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The high end revisited!


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I'd be much more impressed if Taylor Swift or Diana Krall went into the studio and cut a 2 track album straight to acetate in 6 hours.

Even though I am an old fart and actually like some of the Taylor Swift music, I think Diana Krall could actually pull off a straight two track recording.

This is why some of my old 4 track recordings sound better than those of a friend who has been more than willing to do 24-32+ tracks for a 6 piece group.

That could be some of my ego, but what he has done isn't listenable. I would rather hear live music with mistakes than overdubbed multitrack comps that sound like perfection.

Bruce

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I got to work briefly, during a short hiatus from another album, with a fairly well known rockabilly 3 piece band. The entire album was cut and done in 16 days, half the mixes on the record were push ups from the monitor panel (old Helios desk) done at the end of tracking sessions. We worked so fast and so loud I had no idea what the finished product sounded like by the end. I shouldn't have worried, thanks to a great producer and talented band it sounds as hard, fresh and vibrant today as it did back then.

I returned to the other ongoing project. By this time we'd been working on this album off and on for 9 months. I remember one night, the artist (an incredible blues singer working in a pop world) cut a one-take vocal that reduced the control room to complete silence. We then went on to record 20 or so more takes and finally comp'd the "best" into a finished song vocal. This was pretty much the modus operandi for the rest of the album. When we finished the mixes the first comment from the producer's mouth was "now for the remixes!"

Needless to say we reduced some spectacular songs, played by the top echelon of session musicians (even the strings were laid at Abbey Road Studio 2) into a beautiful sounding, emotionally vacant record.

I learned a lot that year.

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"this guy has to be joking!"

Not yet, the joke comes with the 150 - 500 hours needed to break in a power cable.

"Use only music to break in our wires, preferably music with strong transients (i.e. music with lots of percussion and/or plucked instruments)"

I threw up in my mouth.

They were probably laughing their a$$es off as they were writing that. lmfao.gif

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"Now, with so many recordings being absolutely awful in terms of compression and distortion, the need for super sounding equipment is somewhat reduced."

They even go back and make the ones that used to sound good - bad. I actually gave up, bought a nice Oppo, and just went to Blu-ray concerts for any new purchases. I also listen to earbuds 99% of the time, the crappy recordings actually sound good -- which in the end, is all that really matters.

God help me!! You are way down deep into the darkside!! You have to make the trek up to my place so I can fix you...even though the fix won't last a week or so.

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I returned to the other ongoing project. By this time we'd been working on this album off and on for 9 months. I remember one night, the artist (an incredible blues singer working in a pop world) cut a one-take vocal that reduced the control room to complete silence. We then went on to record 20 or so more takes and finally comp'd the "best" into a finished song vocal. This was pretty much the modus operandi for the rest of the album. When we finished the mixes the first comment from the producer's mouth was "now for the remixes!"

Seems to me that Roy Acuff had it right when he said the best cut is the first. If its about the music then its about the performance IMHO. According to the liner notes on Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Roy surprisingly agreed to participate as long as they recorded and used first performances. If it didn't work out, do other songs then circle back.

Have you ever heard of Barefoot Jerry?

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Have you ever heard of Barefoot Jerry?

Got an album of his right here.

I would observe that to my ear its the perfect blend of high studio art with some emotional conection. It ain't live for sure, but its got emotion. I reach for it whenever I want to see what a system can do because I have heard it on so many good audio systems through the years. The digital mastering however doesn't sound near as good as the LPs IMHO.

Ever hear of Area Code 615? The precursor to Barefoot Jerry with Mac Gayden.

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I thought I was going back to basic with my 1" 8 track into 1/4" 3m m56 2 track.

After hearing this Two track recoding (http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/543947-hi-style-studios-chicago-music-video.html)recoding

on a tube Ampex mixerinto a Berlant 1/4 " deck I,m now hunting down A old tube mixers to use with a Berlant mono deck I have.

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Further proof that it's marketing over quality -

http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world

Or...predatory snake oil salesman gets stiffed by guy who engineered some of the worst records ever. The irony is somehow satisfying.

That was a good read. I always like to say in business dealings, if you lie down with dogs you will get fleas. Monster got a taste of what they do to the everyday consumer. Also read this carefully, they did not lose money, they just failed to protect themselves and missed out on the big cash in. You have to love when people think that they can represent themselves.

I like this quote from the discussion:

"I bought a pair of Beats in-ear headphones at an Apple Store once for my iPhone for my commute. I returned them in 10 minutes and exchanged them for the Bose IE's. There's simply no comparison."

My highlighting. All of the usual suspects. Also, check out the frequency response of the headphones posted in the article. Only 10 db down in the mids and 20 db down in the treble.

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The BIGGEST problem, IMO, is too many really bad recordings.
Why spend a lot of money on equipment in order to take on the
impossible task of converting a sow's ear? It's not just dynamic range
compression (although this is a huge problem, especially in Pop), but
classical and jazz recordings that are terrible in one way or another,
or in every way.

My old recordings tend to be my favorite
recordings. Some SACD re-issues (e.g., the Living Stereo series from
the '50s and '60s) can be good. Strangely, the newly recorded SACDs
haven't impressed me very much, except for the multi-channel aspect.
The average new movie on DVD or Blu-ray seems to be better recorded than
the average new SACD or CD. Possible reason: more time, care
and $$$$ spent on film recordings. Of course, that doesn't stop them
from sometimes ruining the sound in transferring to disk. The
soundtrack CD of Shakespeare in Love doesn't sound nearly as good
-- not as airy & pure, to use the Golden Ears' terms -- as the DVD
of the movie played on the very same equipment (including the
player) in the same room, from the same couch. One would hope that
Blu-ray sound would be better than DVD sound when comparing the same movies, as heard on the two media, but that's nothing like always true.

The author of the Stereophile article
pointed out that the sound was pretty good through his ear buds.
Therein lies another problem. The unnatural spatiality of ear buds may
mask defects in recordings. And they may not want the full dynamic
range of Fanfare for the Common Man or Pictures at an Exposition coming
through somebody's ear buds. So I'm not surprised that new recordings
of those two showpieces are less dynamic than my favorite old versions.

Somebody said that some new recordings are mixed by people who have never heard a good sound system. Some
mixers, producers, and executives may have never, or rarely, heard a
live orchestra, or acoustical band, from up close. Or is it just that
there are not many who give a damn?

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Strangely, the newly recorded SACDs

haven't impressed me very much, except for the multi-channel aspect.

I have Nightfly on both vinyl and SACD. One of my favorites questions is to play both, switch back and forth and ask people which one they prefer (emphasis on prefer, not think sounds better). No one has ever yet picked the SACD.

Somebody said that some new recordings are mixed by people who have never heard a good sound system. Some

mixers, producers, and executives may have never, or rarely, heard a

live orchestra, or acoustical band, from up close. Or is it just that

there are not many who give a ***?

That someone was me I believe. At least in the days of the session date you got to be in the studio setting up while the musicians played so had a good point of reference to how it should sound back in the control room. That all went out of the window with the "put an effect on me and make me sound different 80s" and today, apart from Country and Folk, a session date is a rare bird.

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I have Nightfly on both vinyl and SACD. One of my favorites questions is to play both, switch back and forth and ask people which one they prefer (emphasis on prefer, not think sounds better). No one has ever yet picked the SACD.

I've heard this so many times in regard to comparisons between practically any digital recording (from CD quality up) and almost any analog version (vinyl played on a good front end, or reel to reel tape) of the same original, even if the selection was originally recorded in digital (as was Nightfly?). Whenever I've had the chance to compare, I've preferred the analog.

As a professional, what do you think is primarily responsible for this? I mean, with vinyl, here you have a signal that must be electromechanically transduced twice, and the player has all kinds of potential resonances, reluctance, mistracking, etc., yet it almost always sounds better. If it is merely that good players guild the lilly with musically pleasant distortion, by all means let's pump some similar distortion into the digital process.

In about 1986, my old recording teacher (a long term industry pro) said that recordists had over 60 years to learn how to baby analog (dealing with the most favorable mic placement, reverberation, etc.) and when enough time went by they would learn to baby digital so it would be equally good, or better. I've waited for that day to come, but it doesn't seem to be on the horizon yet.

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I have Nightfly on both vinyl and SACD. One of my favorites questions is to play both, switch back and forth and ask people which one they prefer (emphasis on prefer, not think sounds better). No one has ever yet picked the SACD.

I've heard this so many times in regard to comparisons between practically any digital recording (from CD quality up) and almost any analog version (vinyl played on a good front end, or reel to reel tape) of the same original, even if the selection was originally recorded in digital (as was Nightfly?). Whenever I've had the chance to compare, I've preferred the analog.

I was the same way until I stumbled upon a really good audio engine. The importance of the audio engine feeding the DAC seems to be very important. I am using a Focusrite Saffire 6USB as DAC feed by Pure Music on a Mac. The results are crisp and clean with none of the fatigue that pushed me back to analog. Proper amps and good speakers complete what is to my ear (some fault could be found here) a great repro system. Its even better than using my Van Alstine DAC hooked to either the MAC or CD/SACD. Some of that could be that after the preamp I was using a digital DSP for crossover and EQ and now I don't use a preamp and let the audio engine handle the DSP before the DAC.

It does however have a downside. Bad material sounds bad where before bad material was either masked or made tolerable by the repro system.

BTW, Philip thanks for the post about David Manley and Manley Labs. I really like what I see with their equipment. I am trying to talk EveAnna into building a better audio interface than what is available.

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In about 1986, my old recording teacher (a long term industry pro) said that recordists had over 60 years to learn how to baby analog (dealing with the most favorable mic placement, reverberation, etc.) and when enough time went by they would learn to baby digital so it would be equally good, or better. I've waited for that day to come, but it doesn't seem to be on the horizon yet.

We are there, it is just that the good recordings are hard to find. It seems that Jazz in general and the few recording artists that care (like Neil Young, Maynard, etc) have good recordings. Maybe I am against the grain but I will take a well recorded CD over an album any day.

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As a professional, what do you think is primarily responsible for this? I mean, with vinyl, here you have a signal that must be electromechanically transduced twice, and the player has all kinds of potential resonances, reluctance, mistracking, etc., yet it almost always sounds better. If it is merely that good players guild the lilly with musically pleasant distortion, by all means let's pump some similar distortion into the digital process.

I've spent a long time thinking about this. I was originally inspired by watching my cat's reaction to the Dead's Shades of Grey. If I played the vinyl version she would start investigating the speakers immediately the animal growls started. The CD got no reaction whatsoever. Not very scientific but it was repeatable.

Our ears are the most sophisticated and misunderstood of our senses. The huge range of frequencies and power we can detect dwarfs the capabilities of our other senses which are, by comparison, very limited. Why is this? Probably because for millennia they were our first warning of danger or our first detection of lunch. Not blessed with the olfactory talents of our fellow mammals we got very, very good at perceiving and locating sounds. Eyesight is the close up fight or flight sense, hearing is the long distance warning system.

So how does this relate to audio playback? Analog is a contiguous waveform. Even with artifacts, noise and distortion added, the medium carrying it is in a continuos flow. Digital is small slices of data extrapolated to replicate this continuous waveform. A portion (albeit a very small portion) of the signal is only a best guess at what's coming next. We've gotten very good at the accuracy of that best guess (revisit a first generation CD player & you'll be horrified at what we thought was perfect sound forever) but it's still a guess. I believe the human ear (and my cat's ear apparently) can perceive this and to some small part of the brain it does not quite register with the millennia of reference data stored back there. The brain tries to decode this information into patterns it can recognize, hence the fatigue, particularly pronounced on lower quality digital systems.

Another case in point; I was always surprised when people visited a studio control room for the first time they claimed it felt "strange" or "weird." I came to realize that their brain, having learnt to correlate the spatial information being presented by the eyes to the ears, was now being confused. The eyes said BIG ROOM but due to the acoustic deadness, the ears said small room and this made the visitor uncomfortable. We lived in this environment and had grown used to it but I can attest that a full size anechoic chamber is a very strange place to be in.

Back to our digital signal path. In the less than perfect world we live in the actual data we hear from a digital source is generally much less coherent than the specifications would attest to. Dirty CD lenses and CD discs, bandwidth compression systems, mistracking error correction systems, all of these combine to make a much bigger contribution to the "made up" part of the signal than we would like. So our brain is desperately trying to tie this "not quite right" information together, a task it finds difficult. If we return to our Serengeti grasslands for a moment, we can appreciate that the artifacts of analog can be compared to the wind in the surrounding trees, distant thunder or a whole host of other extraneous sounds that do not interfere particularly with our ears primary mission. The artifacts in digital are something fundamentally wrong in the sounds we are hearing.

I think this also explains why better digital playback formats and systems are less fatiguing. The closer we get to the original source waveform the less the brain feels the need to decode the information. Perhaps one day we'll reach a point where the original and the digital reproduction are indistinguishable from each other, not just ot our direct hearing but also to our perception too. Professionally, the next generation of high-end equipment is running at 24bit/192KHz, my favorite mixing console (Digico SD-7) is one piece of equipment just so capableand we are staying in the digital realm (AES/EBU or MADI typically) all the way to the amplifiers. Unfortunately a comparison between it and vinyl is a little difficult to pull off. And obviously the pricing is still stratospheric (not much change from $350,000 for a Digico) but as with all things electronic this will come down soon enough.

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I am using a Focusrite Saffire 6USB as DAC feed by Pure Music on a Mac. The results are crisp and clean with none of the fatigue that pushed me back to analog. Proper amps and good speakers complete what is to my ear (some fault could be found here) a great repro system. Its even better than using my Van Alstine DAC hooked to either the MAC or CD/SACD. Some of that could be that after the preamp I was using a digital DSP for crossover and EQ and now I don't use a preamp and let the audio engine handle the DSP before the DAC.

Have you had the opportunity to compare these to the Audioquest Dragonfly, and how does the latter compare? Thanks.
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I can't agree that vinyl and analog tape is superior in any way to properly done digital. Just because something is analog doesn't mean it will sound good. I own a bunch of vinyl and tape that sounds horrible, simply because of the limitations of the media. Surface noise, compression, and distortion ruin the enjoyment of vinyl for me. Hiss and compression are a constant reminder that I am listening to mag tape. Even when listening to a record originally recorded and mastered on tape the hiss is present and annoyingly audible to me. The last generation of analog studio tape equipment with Dolby SR offers considerably reduced noise performance but by that time (late 80s) digital began take over studio recording and there is not all that much stuff out there done with SR. The recordings done with SR are mostly very good, however.

The other problem with analog sources is degradation. Any time a record is played the stylus damages the grooves. Certain stylus profiles and careful setup of the tone arm will minimize the damage, but it still occurs every time a record is played. Mag tape degrades over time whether played or not. I remember recording mix tapes and monitoring the playback head as I was recording. The sound was very close to the original, but a comparison a week of so later sounded different with a noticeable loss of high frequencies from the tape. This doesn't happen with digital, not even with digital tape, because digital only looks for 1s and 0s, not varying magnetic strengths, that represent audio. Interestingly libraries, including the Library of Congress, have transcribed their analog audio to digital, ensuring it's survival. Many recording studios have done the same thing with their tapes. A lot of the older tapes were recorded on acetate backed mag tape which decomposes into acetic acid over time, which causes the magnetic oxide layer to fall off. This is not good for a storage medium.

I still remember the day I bought my first CD player, in 1985. There weren't many CDs available then but I bought all that was available at the shop where I got the player, about 9 or 10 titles. I stayed up all night listening to the CDs, and comparing them to the same album in vinyl. The CDs were quieter, more dynamic, and had less distortion. It was as if a blanket that had been wrapped around the speakers had been removed, with the noise and hiss gone. To say I preferred the CDs was an understatement, and everyone who came over to listen to both media agreed and most bought their own CD players shortly thereafter.

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