Yes - Close To The Edge - Any Good Obtainable Releases?

[ssully]

The bluray has a flat transfer of the original mix master in 24/96. Cleanest most original copy of the mix possible to have. Then you get a needle drop of the original vinyl release as well as copies of those awful poorly edited radio scratch mix singles from back in the day. And of course the new SW surround mix - whatever you might think of that.

The worst copy I've ever heard was from a SACD discography. Brutally distorted.

The brutal one you refer to is from the 2013 Japanese High Vibration boxed SACD set. Which AFAIK is itself really just an SACD rerelease of the 1998 Japanese HDCD series. Which was mastered by Isao Kikuchi.

Those Kikuchi HDCD remasters are a curious mixed bag. Two of them --- Tales and Relayer -- are very good indeed (decoded). The rest are awful, the worst versions one can get, decoded or not. CttE included.

 

[ssully]

I'd say the flat transfer shows what any of the mastering engineers had to work with along the way and what they did with it. Maybe there's a tape degradation variable in there too? I'd guess it's intentional mastering moves behind what you hear. For good or bad. The SACD being an example of very bad. And unique volume levels across all of them.

Turn the volume up on the flat transfer. You can think of it as the source for any of the rest of them. Unless the argument is they screwed it all up and older copies preserve more (mastered and generational as they are).

I refuse to believe that Tales sounds as bad as the 'flat transfer' included on the SW release.

 

[ssully]

The flat transfer on the SW edition isn't great.

The worst are indeed the Japanese HDCD and SACD versions. Brutally compressed with treble pushed beyond the limit.

Not all of them (HDCDs) are. And of course for the HDCDs you were supposed to decode them, to recover full DR. That only seemed to be the case for a few though...the only two that sound good.

 

[ssully]

I’ve got the original CD (surprised to see some think it’s the best version) and the Audio Fidelity.
Don’t think much of either version.
Not really a fan of the album in the first place so I skipped the BRD.
Maybe I need to give it another chance.
If it gets repressed on BRD I’ll probably buy it to compare.

It will never sound THAT different from the ones you've already heard. The 'most' different will be the Wilson remix. Which I dislike.

 

[ssully]

For the original CttE itself, all but the Japanese HDCD/SACD are good.

Not sure why people drool over the old (and likely sourced from an LP production master) Barry Diament mastering, but that's collectors for ya.

 

[Plan9]

I refuse to believe that Tales sounds as bad as the 'flat transfer' included on the SW release.

I may have them mixed up but I seem to remember the "flat transfer" of Fragile was also pretty poor with audible degradation of the tape.
The flat transfer of The Yes Album has a problem with wrongly decoded Dolby A.

 

[par4ken]

I may have them mixed up but I seem to remember the "flat transfer" of Fragile was also pretty poor with audible degradation of the tape.
The flat transfer of The Yes Album has a problem with wrongly decoded Dolby A.

You can't really call it a flat transfer then, if the Dolby A was wrongly decoded. I think that the discussion of the stereo portion of the Blu-ray releases is rather moot, didn't we all buy them mainly/just for the surround mix? As for a cheaper stereo only alternative we appear to be back back to the AF SACD or the originally released (80's) CD"S. Others are a mixed bag, some good others tremble!

Check the DR data base link posted here by Petr Kropotkin. DR value isn't the only indicator of a superior release but it is the major one. Every time (without exception) that I've been unimpressed by the sound quality of a release and have opened it up in an audio editing program I've been horrified by the brick-walling that I see! It's much easier to check the DR value with Foobar, a low value 7 or 8 corresponds directly to heavy brick wall effect. A lot of CD's have DR values even lower! Now there are bad Blu-ray and HD Tracks releases as well.

 

[ssully]

Except, DR is also affected by EQ, namely, bass content.

So if you look at the Mofi Yes Album CD (where they went to great lengths to try to get the Dolby A decoding 'right',and wrote about it online) you may well be horrified at the waveform.

It sounds amazing.

 

[B&W Driver]

Except, DR is also affected by EQ, namely, bass content.

So if you look at the Mofi Yes Album CD (where they went to great lengths to try to get the Dolby A decoding 'right',and wrote about it online) you may well be horrified at the waveform.

It sounds amazing.

I don't get a lot of time for the forum, so please pardon the old timer type questions...but does "Mofi" stand for Mobile Fidelity Labs? I'd also like to ask for clarification of the last two sentences (bolded above). Is a bad "waveform" a sign of amazing sound?

 

[par4ken]

Except, DR is also affected by EQ, namely, bass content.

So if you look at the Mofi Yes Album CD (where they went to great lengths to try to get the Dolby A decoding 'right',and wrote about it online) you may well be horrified at the waveform.

It sounds amazing.

The added bass won't create a horrible looking waveform unless it\s allowed to clip or is brick wall limited!

 

[ssully]

The added bass won't create a horrible looking waveform unless it\s allowed to clip or is brick wall limited!

But it will have a lower 'DR' number than the same audio with less bass.

And 'horrifying' depends entirely on the viewer's definition of horrible, no? Some armchair experts think any 'fat' looking waveform is horrible. And they look at the crude metric that is the DR number and go SEEEEE...horrible!

(Please don't equate me with someone who reacts like the above. I'm just reporting the sort of discourse I see online. My point is that overreliance on DR numbers can be misleading, and so can a simplistic understanding of waveforms)

Yours Is No Disgrace

 

[ssully]

I don't get a lot of time for the forum, so please pardon the old timer type questions...but does "Mofi" stand for Mobile Fidelity Labs?

Yes.

I'd also like to ask for clarification of the last two sentences (bolded above). Is a bad "waveform" a sign of amazing sound?

Er...no. That's my point. The quotes should be around 'bad', not 'waveform'' A 'bad' looking waveform can sound good. And a 'good' looking waveform can sound bad, btw. A waveform alone -- or a DR number -- doesn't tell you all you need to know.

 

[jimfisheye]

There's brick wall limiting and then there's brick wall limiting too. Up to 6db of limiting and make up gain will be transparent. Match the volume between source and limited again and good luck telling them apart by ear. And those waveforms look "horrible". The shrill volume war stuff you hear gets brick wall limited as much as 20db and usually gets as much as a 20db treble boost at the same time.

Just FYI if anyone was thinking that just touching the audio with a limiter suddenly results in volume war CD sound. You have to put in some effort to mangle audio that much!

 

[B&W Driver]

But it will have a lower 'DR' number than the same audio with less bass.

And 'horrifying' depends entirely on the viewer's definition of horrible, no? Some armchair experts think any 'fat' looking waveform is horrible. And they look at the crude metric that is the DR number and go SEEEEE...horrible!

(Please don't equate me with someone who reacts like the above. I'm just reporting the sort of discourse I see online. My point is that overreliance on DR numbers can be misleading, and so can a simplistic understanding of waveforms)


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Yours Is No Disgrace

This is one of my favorite songs and, thinking back on it, Chris Squire does have some big parts in the mix...so what I'm taking away from this is that "big bass" can reduce DR numbers, correct?

 

[par4ken]

But it will have a lower 'DR' number than the same audio with less bass.

And 'horrifying' depends entirely on the viewer's definition of horrible, no? Some armchair experts think any 'fat' looking waveform is horrible. And they look at the crude metric that is the DR number and go SEEEEE...horrible!

(Please don't equate me with someone who reacts like the above. I'm just reporting the sort of discourse I see online. My point is that overreliance on DR numbers can be misleading, and so can a simplistic understanding of waveforms)


View attachment 76017

Yours Is No Disgrace

The DR value is a great indicator, although not perfect. The waveform you show while not overly dynamic does not appear to be heavily brick walled. I would not call it horrible. The horrible ones have stenches of equal amplitude peaks. In response to Jimfisheye, he seems to think that 6 dB of compression is OK, maybe but why? We were promised greater dynamic range when CD's came out. A few audiophile releases kept that promise but by and large it has largely been forgotten, every one wants to sound the loudest, TERRIBLE!!!

 

[ssully]

This is one of my favorite songs and, thinking back on it, Chris Squire does have some big parts in the mix...so what I'm taking away from this is that "big bass" can reduce DR numbers, correct?

It's more a matter of how bass instruments are EQ'd and mixed.

Plus any EQ changes applied during mastering.

And Eddy Offord used Dolby A noise reduction on the albums he engineered.

Mofi claims that this version is what the album should sound like, when proper Dolby A decoding is used. Which means Eddy mixed the bass and drums pretty high if so. It sounds great to me.

 

[jimfisheye]

In response to Jimfisheye, he seems to think that 6 dB of compression is OK, maybe but why? We were promised greater dynamic range when CD's came out. A few audiophile releases kept that promise but by and large it has largely been forgotten, every one wants to sound the loudest, TERRIBLE!!!

I did not lead to any such conclusion! Just saying that some masters only knock back 2 - 6db of stray peaks and that is usually transparent sounding. Going past 6db with any of the limiters starts to make artifacts. You can see rock music that looks brick walled at a glance at the waveforms that hasn't actually been molested that much. That's all. And your DR numbers will follow that too.

I think there's not any need with 24 bit audio. It still depends on the mix. Most stuff mixed/mastered to, say, -13 LUFS can hit that target without visible brick walled waves. There's no reason to ride the edge of full volume with 24 bit format. Present a super quiet signal with peaks no higher than -48db and you still get a 16 bit recording. Don't know what everyone is worried about there! (Do that with 16 bit format and now you've only made an 8 bit recording. That was a reason to worry. But then some pop music doesn't even have a 48db dynamic range to begin with. Volume wars started with trying to be louder on the radio rather than reacting to any shortcoming with digital formats.)

I guess I was easy to please with the 5.1 remix of CTTE. I guess I'll have to listen to some of these copies of the stereo mix. I used to play the MFSL vinyl.

 

[par4ken]

I did not lead to any such conclusion! Just saying that some masters only knock back 2 - 6db of stray peaks and that is usually transparent sounding. Going past 6db with any of the limiters starts to make artifacts. You can see rock music that looks brick walled at a glance at the waveforms that hasn't actually been molested that much. That's all. And your DR numbers will follow that too.

I think there's not any need with 24 bit audio. It still depends on the mix. Most stuff mixed/mastered to, say, -13 LUFS can hit that target without visible brick walled waves. There's no reason to ride the edge of full volume with 24 bit format. Present a super quiet signal with peaks no higher than -48db and you still get a 16 bit recording. Don't know what everyone is worried about there! (Do that with 16 bit format and now you've only made an 8 bit recording. That was a reason to worry. But then some pop music doesn't even have a 48db dynamic range to begin with. Volume wars started with trying to be louder on the radio rather than reacting to any shortcoming with digital formats.)

I guess I was easy to please with the 5.1 remix of CTTE. I guess I'll have to listen to some of these copies of the stereo mix. I used to play the MFSL vinyl.

If the full dynamic range was used there definitely would be a need for 24 bit audio. I agree that for the brick walled crap that's been coming out even 16 bit is unnecessary as you imply.

When I bought my Maya 44 sound card the seller was recommending the Delta 44 because it was 24 bit, the cheaper Maya only 16 bit. I didn't think that it would make much difference converting vinyl to CD or digitising Q8s, but years latter when I finally got a Delta card I noticed a huge difference in sound quality. Even if the 24-bit master gets reduced to 16-bit it sounds better than the natively recorded 16-bit version. Don't tell me it's the placebo effect either! I do recognise that the sound difference could be in part to other differences between the two cards i.e. audio section, DAC, not just the bit depth.

 

[JediJoker]

If the full dynamic range was used there definitely would be a need for 24 bit audio.

There's no music that has a 144dB dynamic range. You'd be hard pressed to find any with a 96dB dynamic range. Couple that with the fact that there is no DAC with a full 24 bits of dynamic range at output and 16 bits is clearly plenty for end user reproduction. Recording, mixing, and mastering is another story.

I do recognise that the sound difference could be in part to other differences between the two cards i.e. audio section, DAC, not just the bit depth.

Almost definitely due to those.

 

[ssully]

If the full dynamic range was used there definitely would be a need for 24 bit audio. I agree that for the brick walled crap that's been coming out even 16 bit is unnecessary as you imply.

If full dynamic range -- even the 96 dB of 16 bits, much less the 144 dB of 24 -- was exploited by a recording, you'd need a remarkably quiet room to hear it all. And you'd better not turn it up to hear the 'quietest' parts better, or the 'loudest' parts will knock your windows out.

In practice, 16 bits is entirely sufficient for home audio. Higher bit is needed for recording and production steps.

When I bought my Maya 44 sound card the seller was recommending the Delta 44 because it was 24 bit, the cheaper Maya only 16 bit. I didn't think that it would make much difference converting vinyl to CD or digitising Q8s, but years latter when I finally got a Delta card I noticed a huge difference in sound quality. Even if the 24-bit master gets reduced to 16-bit it sounds better than the natively recorded 16-bit version. Don't tell me it's the placebo effect either!

I do recognise that the sound difference could be in part to other differences between the two cards i.e. audio section, DAC, not just the bit depth.

That's good because such audible difference as you describe aren't what to expect from 16 vs 24 ADC . That difference is typically audible, if at all, in the low level ('quiet parts') resolution of the result. A 'huge difference' typical of....placebo, or some mundane level difference.

24 or 32 bits in recording is for headroom, and in production it's to prevent accumulated quantization errors from becoming audible when lots of digital processing is part of the chain.