Everyone agrees...

iaresee said:
Who is listening to low bitrate MP3s anymore? Seriously...variable bit rate solved most of the problem and the near-ubiquitous high speed connections we have now have made delivering them a snap. When you do your critiques at least critique current consumer standards -- I'd say whatever Apple is selling in iTunes now -- they're all far from low bitrate encodes.
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iTunes preferred format is ALAC, which is Apple's lossless format. MP3 is garbage now days with FLAC, ALAC, etc... Where all this "vinyl sounds better" nonsense comes from is shitty MP3's. People chose convenience over quality early on and are now realizing that vinyl does indeed sound better than the 40,000 MP3's compressed to hell on your phone.

A really good example is youtube. How many people use Youtube to show eachother new music? Millions. I even see it here on the forums, "Hey, check out this new recording" and people comment on how good the tone is or isn't. Do this: Go listen to your favorite song on Youtube, then listen to it on CD. There's a huge difference.
 
IMO one of the reasons why people might believe vinyl sounds better is because most vinyl is old, and back in the day people did not master their records compressed to fill up the VU meter and sound "loud". So you hear the dynamics those mastering engineers preserved, especially in percussion. That doesn't mean, of course, that CD is incapable of the same, in fact it's capable of much more. Some people just need to be whacked upside the head so that records are mastered properly again.
 
Ben.Last said:
There is no such thing as "sounding digital" or "sounding analog." There is just individual equipment sounding pleasing or bad or sterile or lush or realistic or whatever. That has nothing to do with analog or digital. Do you think there wasn't a period of decades during which analog equipment was fiddled with in attempts to get it to sound more "whatever"? It's not that companies are trying to get plugins to sound more "analog;" they're trying to make things that sound like what people already know, and analog gear existed first, so that's what people know (which is also why some companies have the obsession with attempting to make their UIs look like old gear).
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Fair enough, but "sounding digital" and "sounding analog" are terms that are rather difficult to avoid when we're trying to replicate the sounds of analog equipment in a digital environment. Sound is difficult to describe, I think we can all agree on that...
 
plexi59 said:
IMO one of the reasons why people might believe vinyl sounds better is because most vinyl is old, and back in the day people did not master their records compressed to fill up the VU meter and sound "loud". So you hear the dynamics those mastering engineers preserved, especially in percussion. That doesn't mean, of course, that CD is incapable of the same, in fact it's capable of much more. Some people just need to be whacked upside the head so that records are mastered properly again.
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It's true. Listen to an old Billie Holiday album. Hell, listen to an old Rufus album! This 'noise wars' crap of compressing the living sh#t out of everything has really ticked me off (and in the end, even my stuff gets more compressed than I'd like - the powers that be say it's necessary for Itunes, Spotify etc.). Maybe it's not the medium, just how people are using it, but it seems that my record label, too, prefers something closer to brickwall mastering than I'd like. I love dynamic range, and I don't know if the compression is necessary for the world of mp3s, ALAC, FLAC, SACD etc., or not - I only know that I miss the old days, when there was less of it...
 
funny_polymath said:
It's true. Listen to an old Billie Holiday album. Hell, listen to an old Rufus album! This 'noise wars' crap of compressing the living crap out of everything has really ticked me off (and in the end, even my stuff gets more compressed than I'd like - necessary for Itunes etc.). Maybe it's not the medium, just how people are using it, but it seems that my record label, too, prefers something closer to brickwall mastering than I'd like. I love dynamic range, and I don't know if the compression is necessary for the world of mp3s, ALAC, FLAC, SACD etc., or not - I only know that I miss the old days, when there was less of it...
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Word is that iTunes has a new 'scaling' function for playing their tunes - It 'normalizes' tunes to the same level on playback, and submissions with more dynamics intact will be just as loud (or louder?) than tracks that are hammered flat. Some are saying that this move may help end the volume wars.
 
Sidivan said:
A really good example is youtube. How many people use Youtube to show eachother new music? Millions. I even see it here on the forums, "Hey, check out this new recording" and people comment on how good the tone is or isn't. Do this: Go listen to your favorite song on Youtube, then listen to it on CD. There's a huge difference.
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AFAIK Youtube only outputs 320kbps mp3 quality audio for a HD video. Anything streaming at a lower quality than that and the audio gets scaled down, so it's not surprising.

Also, very few people who put their stuff out through iTunes have actually read the whitepaper on how to master for iTunes. In fact there are a lot of people who don't know the difference between mastering for differing digital formats full stop which again contributes to the the amount of frankly sh*t quality mp3s.

I do think there's a huge market for high quality music downloads and high quality players. I've heard stuff that I have engineered dumped down to 256kbps mp3 and my immediate reaction on hearing it was that there was something wrong somewhere. It lost the impact of the transients and sounded mushy. This may not have been a factor of the format being mp3 and may have been a result of the encoder used, but to my ears it sounded terrible. Having FLAC/ALAC or even DSD as acceptable downloadable formats may help combat this.

There are a few statements that bear closer inspection:

"Vinyl sounds more true to the studio recordings than CD." - Complete a*se.
"Vinyl sounds better." - It's subjective.
"Vinyl is better than CD." - Subjectively only. As a general statement of auditory quality, this is BS. As a statement of personal preference, each to their own. I love the big sleeves and the artwork, but gimme a CD in that huge sleeve any day.

I just hope that the PONO player does NOT try to emulate vinyl, contrary to what Neil Young might want.
 
BigD1977 said:
AFAIK Youtube only outputs 320kbps mp3 quality audio for a HD video. Anything streaming at a lower quality than that and the audio gets scaled down, so it's not surprising.

Also, very few people who put their stuff out through iTunes have actually read the whitepaper on how to master for iTunes. In fact there are a lot of people who don't know the difference between mastering for differing digital formats full stop which again contributes to the the amount of frankly sh*t quality mp3s.
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Totally agree. When we had our album mastered, the engineer asked "what type of distribution are you looking at? CD? Vinyl? Download?" He did two versions. It surprises me how big a difference there is between the two formats.
 
Hellbat said:
CD's can sound very good. MP3's on the other hand cause me ear fatigue fairly quickly.

I couldn't figure out why I didn't listed to as much music as I used to, especially since I now had it located in a central database that could be accessed anywhere in my home. Then a buddy loaned my his DAC and a bunch of albums in FLAC format and I tore through them non-stop. Some of the FLACs were generated from HD masters as well. I gave him his stuff back and went out and grabbed an Audioengine D1 DAC for myself, for listening to music on my PC. I went on a bit of a FLAC album purchasing tear as well as converting a bunch of CD's.
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I am a big believer in FLAC files for portable music. It preserves all the details such as reverb trails and cymbal decay better than MP3 & Lame.

I tend to buy CD's because they don't deteriorate in quality when you play them a lot unless the player scratches the plastic.

The thing I like about LP's is that they sum everything below 100 Hz or so to mono and limit the crap out of it so that the differential between channels or spikes in low frequency do not launch the needle out of the groove. It gives a solid bass bump on LP that a lot of the original CD issues did not have, because engineers mixed knowing what the mastering engineer was going to have to do to compensate in order to cut the vinyl.

But you can do that summing & limiting in mastering for a CD and have the best of both worlds.

The brutal high end of the first all digital recordings was due to the primitive AD/DA tech at the time. Converters have come a long way since that time and now, except for really minute details, it is difficult to tell on well recorded materials which format was used.

One really can't tell the difference between analog vs. digital recording on modern recrodings because most analog recordings have some sort of digital effects such as reverb on them. Very few people maintain reverb chambers and vintage physical plates anymore, so the odds are that all analog recording has had some portion go through an AD/DA pass at some point on its way to mixdown.

Now the current method of brick wall limiting in both mixing and mastering is a whole other kettle of fish.
 
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dr bonkers said:
The brutal high end of the first all digital recordings was due to the primitive AD/DA tech at the time. Converters have come a long way since that time and now, except for really minute details, it is difficult to tell on well recorded materials which format was used.
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Can you reference some of these brutal recordings? The CDs I had in the early 80s all sounded fantastic. The DDD (remember when it was important to mention how it was recorded, mixed and mastered?) orchestral stuff, in particular, was stunning -- far from brutal.

I suspect "brutal" was a function of the operator, not the medium...
 
iaresee said:
Can you reference some of these brutal recordings? The CDs I had in the early 80s all sounded fantastic. The DDD (remember when it was important to mention how it was recorded, mixed and mastered?) orchestral stuff, in particular, was stunning -- far from brutal.

I suspect "brutal" was a function of the operator, not the medium...
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The early Talking heads CDs are a great example of nasty, brittle, dead transfers to digital. They sucked compared to vinyl...
 
iaresee said:
Can you reference some of these brutal recordings? The CDs I had in the early 80s all sounded fantastic. The DDD (remember when it was important to mention how it was recorded, mixed and mastered?) orchestral stuff, in particular, was stunning -- far from brutal.

I suspect "brutal" was a function of the operator, not the medium...
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Take a listen to the original CD's on studio monitors of the following works:

The Rush album "Hold Your Fire" has a harsh treble edge compared to their previous recordings and later albums of that era.

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Fear".

Paula Abdul "Forever Your Girl"

Wilson Phillips "Wilson Phillips"

The un-remastered Robert Plant "Now & Zen"

The un-remastered Peter Gabriel album "So"

If the mastering was perfect, they wouldn't have remastered them.

All of these recordings had heavy hitters on the production/mastering side recorded at world class studios at the time, so I seriously doubt it was operator error, but rather choice of equipment at the time compared to other recordings that don't sound bad at all.

I also agree with Funny Polymath regarding the Talking Heads albums he mentioned.
 
Sidivan said:
Totally agree. When we had our album mastered, the engineer asked "what type of distribution are you looking at? CD? Vinyl? Download?" He did two versions. It surprises me how big a difference there is between the two formats.
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If it was going for all three formats mentioned he would have needed to do three versions to get the best out of the media. iTunes needs more headroom than CD, roughly -.2db lower than 0DBFS AFAIK. Then vinyl needs it's own as discussed in the OP.
 
Admin M@ said:
"Everyone agrees vinyl sounds better than CDs, except audio engineers and the people who invented the compact disc"

Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl - Los Angeles | Los Angeles News and Events | LA Weekly

Also...
"In double-blind tests conducted by Levitin and others — some results of which were published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society — listeners cannot tell the difference between high-resolution audio and CD-quality audio."

"Every way you can measure it, digital is going to be superior," Metcalfe says. "It really does come down to the preference of the end user."


 Ya think?
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Being old enough to remember the introduction of CDs: AUDIOPHILES were the FIRST people to buy and advocate CD players. They were stupid expensive for the longest time.

Once a new thing reaches critical mass for some reason the old thing becomes sexy again. I miss ginormous album covers and liner notes and the 'album experience' but all our LPs ended up scratched, dusty, etc. Don't even get me started on trying to place the needle on the song you wanted. F* vinyl.
 
You laugh, but I know a dude who owns a record vacuum, and doesn't consider it insane to spend $1k on a phono cartridge. His speakers very badly lack midrange, but I keep that thought to myself so as not to ruin his day. He paid a lot of money for those speakers. :lol
 
dr bonkers said:
Take a listen to the original CD's on studio monitors of the following works:
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The Rush album "Hold Your Fire" has a harsh treble edge compared to their previous recordings and later albums of that era.
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Ever wonder if they lost the master tape and rushed out the CD of that using an EQ compensated version of the album? I have.

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Fear".
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This album was released in 1991 -- well past the CD's introduction. If it sounds like shit, it's because of the engineers, not the medium or the gear.

Paula Abdul "Forever Your Girl"
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1988 -- also not an "early" CD.

Wilson Phillips "Wilson Phillips"
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Ditto. 1990.


All of these recordings had heavy hitters on the production/mastering side recorded at world class studios at the time, so I seriously doubt it was operator error, but rather choice of equipment at the time compared to other recordings that don't sound bad at all.
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Ignoring the unremastered stuff most of the things in your list were well past the "new" phase of CDs. If you'd pulled things from the very early 80's, sure, yes...digital was new. But in 1999 it was old, established, and well understood. If those albums sound bad it's not because of the medium.
 
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