What is that..........

shstrang

Vivien's Daddy
CD's that I burn from vinyl sound (sometimes) better than a pressed pre-recorded one that's supposedly produced from a low generation tape?

Back in Dec '96 I bought a Marantz CDR-615 stand alone pro burner and a Sony DAT recorder as a Christmas present to myself.
One thing I immediately noticed was that recordings made with this recorder (whether recorded to DAT or straight to CD-R via the DAT's A/D converters) from open reel, cassette and vinyl sounded like I was actually listening to the actual LP, Reel or Cassette.
In fact some of my recordings from vinyl and record company 15ips 1/2 dubs sounded better than their CD release version.

Something I've noticed with pressed CD's over the last 5-7 years is that sometimes they sound excellent and other times very hideous. The meters on my CDR-615 are often pegged at 0db for the entire song. I know that compression and limiting is one reason why it's possible to normalize at such a high level. But sometimes they simply sound distorted. Not in the typical harsh digital clipping way but certainly stronger than analog tape saturation or electronics overload.

I've never been able to get my DAT or CD-R units to clip harshly. It sounds more like analog circuitry overload or open reel tape saturation at 7.5 or 15 ips.

OTOH I've heard digital clipping several times on my pc using Cooledit Pro or SAW.

Does anyone have any idea why this happens? My older (80's and early 90's) pressed CD's may not have been converted from analog tape with the newest A/D converters back then, but they don't sound distorted either.
 
What kind of music and were the CDs AAD, ADD or DDD? I have been getting some great stuff that is 20 and 24 bit AAD and have always liked the AAD from Verve. DDD can be anything from a pro studio to a couple of mikes hooked up to a sound card in a PC.
 
Why is it..........

The material I'm talking about varies as far as SPARS code is concerned.

Some of the best sounding CD's I've heard were from analog masters. And without fail, Telarc CD's have always been excellent sounding and they're always DDD.

Here are some examples. All are supposed to be the same mix (album vs single) and do sound the same in that reguard.

"How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" by James Ingram Patti Austin.
I have one copy that was sent by MCA (maybe another label but I don't remember which one) to this CHR radio station where I used to have M-F 7pm to 12am show. It was sent on Ampex 456 1/4" tape recorded at 15 ips 1/2 track mode with no noise reduction. I also have the same song on a James Ingram greatest hits collection what sounds very harsh compared to the 15ips dub that I had recorded to DAT and later to CD-R. The 15ips dub has some tape noise, but that's never really bothered me plus the sound is far better.

"Paradise City" CHR radio edit by Guns n Roses
15ips 1/2 dub from Geffen. It sounds better than the version on the "Appetite for Destruction" album on CD. In this case the 2 are very close in sound quality but the open dub gets the nod. The open reel also sounded better than a pressed CD copy of the same CHR edit.

"Bit by Bit" by Stephanie Mills
15ips 1/2 dub from record company (don't remember which one) sounds better than the album verison on her Greatest Hits collection.

No LP comparisons.
Varese Sarabande dbx LP demo disc called "Beyond the Sound Barrier". The cut in question is "Tribute to a Badman". I also have the same recording on a Varese Sarabande CD called "Digital Space". The song was recorded in 1978 on Stockhams Soundstream digital recorder.
The CD sounds harsh and abrasive (I have 2 copies and both sound the same) but the dbx LP copy sounds very good with the exception of a click that is exagerated by the compansion action of dbx.

"Pops in Space" with John Williams and Boston Pops on Phillips.
The LP copy sounded smoother and is especially noticeable on "Yoda's Theme" and "Close Enconters". The CD copy I have just doesn't have the silken sound of the LP.

These are a few examples but do represent what I'm complaining about.

Now I've also heard pressed CD copies of some albums that I also have on LP and the CD does indeed blow away the vinyl version.

All of the above recording's copy that I preferer (LP, Open Reel, etc.) have been dubbed to DAT and CD-R. The digital copies I've recorded of the reels and LP's sounded better than the pressed versions.

And here's the worst part of all. My turntable (Yamaha belt drive straight arm), cartridge (Audio Technica Moving magnet) and pre-amp (Stanton and one built into a Kenwood integrated amp) are really shit compared to what's available as far as turntables, carts, arms and preamps are concerned.

What this has told me is that the CD standard is really capable of sounding excellent. It's just that pressed copies have been crap lately.

This will never change. Joe Sixpack loves his all in one Aiwa stereo from Wal-mart that holds a bunch of CD's and sounds like shit while the current generation of young people are getting used to the sound of MP3's and think they're just fine.

CD was popular not because it was capable of superb fidelity. It got popular because it could be played loud and was very clean. People didn't care about how good the A/D process was on the mastering side nor did they care about the ability of CD to be rock steady in speed.
 
:grnbounce Hey shstrang:beer:

Have you ever heard the expression, garbage in=garbage out? The reason that your home recorded stuff sounds better is because of the SOURCE, in most cases. Someone said in another thread that the "eartquake in a car" generation is not really interested in quality sound. Thus, many CD's are "remastered" for CD with ridiculous bass levels, among other "fixes" and "updates".

Dubbing from LP to reel or cassette usually sounds better than the manufactured counterpart because the cassettes chosen (or blank reel tape) contain higher quality tape and in the case of the cassette, the cassette shell is usually of much better construction.

CD's are just the opposite. While the source information may be better on the Home "burned" CD, the actual physical stamping of the commersial CD is far superior to the way information is "burned" into a CD-R or RW.

While it IS possible to find quality mastered CD's of popular music, I think it's far easier to find quality in jazz and classical music, simply because the people involved those two genre of music are much pickier about the end result IMHO.


:D Happy Listening:cool:

George
 
I am of the opinion that every time you reproduce something you will degrade the performance. If you can dub onto tape from vinyl and burn onto CD and get a better reproduction of a performance than is commercially available on CD then you are dealing with a music genre that was basically ignored, got few sessions in a in true studio environments or the masters were corrupted and
the CDs cut anyway.
I am not going into the vinyl/disc argument as it is pointless. If you can get better results with your own gear, then you have better gear than who was doing the medium crossover.
 
Hey shstrang,

I had an experience that youcould say was similiar. Not long ago, I borrowed a Fostex CD recorder from a friend to make some C to CD compilations and to transfer some hard to find LP's and singles from vinyl to CD, and also a few casette tracks. I ended up having the recorder for week and burned about 12 CD-r's

First thing I noticed was that the CD-R's that were vinyl transfers did in fact capture that distinctive vinyl sound! There is some audible loss but it is small and I'm very happy to listen to these CD-R's. Another thing, the sound of the 7" singles that I copied is preferable to the sound of most of the '80s compilation CD's that I have purchased many of, being something of a 80's music fan.;)

Later, I found that over at AA, a few of the guys there had similiar results with CD recorders.

Not drawing any conclusions, but this indicates to me that the recording and mastering process may have a lot more effect on the sound than the playback format itself. At this stage, I do believe vinyl sounds better than CD and a lot of LP's were recorded and mastered better as well. Remember all the good work done by Masterdisk and Sterling. There were some horrible LP's as well, and I sure we all remember them. Compressed, bright etc. I still have a couple of those(compilation LP's) in my collection. :) And I can't count how many LP's I've tossed over the years because they sounded crap.

At the same time, there a quite a few CD's I have that I thoroughly enjoy listening to. The Verve CD's would fall into that category.

Note - my vinyl playback gear is nothing special although it sounds very nice to me.

Right now, I'm waiting for next shot at that CD recorder!I have a lot of 7" singles waiting.... :)

cheers
Jack
 
garbage in/out

If there was ever a time when that's a true statement, this is certainly one of them. It's amazing how much commercially produced material sounds absolutely shitty.

Also the notion that jazz and classical recording typically sound better is true. I have several Earl Klugh and Lee Ritenour recordings that sound really good. Two in particular are Earl Klugh Crazy for You and lee Ritenour Rit (took forever to make it to CD) both of which are AAD.

I also have some old analog mastered classical CD's that sound superb. At the same time I also have some pure digital pop music CD's that are hideous. Stevie Wonder In Square Circle and White Lion are some examples.

Then along comes Nashville and early George Strait pure digital albums. Nashville has been recording digitally almost as long as the classical industry and their earliest full digital recordings usually sound really good. Wynonna's debut album on Curb/MCA was fully digital supposedly recorded on Mits X-800 multitrack which was not the newest at the time the album was done. Outboard converters were probably used but this album sounded pretty good. My only complaint was on "She's His Only Need" which had some kind of analog distortion; could've been mic or mixer, etc. don't really know). The album was crisp without harshness.

I also liked Dire Straights Brothers in Arms. I think it was done on the Sony 3300 series digital multitrack. Once again maybe outboard converters but sounded pretty good.

Mobile Fidelity has always been able to make even pop music recordings sound excellent. I never heard any difference between their Gold and aluminum CD's but certainly always a difference between their version of an album on CD and the same album on CD from the original record label. Whethers it's that proprietary "Black Box" they use or what, they still have the upper hand.

Pink Floyd's The Wall on Mobile's gold disc version sounded better than the Columbia version. Same goes for Steely Dan's Aja on MCA.

Has anyone here ever heard any pre-recorded DATs? I've heard some from record companies they varied greatly. I also have a DAT from Premier Radio Networks with some country remixes done by various radio stations and it sounded about like the regular versions on the albums having the orginal verisons of the songs. However they did it, the stations and Premier were able to maintain good sound quality.
 
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