SH Spotlight Vinyl vs. master tape?

But I still object to it's drawbacks. The CD is more acceptable to me in that respect.

All you(I) need is well-mastered CDs.

Hey Bob! "All I Need" The Temptations, 1966!

 

Grant if you are an actor you almost certainly live in the L.A. area. You seem like a nice guy. I live in the valley (don't laugh). You are welcome to come on over some time if you like and listen to what I am hearing. By the way I'm "in the business" too. I'm a make up artist.

 

If you look just below my avitar you will see that i'm not quite in the neighborhood! I'm at least 500 miles away. It's been 18 years since I was in L.A., though... I did some acting in Jr. High but I was always in the bands.

 

"DOPE!" Homer Simpson
I never noticed the little locator telling me you are in Arizona.
Oh well, If you are ever in town....

 

Hi Grant,

I would be a very happy guy if all of my favorite recordings were available on well-mastered cd's, BUT they are not. Few of my favorite recordings have been well-mastered on cd, thus the place for analog in my world.

How many well-mastered cd's do you own?

-Jeffrey

 

Oh, I have thousands of CDs in my collection, so I won't even hazard a guess, but I quite a few! I also have tons of vinyl. I understand that Lindsay Buckingham's "Law And Order" isn't on domestic CD so I bought a near-mint copy of it last night. I plan to turn it into a CD-R. Uh-0h! I can see you guys scrambling for a rope...

 

OK then, fair enough. I can understand your preference for CD. But if others with better gear claim that LP's sound better, you are in no position to say that it is not necessarily so.

 

And you are in no position to say that CD is crap because you can't get into my head. You also are in no position to say that copying vinyl faithfully to CD is not possible. Master tapes? it depends on the tape and the engineer doing the work.

I'm getting quite bored with this whole topic.

Back to music.

 

Grant, I too, thank you for your honesty in what your current turntable is. With all do respect, I submit to you that your old 1981 JUC "direct drive" turntable is why you DO NOT hear what Scott, others and myself are describing to you. Sorry, but Direct Drive in no way compares to a belt drive system for isolation. And what Grado are you using? What arm? I'm sorry, but your bold, sweeping negative statements made against analog HOLD NO WATER based on your equipment. C'mon, do you really feel you can tell us what analog is not doing without listening to a half-way decent setup? If you can't afford it or choose not to put your money into one, that's fine. That's your choice. But please realize that your experiences with your analog setup are in no way representative of what analog can sound like. I always felt I COULD comment on the negatives of digital because I had a $3000 plus cd system at one time. And as Scott says. in all my comparisons (with a MUCH cheaper turntable setup) the vinyl ruled!

 

Fascinating to hear Steve's comments on listening to master tapes. Interesting that the CD -vs- vinyl "debate" continues to come up, and that the usual stereotypes are thrown about.

Here's my take:

- Mastering is critical. A poor master job, from whatever source, to whatever medium, will produce poor sound.

- Music is subjective. Some people like vinyl, some CD, and not always for the "stereotypical" reasons.

- Some CD players use tubed otuputs, which provide a different sound than the "cold hard truth" of SS players. As Steve mentions, all rigs will change the sound he has delivered to us in some way or another, not just vinyl rigs.

- Not all vinyl lovers prefer a "euphonic sound", nor are all vinyl rigs set-up this way. It is inaccurate to continue to state this as fact. Remember, a ton of the music we groove to on DCC CD were recorded and mixed using an analog medium (tape) which has it's own inherent imperfections (wow and flutter, distortion, "limited" S/N ratio) similar to vinyl that the proponents of digital like to criticize.

- Just because someone prefers vinyl, doesn't mean that person "skimps" on the CD playback chain, or vice versa. Why does this even get thrown into the equation? I have owned 5 figure rigs, both digital and vinyl, and for me, I preferred vinyl. Someone else, who cues on different things, may prefer CD, and it's not just because of "euphonics" or "clarity", it's usually due to sense of soundstage and air. Personally, I'll listen to whatever the music is on.

- If 16/44 CD is so good, i.e. "truthful to the source" or to the "live event", then why is there such a desire for High-Rez digital? That's not to say that CD's are bad, it just makes you wonder what all the fuss is about if there is a way to deliver a greater sense of the musical gestalt?

Again, just my take, with my ears, in my system (currently waiting for the new Audio Aero Capitole MK II to use alongside my SME 20/2).

TRH

 

But you guys still make it sound like we digital advocates don't know what we are talking about or that we don't know what to listen for, all while working under the assumsion that we will "fall in line" when we hear "real analog".

I like the convenience and durability of CD. I know it isn't perfect because I work with it every day, but I prefer it's faults to vinyl's faults. Period.

 

Grant
I certainly hope I have never implied that anyone doesn't know what to listen for. I have tried to limit my opinions to my experiences. When people try to explain my opinion of superior sound from LPs over CDs in my system as being psychosematic or as purely the result of euphonic colorations and/or tonal inacuracies I have to take issue. Till you come on over and listen for yourself you don't know what I'm hearing. Your CD player may very well sound better than your turntable. I have never said anything to the contrary but I'll believe your CD player or any other CD player sounds better than my table when I hear it here in my system.

 

So the technical measurements are your benchmark for sonic accuracy? I prefer to let my ears do that work. Vinyl is fully capable of reproducing the the full frequency spectrum and dynamic range of any recording - pop, rock, jazz, vocal, classical, etc. S/N is only a problem if you let it become one (i.e. you can't stand a little noise in your recordings). Some can, some can't. I can't stand too much, but some is fine by me. Many modern LPs (like Steve's DCCs and now the Creedence on AP) are amazingly quiet with a super low noise floor.

All of that said, I still find that my very best LPs are far superior to my very best CDs. They sound better. Euphonic coloration or not, they sound more real, more natural, more lifelike. If you prefer cold and hard, that's great. That's not real life. That all said, I love CDs too. It's all in the mastering. But my ears tell me there's more to music than your bench measurements, and listening to my best LPs confirms that as fact.

Mike

PS: The vinyl reissue business is booming, against all odds. Vinyl should have been dead long ago. It's not. There's a good reason for this, and it's not nostalgia!

 

Hi Scott -

Just curious, have you done the experiment of recording from vinyl onto CDR, and then syncing and comparing the original vinyl against the newly-made CDR?

What differences did you hear?

 

My freind Steve who is comming over to watch the Lakers has brought his CD burner over to copy some of his LPs on my table from time to time. I don't know if this qualifies as a CDR or just a plain ole CD. We have compared them to the original LPs but we never sync them up. I figure if the differences are so subtle that you need to switch back and forth they don't matter much. I don't need to sync them up to hear these differences. Much info is lost and the CDs sound more foreward , hard and nasal. I am not familiar with Steve's CD burner so I cannot say what brand it is or model. I just plum forgot to be honest. I'll pay attention to it and report back after the Lakers finish humiliating the Kings.

 

Hi Scott - thanks for answering.

When I've done this experiment (I'm sure if you search you can find my writeup) I couldn't tell any difference whatsoever.

Could be my ears. Could be my setup. Who knows. But honestly, I don't really care, because it sounds great. (to me).

It would be interesting, though, to know if your friend has a decent CD burner.

HZ

 

It has to be the resampling going on inside that burner. I don't get cold, hard sound.

You can't judge CD-R transfers on just one exoerience with one burner. Digital, like vinyl, is not equal.

I still recommend the computer/software method.
I encourage everyone with a computer setup and a decent card to do the test. The variables with standalone burners are too uncontrolled to be of real use.

 

I doubt it's your ears. the difference isn't subtle. It could be a speaker issue. Im sure that much of what I hear is due to the resolution of my speakers. Martin Logan CLS IIZ with a Vandersteen 2W sub.
As for doing this on the computer I wonder if my hardware is new enough. I'm sure my Mac isn't. It was state of the art back in 94 so it's an antique now. I can't use anything new on it. I suspect that my daughter's little E Machine is also not up to the task. Not much RAM on this thing.

 

Mike V,

Very nice post. Right on the money.

Regards,
Metralla

 

Is CHT your cross to bear? Cut yourself down for god's sake.

Hello everyone,

Someone on this thread mentioned the cold hard truth of the tape, or digital, or something, as opposed to the colorations of the vinyl.

The cold hard truth (CHT) has its place in the world, but rarely when listening to music. Live music has little of those first two qualities, although it can, especially on 20th century orchestral music, which often strives for that effect.

But imperfect recordings and imperfect media are the most likely cause for the coldness and hardness, as well as bad playback equipment. So why not fix these problems and enjoy yourself?

The reasons Miss Manners writes best selling books is that most of the time the cold hard truth is not desirable in the world of human interaction. The same is true for recordings in my opinion. The colorations of the cutting chains in the late fifties and early sixties, coupled with the colorations of the recording equipment of the day, resulted in the most glorious classical, jazz and folk recordings in the history of the world.

Is that such a bad thing?

You mean to say you actually prefer the cold hard truth of today's recordings?

Let's dispense with the cold hard truth argument. Only the mastering engineer can even begin to know what it is anyway. The rest of us are just guessing.

I would rather focus my attention on Musical Truth (MT). How much does this recording in this format remind me of real music, not merely a recording?

To me this is what tubes and vinyl do best. They take recordings and turn them into musically truthful experiences.

Tubes are notorious colorizing devices. Steve has thousands of them. He knows all their "colors" as well as anyone. I believe he would agree with me that without our tubes this hobby would be too cold and hard to bother with. For me, the same would be true for vinyl.

As I learn to listen more critically, and improve my playback equipment, two things which go hand in hand, I find the right colors to be more and more important, not less so.

Best,
TP

P.S.
dccblowout.com should be up and running next week so stay tuned!

 

Nice to have you back Tom!

 

Re: Is CHT your cross to bear? Cut yourself down for god's sake.

Tom,

Very well written observations! It has been said that "cynisism is reality that no one wants to hear". You have spoken the cold, hard truth in your post. It is no wonder so many of us enjoy vintage recordings mastered on vintage equipment.

Welcome back!

Bob

 

long-winded reply

This seems to be the whole of the argument. Analog is an "approximate" representation of a wave-form, but at least the approximation is a continuous line. Digital is an "approximate" representation of an analog wave-form. The hardware has to interpolate what is missing, and estimate what the continuous line should be. This process is not as lossy as MP3, but it is still a lossy medium, because the continuos line isn't there. I've never heard anyone claim that a digital system CAN'T reproduce sound better than an analog system, only that it can't be done with 16 bits. I tend to agree with that.

When CDs first came out I had been listening to music continuously EVERY DAY for over 20 years, and had about 3000 LPs. Many of the LPs were imports. I started buying imports in the 70s because they SOUNDED better. I was totally enchanted by the dynamic range and lack of surface noise on CD, and I started re-purchasing everything on CD. After a couple of years I seemed unable to listen to an entire disc without stopping it and putting something else in. I assumed my listening habits or interests had changed. Over a period of about 8 years I practically lost interest in music altogether. Then I had to take my CD player in for service, and while it was gone I played a few records. I found myself LISTENING to them again.

I don't have an expensive turntable and tonearm setup. I've got a B&O. My CD player was the top of the line Sony ES made in 1989. Some people on this board have suggested newer players with newer D to A converters sound a lot better than ANYTHING made in 1989, which is probably true, and based on recommendations, I will probably buy one. All I know is that a $400 turntable made in 1984 is a lot more MUSICAL than a $2000 CD player made in 1989, (as does a $150 Hoffman tube hi-fi made in 1959.)

If CD is such a great medium, why do they have to keep developing better converters to make it sound better? And why does high resolution digital supposedly sound better than CD? Because digital is a lossy system, and I think what gets lost is the natural warmth Steve talks about that is only found on LP. That warmth doesn't even come through completely on the Hoffman CDs, although a lot more of it does than the on the usual CD fare. However, the Hoffman LPs sound better. Even on a $400 turntable. There is a quality to the sound that is missing on the CDs. I don't think it's entirely the 1989 CD player.

I don't know that someone who grew up listening to CD would ever think vinyl sounds better, because they have become accustomed to something different in the sound. Of course there are a lot of people who like the sound of MP3s, which REALLY sounds bad to my ears. I wouldn't be suprised if the new high res digital mediums fail, unless prices come way down. A lot of people complain about the high prices of CDs. I don't think Joe Public is going to pay $20-25 for an identical title with "better" sound. Especially if they can download the songs they want from the internet. If so, gold audiophile discs would have been the norm, rather than the exception.

Personally, I salute everyone who likes the sound of CD (or MP3). If I didn't already KNOW that CD doesn't really cut it, I wouldn't WANT to know. Vinyl is a hassle. You have to clean it, you have to store it carefully, and you can't do a track search. I'm probably too spoiled by the convenience of CD to ever go back to vinyl 100%. So all I can do is seek out the DCCs and MFSLs I don't have, and keep reading this board to find out what else out there is listenable, so I don't spend $15 on a CD that sounds like a cat getting strangled. But what do I know? I think every amplifier ever made sounds a little different, and I can hear minute differences in cables, and all that golden ears stuff that so many equipment magazines say is all in my head. So maybe I'm just imagining that CDs sound like something just isn't there.

 

dwmann,

Curiously, have you read any of Steve's postings where he says "the vinyl and the cd sound identical"? I can't remember which of the many SH albums Steve was referring to right now, but if Steve says it, and he did, I believe him.

 

I have never seen any of Steve Hoffman's posts claiming they sound identical. I have only seen him claim that his mastered LPs and CDs are tonally very close on his playback equipment. The idea that they would sound identical is meaningless unless you site specific equipment since each piece of equipment has it's own sonic signature.