ABX tests from my kitchen, even one where after initially listening to A and B from the kitchen, I then for all 16 trials only listened to X and only to the first four seconds of the song. Again, if you refuse to do a blind test, then all I can say is that "what is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof".
Actually, I've decided to change my tactics now. You don't have to respond to my last message if you don't want to. Instead I would just like to ask you a very simple question, to which you will hopefully be able to give a very simple answer: What, if anything, could make you change your mind about your claim that digital, be it 16/44.1 or higher, audibly changes the sound of the original analogue signal (i.e. degrades the sound)?
Agreed. I finished the topic last week. But if a certain member keeps beating the subject like a dead horse well.....What can I do. If a member says he prefers the vinyl over the original CD we should take him at his word. I would. The thread was about the remastered Iron Maiden CD. But then some members start talking about vinyl maiden which is not what the tread is about either. And that led to current off thread topic.
It's okay that you mention me by name instead of saying "a certain member" or whatever you choose, since I know it's me you're talking about anyway. Honestly, I was fed up with this discussion as well. I simply hadn't checked the forum since last week, which is why I responded late. But yes, let's end this discussion. It's true that it was completely off-topic, and I have no problem with someone preferring vinyl over digital, as long as it's stated as a personal preference. But I do have a problem with someone, both John Morris and others, saying that because they prefer XYZ it must mean it's a superior technology and showing no proof except for anecdotes and "sounds good to me and my buddies", as this is not proof. That's why I objected. But yes, we'll put an end to it here and let the thread go back to be about the Iron Maiden remasters.
So... Overall then...I'm safe to stay with all my original CD's ? Lets face it...most remasters are just a con job. This is coming from someone who'd actually like Judas Priest or Sony to one day do a proper job on their back catalogue!!!
Yes, The '98 remasters are terrible and not worth it at all. The 2015 remasters which have recently been issued on CD are better than the '98 discs but are way too loud. If you have the S/T through Fear of the Dark in the original CD format then keep them and don't bother seeking out either set of remasters.
All early Iron Maiden original CDs sound average. Yes, they have a good dynamic range, but the mix and eq are mostly bad, except Piece of Mind and Powerslave. IMO
Personally id take an '80s CD with high DR and a subpar mix over something that might have a better master and mix but is loud and jacked to all hell but that's just me.
