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

[Ricardus Vincente]

On Sat, 2010-02-13 at 15:07 -0600, Brent Busby wrote:


> 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.

  Well, the good news is that after Metallica's last CD release, the
question of over-compressing CD's jumped right to the forefront.  Mix
magazine seems to have an article about it every few months, and many
prominent mastering engineers are speaking out about why it shouldn't be
done, and why they don't do it.

 The great thing about vinyl, and I say this having not put a record on
a record player, in 15 years, is that it has limitations, and one of
them is that you can't push the medium to far in the area of volume and
compression.

 Vinyl is cool, and I intend to do some vinyl releases on my record
label, but CD's are more convenient (I never liked having to flip a
record), and as long as we don't abuse the format with the amazingly
powerful digital tools at our disposal, CD's are good enough.

 Rich...