SH Spotlight What sounds just like the analog master tape: CD, Vinyl, SACD or a 1:1 analog Reel tape copy?

I forgot to say it uses this mastering. DOH!

 

Hi George!

I used to have at least a couple of "later" CSR Japan for Japan CD pressings of Thriller but I no longer have them and I sold them many years ago before I learned how to check for EAC peak levels.
With that said, however, IIRC, the ESCA Thriller first came out around the early 90's and I think the same SECOND CSR mastering was still being used (i.e., BEFORE the "remaster").

Hi. I love that photo of your lab. Incredibly wonderful dogs, labs and retrievers.

 

I found the EAC peaks for my ESCA 5408, which has pre-emphasis:

Track 1
Peak level 85.7 %
Track 2
Peak level 80.0 %
Track 3
Peak level 75.4 %
Track 4
Peak level 75.3 %
Track 5
Peak level 66.7 %
Track 6
Peak level 96.1 %
Track 7
Peak level 68.4 %
Track 8
Peak level 79.0 %
Track 9
Peak level 63.0 %

 

IIRC, I think that is the first CSR mastering. I think Japan stayed with their original mastering.

 

People seem to forget how young digital tech is compared to analog tech.... Digital has come a LONG way in a very short time.

 

Thanks, can you say what you prefer about the DADC? I haven't heard it.

 

Fascinating discussion. Waltz For Debby was a great choice for the comparison. The experiments could be continued all sorts of ways. I'd like to know how much- or how little- difference there might be, between original pressings on Riverside, Prestige, World Pacific, etc. and reissues from Fantasy, OJC, or Mosaic. (I'm leaving MCA out of the reissue comparisons; I take it for granted that MCA reissues hover around "acceptable", even in the (unlikely) event that a clean vinyl pressing can be found.)

I'd like to get something like a definitive comparison between examples of DDD CD vs. DD(A) vinyl. Like the Pretenders LP Packed, for example, which always sounded better to me as an LP, for no reason I can think of other than some subtractive or additive quality connected with the mastering step, or the character of yinyl playback itself.

 

Not to be rude, but this spreads the idea that analog resolution is infinite while digital is limited by nature. And that's just false. Pseudoscience. And a common misconception that's kept alive by economic interests. Every recording medium is limited compared to reality, that is a fact. It doesn't matter if we're talking image or sound. Digital image and sound recording surpassed the capabilities of analog media many years ago now. Whether the result looks or sounds better or worse to you is subjective and I am not stepping in there. But whenever scientists want to capture and record anything with the most precision and fidelity possible today, they use digital media. And for good reason. No resolution is lost by digitizing... if done right. Digital does not inherently mean quality loss.

 

nope. Once you digitise something analog, you are losing resolution. No way round it.
Once you go out of the converters for another a/d d/a trip, say to use some hardware, you are again losing resolution.
I have seen this borne out time and time again both ways in the studio.
it may be small, it may be insignificant to you, maybe, but its there.

 

Wasn’t that for CD resolution vs SACD resolution?

 

I mostly agree...

This whole 'original analog vinyl' sounds different than most CDs is true. The difference is NOT because analog nor digital is better, the difference is in the processing. Most digital releases have some low level compression along with dispersive processing added on. This 'dispersive processing' is what mostly gives the 'digital sound' that was complained about in the 1980s. However, there IS some low level compression that can sometimes make hiss unbearable on older recordings. This system is amazingly consistent across most recordings, to the 0.001dB or better on various thresholds, EQs, etc.

This 'dispersive processing' is what gives the 'grainy sound' that some of us are totally repulsed about. I do have an evil idea though... I have a working dispersive processor design that accurately undoes the dispersive processing, including considering the EIA component values on the HW, on digital releases. It wouldn't be too awful hard to configure it to predistort the signal so that the mastering engineer can FORCE the distribution system to produce better results. Currently, my interest is not in the pre-distorter though, because I am pretty sure that most mastering engineers know *really* what is going on, just not public knowledge.

BOTTOM LINE: the big difference between early analog and most digital releases has ALMOST NOTHING AT ALL to do with analog and digital, it has EVERYTHING to do with the processing... PERIOD...

(Of course, not talking about vinyl noise or peak clipping in digital.)

John

 

(regret the replying against myself.)
Here is a perhaps helpful hint for everyone who does high quality, 2nd order or bigger, EQ themselves. Because of the dispersive compression, there are strange spectral changes in the signal, somewhat remeniscent of mp3. Anyway, whenever EQing a normal consumer recording, you'll probably get better results by using frequencies that are multiples and mostly-odd-submultiples of 221.5Hz. So, if you want 500Hz, you probably really want 443Hz so that the signal sounds more clean. Of course, there are requirements that just might require the exact freq of 500Hz. Also, the correct submultiples are divide by 2,3,5,9,11 (skip 7!!!). At higher freqs, it is best to stick with multiples of 1550.5Hz. Believe me, this is crazy stuff, esp since they designed this back in the early 1980's with normal, but high precision HW. (If needed, I can probably estimate the exact component values -- I have this thing run down to almost the smallest detail!!!)

Anyway -- I'll shut up now.

John

 

To clarify, I was just repeating the claim made by Steve (below). I was just drawing a conclusion about what could be expected from a digitally-source vinyl record -- if the mastering to digital resulted in some resolution loss, as described below, then it would be logical to assume that that digital signal when used to master the analog vinyl record would reproduce that same signal and be unable to restore what was lost.

 

Good point. Assuming a significant difference between the digital master and the resulting CD layer, then my assumption may be false. I guess we would need Steve to chime in on the difference, as he says here..

"The acetate record playback beat them all in terms of resolution, tonal accuracy and everything else when compared directly with the analog master in playback. "

 

Since I haven't heard the SACD of that album nor the CD layer of that same release, I cannot say anything about it.
And yes, resolution loss is a thing, but as far as facts go it happens in the frequency domain and dynamic range, never in the time domain. Copy that SACD to a crappy cassette and the reverb on the snare will last the same. It will just sound much worse for obvious reasons. No wonder the guy thought there was some extra reverb on the SACD layer. I don't doubt there was a loss, but it has nothing to do with resolution.

 

I am not technically equipped to debate this in depth, but what I understood Steve to mean about 'reverb trail' resolution loss was a detectable weakening of the signal at the tail end, whereby it was not audible to the same extent. I didn't understand he meant it was shorter in clock length.

 

Good point. If that was the case though, I honestly doubt any of us geezers older than 40 would be able to detect it due to natural hearing loss. I attribute such things to subjective perception of changes in the signal and the difficulty of expressing such changes with words.

 

Yes, I think he essentially made that point in summary, that it would not effectively mean anything to us in practical terms.

 

This was a quintessentially great SHTV thread in 2007, and it still is today. That’s all

 

Oh my, describing audio signal defects is nightmarish because of the unbelievable variations of signal damage types.
True, frustrated, actual examples below (technically defendable -- this is NO NONSENSE)...

'Fog', 'Envelope IMD', etc etc, etc.. The name that 'I' use might not be the same as what 'You' use, thereby creating a lot of confusion, frustration eventually anger.
Then, the *VERY* important matter is never really addressed, and the perpetrators continue to get by 'doing the dirty' on the recordings.

* For example, almost every, I mean, like 99+% of the audio on digital distribution has something best described as 'envelope intermodulation distortion' not to be confused with 'intermoduation distortion'. Consumer digital distributions have massive amounts of the 'envelope intermod', but is not audible in the same way as normal intermod. It isn't really all that noticeable other than a kind of subtle (not so subtle) grain in the signal for some of us. This envelope intermod produces sidebands and all kinds of nasties that create a loss of detail, but tends to 'sharpen perceptual peaks'.

* 'Fog' is a sense of 'warmth' which actually comes from uncancelled sidebands created when using the ancient NR systems (almost all Dolby types, Telcom, probably not-so-much DBX.) You won't hear it until it is demoed to you, have to deal with the damaged signals, or have unbelievably good perception. Once you notice 'Fog', it will stick with you forever, almost as bad as the 'stench of death'. Fog creates auditory confusion, thereby obscuring actual, mostly HF, details in a recording.

I have dealt with repeatable and common distortions that aren't even thought of by most audiophiles, probably many people doing mastering, and even EE circuit designers, because they cannot do anything about them, also not noticing them because of perceptual accomodation.

These 'ghost distortions' haven't been resolved because it is VERY difficult to communicate about them except in highly technical terms.
The discussion never gets critical mass because everyone gets confused, including the technical people who understand the issues.

Some of this is subtle stuff exists because some 'crazy genius person' (probably R Dolby) is putting a 'bad touch' on almost everyones recordings in the name of 'IP protection' and 'More consistent sound'. The tools to properly deal with, process, technically understand and resolve these travesties is just coming of age... (At least 4 core CPUs.)

This *devil* processing nowadays is often done on vinyl, so the only refuge is boutique stuff and vinyl <1980s, perhaps as late as early 1990s.

The problem will NOT be resolved until there is a direct A/B comparison demo for everyone to hear, and even then, the resolution might be the consumer cleaning up the recordings themselves.
Using normal language doesn't seem to be 'good enough' to easily move forward...

DESCRIBING AUDIO SIGNAL FLAWS CAN DEFINITELY BE CONFUSING.

John

 

The 1991 ESCA uses the same mastering as every Japanese CD before it, so it has the original mix of Billie Jean, but also has pre-emphasis.

 

The bottom line is the acuity of the average human ear is far more limited than any sound we can perceive. Ref. natural sound and, digital or analog recorded sound.

How does the human auditory brain system convert physical "analog" sound wave energy into conscious perception?

The human brain can also be trained to "fill in" what it perceives as missing "expected" information. [We unconsciously do this every day.] The human brain will do that without training, for example, if you have limited eyesight (ex: partially detached retina).

 

Yes, first time I experienced this related to sound and HiFi, I was only 16 years old. At that time I had bought my first stereo system; amp, turntable, cassette deck and speakers for the total of $750. When listening to the same tape in my fathers car parked outside the house, I could hear some details in the music not heard on my stereo. (Details buried in noise). That surprised me, thought my stereo system was better than my fathers car-fi. But even more surprised back in house when the same tape played back on my stereo and I actually heared those missing details. I was a bit confused.

My brain filled in those missing details, details in music that was buried in noise.

 

Another situation [which I explained in a previous post here with an audio example that was deleted] is understanding English spoken with a heavy accent. I cannot for the life of me understand them while a person standing next to me has no problem.