I've often pondered the concept of vinyl records being associated with analog nostalgia. However, when considering the purchase of vinyl editions for contemporary movies, it's interesting to note that these recordings are digitally produced before being transferred to analog vinyl. Does this mean we are truly experiencing analog nostalgia in such cases?
That's stuff has been going on for a long time. The famous Telarc recordings were originally done to digital.
If we consider reprinted vinyl records sourced from older analog recordings, the narrative seems to persist. Despite the vintage origins of the content, the reprints often involve a digital intermediary before being transferred onto analog vinyl.
Artists can still choose a completely analogue signal path if they want to:
https://www.recordindustry.com/artone-studio
https://www.recordindustry.com/artone-studio
What is this about a digital veil anyway? It suggests there is a problem with your dac if you are hearing a veil.
The sampling rates are likely higher than 44.1KHz. Even records made with early digital were sampled at 50KHz.
For example, Narada's records were digitally mastered but do not sound digital.
Ed
For example, Narada's records were digitally mastered but do not sound digital.
Ed
Folk spending big bux on reel-to-reel copies of "Master Tapes" are going to be disappointed to find that No, the owners of valuable master tapes are not allowing them to be used repeatedly for copying (despite a strong intimation in advertising). Instead, there's a 96ks/s intermediary. Yes, the dreaded digital. The same sensible position for owners of early generations of valuable music applies to vinyl manufacture, except that real vinyl mastering, by the best folk, also classically involved real time level adjustments and often a tonally adjusted intermediary tape. In later days, the preview head (used for automatic lateral track separation) got too cumbersome, and an A/D/A was used to simply delay the signal to cutting head to allow time for preview. More dreaded digital.
All good fortune,
Chris
All good fortune,
Chris
Well one could say yes, you get all the noise and distortion of the vinyl signal chain which dominates any artifacts of the digitization - more or less true, vinyl SNR is low, inherent distortions are high, there's no getting round the fact digital is much much better for everything but headroom really, the real "veil" is surface noise...
Even headroom is of course worse - however, it may take overload/clipping i.e. passing "0dB" better... but thats just bas gain staging really..
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Is headroom really a problem? I worked in broadcast TV and normal levels on the
20 bit systems in movies/TV set operating level at -20 dbfs in the US and Europe
-18 dbfs. The only place headroom might be an issue is the initial recording.
Once past that it's not a big deal to keep levels under control.
The first things I noticed with DDD CDs was no ticks/pops, surface noise and NO wow and
flutter. I'm glad folks are having fun with the old gear but you'll never get me to buy
back into a system that has DESIGNED IN wearout functions AND distortions AND...
If you had never seen a CRT display, would you get excited about a new technology using
magnetically deflected electron beams inside a vacuum CRT ? BTW for Christmas I got an LG
OLED computer monitor.
G²
Which is exactly why I have not listened to vinyl in over forty years; it's so distracting...
The user interface is better, though, and a real big advantage is that you can't play records on a mobile phone!
Keeping the home free of dust with an electrostatic air filter seems to help.
I could imagine a dozen ways the underlying technology for analogue playback could be improved.
Too much crosstalk? Dual grooves. And while we're at it, why not properly encode a few things like a metronome to maintain the correct tracking speed? And wasn't there an analogue laser based system that appeared about the same time as CD?
I don't know if an RIAA-like pre-emphasis filter would still be useful with a laser based system, but who said the filters on the pre-amp side have to be hard-coded? There exist plenty of ways in which a filter could be digitally controlled but still pass analogue signals.
People seem to have this either/or thing going with digital techniques, probably because of cynicism and overzealousness on both sides. Just because good A to Ds and D to As exist, does not imply that they must be used every time some digital circuitry would come in handy. Not least because the designer always knows better than the customer what they can and can't hear. It seems to be a lack of trust among people, and it doesn't surprise me. For one thing, ultrasonics are routinely regarded as "inaudible and therefore safe to ignore in all circumstances", even though that's obviously wrong. So we have digital developers applying 20kHz low-pass filters to prevent aliasing in A/Ds, while at the same time ultrasonic transducers are being developed where the vibrations are demodulated and made audible. You can't have it both ways.
I could imagine a dozen ways the underlying technology for analogue playback could be improved.
Too much crosstalk? Dual grooves. And while we're at it, why not properly encode a few things like a metronome to maintain the correct tracking speed? And wasn't there an analogue laser based system that appeared about the same time as CD?
I don't know if an RIAA-like pre-emphasis filter would still be useful with a laser based system, but who said the filters on the pre-amp side have to be hard-coded? There exist plenty of ways in which a filter could be digitally controlled but still pass analogue signals.
People seem to have this either/or thing going with digital techniques, probably because of cynicism and overzealousness on both sides. Just because good A to Ds and D to As exist, does not imply that they must be used every time some digital circuitry would come in handy. Not least because the designer always knows better than the customer what they can and can't hear. It seems to be a lack of trust among people, and it doesn't surprise me. For one thing, ultrasonics are routinely regarded as "inaudible and therefore safe to ignore in all circumstances", even though that's obviously wrong. So we have digital developers applying 20kHz low-pass filters to prevent aliasing in A/Ds, while at the same time ultrasonic transducers are being developed where the vibrations are demodulated and made audible. You can't have it both ways.
There were a couple attempts, including at least one commercially available, to make laser reading shellac and vinyl playback. Although being contact-free and so not damaging to archival material (good for museums, national music archives, etc.) the noise level requires massive amounts of post-transfer processing, with its own issues, to be usable. Generally built into the machine.
All good fortune,
Chris
FM could probably fit a lot more onto the disc with less noise. What did laser video discs use? Anyway, the inertia is probably too great for mere mortals to shift the tide.
A large part of the appeal for all manner of digital technology seems to be the unobtainium status -- the more difficult it is for homebrew tinkering to allow recording or playing something independently, made from surplus junk, the "safer" and more marketable it is. It has to be a magic black box, and if you misbehave, your music listening subscription privileges can be remotely revoked at the push of a button 😆
At least in Poland, we still have local glass blowers, so there's always a slim chance that -- if some natural disaster happens -- we're one step away from manufacturing vacuum tubes. The same cannot be said about even the oldest ICs that require silicon foundries and mind boggling UV stencil technology that simply can't be replicated in one's backyard.
A large part of the appeal for all manner of digital technology seems to be the unobtainium status -- the more difficult it is for homebrew tinkering to allow recording or playing something independently, made from surplus junk, the "safer" and more marketable it is. It has to be a magic black box, and if you misbehave, your music listening subscription privileges can be remotely revoked at the push of a button 😆
At least in Poland, we still have local glass blowers, so there's always a slim chance that -- if some natural disaster happens -- we're one step away from manufacturing vacuum tubes. The same cannot be said about even the oldest ICs that require silicon foundries and mind boggling UV stencil technology that simply can't be replicated in one's backyard.
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I remember getting a copy of Ry Cooder's "Bop Til You Drop" back in 1979. It was "the first digitally recorded major-label album in popular music" (Wikipedia), and I wanted to hear what it sounded like (and I liked Ry Cooder).
It sounded really good (and I still have it, and it still does.)
If digitally recorded and mastered music, transferred D2A for vinyl cutting, sounds great... I see no problem. There has to be a D2A step somewhere along the line with digital music.
It sounded really good (and I still have it, and it still does.)
If digitally recorded and mastered music, transferred D2A for vinyl cutting, sounds great... I see no problem. There has to be a D2A step somewhere along the line with digital music.
I suppose with some material you could have analogue playback that is programmatically controlled, like MIDI connected to analogue controllers. A lot of mixes could be encoded as a series of lossless instructions on top of the base material. Maybe I'm speaking in an alien language to some people, but making all the mastering "secret sauce" accessible doesn't seem all that different from publishing a musical score.