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.
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.