[LAU] 1980's cds: analog to digital conversion

[Brent Busby]

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010, Sean Bolton wrote:

> On Feb 12, 2010, at 11:35 PM, Aaron L. wrote:
>> The most common reason is that because vinyl records don't have a flat
>> response, vinyl has a preempahsis applied to the HF.  Sometimes the
>> preemphasis was applied during cutting, sometimes it was applied to
>> the tape master before cutting.  When early CDs were pressed, they
>> were often pressed from the vinyl masters and if the preemphasis was
>> on the master, boom, harsh gritty super-over-bright CD.
>> 
>> Monty
>> 
>> Your description is right on.
>
> 'Piece of Mind' on CD still sounds good to me -- sweet guitars, crisp drums, 
> very simple and uncluttered mix.  It's not like the over-distorted, 
> over-processed, and over-compressed crap that too often makes it to CD these 
> days.  (n.b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)
>
> I want my dynamic range back!

I was hoping someone was going to mention that:

It seems that with CD's, you're cursed one way or another nomatter what 
era they come from.  In the 80's CD's, you have the gritty metallic 
sound that comes from inappropriate EQ that was mentioned, or sometimes 
from bad AD conversion.  (They used to do everything in 16-bit a lot 
then, end-to-end, no 24-bit for more processing headroom like now.)

But now we have great AD converters, and we work in 24-bit (sometimes 
even 32-bit in our DAW's), and 96kHz sample rates.  Now the problem is 
the mastering engineers are being forced by the PHB's at their labels to 
compress every bit of attack out of the whole album.  What's even more 
irritating is that a lot of albums that were released on CD before are 
having this done and then being reissued as "remastered" versions, which 
leads even people who know about these problems to be tempted into 
buying the new versions, thinking that surely this time it's an improved 
release that takes advantage of our better mastering processes, right? 
Often the older CD's actually sound better, because at least they 
weren't ruined by the Loudness War.  And often the only way to know is 
to actually buy both CD releases and listen to them yourself to see 
which version (if any) they didn't butcher the mastering on.

This, I think, is the real reason vinyl has such an undying good 
reputation with people who care about music.  It's not that vinyl is 
actually a superior format.  It isn't.  Actually, as a format, it's kind 
of sad.  It has less dynamic range, poorer stereo channel separation, 
poorer frequency response, and to top it all off, it wears out from just 
using it in a phonograph player, which is supposed to be what it's meant 
for.

But when you buy a vinyl record, and it's brand new, never played, and 
you put it on the turntable...it doesn't matter what decade it's from: 
It's not a crap shoot.  It doesn't depend on XYZ political or technical 
BS that might have been happening in the mastering world at the time of 
its release.  It will sound good, because the processes and traditions 
of mastering a vinyl record from multitrack tape are older than my 
grandpa, and he's dead.  Studios *know* how to make a vinyl record.

People not familiar with recording often credit vinyl itself with the 
good sound, which their ears are not lying to them about -- it sounds 
good!  They say vinyl was better.  Really, CD has never had a fair 
chance to prove itself.  From the time it initially came out in the 
80's, it's always had one kind of stupidity or another in the recording 
and mastering process making it seem inferior.  There have even been 
some real albums that have come out to prove it -- everyone has some 
CD's that sound really good.

But it's the inconsistency of it though.  With a CD it's a crap shoot. 
With vinyl, it's a sure thing.  Almost every single time, you put it on 
the turntable, and if the record isn't worn out, the ninety years of 
industry know-how and tradition show themselves -- the studios know how 
to make a vinyl record.  With CD's, for each album you put it, it 
becomes a question of "which kind of BS did they ruin this one with"? 
Is it the bad-EQ metallic gritty kind of BS?  Or did they just compress 
it to death?  Maybe they used poor converters and let some aliasing 
noise through?  How did they ruin my album this time?

The fact that occasionally they get it right isn't enough to save CD's 
reputation.  Vinyl has an undeserved reputation as a better format in 
truth because it's a more consistent format.  You get good results all 
the time, not fantastic results once in a while as with CD.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky