SH Spotlight Recording and Mastering Questions---Answered here. Any more?

Yeah, or possibly the forward treble just made it sound harsh. Sorry for going OT, back to the scheduled program.

 

DC, In principle yes. When a laser "cuts" it actually ablates, that is it vaporizes the material that is being removed so rapidly that there is very little heating to the material next to removed material. This is the same phenomenon that happens to meteorites when they fall through our atmosphere. Having said that my guess is that to bring such a device to a manufacturable state is a $50M R&D project. You would have to have one of the big guys like Sony or WB, this is not something you do in your garage.

 

Yes, apparently most cartridges roll off somewhere in the 20-30kHz range, judging from what I've read. And you're right in that there's no way the carrier signal is cut anywhere near "normal" music levels. That Pickering cartridge I mentioned above is a CD-4 cartridge and it's stylus is .3 x 2.8 mil. So, front-to-back, that's twice as long as the Shure. That was supposed to be a pretty good cartridge back in the day and you can still find styli for it with some searching.

 

David R. Modny has a "good tracker" for sale in the classifieds right now, I was tempted to buy it but it looks like D. Chickens needs it far worse than i do.

 

Steve, if you have a finger-played Fender bass in a song that sounds a quite muffled, what EQ touches would you make to give it more punch and definition?

 

Sorry, I should have clarified this detail in my question. The bass is on its own channel as I am doing a new mix.

 

Steve, thanks for the info! Given it is an old (1976) recording the bass is alone on a channel (no second direct recording as is done nowadays). We did another bass overdub a few months later that is on another channel. In this case the bass player played with a pick and it was done IIRC directly unto the board, thus, it has more ping but it doesn't have much deep bass information (I hope to be explaining myself well here). The thing is (also) that this other take seems to have less swing to it than the first one, probably due to the fact that the first bass was recorded with all us playing together in the studio.

 

Steve, how does one go about to un-master a badly mastered CD and make it sound more reasonable (e.g. the way the original LP sounded like) if one does not agree with overly aggressive equalization applied on the CD master? Are there some typical frequency areas that are usually over- or under-emphasized and how does one find such frequency areas?

 

I have, some time ago.

 

Steve, just wanted to let you know that your bass EQ advice has worked quite well. Thank you very much!

Now I am on to tackle a few other issues with the recording.

 

Is digital recording done on magnetic tape or on a hard drive? How do studios archive digital recordings?

 

Can be done on both.

 

Steve, a more philosophical audiophile question: I'm comparing the DCC version of Elvis Presley's "In the ghetto" (supposedly a flat transfer from the mastertape) with a recent DSD master of that song as released on the "Elvis by the Presleys" CD (which I find to be more musically sounding and which probably has been equalized by Sony in the Sonoma enviroment after being transferred to DSD).

I don't quite understand the fascination that audiophiles have with so-called "flat transfers" of original mastertapes. I thought the goal of mastering is to compensate for the lack of musical warmth in the original analog tapes. Is that not the case? Why would people prefer to listen to a reproduction of these tapes in an *unmastered* state which to me simply lacks the musicality present in the original session?

Is the idea here that the right combination of more musically sounding audiophile playback equipment will make up for that lack and *that* is the reason a flat transfer is preferred?

 

I think most people would prefer an album to be tastefully mastered. But given the choice of bad mastering and a flat transfer, many people will take the flat transfer. It's often better to have a "warts and all" flat copy of the master tape than a screwed-up mastering that's beyond repair.

 

The original idea of mastering was to get the recording onto another medium, usually vinyl, with the least amount of alteration in sound quality. That also used to be the same general idea for CD mastering, until someone figured out how to make CDs quieter and louder...

 

Hello, this is my first post, so apologies if this is a done-to-death question or topic...

Is there any (hopefully affordable) outboard digital studio device available commercially that can do that Abbey Road "tape-delayed echo chamber" like what's heard on the early Beatles albums? (I also hear a similar sound on albums like "Fresh Cream"...or is it just me?)

Cheers,
Bruce

 

And more, or less, shrill.

 

Steve,

When do you setup the track locations/indexes?

and

Are those markings on the digital master sent to the pressing plant?

Thanks

Joe