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digital lp's ?

I cant imagine some of my billy idol cd's sounding better on vinyl though.... I would really like to listen to some of the audiophile cd's like the mobile fidelity sound lab ones...I have a few mobile fidelity lp' s and the non mofi pressings and they sound fabulous...I honestly think we need to embrace all formats (minus 8-track) for ghier own unique qualities...and see more live shows to satisfy the need for pure, almost unadulterated music.....
 
grottyash said:
If you really want analogue only don't by a record made after 1980. Fifties, sixties and seventies are fine, but after that the chances are the recording media will be digital.
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Yep, look for something without a barcode. It's not a 100% guarantee, but it will get you close.
 
If mastering was done on DAW, then give me digital copy in original resolution. I do not want vinyl cutting process be involved, if I can avoid it altogether and hear exactly what was put on master tape (or rather hard disk in this case).
 
I'll put it this way.

I recently bought the reissue vinyl of "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" by Lucinda Williams. To my ears, it sounds better than the CD did, and the CD was excellent. It was a full digital recording.
 
I found one of those early digital Telarc LPs, recorded April 4 & 5, 1978, on a Soundstream Digital Recorder. Claims frequency response of 0-21KHz.

TELARC DIGITAL, Stereo 5038
Frederick Fennell, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra
Program of Holst, Handel, and Bach selections.

Liner notes actually list every member of the orchestra and what he/she plays, presumably cause you might be able to hear each one (?)

Actually, the first time I played this on a little Pioneer turntable and receiver combo into a pair of EPI 100s, it was the first time those little speakers made the floor vibrate in the house we lived in then.

Don't play it much anymore; it accidentally got some bad gouges toward the end of side one, my favorite side.
 
A lot of popular music gets released on vinyl alongside their digital CD and itunes releases. While both are sourced from the same digital masters, it has been seen time and time again that quite a few Vinyl versions sound better and have greater dynamics than the Compressed CD or Digital download versions.
It's actually as if the people in the studio actually create a compressed version for digital and use a less compressed, more dynamic sounding vinyl version.

Beck's Morning Phase comes to mind as one album where comparsions were written about the different versions and the best quality.

Plus there is lots of empirical data on the Dynamic Range database. I found this to be quite true for many modern albums I have purchased recently.
 
illinoisteve said:
I found one of those early digital Telarc LPs, recorded April 4 & 5, 1978, on a Soundstream Digital Recorder. Claims frequency response of 0-21KHz.

TELARC DIGITAL, Stereo 5038
Frederick Fennell, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra
Program of Holst, Handel, and Bach selections.

Liner notes actually list every member of the orchestra and what he/she plays, presumably cause you might be able to hear each one (?)

Actually, the first time I played this on a little Pioneer turntable and receiver combo into a pair of EPI 100s, it was the first time those little speakers made the floor vibrate in the house we lived in then.

Don't play it much anymore; it accidentally got some bad gouges toward the end of side one, my favorite side.
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I have a few of that release, a great LP, and plenty of evidence to show that digital in the process can still sound very good with vinyl as the medium.

The technical specific's on that recording was three Schoepps/Studer transformerless Omni microphones, Model SKM-52U. Their signal was fed throught a Studer Model 169 mixing console directly to the Soundstream Digital Recorder. Mastering was accomplished by sending the digital playback signal directly into the electronics of a Neumann VMS-70, SAL-74 cutting system equipped with an SX-74 cutter head. That Neumann System belonged to the JVC Cutting Center in Los Angeles and is completely transformerless, and especially designed for half-speed mastering. Mastering was done half-speed using Pyral Lacquers and Adamant cutting styli. Absolutely no limiting, filtering, compression, equalization or low frequency crossover was used at any point in either the recording or mastering process. Monitoring was done using ADS Model BC-8 Broadcast Monitor loudspeakers.

Frequency Response: Flat from 0 to 21 kHz (-3 at 22kHz)
Total Harmonic Distortion: At "0" Vu, less than .004%
At Peak levels, less than .03%
Signal to Noise: 90 db RMS, Unweighted
Dynamic Range: 90db RMS, Unweighted
Samping Rate: 50,000 samples per second
Digital Fomat: 16 bits linear encoding/decoding
Wow and Flutter: Unmeasurable


That LP includes a warning slip that drops out when you pull the LP out, due to its wide dynamic range they warn you to start out at lower volumes in order to minimize speaker damage on some of the passages.
 
jkilla said:
A lot of popular music gets released on vinyl alongside their digital CD and itunes releases. While both are sourced from the same digital masters, it has been seen time and time again that quite a few Vinyl versions sound better and have greater dynamics than the Compressed CD or Digital download versions.
It's actually as if the people in the studio actually create a compressed version for digital and use a less compressed, more dynamic sounding vinyl version.

Beck's Morning Phase comes to mind as one album where comparsions were written about the different versions and the best quality.

Plus there is lots of empirical data on the Dynamic Range database. I found this to be quite true for many modern albums I have purchased recently.
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Modern CDs and standard resolution (16/44.1) downloads are mastered to be played via ear buds or in car stereo. Do not try to play them in hi-fi stereo system. For that there are high-res downloads (24/88 and above), SACD, DVD-A and BD-A disks.
 
There ars several copies of that lp on eek-bay right now for $8-20 bucks. Im assuming all the telarc label recordings are vood as many of them are listed as "audiophile lp"...I might grab one if I see one go for 5 or less just to hear it.
 
Other facts to note:

Not all mastering studios have analog tape machines with delay heads.
Not all recordings are analog.
Not all master tapes can be played through to master an LP from.
Not all record labels will hand their tapes to just any reissue label.
Sometimes master tapes are stored in other vaults (i.e. Iron Mountain) and not available easily for a project on time.
Not all digital masterings of vinyl are poor sounding. The studios have better converters than you can afford to use at home.
Just to name a few.
 
botrytis said:
BULL - the difference is your VINYL does not have the same output as your digital, even with the phono pre. Many vinyl pre-amps are less that 1 volt max output Many are 05. -0.75 max output (MC are way lower) and that depends on the output of your cartridge) which most CD players and digital players put out. Basically, you just are not hitting the limiter on the input of your pre-amp.

From Needle Doctor - "For low output MCs, a good rule-of-thumb is to have enough gain in the phono stage to amplify the cartridge output to 250mV. Here is a table of gain values that will do that."

Cartridge Output ...... Gain in dB

0.50mV ......................... 54dB
0.40mV ......................... 56dB
0.30mV ......................... 58dB
0.20mV ......................... 62dB
0.10mV ......................... 68dB
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Thank you to botrytis for bringing this up as I have heard to my ears, a preference of my vinyl playback to my digital playback, but wanted to investigate the case in point.

There is a rather lengthy discussion on Steve Hoffman forums, in particular the postings of one sound/mastering engineer Ian Shepherd:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ccurate-for-vinyl.330706/page-11#post-9481216

In a nutshell, it says that the DR meter used by many people, including myself, is flawed and cannot be relied upon to say which has a better dynamic range or not. Certain manipulation of the album prior to it making it onto the vinyl, combined with the fact that vinyl rips required to make the DR calculation in the software, can side heavily with the vinyl rips, leading to say 4 or 5 db jumps in DR rating over digital.

Some users then attempted to pass the digital versions of the songs through certain filters and other manipulations in order to trick the DR meter into giving it higher dynamic range. Ultimately this was to disprove that the DR meter was a trustworthy way of making assumptions about vinyl and digital, which I am starting to see.

Whether or not the vinyl or digital version is better, well, still no real answer as of yet.

I do also see where the digital's output ramming into the limiter causes an unpleasant sound, any constructive ways to lessen that effect via simple to use playback software??
 
illinoisteve said:
A few years before that the TELARC label was specializing in digitally mastered classical music LPs. However, I'm sure that some small, very small, and "niche" record producing operations were recording, mixing, mastering on tape well into the 80s and 90s, even if the biggies went whole hog digital for whatever formats of consumer recordings they were producing around or not that long after what you say.
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And one of the extreme digital vinyl recordings is the Telarc recording of the 1812 Overture directed by Kunzel. There is an awesome image at the bottom of this thread http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=mug&m=204358 of the grooves in this record.
 
I bought one off ebay. The previous owner clearly played it a lot with not properly setup turntable because if you look at were the big bend in the groove you can see the stylus skipping off the groove and create lines in the vinyl and back into the groove. As a result, even with properly setup turntable, it will skip.
 
I acquired one recently but haven't had a chance to play it. I am a little leery of trying to track this monster. The copy I have appears to be in very good shape but haven't had too much time to inspect it or pull out a good magnifier.

Not sure whether to play it or frame it with a strategically placed light or led lighting the really extreme portion of the grooves!
 
The thing to remember is that all audio processes, digital or analog, are non-linear in their response. Every step of recording, mixing, mastering, pressing and playing changes the sound.

All of these things are tools to create a sound which, at the end, is pleasing to our ears.

Instead of looking for things which are "all analog" just look for things that sound good to you.

I for one, prefer vinyl as a listening medium. (maybe because my turntable is much better than my cd player)

The work flow varies wildly from studio to studio. And you would be surprised how many pressing plants won't take masters on tape. And how many mastering engineers will prefer not to submit masters on tape if given the option.
 
StrychnineCB said:
And you would be surprised how many pressing plants won't take masters on tape. And how many mastering engineers will prefer not to submit masters on tape if given the option.
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Dealing with reel to reels are such a hassle nowadays, that it has to be a specialty studio to use the different sized multitrack reels, and mastering reels. Digital is much cheaper and less time consuming. Not to mention the limit on recording punches to a tape (depending on how skilled the talent is) tapes can wear out while recording. So much easier to copy and paste in Pro Tools than to do a 6 note harmony multiple times in a song anymore. Every time you use a 8, 16 or 24 track pro grade reel to reel, you have to calibrate, clean and test the heads before every session. Compared to digital medium nowadays, tape is a major PITA. Used to be the norm, now its not. Now its just too expensive to do on a regular basis for struggling record companies, to appease a niche market of vinyl snobs that want a strictly analog chain sound.

BTW, Britney Spears music producer for her first album, Max Martin, recorded everything in Pro Tools, then bounced it all to two 24 track reel tape for the sound. Then it was mixed back to digital for the master DAT tape. Now Im not talking about the crappy music, just that he heard that difference in the tape, and I'm pretty sure its more than noise.

Even though I cant hear the difference, I like to keep it pure, so I only buy records from pre-1980. The idea of getting vinyl sourced from digital still bugs me in principle.
 
Compared to digital medium nowadays, tape is a major PITA. Used to be the norm, now its not. Now its just too expensive to do on a regular basis for struggling record companies, to appease a niche market of vinyl snobs that want a strictly analog chain sound.
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Tape is relatively easy to use and easy to get great results with. Needlessly avoiding any digital signal path is needlessly difficult.

It is important to understand that analog tape is valued, not for it's perfectly accurate sound. But for it's pleasing, natural sounding compression. You are not getting truer sound on tape, just cooler sounding sound.

This is why there is very little harm done Tracking direct to tape. Bouncing into some sort of DAW. Editing, chopping and changing on the computer. Then mixing on outboard gear (some will be digital and some analog). Before mastering to 2 track tape. Then bouncing that master down to a high resolution digital master to then be sent to the pressing plant.
 
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