SH Spotlight Vinyl vs. master tape?

Nectarines!

 

Grant, good idea! I'll meet you next week at the Nectarine Bar!!

Todd

 

Scott,

Remember, I own and enjoy both Vinyl and CDs! The "recordings" are what they are but, I believe the next most controllable and compelling factor is mastering and the quality of the manufacturing processes. Very well mastered recordings will make any reproduction system sound better whereas poorly mastered recordings will make any reproduction system sound less pleasing than it's capabilities--would you agree with that basic premise? The rest is just personal preference based on what we enjoy, what we can afford, what we find important and how we enjoy listening to music. I enjoy my LPs and 12" singles but, I also enjoy my CDs. When they are well mastered they all sound great! I still have a special affinity for wide-grooved 12" 45 rpm singles but, those are far and few between these days.

I maintain my contention that quality of "mastering" is paramount

Bob

 

Whew! We have been arguing over

CD vs. LP
digital vs. analog
compression
new music vs. old music
rap/hip-hop
computer vs. standalone CD burners
mastering/reissue engineers
politics
sociology
morality
Star wars
Mac vs. PC
Britany
good CDs
bad CDs
CD vs. DVD
CD vs. SACD
LP vs. SACD
DVD-A vs. SACD
DVD-V vs. DVD-A
which side is better
freedom of speech
cables
tubes
turntables
money
class
The Who
The Bee Gees
Fleetwood Mac
stampers
pressings

We gotta think of something new...or, we can start again at the top!

Let's go for another round!

 

Bob
I agree that good mastering makes for better sound and bad mastering makes for inferior sound but I do not agree that it has a larger effect in the chain of reproduction. My experience is that the weakest link in any given chain is the one thing that will allow for the greatest improvement. Badly mastered LPs (and i have a few) will still sound a lot more like the real thing than the best mastered CDs on a boom box. Quite honestly I think the most obvious diffences happen in the speaker room combination in playback and the original recordings themselves on that side of the chain. They all matter is my point. You can get all the best mastered CDs and LPs in the world and you will be missing most of what they have to offer if the playback equipment is lacking.

 

'Round and around and around we go,
Where the thread's headed
Nobody knows!

 

Scott,

Of course, the quality of equipment and the set-up effects the quality of the listening experience--another basic premise. However, mastering "garbage" is going to "smell" even worse on high quality reproduction systems (I know!). My favorite analogy about mastering is here at work where I listen to CDs on a Bose Wave Radio. I can hear the difference in the quality of the mastering even on the Bose. SH mastered CDs even make the BOSE sound better than it normally does.

Fun discussion!

Bob

 

All kidding and saracasm aside, a good recording and mastering job will shine through anything it is stored and played back on. A bad recording or mastering job will stink anywhere.

 

Grant,

Should be start at the top of your list or vote on the next subject or debate on what to debate about next?

Bob

 

How about shoes?

 

I thought it was more like arguing!

All I can say is that the best way to discourage a potential audiophile is to have him or her read this thread! They will go back to their bookshelf stereo or mp3s fast!

 

I generally have no reason or use for MP3s, but when I have had to make
them, I've used Lame, which was recommended to me by those who
are 'connoisseurs' of the format.

 

Interesting product name--Lame, doe not sound like good marketing!

Bob

 

It's not necessarily true that an A/D converter will add any noise or coloration, or that a CD player would do so. So I don't see why the CDR/LP comparison would have to fail on that basis. Assuming the LP output is taken after the preamp has done its work, the burn should capture whatever is being sent to the speakers.

please see www.pcavtech.com for info on 'noisiness' of various soundcards.
I use a Midiman Audiophile 2496.

Right now, my turntable setup -- a Systemdek IIX with a SHure V15-IVMR cartridge -- is on the fritz, having developed a low-level hum, so I'm not doing *any* LP-to-CDR transfer these days. ;<

 

Depite legions of audiphiles who cling to the belief that there are audible differences between nominally competent cables, there is no scientific evidence for this, and, AFAIK, no blind test done on cables has ever found any.

A/D converters are more likely to sound different, but even here, youd' want to verify that an audible difference exists via a blind test.

Over this distnaces involved, that shoudl make no audible difference whatever.

*Not all possible differences translate into audible difference* The human ear is not infinitely sensitive....as you note in your reference to bat ears below ;>

 

*Sometimes*. Due to bad design or purposeful manipulation of sound.
Solid state amplifiers, preamps etc *can* be sonically, and demonstrably, transparent i.e., no audible distortion added, only gain.

 

Enjoy your dogma, Beagle.

 

The name doesn't influence the younger guys who deal with mp3.

I use Cool Edit and Sound Forge. They work well when I need mp3s.

 

1) I'm not dismissing Boyk's work, simply pointing out that some of his work is controversial...and pointing out where to go to read about that controversy.
Pointing *only* to Mr. Boyk's site isn't likely to give the whole picture (that's only natural)

2)You *can* discuss the sampling rate/'bitrate' of vinyl...it's been done on rec.audio.high end. Use advanced google wiht 'sampling rate vinyl' as the search terms , searching that newsgroup, and you'll see a lively debunking from a scientific perspective, of the myth that vinyl has an 'infinite sampling rate', by e.g. audiphiles/engineers like Dick Pierce and the late Gordon Gilbert.

3) these discussions always tend to bog down in a rhetorical confusion between *preference* and *accuracy*. Please not that the former is subjective, while the latter can be ranked objectively.

 

There are a LOT of crappy sounding master tapes, Beagle, which our own Steve Hoffman will attest to.

So much manipulation goes into everything we listen to, including your beloved LPs and my beloved CDs. Nothing is really sacred. If Steve H. simply transferred all master tapes to CD/LP, he'd get a lot of complaints! Believe me!

As long as some could say that a CD on a hi-res system can blow away any LP, anywhere, your statement of the opposite is purely opinion, not fact. So, all most of us are doing is arguing opinion based on conditioning and bias.

 

see
http://www.mp3-converter.com/encoders/lame_encoder.htm

re: lame , and other mp3 encoders

 

Krabapple, Beagle's not alone. There are others on this board, like myself, who have at one time invested large sums into digital playback only to continually HEAR that something was wrong. The music was just bright and forward whenever the volume was turned up. Hmmmm, now that was not the case when I cued up the same recording on my WAY less expensive analog turntable. I could turn the volume way up and ENJOY the music without running to the volume control. It was involving! I don't care what the spec's said, I only know WHAT I HEARD. Sure, specs say cd is supposed to be better in all aspects of playback. How come I didn't hear that. I got tired of people telling me it was a "bad" recording that the digital medium was now "exposing" for the first time. Do you really think the Beatles were recorded as poorly as they sound on cd????? Funny, but I have heard varouis VINYL pressings of the Beatles that say the master tapes are NOT BAD AT ALL. Nope, just the digital cd's make 'em sound that way. Or I've heard poor mastering is the reason that cd's are bright and forward. Well, Steve Hoffman is damn good at the mastering game, yet I have compared his gold DCC cd's to DCC vinyl, and on my system, the vinyl wins once again in that area I mentioned above. For example, I compared "Operator from the DCC Jim Croce gold CD to the same cut on the DCC vinyl. In comparision, the DCC CD sounded hard. The vinyl was sweet. AND, as I stated above, I could turn the volume up WITHOUT it becoming unlistenable. It just became louder and fuller on the vinyl.

So I don't care about specs. I need to hear a cd player sound more musical than a properly setup turntable. And I have been looking and listening for this "musical" cd player since 1985. So far, my turntable still wins. And please don't tell me I'm biased. I spent over $3000 on digital TRYING and hoping to get it to sound better than my turntable. I tried to believe what people like you said. Only thing was, according to digital lovers, my lying ears keep telling me different.

 

If there are sound differences in the sound of cables and interconnects, and there are, it is because of the electrical interaction between the wires and the gear in question. That's why it is important to experiment with many to find what works with your equipment. Crazy, perhaps, but many, including myself, agree with it. Impedence, capacitance, and resistance are the only three properties that really matter.

The breakpoint is looking for what one believes is a cable that colorizes the sound the least as opposed to finding one that gives one a euphoric sound, and damn the accuracy. It's all subjective.

In a couple of instances, I have heard a cheap, $2 RCA connector sound very close to an "audiophile" cable on certain gear in terms of frequency response. The audiophile stuff was clearer sounding, however.

 

Thanks for the link, Krab! I will; read what they have to say.

I should have stated what I meant more clearly. What I was responding to was the fact that the name of a given software program usually has no negative impact on it's popularity.

I don't deal much with mp3 outside of occasionally trading hard to get music, so the issue of highly encoded mp3 doesn't matter quite that much to me. The two audio editors do what I need when I need quite well.

Thanks, anyway.

 

Sam, with all due respect, perhaps you have just gotten used to the slightly depressed midrange your vinyl and/or vinyl playback is giving you, and therefore, CD's flatter frequency response makes things edgy to you in comparison? This could suggest that your vinyl playback is NOT accurate. Or, this could mean the opposite is true. We can't know without hearing STEVE'S master on whatever STEVE played it back on.

Specs DO matter!