OT Technical from Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - 50th Anniversary Atmos mix in 2023!
- Thread starter Owen Smith
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Instead of going back to the unaltered mixing master, in many cases they sadly just reached for the finished master that was mixed for the vinyl release and put that on the CD.
Has everyone read how a vinyl master is created for a cutting lathe and the way it's been manipulated to allow the lathe to cut it and a stylus to track it? This is a somewhat simplified but accurate picture of the process..
https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-mastering/
Most of the people I know who buy vinyl don't know the first thing about audio compression. It's not the better sound they are after. It's the coolness factor, and their friends telling them it's a better option.. They play records back on cheap USB turntables and are convinced it must be better. It's so ironic.
Mr. Afternoon
Mixing Engineer & Artist
The timeframe of the loudness wars taking off is also a regional thing. For example, in Japan it started as early as the late 80s, and in India it wasn't a problem until the early 2000s.
Yeah there is definitely some of that too. The "hip" factor. But I'm curious what kick started it? Did people that did care about the sad state of some of the digital recordings start the trend back to vinyl and other people saw that and thought that was the way to go? There's probably not an easy answer, but it's interesting to speculate. I'm kind of surprised that the studios didn't start offering "audiophile" digital mixes as a premium option way back when all this started.
As far as early CD's not using the best master for the format, they still sounded great to us teens in the '80's. Since none of us knew squat about how to get the most out of turntables and the ones we owned were from Kmart or similar. So not the best vinyl equipment to begin with. Of course the most common format of that time was the cassette (which certainly has it's own issues as a format). I think only a couple friends even had access to a CD player in the 80's. Early 90's were when most of us got one.
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Interesting. Yeah the time frame I mentioned was from my perspective being in the US. Were the Japanese abusing compression to the same extent even back then? Crazy if they were.
MHO, you can look to the Stereophile & TAS, folks like Mikey Fremer who have been pumping up a big dollar market with claims of the "superior" sound of analog and vinyl for the last approx 25 years. That along with the other snake-oil claims like sonic value expensive power cords, digital cables and the rest have created a huge market for both hardware and software. A boys club with vested interests in each others prosperity. A lie spoken often enough and all the rest.
Actually the quick and dirty CD's were a fairly small minority.
You only to look to releases like 1985s Dire Strait's Brothers In Arms for an example of the earliest CDs
that were SOTA then and remain so when played today.
They finally have, thankfully we're not seeing any of those shenanigans going on from any of the mastering engineers or the labels involved in the multich boom we're wittnessing.
They can leave the "all loud, all the time" to the ones that don't care.
And TBH there's much of todays modern music where it IS the artists intent for the music to sound that way. For much of Pop, Hip-Hop, and Rap that is what they want. I remember a blog by Mark Waldrep of AIX records where he recounts doing the studio recording and master for an unnamed group and haveing
the final master returned to him 3 times with directions to "make it louder". What can you do?
Owen Smith
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
I'd reply "turn your volume control up".
On a 33-1/3rpm LP there is quite a lot of compression (along with frequency EQ adjustments) on vinyl to allow the stylus to track and to limit groove to groove breakthrough.
I like vinyl on the grounds its tactile, that physical connection with the music, and I grew up with the 'sound' so its OK to me. I still happily play my LPs. Plus, I can read the majority of the covers without a magnifying glass!
Our hearing ability isn't as great as the mystics push, for the same sound level recorded the distortion on a pristine LP is a lot higher (1%-3%) than a CD (better than 0.1%), but we don't hear it as being much higher. Peter Walker (the founder of Quad amplifiers) wrote an article (in Wireless World I think), which noted the actual figures found and what people can hear/perceive, this was back in the 70s so pre-digital! If I can find it I'll scan and post it. I find it difficult to hear the difference between a 45rpm 12" single and the CD of the same track
The early CDs I have still sound great no doubt. I was just reflecting that with cassettes and the poor turntables we had at the time, even a "quick and dirty" CD would still likely have sounded great to us.
Not much you can do when the band says "make it loud" as the customer. I'm very thankful that we do still have artists and engineers that care.
Owen Smith
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Agreed, I've heard some great 45rpm 12" singles played on decent gear (Rega Planar 3, Audiolab 8000PPA phono stage, 8000Q pre amp and 8000M bi-amped monoblocs, Monitor Audio Studio 20SE speakers, don't know the cartridge might have been Sumiko Blue Point).
I think another problem was that they sometimes used the vinyl LP mastering for the CD. So boosted highs and diminished lows which would have been reversed by the RIAA eq on a phono amp but were left 'flat' on CDs. I've long thought it ironic that early CDs were sometimes dismissed by vinyl lovers as being poor quality because the CD used a vinyl-eq'd mastering rather than a flat transfer.
Edit: It has been pointed out to me that the RIAA curve is not added onto the master but is only added during actual cutting, so it can't have been used by mistake on a CD, so the above comment about RIAA is wrong. See comments 1033 and 1034.
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You've also got the problem which is kind of the same but kind of opposite. People who have built up a very expensive vinyl system over many years (TT, cartridge, stylus, phono stage, leads, etc.) are reluctant to believe that all the time and money they put into getting an almost perfect signal from vinyl to amp can be replaced by a cheap blu ray player playing a bit perfect hi res copy of the studio master down a cheap HDMI cable into the amp.
Having said the above, I still buy vinyl - second hand singles, mainly, so I totally get the coolness factor. I probably own the music on CD but I still love records and nothing can replace holding an original Beatles single in your hand, even if I actually play the 5.1 bluray. And I can still remember the first time I saw a picture disc - just being astounded that it was also a record so, again, I totally get that it can be nice to have even if you don't play it. Car collectors might own a £500,000 car that they only ever drive a few miles, if at all. So a small chunk of cash on something you love, even if you don't use it for the 'proper' purpose, is forgivable.
Here you have another explanation (more easy readable/understandable to me) about the amount of modifications that have to be done in a master to properly cut a vinyl.
Mastering for Vinyl | Envato Tuts+
I think this clearly explains why:
- CD is a better support/format to achieve studio fidelity. Vinyl has much more limitations.
- Vinyl adapted master may really sound more "warm", but just because all the necessary filters and modificatons done to adapt it.
- We cannot compare CD vs Vinyl sound. We must "compare" the same master transferred either to CD or to Vinyl. But normally the masters are not the same. So no valid comparison apply.
jimfisheye
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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We have a wealth of formats capable of delivering audio at the highest fidelity. We can deliver a genuine 1:1 digital clone of a master to the listener. There may still be a few compromised formats in use. I'd argue the compromise, even in the worst cases, doesn't even register on the meter compared to the differences in mastering. And there are novelty editions intentionally released with poor sound pretty often. I want to give benefit of doubt that these are intentional marketing shenanigans anyway. Could be screw ups of course.
You aren't hearing any format limitation between DSD and PCM or with Atmos encoded files. Any differences are intentionally baked into the audio. The best case analog vinyl might have an edge on dynamic range vs a 16 bit CD for VERY dynamic music. Classical or artsy style mixes. So much has to go right and those quiet sections on vinyl are so fragile. And you need a $$$$ cartridge and preamp. Setup is critical. 24 bit digital used properly blows this and every other recording format out of the water.
Wish I had something good to say about this Atmos mix. I've heard a couple 12 channel mixes now that are accomplished beyond anything I've ever heard before in my life. The ambitious and audacious potential is out of this world! I'll keep listening to the original quad mix for this one.
You aren't hearing any format limitation between DSD and PCM or with Atmos encoded files. Any differences are intentionally baked into the audio. The best case analog vinyl might have an edge on dynamic range vs a 16 bit CD for VERY dynamic music. Classical or artsy style mixes. So much has to go right and those quiet sections on vinyl are so fragile. And you need a $$$$ cartridge and preamp. Setup is critical. 24 bit digital used properly blows this and every other recording format out of the water.
Wish I had something good to say about this Atmos mix. I've heard a couple 12 channel mixes now that are accomplished beyond anything I've ever heard before in my life. The ambitious and audacious potential is out of this world! I'll keep listening to the original quad mix for this one.
I’d love to know which ones!
Sort of true, but meaningless since it’s all reversed by your phono stage.
Mostly incorrect. The RIAA curve is irrelevant to the sound of any CD. The RIAA curve is applied during lacquer cutting, not to a vinyl cutting master. And certainly not to a CD…ever. If the RIAA curve was applied to a CD, it would sound ridiculously thin and tinny.
It is true that some (but not many) early CDs used pre-emphasis (sort of, kind of like RIAA or noise reduction) - which if your player or playback mechanism is unable to read the pre-emphasis flag, it will sound somewhat thin and tinny. But that isn’t near what an unreversed RIAA curve sounds like. And was purely a CD/digital thing regardless.
