MrFeedback thanks for bringing us back to the source of the problem. Until they will sell a copy of the original DAT I guess audiophile will always be condemned to running around in their little cage or to listen to unknown artists printed on some obscure audiophile label that sound real good. Listen to predigested and regurgitated music no matter how much stuff they pile on their racks, how many monoblock PS enclosures they have.
Who invented the 'loudness' button? Boomy bass,rice paper-thin midrange, and harsh treble that sounds soo good in the car stereo? Meanwhile, technology is evolved choices that where made back in the 50's to doctor the sound to make it better on the existing equipment no longer have a reason to be but the people are somehow 'hooked'.
Maybe there is sometype of distortion in tube equipment that give the illusion of regaining something that was lost during reprocessing of music. Two 180 deg wrong turns put you back in the right direction I guess.
Who invented the 'loudness' button? Boomy bass,rice paper-thin midrange, and harsh treble that sounds soo good in the car stereo? Meanwhile, technology is evolved choices that where made back in the 50's to doctor the sound to make it better on the existing equipment no longer have a reason to be but the people are somehow 'hooked'.
Maybe there is sometype of distortion in tube equipment that give the illusion of regaining something that was lost during reprocessing of music. Two 180 deg wrong turns put you back in the right direction I guess.
grataku said:
So? Recorded music is nothing but illusion from the start.
The only "right" direction is that which gives us the greatest enjoyment of music. While some take different paths than others, none are inherently more "right" than any other.
Why do you seem so threatened by those who would choose a path different from yours that you feel the need to impugn them?
se
I have around 700 CD's and I can count those which have excellent sound. Of some peculiar reason very few of them are from USA! Denmark, England, Sweden and Germany have very high quality on recording quality.
Ok, hit me
!
To the gathered experteze: Why do we want 24 bit sound when almost none recording uses 16 bits?
Ok, hit me
!To the gathered experteze: Why do we want 24 bit sound when almost none recording uses 16 bits?
peranders said:Ok, hit me
Ok boys, saddle up!
Insane Santa Posse's comin' to getcha!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeehaaawwwwwwwwwwww!
<img src="http://www.q-audio.com/images/cowboy1.gif"><img src="http://www.q-audio.com/images/cowboy1.gif"><img src="http://www.q-audio.com/images/cowboy1.gif"><img src="http://www.q-audio.com/images/cowboy1.gif"><img src="http://www.q-audio.com/images/cowboy1.gif">
What do you mean? You mean less than 16 bits?
se
Steve Eddy said:
I wish I knew what tha "F" are you talking about, actually not really.
When there is no argument to be won or lost I guess you just have to make up your own and then proclaim yourself as the winner.
What do you do for a living, what is next for you? The Nobel price? The US presidency? The title of smartest man in the universe? What is it that you need to prove, exactly?
Poor re-release of analogue masters as CD's:
A few words about my earlier comments:
First, I enjoy the polite and familiar nature of the conversation here and greatly appreciate even-tempered responses I received to my comments yesterday. This is, I think, one of the things that set this forum apart from most others. Thank you, and I hope that I didn’t deviate too much from this genre.
I'm certainly not anti-CD. But the fact remains that when the CD format 1st went mainstream, many of the of LP's we all loved so much had really crappy re-releases as CD re-masters. These were likely the ones where there was more attention to getting title to market than there was thinking about the transfer process. These things that had been mastered on 1/2 tape machines running at 30 IPS could be phenomenal.
I’ve always wondered where the source of the failure was.
Apathy? Perhaps.
Ignorance that CD is an ostensibly different media with its own aesthetic and unique technical boundaries? Again perhaps. I think there was often an over reliance on process and equipment that may have resulted in the use of B team engineers to produce these CD's. The masters were likely blown directly onto PCM 1630 systems, P and Q tones ruffed in to simulate the LP timings and then sent out to be "pressed". To this day if I think if I were to ask 5 recording engineers the correlation between 0 Vu on an analogue recording and 100% on a digital media, I would likely get 5 different answers.
And then there is the one that seems almost relevant today to anyone who is conspiratorially minded. Did the record labels intentionally allow the CD masters to be sub standard in order to minimize or attempt to control the effects of piracy? I don’t think this is too likely, but sometimes when listening to the limited quality of a product, one has to wonder.
These are my own humble opinions.
(More post(s) on the way to mumble about dithering)
A few words about my earlier comments:
First, I enjoy the polite and familiar nature of the conversation here and greatly appreciate even-tempered responses I received to my comments yesterday. This is, I think, one of the things that set this forum apart from most others. Thank you, and I hope that I didn’t deviate too much from this genre.
I'm certainly not anti-CD. But the fact remains that when the CD format 1st went mainstream, many of the of LP's we all loved so much had really crappy re-releases as CD re-masters. These were likely the ones where there was more attention to getting title to market than there was thinking about the transfer process. These things that had been mastered on 1/2 tape machines running at 30 IPS could be phenomenal.
I’ve always wondered where the source of the failure was.
Apathy? Perhaps.
Ignorance that CD is an ostensibly different media with its own aesthetic and unique technical boundaries? Again perhaps. I think there was often an over reliance on process and equipment that may have resulted in the use of B team engineers to produce these CD's. The masters were likely blown directly onto PCM 1630 systems, P and Q tones ruffed in to simulate the LP timings and then sent out to be "pressed". To this day if I think if I were to ask 5 recording engineers the correlation between 0 Vu on an analogue recording and 100% on a digital media, I would likely get 5 different answers.
And then there is the one that seems almost relevant today to anyone who is conspiratorially minded. Did the record labels intentionally allow the CD masters to be sub standard in order to minimize or attempt to control the effects of piracy? I don’t think this is too likely, but sometimes when listening to the limited quality of a product, one has to wonder.
These are my own humble opinions.
(More post(s) on the way to mumble about dithering)
I think we have to take every stage of the chain - from musician to listener - into account when we talk about quality.
While many scanting salesperson would insist that the loudspeaker would still be the weakest piece of the chain (and others argue about analog vs digital) me personally, I am convinced that the three weakest parts are:
-composers
-musicians
-producers
and it is mainly the fault of the last element, the "listener" !!!
I generally like (and have played by myself) many styles of music, but my listening to pop music is decreasing.
IMHO the best rock/pop music was composed, played and recorded from the sixties until the mid eighties.
How can anyone expect that crappy music can be recorded well ??
Today's mainstream pop is so boring and artificial that it is mainly usable for background sound (and for car radio, because it doesn't disturb too much).
If it is performed "life", one can only bear it due to the massive use of added optical stimulation (i.e. gigantic light-shows , and the "musicians" doing aerobic performances on-stage).
If the consumers would stop to use music as background noise (as if our environment wasn't noisy enough nowadays) and start to LISTEN to it again, then this would be the end of boring music (and maybe the end of illegal copying as well).
Regards
Charles
/being in a heretical mood
While many scanting salesperson would insist that the loudspeaker would still be the weakest piece of the chain (and others argue about analog vs digital) me personally, I am convinced that the three weakest parts are:
-composers
-musicians
-producers
and it is mainly the fault of the last element, the "listener" !!!
I generally like (and have played by myself) many styles of music, but my listening to pop music is decreasing.
IMHO the best rock/pop music was composed, played and recorded from the sixties until the mid eighties.
How can anyone expect that crappy music can be recorded well ??
Today's mainstream pop is so boring and artificial that it is mainly usable for background sound (and for car radio, because it doesn't disturb too much).
If it is performed "life", one can only bear it due to the massive use of added optical stimulation (i.e. gigantic light-shows , and the "musicians" doing aerobic performances on-stage).
If the consumers would stop to use music as background noise (as if our environment wasn't noisy enough nowadays) and start to LISTEN to it again, then this would be the end of boring music (and maybe the end of illegal copying as well).
Regards
Charles
/being in a heretical mood
Why did I swoon about DG when I have so very few DG recordings?
Why did I swoon about DG when I have so very few DG recordings?
Back around the time I bought my 1st CD player in the mid 80's (an unrelated event) I had this cool opportunity to hang around in Riga and Yurmala Latvia with a film crew documenting a Soviet US cultural, ideological, and social exchange.
There were a couple of huge evening programs that featured from the US, Eugene Fodor, Grover Washington Jr., Dr. Billy Tailor, and a crew of other stellar jazz artists. The Latvians presented the Riga Symphony Orchestra and a crew of other equally talented performers.
The Latvians were thrilled beyond description to have these masters of the Jazz genre performing for them. I met a hand full of passionate and, highly skilled recording engineers. At some performances these guys seemed to come the woodwork with their Nagras. Me, I got to help the film crew audio recordists get feeds from the Latvian mix engineers. (I also carried boxes, logged tapes, and charged the batteries.) The performances were great and emotionally charged. The quality of the audio mix we were given was as good as it gets.
Well to truncate the rest of my ramblings, through some bits and pieces of mixed language exchange, I think that these Latvians had indicated to us that they had received their training at DG.
OK, twenty years ago... I don’t own many DG recordings... I was just very impressed with these guys who I think might have been trained there. If its not the case that they turn out a quality product, I am disappointed. Another case of lost potential, or perhaps our Russian, German, English Latvian exchanges were so bad that these guys were really trying to tell me to watch out for DG because it wasn’t that good.
A classical recording that I am particularly fond of is, "JS Bach Cello Suites" performed by Nathaniel Rosen, produced and distributed by John Marks Records. My only critique on the recordings would be that the stereo image is slightly better when listened to through cans than speakers. I believe that this is a good example of a CD product where care, craft and art were well applied throughout the production resulting in an excellent product.
Why did I swoon about DG when I have so very few DG recordings?
Back around the time I bought my 1st CD player in the mid 80's (an unrelated event) I had this cool opportunity to hang around in Riga and Yurmala Latvia with a film crew documenting a Soviet US cultural, ideological, and social exchange.
There were a couple of huge evening programs that featured from the US, Eugene Fodor, Grover Washington Jr., Dr. Billy Tailor, and a crew of other stellar jazz artists. The Latvians presented the Riga Symphony Orchestra and a crew of other equally talented performers.
The Latvians were thrilled beyond description to have these masters of the Jazz genre performing for them. I met a hand full of passionate and, highly skilled recording engineers. At some performances these guys seemed to come the woodwork with their Nagras. Me, I got to help the film crew audio recordists get feeds from the Latvian mix engineers. (I also carried boxes, logged tapes, and charged the batteries.) The performances were great and emotionally charged. The quality of the audio mix we were given was as good as it gets.
Well to truncate the rest of my ramblings, through some bits and pieces of mixed language exchange, I think that these Latvians had indicated to us that they had received their training at DG.
OK, twenty years ago... I don’t own many DG recordings... I was just very impressed with these guys who I think might have been trained there. If its not the case that they turn out a quality product, I am disappointed. Another case of lost potential, or perhaps our Russian, German, English Latvian exchanges were so bad that these guys were really trying to tell me to watch out for DG because it wasn’t that good.
A classical recording that I am particularly fond of is, "JS Bach Cello Suites" performed by Nathaniel Rosen, produced and distributed by John Marks Records. My only critique on the recordings would be that the stereo image is slightly better when listened to through cans than speakers. I believe that this is a good example of a CD product where care, craft and art were well applied throughout the production resulting in an excellent product.
Good bifurcation Jocko...
Jocko,
Sorry for my rather facetious post near this thread start. I had missed your comment on the "twisted pair" thread, having abandoned it . It was clear to me there were irreconcilable differences, and with the tone of one participant unpleasant, it was not fun any more.
Cheers,
Jocko,
Sorry for my rather facetious post near this thread start. I had missed your comment on the "twisted pair" thread, having abandoned it . It was clear to me there were irreconcilable differences, and with the tone of one participant unpleasant, it was not fun any more.
Cheers,
My worst sounding CD in my collection is
Ricky Martin - Living La Vida Loca. It is the CD I listen to the least and only for Track #2.
For 14 tracks, there are 9 producers, 23 recording engineers, 20 assistant engineers and 6 mixing engineers.
When I play it in my friends' cars, it sounds OK, not great, but OK, but when I play it at home, the use of limiters and compressors becomes obvious. Very inconsistent from track to track. Even my discman tells me the CD is crap. I cannot say about the recordings and the mixes, but the production is awful.
I think it was intended to be played only on those horrible little boom box systems - the type found in the bedrooms of teenage groupies.
I guess that means it was well-made for the purpose. The consumer has to stop wanting crappy sounding stuff. There are some nice songs on this CD, but they are hidden by the commercialism.
ensen
Ricky Martin - Living La Vida Loca. It is the CD I listen to the least and only for Track #2.
For 14 tracks, there are 9 producers, 23 recording engineers, 20 assistant engineers and 6 mixing engineers.
When I play it in my friends' cars, it sounds OK, not great, but OK, but when I play it at home, the use of limiters and compressors becomes obvious. Very inconsistent from track to track. Even my discman tells me the CD is crap. I cannot say about the recordings and the mixes, but the production is awful.
I think it was intended to be played only on those horrible little boom box systems - the type found in the bedrooms of teenage groupies.
I guess that means it was well-made for the purpose. The consumer has to stop wanting crappy sounding stuff. There are some nice songs on this CD, but they are hidden by the commercialism.
ensen
Re: Why Johny cant hear, my own digital duldrums...
So,
It’s been ten years since I’ve spent any real time evaluating digital recording or processing equipment.
My memory of every production and mastering system that I had played with up to this time as that when I would turn it on, it would add a synthetic noise floor and a certain amount of distortion to the signal. Not too impressive for stuff with names like Neave, AMS, Lexicon and Sony. That’s what I heard.
But then thinking about what others and I had said yesterday, and since I’ve got a @#$% cold today, I got to wondering about more of the details about what this dithering stuff is about anyways.
I just dusted off "The Art of Digital Audio", Second Edition, John Watkinson, Focal Press. (Autographed Too!) Pages 120-130 have a great explanation of dithering, how it works and what I didn’t experience.
John presents three dithering techniques based on the work of Vanderkooy and Lipschitz.
Rectangular PDF, Triangular PDF and Gaussian PDF dithering. He also qualifies these descriptions with the explanation that results will vary with over sampling and noise shaping.
I can only assume, and hope, that the state of the art has grown since my experiences leading to yesterday’s comments.
But now if apply everything we know about making great digital recordings to at least 24bit 96 kHz sampling, we should be standing before a sea change in audible quality. Bandwidth and storage are both at least 1000 times cheaper than when the CD format was 1st defined. It is time to move on.
So what does this have to do with JH's original ponderings? Engineers, producers and artists must each have an understanding of the unique qualities of the media witch they use to produce and distribute their products. They must also endeavor to overcome the financial pressures to just get it done cheap and earn a living.
Optimize the processes of the creating the art with respect to the relevant media, and whether we appreciate the aesthetic content or not, we will likely all agree that we have a technically valid recording.
So,
It’s been ten years since I’ve spent any real time evaluating digital recording or processing equipment.
My memory of every production and mastering system that I had played with up to this time as that when I would turn it on, it would add a synthetic noise floor and a certain amount of distortion to the signal. Not too impressive for stuff with names like Neave, AMS, Lexicon and Sony. That’s what I heard.
But then thinking about what others and I had said yesterday, and since I’ve got a @#$% cold today, I got to wondering about more of the details about what this dithering stuff is about anyways.
I just dusted off "The Art of Digital Audio", Second Edition, John Watkinson, Focal Press. (Autographed Too!) Pages 120-130 have a great explanation of dithering, how it works and what I didn’t experience.
John presents three dithering techniques based on the work of Vanderkooy and Lipschitz.
Rectangular PDF, Triangular PDF and Gaussian PDF dithering. He also qualifies these descriptions with the explanation that results will vary with over sampling and noise shaping.
I can only assume, and hope, that the state of the art has grown since my experiences leading to yesterday’s comments.
But now if apply everything we know about making great digital recordings to at least 24bit 96 kHz sampling, we should be standing before a sea change in audible quality. Bandwidth and storage are both at least 1000 times cheaper than when the CD format was 1st defined. It is time to move on.
So what does this have to do with JH's original ponderings? Engineers, producers and artists must each have an understanding of the unique qualities of the media witch they use to produce and distribute their products. They must also endeavor to overcome the financial pressures to just get it done cheap and earn a living.
Optimize the processes of the creating the art with respect to the relevant media, and whether we appreciate the aesthetic content or not, we will likely all agree that we have a technically valid recording.
peranders said:
Ah. Agreed. Not to mention so many recordings which are compressed to hell and back and have next to no dynamic range at all which isn't exactly my particular cup o' tea.
I have at least 2 good AMERICAN recordings:
Jennifer Warnes: Famous blue raincoat
Linda Ronstadt: 'round midnight
That might be just enough to keep the Bush administration from liberating Sweden next. Can't be too sure though. Wouldn't be a bad idea to go buy a couple more just to be on the safe side.
se
RECORDING THE MESSAGE...
Hi,
Don't give a damn on the how...US or Europe based, main thing is most recording DON't know how to capture an event.
Some good ones:
1/Opus 3
2/Reference Recordings
3/Dave Wilson
From the past:
1/ Blue Note
2/Almost all Decca
3/Mercury
4/Some RCA
5/A lot of other petite labels.
And many other smaller labels if you care about the content.
Let me rephrase that, there are more small labels out there with excellent recording qualities and musical content worth at least a million bucks...combined.
Sure enough, I forgot alot of smaller labels.
Don't care really....as long as they used a U47...just kiddin'
Oink,
Hi,
Don't give a damn on the how...US or Europe based, main thing is most recording DON't know how to capture an event.
Some good ones:
1/Opus 3
2/Reference Recordings
3/Dave Wilson
From the past:
1/ Blue Note
2/Almost all Decca
3/Mercury
4/Some RCA
5/A lot of other petite labels.
And many other smaller labels if you care about the content.
Let me rephrase that, there are more small labels out there with excellent recording qualities and musical content worth at least a million bucks...combined.
Sure enough, I forgot alot of smaller labels.
Don't care really....as long as they used a U47...just kiddin'
Oink,
Digital Does Not Mean Bad
Modern recordings are captured to hard-drive at 96k/24 bit.
It is during subsequent processing (DAC send to outbourd effects, and then ADC returns) and internal digital effects processing and consequent rounding errors that conspire to stuffing up the final sound.
Add to this engineers with cloth ears, and overdoing compression and limiting, and wrong fine eq and you end up with the mess that a lot of studios put out.
Involved in this bad sound too is jitter induced non musical artifacts, and it is here that multitrack tape shines in it's absence of these kinds of distortions.
To add insult to industry, the final release copy is 'Finalised' in a 'reference' studio, and the replay and re-recording equipment and the ears of the operator are final judge as to what gets released.
Having heard the recording studio version and the Top-40 release version of the same songs, I would say that some of these final engineers need shooting.
I have many recordings where I am intimately familiar with the live sound, and that of the spoken and sung voices of the vocalists and individual instruments (especially ones that I have repaired), and on the whole the recordings are actually very good, and it is digital processing artifacts that cause hardness and edginess - different DAW are noted for sounding different according to the effects algorithms used.
I have done some recent experimenting with improving mic signals going into an outboard CODEC, and the sound that captures to hard-drive without any effects processing can be very good indeed.
A young sound engineer friend who is studying sound and film production is currently secretly trialing this technique, and is getting outstanding results - so much so that fellow students and his lecturers are asking questions about how he is getting such clean and sonically nice recordings, and he is getting top marks in his practical assignments !.
IOW, for non effected recordings, it is possible to get excellent results using 44k/16bit - it is the recording analog side that is generally lacking wrt the capabilities of digital.
Eric.
Modern recordings are captured to hard-drive at 96k/24 bit.
It is during subsequent processing (DAC send to outbourd effects, and then ADC returns) and internal digital effects processing and consequent rounding errors that conspire to stuffing up the final sound.
Add to this engineers with cloth ears, and overdoing compression and limiting, and wrong fine eq and you end up with the mess that a lot of studios put out.
Involved in this bad sound too is jitter induced non musical artifacts, and it is here that multitrack tape shines in it's absence of these kinds of distortions.
To add insult to industry, the final release copy is 'Finalised' in a 'reference' studio, and the replay and re-recording equipment and the ears of the operator are final judge as to what gets released.
Having heard the recording studio version and the Top-40 release version of the same songs, I would say that some of these final engineers need shooting.
I have many recordings where I am intimately familiar with the live sound, and that of the spoken and sung voices of the vocalists and individual instruments (especially ones that I have repaired), and on the whole the recordings are actually very good, and it is digital processing artifacts that cause hardness and edginess - different DAW are noted for sounding different according to the effects algorithms used.
I have done some recent experimenting with improving mic signals going into an outboard CODEC, and the sound that captures to hard-drive without any effects processing can be very good indeed.
A young sound engineer friend who is studying sound and film production is currently secretly trialing this technique, and is getting outstanding results - so much so that fellow students and his lecturers are asking questions about how he is getting such clean and sonically nice recordings, and he is getting top marks in his practical assignments !.
IOW, for non effected recordings, it is possible to get excellent results using 44k/16bit - it is the recording analog side that is generally lacking wrt the capabilities of digital.
Eric.
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