How does that work if the album was recorded digitally in the first place?
Mobile Fidelity - the digital step in MFSL vinyl debacle
- Thread starter windhoek
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How does that work if the album was recorded digitally in the first place?
How does what work?
what you said
JediJoker
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
That isn't "meaningless data." It demonstrates that the conversion is transparent and undetectable by the human ear in a blind test. It's unlikely Bernie Grundman would fare any differently in that same test. In sighted listening, bias plays a huge role; we hear what we want to hear, and Grundman most likely brings a preconception that a hi-res digital conversion somehow harms the audio. Empirically, it does not.
Others have no doubt cut excellent albums from digital masters too. Which is something many vinylphiles seem to want not to believe.
I didn't see that they claimed converting to digital achieves the best setup for playing back a master tape. That's two different steps, and the second comes before the first. The obvious advantage of a digital inter-master is they only have to achieve the best setup once per tape, regardless of number of later lacquer pressings.
Huh? There's nothing inherently bad (and much potentially good) about a DDD release . DDD isn't 'processing' btw. It means digital recording, digital mixing, and digital mastering. (All physical digital media are 'digitally mastered')
Whatever was "horrible" about DG releases wasn't because of DDD.
I have no idea what you are asking.
Yes, they have. And the vast majority of them cost 1/4 to 1/3 of what MFSL is charging for effectively the same process. Does possibly judicious EQ, a pretty box, sometimes quiet vinyl, and a good marketing program make up the difference in price? That’s an individual decision, but at least it’s now a somewhat informed one.
In the interview, they used What’s Going On as an example of a tape which benefits cutting, i.e. achieves a better set-up, by converting to digital first because each song has different calibrations. This is nonsense BS - if for no other reason (as I said) than others have cut arguably better cuts using set-ups which did not use a digital source.
Yet again, the advantage of doing it once using digital is convenience and thus lower costs. It is not being done because it creates a better LP.
It’s just one data point. It doesn’t prove anything other than that’s the measurement.
But again, MFSL didn’t tell us what they were doing because anyone who thinks of this rationally realizes it‘s all about saving costs, not improving quality (or even matching quality).
If that’s good enough for you, great. But I’ve been saying for years that while MFSL has made many good records, the hype for them exceeded the results.
On the flip side, by and large they‘re making better records now than the old 80s MFSL when the entire process was analog - because the impact of bad mastering choices is many orders of magnitude more important than whether the source is the original tape or a digital facsimile of it.
Seriously. Just listen to the Soundstream/Telarc recordings from the early 1980s and it becomes very obvious that even early digital was plenty for even the most demanding recordings.
Way back in 1980 I bought Stevie Wonder's "Hotter Than July", I stuck it on the turntable and thought this sounds so much better than the rest of my LPs, it turned out it was a digital recording, and the key thing to me was that the drums sounded 'sharp/clean', no muffled thud when the skin was hit. Yes, the mastering will also have played a part, but the quality of the original recording was the key element.
I like my analogue, my old LPs, tapes etc. but put on a pristine LP, then the same album on CD, then on Blu-ray or 24-bit flac, you'll hardly notice the difference, if at all (especially if done blind), yet the LP has a much worse technical specification than the CD, which isn't as good as the 24-bit Blu-ray/flac. The point is our hearing isn't actually as good as people suppose, there is no mysticism involved, even if you have perfect hearing.
What people like is the 'sound', so the imperfections!
I like my analogue, my old LPs, tapes etc. but put on a pristine LP, then the same album on CD, then on Blu-ray or 24-bit flac, you'll hardly notice the difference, if at all (especially if done blind), yet the LP has a much worse technical specification than the CD, which isn't as good as the 24-bit Blu-ray/flac. The point is our hearing isn't actually as good as people suppose, there is no mysticism involved, even if you have perfect hearing.
What people like is the 'sound', so the imperfections!
I would guess that the drums sounded better because the quality didn’t degrade after multiple overdubs of other instruments. Check out the Classic Albums episode on the making of Rumours. They laid down the drums first, and when all the overdubs were finished the drum tracks had degraded so badly that they manually sync’d up the safety copy of the drums and re-recorded them to the multitracks. (And FWIW, I think the drums on Rumours sound FANTASTIC.) If digital were available to them it wouldn’t have been a problem.
Could also just be the way they were recorded/mixed on Hotter Than July. At the end of the 70s and into the 80s there was a push to make drums more "punchy". Disco demanded louder and 'thumpier' kick drums mixes which carried over into other genres. Drums in general were much more forward in most mixes by 1980 than they were in 1975.
I always felt that the highend of those early digital recordings sounded digital/artificial just like the sound of those early CD players. The low end was excellent however.
Ditto
Good grief. Is it that hard to simply rephrase your question?
https://luckyx02.de/musikassetten-taugen-nix-oder/mfsl-master-cassetten/^^^
Did you know the Dark Side of The Moon Master was ruined? Someone put it on a recorder instead of a playback-only mastering deck, and a little bit of Super Tramp was dubbed into Breath's outro.
https://www.whathifi.com/advice/what-dsd-audio-how-it-works-where-to-download-files-and-more^^^
In terms of dynamic range, DSD is claimed to be around 120dB in the audible frequency range. In comparison, CD measures around 96dB, and 24-bit/192kHz recordings have a theoretical maximum of around 144dB.
If DSD has flat FR to 29kHz, then DSD is comparable to 20bit/58kHz PCM.
Kirk Bayne
Did you know the Dark Side of The Moon Master was ruined? Someone put it on a recorder instead of a playback-only mastering deck, and a little bit of Super Tramp was dubbed into Breath's outro.
https://www.whathifi.com/advice/what-dsd-audio-how-it-works-where-to-download-files-and-more^^^
In terms of dynamic range, DSD is claimed to be around 120dB in the audible frequency range. In comparison, CD measures around 96dB, and 24-bit/192kHz recordings have a theoretical maximum of around 144dB.
If DSD has flat FR to 29kHz, then DSD is comparable to 20bit/58kHz PCM.
Kirk Bayne
They're charging premium and super-premium prices for a premium and super-premium vinyl pressing process - which has always been what they sell, and where the cost is, and what separates them, and why the vinyls they sell cost far, far more than the SACDs.
If you don't think the pressing process they use adds value, then that's certainly fair - but that is where the cost comes in, and that has always been the focus of their marketing materials.
Vinyl pressing is the most expensive part of the process, if you don't do it the normal way - and their advertising has always centered around how they don't do it the normal way.
4x DSD is audibly transparent many, many times over - whether having it in the process counts as a "premium process" versus a much-less-demonstrably-transparent chain of analog processes is a question with an answer that can only live in your head. It's a matter of perception, not fact.
If your assertions boil down to
1. "vinyl is expensive"
2. "a transparent digital step isn't premium"
then the only responses possible are
1. Yes, to make and press, which is why people dropped it when cheaper+better mediums arrived.
2. This is an opinion in the same way saying "gray isn't a premium color" is, and no agreement with what you're saying is possible or even necessary.
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They're wrong, as is that "old adage".
Human perception is the weakest tool you can use for evaluation.
Truth is MFSL told their little fibs because so many buy into this malarkey that a properly done digital copy isn't completely transparent to the source.
There's another fact here, each time those old analog tapes are played the sound quality deteriorates. Same happens every day they just sit on the shelf getting older. They shed oxide, they stretch or shrink, get ever more brittle, they print-thru, much more.
Best thing that could be done today is to copy all those old analog tapes to digital now while they exist in the best condition they ever will, then send them to a museum.
Whatever the source, cutting to a record always means you are one step removed from the original source - and that has a consequence. When executed competently and expertly it can add a certain enigmatic enhancement to how it was intended to sound. Brilliant.
But the limitations of LPs has always meant compromise of dynamics, equalisation, and stereo width.
So frankly from my point of view ninety percent of the time the process deteriorated - or even spoilt the original intent of our mixes when passed to vinyl. Disappointed.
Yes, original digital workflow had some limitations, but that has definitely improved and become more transparent - and makes it more straightforward to express one’s original intention.
So now it has become more about the sonic choices and intentions - dynamics and tastes have changed along with the way people listen or hear music.
These days analog tape is so very vulnerable to deterioration ( it actually has been for the last 40+ years - I can vouch for that during multiple projects that wore out and had to be copied) that conversion to high res digital is a must. And it makes it much more possible to create modern mixes!!
SWTx
But the limitations of LPs has always meant compromise of dynamics, equalisation, and stereo width.
So frankly from my point of view ninety percent of the time the process deteriorated - or even spoilt the original intent of our mixes when passed to vinyl. Disappointed.
Yes, original digital workflow had some limitations, but that has definitely improved and become more transparent - and makes it more straightforward to express one’s original intention.
So now it has become more about the sonic choices and intentions - dynamics and tastes have changed along with the way people listen or hear music.
These days analog tape is so very vulnerable to deterioration ( it actually has been for the last 40+ years - I can vouch for that during multiple projects that wore out and had to be copied) that conversion to high res digital is a must. And it makes it much more possible to create modern mixes!!
SWTx
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