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

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Peder Hedlund wrote: Not necessarily... I've got a few tapes that sounded way better than the CD that was supposed to "replace" them, and that's pretty bad considering how bad cassette sounds. There's something about the way we hear that can way more easily deal with background hiss, rumble, pitch instability, and a multitude of other evils than deal with grainy metallic thin sound that has all the body removed from it. Granted, some of that may have been the way the original recording really sounded, and the cassette may have been flattering it with its pleasant mid-bass saturation. I can't imagine that's always it though. People always say that when we hear that sort of effect from CD's, the CD is just telling the truth (kind of like the same excuse I hear about certain Mackie monitor speakers), when we all know that almost all recordings made before the 90's were done on an original recording medium of multitrack tape itself. Surely the studio master tape didn't sound like a grainy metallic 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