Alan Songer�s dirty vinyl

[boomac]

I like my copy of "Way Out West" but the last LP that I got from Allan was the best. Ike Quebec's "It Might As Well Be Spring". It's an early Liberty pressing and it plays as good as music that's on it. I've never talked to anybody that has had a problem with Allan. That's enough a__ kissin', hey?

[Piranha]

Just keep politics out of it and it's all good with Allan. His experience with jazz and audio in general for that matter should without a doubt be respected. Those are things he definitely knows quite a bit about.

[AndyKubicki]

Greetings gents!

Did I hear my name?

As far as differences in sound, some people say it's all in the RIAA curve used in recording and phono stage amplification. Ask Andy K what kind of terse response I got from a big time speaker design guy who spoke at one of our SoCal Horn Group get togethers when I asked him why vinyl sounds better to me. Regardless of what he said (and it wasn't pretty), I still think vinyl sounds better.

That was a while ago, but as I recall, I rather enjoyed his terse response. This was a person who when doing A/B comparisons, would actually throw in an additional control choice an it would actually be an A/B/C comparison, and I believe the catch was that two of three were identical, sometimes. I recently met a guy who told me about a test that one of the major audio companies did where there were two identical theaters except that one had a better sound system. All else ws equal. There were two groups who watched a presentation in both theaters and almost to a person, when asked which theater had a more vivid picture, they chose the theater with the better sound system.

He made another very valid point, and that is the weakness of the record vs CD. Getting the RIAA curve is one part of this, and I wonder how much those can vary, especially in vintage equipment. Maybe our in house tech crew can do somew testing? Craig? Mark? Ryan? Anyway, aside from the noise factor, he mentioned the loss of higher frequency response that occurs as you get closer to the inner grove. On some recordings, this becomes apparent when you do an A/B comparison with a CD, but that does present another problem.

This software sux!

[AndyKubicki]

I wonder how much of the difference between CD and LP is the result of mastering and pressing process and how much is the technology?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Sal, brother, you got it! We've had discussions here where guys who work in the mastering field confirmed that early CDs were EQed bright to present them as being clearer. If you A/B most earlier Emerson Lake and Palmer CDs with their LPs, you will notice right away. Other comparisons are not quite as obvious, some others minimally. I will one day do an A/B of an LP to a CD that I will make of the LP, that will take the mastering difference out of the equation since there will be no difference.

Listen to Yes' Fragile, LP or CD. You will hear distortion. Before I got the CD, I attributed this distortion to mistracking, thinking Atlantic should be burned down for using poor quality vinyl. I was surprised to find the same distortion on the CD. Now listen to the DVDa which has been REMIXED. Without the benefit of DVDa (my player cannot decode DVDa), but just with the stereo mix that new recording leaves both previous ones in the dust!

Bottom line is that we need to take the emotion out of this and just listen. I too enjoy a lot of vinyl, but I will be happy when we do have a digital medium that gets closer to vinyl. Matter of fact, I just picked up a copy of Thelonious Monk at our local Tower Records...I wanted to hear Straight, no Chaser as he played it. I learned it from the guys I played in a band with some years ago without ever hearing the Monk's own tune.

[meuge]

I know very little about vinyl, but what I do know is that a lot of the problems with CD recordings are purely due to the fact that audiophiles with hifi systems are rarely the primary target of the record company, and the CDs are mastered accordingly.

Now if heads of the RIAA were to take their heads out of their collective anuses and stop trying to stop tomorrow from becoming today, some very interesting options might emerge. If the major record comanies were to support online sales of digital recordings it would cost them almost nothing to have several versions of the same recording. Let's say a mass market one, and one from before most of the compression and EQing which could be appreciated by people whose systems would allow them to enjoy the dynamic range.

But I doubt it's going to happen. God forbid someone downloads a version of a Britney song from before the mastering and actually hears her sing. Hell, I can't bear to hear her voice even AFTER all that manipulation.

[edwinr]

Modern CD mastering has come a long way. Most new CD releases I have purchased have surprised me with their even tone. Very listenable and much closer to good vinyl sound than they used to be. This also might have something to do with the better quality playback equipment available to us at increasingly lower prices.

[ChrisK]

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On 9/15/2004 8:34:48 AM mdeneen wrote:

...I think to enjoy a wide variety of "regular LPs" - which is to say, not just the $100 audiophile jobs - one needs to have a lot of room for equalizing your system in some fashion or another. The idea of the pure, "flat", unadultered, no EQ, no tone controls, type playback system, is probably going to make the majority of LPs sound crappy.

mdeneen

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Mark,

With the above thought in mind, why no tone controls on your gear? My Peach (paired with a friends ARC Classic 60) definitely sounds better overall than does my Scott 299B. However, I do miss the Scott's tone controls when listening to recordings that may be bass heavy or have other problems. Would some sort of external equalizer help? Or might it negatively impact the sound quality by being an additional circuit in the signal path?

Chris

[Allan Songer]

I would never own a preamp without tone controls.

I spin old 78's at least 6-8 times per year on my main system and you simply can't do it without tone controls.

And you know what, the more I read the original post in this thread the nastier it reads. I don't think arto (I'll spell your name right when you spell mine right) is trying to be funny any more than he is trying to attack me. Why? What did I ever do to you? I think you owe me an apology. NOW.

If you were spinning the "Analogue Productions" reissue, that's a Doug Sax master and I have no idea how it compares to the Roy DuNann original. Not as good if I had to guess . . .

[tubelover]

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On 9/15/2004 10:08:25 AM mdeneen wrote:

Regarding EQ: Yes, it would help dramatically and I advise you try some high quality units.

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Would you mind referencing a few of the units you would recommend?

[Griffinator]

Furman makes a very good quality EQ - I periodically use a dual-channel 30 band Furman for particularly bass-heavy recordings. List is around $700, can be had for inside of $600 most music shops - I bought mine used for $300.

[Frzninvt]

Mark, I certainly don't think the DBX 14/10 14-band Computer Equalizer/Analyzer with a price of street price of $1300 and a myriad of features and capabilities falls into the poor equalizer category. It is far superior to its predecessors the 20/20 and 10/20. It was and still is one of the best equalizers ever produced with maybe the exception of the Accuphase units.

Regardless of what people say I never had any noise or artifacts while using the DBX 14/10. If anyone wants one I konw where one is available but it will not come cheap, they are quite rare.

The White 4400's are definately top notch but aren't they "cut only" equalizers?

[ChrisK]

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On 9/15/2004 12:31:39 PM mdeneen wrote:

"Would you mind referencing a few of the units you would recommend? "

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1) The Klark Teknik series (Currently available new)

2) The White 4400 series. While White may be in or out of business at any given moment, there are plenty of used units in the market. I think they are currently back in business with a smaller portfolio. I have the older White 4400s. Quite good.

There are undoubtedly many more recent introductions available that I am not aware of. I don't follow this end of the market too closely anymore. Griff probably has a better handle on it.

I think the bad rap attendent to EQ is from the old cheapo-consumer "ADC SoundShaper" days. These $250 buck (or less) units are not useful, really. There were a million versions of that under the brands of ADC, BSR, dBx and others. All of them came from Aztec in Taiwan. Minor cosmetic differences.

mdeneen

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Mark/Griffinator,

I did some research on the EQ's you mentioned and they all have about a zillion knobs. It makes my pea-brain spin just looking at them. Is there something a tad bit more, shall we say, consumer friendly that you guys can recommend? Or is it possible that the units you speak of are much easier to operate than they appear? I'm guessing they would work well for EQ'ing someones listening room not to mention individual recordings.

Thanks,

Chris

[garymd]

I used an Audio Control C-101 with my SS reciever for years and it made a significant improvement. It's not a cheapo unit but after hooking it up with the blueberry, it did take away some of the sweetness of the sound and gave it more of a SS sound. I have it sitting on a shelf if anyone wants to borrow it for testing purposes.

[3dzapper]

My advice if you feel that you need equalization on your Bb is to put the Eq in the tape loop, not the input loop. In that way for sources that need more umph just flip the tape switch. For nice clean material, switch it out and enjoy the BB's smooth sound. Best of all worlds.

Rick

[radiob]

Has anyone heard the Rives unit? Finally a way to remove the BOOM in your room.

The PARC is a Parametric Adaptive Room Compensation system. Rives Audio designed the PARC because current stereo and home theater components have exceeded the capability of their environment. Today's hi end audio speakers and electronics have the capability of delivering a near flat response throughout the audible frequency range (20Hz to 20kHz). However, these systems interact with their environment, namely the room they are located in. One of the largest problems in typical listening rooms is standing waves or room modes (bass modes) caused by parallel walls. The PARC is specifically designed to alleviate this problem. To understand more about the issues of room modes, go to "the Listening Room".

The PARC is a 2 channel, 3 band (per channel) parametric equalizer (parametric eq) that can attenuate 3 separate frequencies at different ranges and amplitudes. It is purely analog based, so there is no digital conversion to corrupt the audio signal. The system uses components and modules developed for high end analog recording studios. Every item in the signal path is of the lowest noise and highest quality available. The engineers that developed the unit have literally dozens of years experience in designing low noise parametric equalizers (parametric eq) for the recording industry.

[Parrot]

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On 9/14/2004 10:18:18 AM artto wrote:

As I removed the record from its sleeve I was horrified. I thought, “This can’t be”. Dirt. Fingerprints. Spots. Crud. I moved under some brighter light to get a better look. Yikes! I can’t believe it! Boomac comes back into the room, “Boomac” I say, “I have to reprimand you! Shame on you!” Boomac with a confused look says “What’s wrong?” I say “This record. It’s filthy!” Boomac says “Oh, I got that one from Alan Songer!”

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Thank goodness you checked it so that you didn't get all that garbage on your stylus. Why anyone would ever consider playing ruined vinyl is puzzling. There's too much mint vinyl out there to waste time with stuff that is shot. And if the mint vinyl happens to cost too much, just get a CD of it.

[boomac]

Paul, this was just kidden' around. The record needed to be cleaned but otherwise is quite nice. I would buy any LP that Allan Songer was offering. My only concern would be content but since Allan's record, for recommendations, is 87 to 2, I don't worry at all. Besides, if I didn't like it he'd never insist I keep it. In fact, I think so much of his recommendations, that I'd keep it even if I didn't like it figuring it must be me. That's why I still have "The Shape Of Jazz To Come".

[artto]

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On 9/15/2004 10:04:25 AM Allan Songer wrote:

And you know what, the more I read the original post in this thread the nastier it reads. I don't think arto (I'll spell your name right when you spell mine right) is trying to be funny any more than he is trying to attack me. Why? What did I ever do to you? I think you owe me an apology. NOW.

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Sorry Allan but you'll get no apologies from the likes of me. It was intended to be funny and that's all. I ended the post with an explanation/disclaimer "In all fairness to Alan, Boomac did give Alan an excellent endorsement as being very fair with his used record prices and complete satisfaction or your money back." I was just razzin' Scott about the dirty record he brought along to listen to on my "ultimate" system and was surprised to hear that he got it from you, a highly respected jazz/LP enthusiast and it quickly turned into a joke about "liberal cleaning policy" or something like that, apparently in reference to your possible political orientation (which I don't really care about one way or another). Just a good laugh my friend. Nothing intended or implied otherwise.

[Allan Songer]

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On 9/15/2004 4:57:57 PM artto wrote:

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On 9/15/2004 10:04:25 AM Allan Songer wrote:

And you know what, the more I read the original post in this thread the nastier it reads. I don't think arto (I'll spell your name right when you spell mine right) is trying to be funny any more than he is trying to attack me. Why? What did I ever do to you? I think you owe me an apology. NOW.

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Sorry Allan but you'll get no apologies from the likes of me. It was intended to be funny and that's all. I ended the post with an explanation/disclaimer "In all fairness to Alan, Boomac did give Alan an excellent endorsement as being very fair with his used record prices and complete satisfaction or your money back." I was just razzin' Scott about the dirty record he brought along to listen to on my "ultimate" system and was surprised to hear that he got it from you, a highly respected jazz/LP enthusiast and it quickly turned into a joke about "liberal cleaning policy" or something like that, apparently in reference to your possible political orientation (which I don't really care about one way or another). Just a good laugh my friend. Nothing intended or implied otherwise.

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Fair enough! That's all I needed to hear. The record WAS in NM condition even if it needed to be cleaned . . .

[Allan Songer]

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On 9/15/2004 3:08:06 PM paulparrot wrote:

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On 9/14/2004 10:18:18 AM artto wrote:

As I removed the record from its sleeve I was horrified. I thought, “This can’t be”. Dirt. Fingerprints. Spots. Crud. I moved under some brighter light to get a better look. Yikes! I can’t believe it! Boomac comes back into the room, “Boomac” I say, “I have to reprimand you! Shame on you!” Boomac with a confused look says “What’s wrong?” I say “This record. It’s filthy!” Boomac says “Oh, I got that one from Alan Songer!”

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Thank goodness you checked it so that you didn't get all that garbage on your stylus. Why anyone would ever consider playing ruined vinyl is puzzling. There's too much mint vinyl out there to waste time with stuff that is shot. And if the mint vinyl happens to cost too much, just get a CD of it.

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You are SUCH a nitwit! I'm still laughing at this pathetic post!! DUST will NOT hurt a stylus. The record was filthy only by the unusually high standards of vinyl enthusiasts like Artto and myself! This record was in NM condition and just needed a quick trip though the RCM. Why don't you just butt out of threads that discuss topics that are beyond your level of knowledge?!